 Harmon c. 1940 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| No. 98 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Position: | Halfback | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born: | September 28, 1919 Rensselaer, Indiana, U.S. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Died: | March 15, 1990 (aged 70) Los Angeles, California, U.S. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height: | 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight: | 197 lb (89 kg) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Career information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| High school: | Horace Mann (Gary, Indiana) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| College: | Michigan (1938–1940) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| NFL draft: | 1941 / round: 1 / pick: 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Career history | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Career highlights and awards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Career NFL statistics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Thomas Dudley Harmon (September 28, 1919 – March 15, 1990), nicknamed "Old 98",[1] was an American professional football player, military pilot, actor, and sports broadcaster.
Harmon played college football as a halfback for the Michigan Wolverines from 1938 to 1940. He led the nation in scoring and was a consensus All-American in both 1939 and 1940 and won the Heisman Trophy, the Maxwell Award, and the AP Athlete of the Year award in 1940. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954.
During World War II, Harmon served as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces. In April 1943, he was the sole survivor of the crash of a bomber he piloted in South America en route to North Africa. Six months later, while flying a P-38 Lightning, he was shot down in a dogfight with Japanese Zeros near Jiujiang in China.
After the war, Harmon played two seasons of professional football for the Los Angeles Rams and had the longest run from scrimmage during the 1946 NFL season. He later pursued a career in sports broadcasting and was the play-by-play announcer for the first televised Rose Bowl in the late 1940s and worked for CBS from 1950 to 1962. He later hosted a 10-minute daily sports show on the ABC radio network in the 1960s and worked as the sports anchor on the KTLA nightly news from 1958 to 1964. He also handled play-by-play responsibility on broadcasts of the UCLA Bruins football games in the 1960s and 1970s.