Rick Casares

Richard Jose "Rick" Casares (born July 4, 1931) is a former American college and professional football player who was a running back in the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL) for twelve seasons in the 1950s and 1960s. Casares played college football for the University of Florida, and thereafter, he played professionally for the Chicago Bears and Washington Redskins of the NFL and the Miami Dolphins of the AFL.

Early years
Rick Casares was born in Tampa, Florida in 1931. When he was 7 years old, his father was killed in a gang-style murder; his mother sent him to live with an aunt and uncle in New Jersey. At 15, Casares became a Golden Gloves boxing champion. When he was offered a professional boxing contract at 15, his mother refused to permit it, and he returned to Tampa.

Casares attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Tampa, where his teachers introduced him to high school sports as a way to keep him in school. The Jefferson coaches discovered the 190-pound, six-foot-one-inch freshman when he picked up a javelin for the first time and threw it. Casares played high school football, basketball, and baseball for the Jefferson Dragons, and he was a track and field, too. He was an all-state football and basketball player, and the Dragons won the city football championship in 1948 and 1949. In 2007, fifty-seven years after he graduated from high school, the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) recognized Casares as one of the thirty-three all-time greatest Florida high school football players of the last 100 years by naming him to its "All-Century Team."

College career
After graduating from high school, Casares received an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, and he played fullback for coach Bob Woodruff's Florida Gators football team from 1951 to 1953. Casares quickly became the star rusher of the Gators' backfield. As a 210-pound, six-foot-two-inch sophomore in 1952, he scored the first touchdown of the Gators' first bowl game, a 14–13 victory over the Tulsa Golden Hurricane in the January 1, 1953 Gator Bowl, and was a second-team All-Southeastern Conference (SEC) selection. In 1953, he was a team captain. Woodruff ranked Casares as the Gators' best running back and one of their three best kickers of the 1950s.

Casares was also a member of coach John Mauer's Florida Gators basketball team, and led the team in scoring and rebounding with 14.9 points and 11.3 rebounds as a sophomore in 1951–1952 and 15.5 points and 11.5 rebounds as a junior in 1952–1953. In basketball, he was a third-team All-SEC selection in 1952; as basketball team captain in 1953, he received second-team All-SEC honors.

Although his college career was cut short when he was drafted into the U.S. Army after his junior year, Casares was later inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a "Gator Great."

Professional career
Casares was selected in the second round (eighteenth pick overall) of the 1954 NFL Draft by the Chicago Bears, and, after fulfilling his military service obligations, he played for the Bears from 1955 to 1964. Casares led Chicago in rushing from 1955 through 1960. In 1956, Casares led the NFL in rushing with 235 carries for 1,126 yards. At the time, this was the second most yards gained in a single season in the NFL. Behind Casares' hard-nosed rushing, the Bears advanced to the 1956 NFL Championship Game. However, the Bears' championship game opponents, the New York Giants, completely stifled Casares and crushed the Bears, 47–7.

During the following 1957 season, Casares again led the NFL with 204 rushing attempts, but his 700 yards was eclipsed by Jim Brown's 942 yards on two fewer carries. After ten seasons with Chicago, Casares was the Bears' all-time leading rusher with 1,386 carries, 5,657 yards, and forty-nine rushing touchdowns. His Chicago Bears rushing records weren't broken until Walter Payton shattered them in the 1980s, and he remains the third all-time rusher in franchise history, immediately behind Payton (16,726 yards) and Neal Anderson (6,166 yards), and immediately ahead of Gayle Sayers (4,956 yards).

Casares finished his professional career with the NFL's Washington Redskins in 1965, and in 1966 with the AFL's Miami Dolphins, receiving only limited carries in his final two seasons.