Conecuh County mourns the passing of football great, Wayne Frazier

Like a lot of folks in Conecuh County this week, I was very sad to hear that Wayne Frazier had passed away.

Frazier, age 73, was arguably the most successful athlete to ever pass through Evergreen, and he was one of only a few football players who could say that they started in the very first Super Bowl.

After a stellar high school career at Evergreen High School and several standout seasons at Auburn University, Frazier played four seasons as a center in the AFL. He started his career with the San Diego Chargers and was later traded to the Houston Oilers. He went on to play for the Buffalo Bills and ended his career with the Kansas City Chiefs.

In 1966, Frazier and the Chiefs won the AFC championship, which earned them a spot in the very first Super Bowl.

The first Super Bowl was played on Jan. 15, 1967 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles. The Chiefs played the Green Bay Packers. Other famous football players and coaches who participated in that game included Bill Curry, Jerry Kramer, Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Buck Buchanan, Ray Nitschke, Hank Stram and Vince Lombardi.

Frazier also coached high school football for a while, including a four-year stint at W.S. Neal High School in East Brewton. From 1980 to 1983, he posted three winning seasons, finishing with a 23-17 overall record during that time.

Fans of The Courant’s regular Sports Flashback feature will know that Frazier’s name is a regular in that weekly column. Frazier’s name appeared in the paper frequently over the years, and I suspect that the only name that showed up more was his former football coach, Wendell Hart. For those of you who knew Hart, that’s not bad company to be in.

About a year after I started working at The Courant, I got the chance to hear Frazier speak about his football-playing days during a meeting of the Evergreen Rotary Club. He was invited to speak by his former EHS teammate, Bert Cook. Frazier had a ton of interesting tales from “the old days,” and some of them were very funny.

Frazier joked that he owed much of his football success to a hulking, oversized schoolyard bully that beat him up nearly every day while in grade school. Frazier said that, before he hit his growth spurt, he was just an average-sized kid, and this bully “made him tough.”

Frazier joked that while appearing in the Super Bowl was one of the finest days of his life, an even better day was the day that this bully became too old to attend elementary school and left for a job driving a pulpwood truck. Frazier said that every once in a while, he and the rest of the kids would be out on the playground, and their former classmate would toot his horn as he motored by with a load of logs.

Frazier kidded that this bully probably never realized the impact that he’d had on future Evergreen, Auburn and NFL teams.

In the end, Frazier will be missed by his many friends, family and former teammates. Our condolences go out to all of his loved ones.