Hall of Fame Feature | Mike Magac
10/16/2018 3:17:00 PM | Football, General
From humble beginnings, Magac shined on the football field at Mizzou
There are a few key prerequisites needed to be a successful offensive lineman. Tough. Smart. Athletic. Mizzou lineman Mike Magac possessed all three in spades.
"If you went back to biblical times, in those days, sometimes one army would send out their best fighter, and the other army would send out their best fighter and whoever won, that was it. Well if we were doing that, we would have sent Magac out, I can guarantee you," said fellow Mizzou Athletics Hall of Famer and former teammate Russ Sloan.
Magac, a team captain, played in the trenches for Dan Devine between 1957 and 1959. In his three seasons, he was twice named second-team All-American and also was a two-time first-team All-Big Eight offensive lineman.
"He easily was one of the finest linemen in the whole decade of the 50s at Mizzou," Sloan said.
"He was very, very tough, and in many senses of the word, how they talk about athletes having to think two and three and four moves in advance, I would say definitively that he had those characteristics," said his son, Brady Magac.
Mike was listed at 6-3 and weighed around 215 pounds, a large man by today's standards, but a behemoth back in the 1950's. He also possessed rare quickness for his size, perhaps coming from his days as a quarterback in high school. Sloan said Mike "threw a great pass."
"When you get somebody who's [his size], who's fast and agile, you know, that's surprising on the football field. In today's sense, obviously, it's a little more prevalent. That was a unicorn back then," Brady said.
Back in the 1950's, it was much more common than it is in today's game for a player to play on both offense and defense. It is a testament to the endurance and toughness of the players of that era, and Sloan says a hit Mike made on defense was the most memorable play he had at Mizzou.
"We opened with Penn State my senior year. And Penn State probably was about as big of a team as we ever played size-wise. And they had a big fullback by the name of [Pat] Botula, and he broke loose on the left side and started running downfield and he cut back toward the middle of the field," Sloan said. "Magac was on the dead run and Magac hit him, and honestly, it's the only time in my life, I must have been 12 to 15 yards away from the contact point, but I literally heard the air go out of Botula. That was the greatest single hit I'd seen in my four years [at Mizzou], and Magac delivered it."
Mike went on to the NFL after his time at Mizzou and spent seven years in the league with both the San Francisco 49ers and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Sloan recalled a historic coaching figure who narrowly missed out on drafting Magac; legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi.
"The day after the Orange Bowl, Mike and I flew to Hawaii [for the Hula Bowl] by way of Chicago, [then on to Los Angeles], and then Honolulu. Lombardi drove down from Green Bay to meet Mike at the Chicago airport because he wanted to draft Magac," Sloan said. "Mike was the fourth pick in the second round. The 49ers picked him right before Green Bay, Green Bay had the next pick, and the 49ers got him before Lombardi could get him."
Mike is being inducted into Mizzou Athletics' Hall of Fame posthumously as he passed away in 2003, an accomplishment that means a great deal to his family.
"I didn't really understand the breadth or the magnitude of what he had done until after he had passed away," Brady said. "There were thousands of people who came to the wake, and I was just absolutely blown away. And with clippings and stories and memorabilia, literally the display, I couldn't believe it. And so, that was kind of when I learned, a lot more than I had up until that point because he wasn't the type of person who would boast about his accomplishments. He just was very, very humble."
Although Mike wasn't one to brag, his success at the university was important to him. To this day, his son still keeps many of Mike's most prized possessions from his days in Columbia.
"When I was collecting his things [after he passed away], we still have all of his Mizzou memorabilia," Brady said. "My father was a very simple man, humble, but he kept those things that he treasured, and many of those things were specifically from his time at Mizzou."
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The Mizzou Athletics Hall of Fame induction ceremony for the 2018 class will be held this Friday at the Stoney Creek Inn beginning at 5:30 p.m. Tickets to the event are still on sale and can be purchased by clicking here.
