| Jack "Mad Dog" O'Billovich - Football |
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Oregon State football head coach
Mike Riley likes to bill the Beavers
as “linebacker U” west coast and for
good reason. Many recent Beavers
have earned postseason honors and
went on to the NFL. The lineage of
linebackers that OSU has produced
can be traced back decades and includes Jack “Mad Dog”
O’Billovich in the mid-1960s. O’Billovich earned All-America
honors as a junior and helped the Beavers play in the 1965 Rose
Bowl. His honors also include All-Pac-8 Conference, All-Coast
and team captain. His photo was the cover shot for the NCAA
Official Collegiate Football Record Book 1965, with only one
football player in the country being chosen for the honor. He
concluded his collegiate career as one of a few Beavers to play
in both the Hula Bowl and East-West Shrine Game. Jack was a
1966 OSU graduate in Forestry.
In 1964 he led the team, coached by the late Tommy Prothro,
finished eighth-ranked in the country and ended the regular
season beating top-20 Oregon in Eugene.
“He was the toughest football player I have ever coached,”
Prothro would later say. “He was a very loyal Oregon Stater, but
he was a fine human being to start with.” His performance and
passion on game day were mirrored in his training and practice
during the week and in the off-season. Strength and Health
magazine, February 1966, featured Jack in a story about his
weight training program at OSU and his disciplined and healthy
approach.
Following OSU, O’Billovich was drafted by the Detroit Lions
where he played the first season, then played in 1967 with the
Hamilton TigerCats of the Canadian Football League.
The Butte, Montana, native was one of the first individuals
to be inducted into the Oregon State University Sports Hall of
Fame (1991).
Tony O’Billovich followed his dad’s footsteps to Oregon State,
where he was an outstanding linebacker in the early 1990s.
Tony was the team’s MVP and co-captain in 1993, and later
played with the Toronto Argonauts in the Canadian Football
League.
Jack’s ashes were dispersed over the Tommy Prothro Football
Complex (practice fields) “where he was most at home.” |
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