Wilson Whitley
No. 78 | |||
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Position: | Defensive tackle | ||
Personal information | |||
Date of birth: | April 28, 1955 | ||
Place of birth: | Brenham, Texas | ||
Date of death: | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. | ||
Place of death: | Marietta, Georgia | ||
Height: | Lua error in Module:Convert at line 1851: attempt to index local 'en_value' (a nil value). | ||
Weight: | Lua error in Module:Convert at line 1851: attempt to index local 'en_value' (a nil value). | ||
Career information | |||
High school: | Brenham (TX) | ||
College: | Houston | ||
NFL draft: | 1977 / Round: 1 / Pick: 8 | ||
Career history | |||
Career NFL statistics | |||
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Wilson Whitley (May 28, 1955 – October 27, 1992) was a consensus All-American defensive tackle at the University of Houston from 1972-1976 under defensive coordinator Don Todd. He led the Cougars to the Southwest Conference championship in football during Houston's first season as a conference member and won the 1976 Lombardi Award as the nation's top lineman. Former President Gerald Ford presented him the award at a ceremony in Houston, Texas.
Whitley was drafted in the first round by the Cincinnati Bengals and started alongside another Lombardi Award winner, Ross Browner, for 6 seasons. He was later named to the Southwest Conference "All Decade Team" for the 70's.
Whitley died at the age of 37, due to a heart condition. He is a 1998 inductee into University of Houston's Hall of Honor and was a perennial candidate for the National College Football Hall of Fame until his selection in 2007.
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- NFL player using deprecated currentteam parameter
- NFL player with pastcoaching parameter
- NFL player with pastexecutive parameter
- Infobox NFL player with debut/final parameters
- Pages using infobox NFL player with dbf parameter
- 1955 births
- 1992 deaths
- All-American college football players
- American football defensive tackles
- American football defensive linemen
- Cincinnati Bengals players
- Houston Cougars football players
- College Football Hall of Fame inductees
- American football defensive lineman, 1950s birth stubs