![\"\"](\"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/sametcheverry.jpeg\")
- Sam “The Rifle” Etcheverry was born on May 20, 1930 in Carlsbad<\/a>, New Mexico. His parents<\/a> were Jean Baptiste “Jim” and Florence (nee Arreguy) Etcheverry, Basque sheep ranchers. Jim had been born in Urepel<\/a>, Nafarroa Beherea. Born in Texas, Florence’s father was from Anhaux<\/a>, Nafarroa Beherea, and her mother was from Mexico. <\/li>
- Sam attended high school in Carlsbad and, upon graduation, went to the University of Denver. He still holds many of the passing records for the Denver Pioneers<\/a>. But, his career really shined when he joined the Montreal Alouettes<\/a> of the Canadian Football League (then known as the\u00a0Interprovincial Rugby Football Union<\/a>) in 1952. <\/li>
- In Montreal, he was named an all-star six times and once was awarded the\u00a0Schenley Award<\/a>\u00a0for most outstanding player of the\u00a0Canadian Rugby Union<\/a>. He once passed for 586 yards in a game, in 1954, a single-game passing record that stood for 39 years. He led the CFL in passing for six years and was the first professional quarterback in any league to throw for more than 4,000 yards. He took his team to the Grey Cup<\/a>, the Canadian version of the Super Bowl, 3 times, losing each time to Edmonton. However, his 508 yards in the 1955 Grey Cup still stands as the record.<\/li>
- When he was traded to the\u00a0Hamilton Tiger-Cats<\/a>\u00a0in 1960, he opted instead to leave the CFL and join the National Football League, playing two years with the-then\u00a0St. Louis Cardinals<\/a>. However, he didn’t receive much playing time and in 1963 asked to be released from his contract.<\/li>
- In 1964, he returned to Canada, this time as head coach of the\u00a0Quebec Rifles<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0United Football League<\/a>. After that league folded, he coached at the college level for a couple of years before being hired as the coach of the Alouettes. In his first season as coach, he took his team to the Grey Cup, where they beat Calgary<\/a> in horrid conditions. He coached a few more years before retiring after the 1972 season.<\/li>
- Sam was elected to the the\u00a0Canadian Football Hall of Fame<\/a>\u00a0in 1969 and the\u00a0University of Denver Athletics Hall of Fame<\/a> in 1996. In 2006, he was ranked 26th out of the top 50 players to ever play in the Canadian Football League. He died in Montreal in 2009.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Primary sources: Newest Carlsbad Hall of Famer remembered as childhood hero<\/a><\/em>, Mike Smith, Carlsbad Current Argus; Sam Etcheverry<\/a><\/em>, Wikipedia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thanks to Eneko Sagarbide for suggesting this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s Super Bowl Sunday, the culmination of the National Football League’s season, which saw star quarterbacks like Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray, and Dak Prescott light up the field (yeah, these last two are on my fantasy football team, so I might be biased; and I’m rooting for the Bengals!). However, there’s another league, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[836,5,19,9],"tags":[2957,2953,2955,2954,2952,397,619,121,2956,2958],"class_list":["post-4956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basque-fact-of-the-week","category-diaspora","category-people","category-sports","tag-arreguy","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-carlsbad","tag-grey-cup","tag-montreal-alouettes","tag-nafarroa-beherea","tag-new-mexico","tag-sam-etcheverry","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-university-of-denver"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/sametcheverry-head.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2sYNu-1hW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4956"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5336,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4956\/revisions\/5336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Sam attended high school in Carlsbad and, upon graduation, went to the University of Denver. He still holds many of the passing records for the Denver Pioneers<\/a>. But, his career really shined when he joined the Montreal Alouettes<\/a> of the Canadian Football League (then known as the\u00a0Interprovincial Rugby Football Union<\/a>) in 1952. <\/li>