Willis accounted for most of the numbers: 99 passes, only 33 completions, just six touchdown passes and 13 interceptions. A week later, on a day when it rained so hard that the team delayed coming out of the tunnel, the Huskies scored a 44-26 win over Texas Christian with Sixkiller hooking up with Jim Krieg for a 56-yard touchdown, with Scott for a 48-yard scoring strike, and then with Scott again on a 51-yard clothesline shot that set up a third touchdown. Burt Reynolds, who is one-eighth Cherokee, visited a UW practice in Sixkiller's sophomore year. Sixkiller’s pass found him at the Michigan State 38-yard line, and Hammon, a co-worker with Sixkiller on the 1969 freshman team, rambled the rest of the way to complete a 59-yard touchdown. After Sixkiller at least matched, or probably exceeded, the passing of Heisman Trophy candidate Plunkett in Washington’s 29-22 loss to Stanford, Stanford CoachJohn Ralston said, “We’ve faced some fine quarterbacks this season but none of them presented as many defensive problems as Sixkiller. Repeatedly he passed on first down. Twice, contrary to all Husky tradition, he brazenly threw from the end zone, or tried to.”, Husky fans had not seen anything remotely resembling Sixkiller’s aerial feats since the days of Heinrich in the early 1950s. I too remember the song. They broke the mold with Sonny. / David Eskenazi Collection But with Sixkiller at the controls, the Huskies had a sudden conversion from a hang-on-to-the-ball, run-dominated offense to one in which Sixkiller threw often and long, on any down, to multiple sprinting receivers, and once from his own two-yard line. His movie and TV credits are short but memorable. “I have no idea where it came from. He entered the Husky Hall of Fame in 1985. Toss in the civic economic burp we now refer to as the Boeing Bust and Seattle did not have much to recommend it in those days. “That was my longest run ever, in any kind of game,” Sixkiller told reporters. “It’s pretty remarkable.”. Sixkiller played at the University of Washington from 1970-72, establishing passing records that stood for nearly 30 years. Thanks to Sonny Sixkiller, Husky football was back and Jim Owens received a temporary reprieve. The surprise was not so much that oddsmakers made Washington a three-point underdog in its opener against Michigan State, but that they didn’t dismiss UW by double digits. When Sixkiller entered, he did so in the following context: Owens’ offense featured a wishbone attack for a number of years that placed virtually no premium on passing. In a game that featured eight lead changes, Sixkiller completed 24 of 48 passes for 387 yards (career high) and tossed the game-winning touchdown pass of 33 yards to Tom Scott with just two minutes to play. In 1971, he had led the nation in passing. I’ll never forget watching  Tommy Prothro throwing his hat on the field after the onside kick. Jeremy Gilchrist - Director of Finance and Events, Ninth Annual Sonny Sixkiller Celebrity Golf Classic. / David Eskenazi Collection. He doesn’t know. Although mostly a passer who would throw from anywhere, Sixkiller occasionally saw fit to run the ball. He was a single platoon guy who never seemed to adjust the two platoon game. In basketball, he was an all-conference selection. Thiel: Carson takes the hit to make Seahawks 4-0, Huskies open at Cal, Cougs at Oregon State, Thiel: Wilson gets a helping hand in hot start, With healthy Bird, Stewart, Storm eye title No. Head coach Jim Owens and Sonny Sixkiller in the locker room following Washington’s 28-20 Apple Cup victory over Washington State on Nov. 20, 1971. Sixkiller scored Washington’s first touchdown on a 32-yard run. Roy Blount Jr. aptly described Sixkiller as a player in the Sports Illustrated story: "Another powerful inducement for fans and scribes to go wild over Sixkiller is his style of play. In Sixkiller’s senior year, 1972, the Huskies traveled to West Lafayette for a rematch with Purdue. During his first year in town, the UW football program endured two race-based revolts and went 1-9, outscored 304-116. Other major sponsors include: Irwin Dental Center, Next Door Gastropub, Lakeside Industries and Swinerton Builders. But the Huskies were not given much chance of having a successful season. A week after that, at Illinois, with Washington trailing 14-10 at the half, Sixkiller rallied the Huskies to 42 second-half points for a 52-14 victory. Owens named Sixkiller as his backup. / David Eskenazi Collection. “I thought maybe that was right, maybe I was a small-college quarterback.”. Very good article by the way. "I’ve been a lucky guy," says the former Ashland High standout who became a college icon at Washington, dabbled in pro football and movies and is now the color analyst for Husky football games. “All my life, people have been jumping on that name,” Sixkiller explained in one interview. In football, Sixkiller was an All-Southern Oregon Conference selection and a second team all-state selection. “Now, I’m certainly glad it happened,” said Sixkiller, who followed Bob Schloredt (1960) on the list of Sports Illustrated cover boys from UW. Sixkiller even had a part (“The Indian”) in the original version of The Longest Yard (1974), starringBurt Reynolds, a part Cherokee whom Sixkiller met on the UW campus in the early 1970s when Reynolds came to Seattle on a publicity junket. “It was a good way to get off on the right foot,” said Sixkiller, who not only got off right, but transformed himself into an instant celebrity. “We were down 21-zip at halftime and we came back to win 22-21. Burt had been in Seattle my sophomore year and came out to campus and said ‘hi’ to everybody. That’s always the way he looks.”. SportspressNW.com has partnered with Crosscut.com. [5] The Huskies posted consecutive 8–3 records in 1971 and 1972. He was that big. "We are delighted to be a part of this tournament – we think it is the premier sporting event on the Peninsula," said Jerry Allen, the CEO of Seven Cedars Casino. He would not have lasted as long as he did, today, but back then his early successes made him untouchable. Earlier this year Sixkiller was enshrined in the Pac-12 Hall of Honor. "We have been very fortunate to partner with Sonny for the past 12 years.". I’ve never forgotten how much my dad and I enjoyed that game. That contest featured one of the more remarkable rallies of the Sixkiller era or, as Dick Rockne of the Seattle Times put it, it was a game that gave sophisticated football fans a “life-long case of goosebumps.”, Membership card for the “6 Killer Klub!” on KJR-AM radio. Entering spring drills in 1970, Sixkiller seemed destined to spend the coming season watching the incumbent Willis, a fellow Ashland native, steer the Huskies, with Collins serving as the primary backup. Sixkiller won the starting job on merit, not on his name. [6] The Pac-8 Conference allowed only one team to play in the postseason, the Rose Bowl, until the 1975 season. Not only was Husky football respectable again, they had a Native American starting at quarterback, relieving some of the racist poison that Owens had contaminated the program with. Of all the games Sixkiller played, none gave him bigger grins than Washington’s 61-20 romp over UCLA on Nov. 14, 1970. / David Eskenazi Collection. Sixkiller scored Washington’s first touchdown on a 32-yard run. He is currently an executive for sports marketing firm IMG College, serving his alma mater, the University of Washington. Also participating will be former Port Angeles High School player Scott Jones, who is the only Roughrider to have played in the NFL, that coming after a successful career as a tight end and offensive tackle at Washington. Washington Huskies football statistical leaders, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sonny_Sixkiller&oldid=929307955, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 4 December 2019, at 23:48. In so doing, Sixkiller became the first UW quarterback to throw for more than 300 yards in back-to-back games. Aside from the 30 points the Huskies scored in the Apple Cup against a one-win Washington State outfit the previous November, they hadn’t scored more than 14 points in any game in 1969. “We just came on in the third quarter and tore them up,” remembered Sixkiller. His average of 18.6 completions per game made him (according to the statistical guidelines of the day) the nation’s leading passer. For one thing, Owens had a starter, Gene Willis, about to enter his senior season. Sixkiller became the starting quarterback for the Huskies as a sophomore in 1970,[4] and led the Huskies to a 6-4 record, a vast improvement over the 1–9 record in 1969. But slightly more than 40 years ago, when Sixkiller arrived at the University of Washington, he did so without a whit of hype. Sixkiller had not been convinced that would ever happen. Sixkiller finished the 1970 season completing 186 of 362 passes for 15 touchdowns and 2,303 yards. It also airs Saturday at 6:35am and 9:35am. For Washington, it turned out to mean just about everything. “When I threw that touchdown pass to Ira, the place just exploded,” recalled Sixkiller, who currently works for IMG College, the country’s leading collegiate multimedia, marketing and licensing/brand management company. / David Eskenazi Collection. More significantly, The Associated Press named Sixkiller its National Back of the Week. But on Washington’s first play from scrimmage, Sixkiller threw a 12-yard completion to tight end Ace Bulger. But they way that Sonny stepped in after Greg got hurt, well, he demonstrated that he can be a first-string quarterback.”. Intent on revenge a year later, the Huskies got it. The Varsity throttled the willing but unable Alumni 43-7. He also was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated October 4, 1971. :-). The Pac-8 selected Sixkiller its Back of the Week five times during the 11-week season, during which he set a passel of records, including most passing yards (360) in a game, most yards (2,303) in a season, most completions (30) in a game, most completions (186)  and most TDs (15) in a season, setting the stage for one of the most remarkable careers in Husky history. The newspapers called it “Christmas in September” and “water in the wasteland.” Sixkiller became an instant legend and a media magnet, particularly for those in the press eager to seize on Sixkiller’s name and background, the great grandson of a Cherokee chieftain. He hasn’t gone back. But I never knew exactly how good he was until now. / David Eskenazi Collection. He is a fine looking athlete who whistles the ball and moves fluidly. One writer (Times) absurdly called Sixkiller a “bronze catapult.” Another speculated without any apparent foundation that the “Sixkiller” name came from the “fact” that Sixkiller’s grandfather had slain six bison. In fact, it took more than a year before a local newspaper saw fit to bang together consecutive sentences about his prospects as a major college quarterback. Teams ran over them on offense and defense. Had UW head coach Jim Owens had his druthers, Sixkiller would not have had a shot to start at quarterback nearly as soon as he did. "I've always wanted to set up a tournament to showcase the legacy of University of Washington sports, especially football," said Sixkiller. I can’t recall the game but I think it was either a bowl game or agains Purdue but my dad and I watched in amazement as some guy named Sonny Sixkiller threw, and threw and threw.