University of North Carolina Athletics
Pace: The Hang Man
This story first appeared in Tar Heel Monthly in the spring of 2011, after Chris Hanburger had been named for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Hanburger was on the 1963 Carolina football team that won the Gator Bowl. That team will celebrate its 50th-year anniversary with a reunion this weekend in Chapel Hill.
by Lee Pace, GoHeels.com
The routine in my Hendersonville home on fall weekends in the 1960s was simple and consistent: Friday nights, attend the Hendersonville Bearcats football game; Saturday afternoon, listen to Bill Currie describe the Tar Heels' game; Sunday afternoon, watch the Washington Redskins on television-first on a boxy black-and-white set and by 1967 on the most splendiferous RCA color TV that an 10-year-old boy could imagine. Today I can still see the dark maroon jerseys and helmets the Redskins wore, the headgear adorned with a gold and white arrow and feather, this before Vince Lombardi took over for one season in 1969 and lightened the maroon and turned the rusty gold nearer to the yellowish hue he liked so well from his Green Bay days.
My dad loved the Tar Heels and Redskins, though in the 1960s it wasn't much fun to root for either team, that is until Bill Dooley and George Allen got down to brass tacks. So it's no wonder my dad's favorite player was one of both-Chris Hanburger, Tar Heel from 1962-64 and Redskin from 1965-78.
"Hanburger's about to take someone's head off," my dad would say as Y.A. Tittle or Norm Snead or Milt Plum barked signals from behind the opposing team's center.
Sure enough, Hanburger would charge from his outside linebacker position on a blitz, or he'd hone in on a receiver crossing the middle, or he'd chase down a halfback on an angle. He'd extend his left arm, whip it around the side of the ball carrier's head and rip him to the turf, the poor guy seeing stars and groaning for some Excedrin.
"The Hang Man" strikes again.
Hanburger was modest in size by today's standards, standing 6-2, 220 pounds. But he was an expert technician, knew how to read plays and react before his teammates and wielded a lethal blow with his signature clothesline tackle.
"I developed the habit early on of tackling high," Hanburger says. "My fist was clenched, my arm was going around their neck. As a defensive player, I had that mentality that we ought to be able to do anything we can to get them down. If you can clothesline someone, I think you should be able to do that. If he doesn't want to get clotheslined, he can duck his head."
The extended Tar Heel and Redskins families are paying homage these days as Hanburger was elected in mid-February to join the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He becomes only the second Carolina player (Lawrence Taylor being the other) to be anointed to such an illustrious body.
"It's a wonderful honor," says Hanburger, who lives in Darlington, S.C., and avoids the limelight whenever possible. "I am just overwhelmed. It's just a tremendous honor to have been nominated, much less get in. It's just a select group that make it."
Hanburger was born at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, graduated from high school in Hampton, Va., and spent two years in military service before enrolling at Carolina in the fall of 1961.
"Chris deserves all the recognition he's getting," says Joe Robinson, a teammate of Hanburger's on the 1963 ACC championship squad. "It's long overdue. Chris was something else. He had been in the military before college, so he was more mature than the rest of us, physically and mentally. He knew exactly where he was in life and where he was going. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy, but he enjoyed the camaraderie, the members of the team and playing football. Obviously he was very good at the game."
Brent Milgrom remembers arriving at Ehringhaus Dorm in the summer of 1964 as a freshman and seeing Hanburger and teammate Charlie Davis climbing the brick latticework up the side of the six-story building.
"They were racing to see who could get to the top first," Milgrom says. "That was my introduction to Chapel Hill."
Milgrom remembers Hanburger as one of the most feared players on the team, particularly among the younger players.
"He was quiet, but he was quiet like a lion," Milgrom says. "He was a raw-boned guy. He was in great shape after those two years in the service. He never smiled. He was scary. He was nice enough, and he never made trouble. But when you walked down the hall past his room, you'd tip-toe. You didn't want to bother him and piss him off."
Everyone around Tar Heel football in the early 1960s and later in the NFL had more than a healthy respect for No. 55.
"Chris was devastating with that tackle," Milgrom says. "He whipped running backs to submission with that arm."
"He punished quarterbacks, he punished anyone with the football," says John Bunting, who was behind Hanburger at Carolina but played against him when Bunting joined the Philadelphia Eagles in 1972. "He would tomahawk people at the neck, he'd chop them up. He was one heckuva player."
Don McCauley was recruited by Bill Dooley after Hanburger had moved on to the NFL, but he played halfback for the Baltimore Colts throughout the 1970s, so his teams frequently ran up against the Redskin defense.
"Chris put the fear of God into you," says McCauley. "You paid attention to where he was at all times. I hoped since I was a fellow Tar Heel, he might show me a little mercy, but no luck on that."
Hanburger wasn't drafted until the 18th round in 1965, but he quickly established his bona fides on the Redskin special teams. Robinson marvels at the memory of one particular Hanburger highlight from that rookie season, a clip that was shown on a "Plays of the Week" reel running on TV games on Sundays. Hanburger led the kick-off cover team downfield, leaped a blocker and then slammed head-on into the ball carrier, knocking the opponent stone cold.
"Anyone of that era will remember seeing that play," Robinson says. "It was vintage Chris Hanburger."
Hanburger was a key member of coach George Allen's juggernaut squad of the early 1970s; the 1972 team advanced to the Super Bowl before falling to Miami. He was named to nine Pro Bowls and was the Redskins' defensive signal caller.
"My dad would be so happy for Chris because he was a dedicated player who didn't play the game for the limelight," says Bruce Allen, the Redskin's general manager today. "He's a humble man. He cared about doing his job right and he cared about other people doing their jobs right. He's a very disciplined person. The same things you appreciate in today's game with Peyton Manning and Tom Brady-the detail of his preparation was amazing."
As my dad always said, there's nothing better than a Tar Heel and Redskin wrapped into one.