1. Link Lyman played college football for the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team in 1918,1919, and 1921.
35 Facts About Link Lyman
1. 2.
Link Lyman won four NFL championships and was selected five times as a first-team All-Pro player.
3.
Link Lyman later had a career in the insurance business.
4.
Link Lyman was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1964.
5.
Link Lyman died in an automobile crash in 1972 while driving to Las Vegas.
6.
Link Lyman had four younger brothers and three younger sisters.
7.
Link Lyman attended high school in McDonald, Kansas, but he did not play football as there was no team with only "six or seven boys in the whole school".
8.
Link Lyman enrolled at the University of Nebraska in 1917 where he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
9.
Link Lyman was married shortly after the end of the 1919 football season and did not return to the university in the fall of 1920.
10.
Link Lyman returned in February 1921 to establish his eligibility to play in the fall of 1921.
11.
In September 1922, Link Lyman left Lincoln, Nebraska, to play professional football for the Canton Bulldogs.
12.
The Bulldogs were coached by Guy Chamberlin, an All-American out of Nebraska, who invited Link Lyman to join the team.
13.
Link Lyman played seven games for the 1925 Bulldogs and then finished the season playing four games for the Frankford Yellow Jackets.
14.
Link Lyman was reunited with Guy Chamberlain who was then Frankford's head coach.
15.
In December 1925, Link Lyman joined the Chicago Bears and took part in a winter barnstorming tour that featured football player Red Grange.
16.
Link Lyman joined the Bears again in the fall of 1926.
17.
Link Lyman remained with the Bears for the 1927 and 1928 seasons.
18.
Link Lyman retired after the 1928 season but returned to the Bears in the fall of 1930.
19.
Link Lyman was selected as a first-team All-Pro by Collyer's Eye magazine and the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
20.
Link Lyman again retired from playing football after the 1931 season.
21.
Link Lyman was a pioneer in the use of shifting maneuvers to disrupt the blocking assignments of offensive linemen.
22.
Link Lyman's sliding, shifting style of defensive line play confused his opponents and made him one of the most respected players of his time.
23.
Link Lyman explained that the idea of shifting was an instinctive move to fool a blocker.
24.
Link Lyman had a unique ability to diagnose a play and many times he would make his move just as the ball was snapped.
25.
Link Lyman received many honors for his contributions to the game, including being inducted into the Helms Foundation major league football Hall of Fame and the Nebraska Sports Hall of Fame and receiving the University of Nebraska's Distinguished Alumni Award in June 1961.
26.
Link Lyman was known as one of the true "iron men" of iron man era.
27.
In December 1934, Lyman was hired as an assistant football coach under Dana X Bible with the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
28.
Link Lyman was the line coach at Nebraska from 1935 to 1941 under coaches Bible and Biff Jones.
29.
Link Lyman was married in June 1920 to Grace "Dolly" Godwin.
30.
In 1942, Link Lyman accepted a job with the Equitable Life Assurance Society.
31.
Link Lyman became an agency manager for the company in San Antonio, Texas, in 1948.
32.
Link Lyman's wife died in 1967 at a hospital in Pasadena, California.
33.
Link Lyman died in 1972 at age 74 in an automobile crash.
34.
Link Lyman was driving to Las Vegas on I-15 when his automobile crashed into the back of a semi-trailer truck 12 miles south of Baker.
35.
Link Lyman was dead upon arrival at the Barstow Community Hospital.