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posted 11/19/2007
Former Green Bay Packers great and Pro Football Hall of Fame member Jim Ringo passed away on Monday morning after a short illness. He would have turned 76 on Wednesday.
Ringo was a seventh-round draft choice out of Syracuse in 1953 and played 11 seasons in Green Bay before being traded to the Philadelphia Eagles. He played his final four seasons there.
A center, Ringo earned All-Pro honors eight times, including seven with the Packers, and played in 10 Pro Bowls, seven of them with Green Bay. Ringo also once held the NFL record for most consecutive games played, with 183, including 126 with Green Bay.
"He was a very proud performer," Packers historian Lee Remmel said. "He took great pride in being elected to the All-Pro team almost perennially. He was extremely durable."
Ringo was named to the NFL's All-Decade Team of the 1960s and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981. He played for the Packers' NFL championship teams in 1961 and 1962 under Vince Lombardi.
The details of Ringo's trade are the stuff of legend. For years it was said that following the 1963 season, Ringo showed up in Lombardi's office, with an agent in tow, looking to negotiate a raise and that Lombardi was so angered that he excused himself for five minutes only to return and announce that he had traded Ringo to the Eagles.
But over the years it's been suggested that that story includes more fiction than fact. In reality, Lombardi had probably been negotiating a trade for some time (the Packers also traded fullback Earl Gros and received in return linebacker Lee Roy Caffey and a first-round draft pick that they used to select fullback Donny Anderson). Still, the legend persists.
Remmel also recalled another story that has become part of Ringo's legend. He reportedly left head coach Gene Ronzani's training camp as a rookie in 1953 because it was too demanding, and he had to be tracked down in the eastern part of the country, near his New Jersey home.
But Ringo did come back, earned his first All-Pro honor in his fifth season, and went on to become an ideal blocker for Lombardi's famous power sweep. All but one of running back Jim Taylor's five 1,000-yard seasons, including his then-record 1,474-yard effort in 1962, came with Ringo at center.
"It turned out he had a great work ethic, and as a result that paid great dividends for him and the Packers," Remmel said.