July 8, 2020
Congratulations to Mike Shanahan
on his Broncos Ring of Fame selection, announced Tuesday.
But there's still a glaring omission: Otis Armstrong.
For years, the obvious Ring of Fame player oversights were Rick Upchurch, Simon
Fletcher and Armstrong.
Upchurch
made it in '14, Fletcher in '16.
Otis, who won NFL rushing title and played eight seasons (the final ones while battling injuries and team doctors),
is still frozen out. It's not right.
I was going to write a new column about it, but bluntly, I've written the same thing about 10 times -- each time a
Ring of Fame announcement comes and Otis isn't among the picks. (I thought that was a dramatic license exaggeration until
I went back and looked. It isn't. It's more than 10.)
My
2018 Mile High Sports Column on his omission that year is here. Change all my Armies to Navies and 2018 to
2020, and it all stands.
Otis
was a prominent figure in my book '77, of course, involving -- among other things -- his touching
relationship with with Darryl Stingley, his Chicago childhood pal and Purdue teammate. Stingley was paralyzed after taking a hit from the Raiders' Jack Tatum in 1978 and died
in 2007.
The column I did on Armstrong's reaction to Stingley's death is here.