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James Edwin Otto (January 5, 1938 – May 19, 2024) was an American professional football player who was a center for 15 seasons with the Oakland Raiders of the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Miami Hurricanes.
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2024) |
 Otto with the Raiders | |||||||||
| No. 50, 00 | |||||||||
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| Position: | Center | ||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||
| Born: | January 5, 1938 Wausau, Wisconsin, U.S. | ||||||||
| Died: | May 19, 2024 (aged 86) Auburn, California, U.S. | ||||||||
| Height: | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) | ||||||||
| Weight: | 255 lb (116 kg) | ||||||||
| Career information | |||||||||
| High school: | Wausau | ||||||||
| College: | Miami (FL) | ||||||||
| AFL draft: | 1960 / round: Regular draft | ||||||||
| Career history | |||||||||
| Career highlights and awards | |||||||||
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| Career NFL statistics | |||||||||
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Otto was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1980, his first year of eligibility. He was also named to the AFL All-Time Team and NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team.
He had over 70 football-related surgeries, including a leg amputation.
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Otto was born on January 5, 1938, in Wausau, Wisconsin. His parents Lorenz and Loretta (Totsch) Otto worked a variety of jobs to help the family get by, and they had so little when Otto was a boy, they could not afford new shoes to keep his feet warm and dry in Wisconsin's winters.[1] Growing up as a child, he wanted to be a football player like Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch.[2] He recalled Hirsch once saying, "‘if you put your heart into it, you can do it.’”[3]
Otto played football at Wausau High School at linebacker and center for the Lumberjacks,[1][3] under coach Win Brockmeyer; who also coached Otto's hero, Crazylegs Hirsch, at Wausau.[4] Otto, the team co-captain, and the Lumberjacks were 18-5-2 during his high school football career. He was particularly inspired by his offensive line coach, Tom Yelich. At a 1980 banquet honoring Otto in Wausau, Otto credited Yelich with teaching the technique Otto then used throughout college and professional football. “'Yelich was the first coach I ever had, and he helped me more than any coach since.'”[3]
Otto had offers from 48 colleges to play college football, and with the help of Brockmeyer, chose the University of Miami in south Florida,[1][3] where he joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.[5] In addition to playing offensive center at the University of Miami, he also played linebacker on defense.[6]
Otto was inducted into the University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in 1972.[7]
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No National Football League team showed interest in the undersized center, who weighed only 205 pounds.[1] Otto was drafted by the proposed Minneapolis franchise of the new American Football League in the 25th round of the first AFL draft, before play ever began in the new league. When the Minneapolis contingent reneged on joining the AFL, to accept instead an NFL expansion franchise, the AFL replaced the Minnesota franchise with a team in Oakland, which inherited Minnesota's draft picks.[8] Otto's rights then defaulted to the AFL's Oakland Raiders.[1][8] He then signed with the Raiders and played for the entire 10 years of the league's existence and five years beyond that after the merger of the NFL and AFL. In his rookie year at training camp, he weighed 217 pounds, but was up to 240 pounds by the end of his first year.[1]
He was issued jersey number 50 for the AFL's inaugural season, 1960, but switched to his familiar 00 the next season. Otto worked diligently to build his body up to his playing weight of 255 pounds (116 kg). Otto wore the jersey number of 50 in his rookie season, but the suggestion of equipment manager Frank Hinek led to the idea of Otto wearing 00 (0 was being worn in the NFL by Johnny Olszewski) "for recognition", which Otto eventually went with, as did AFL Commissioner Joe Foss.[9]
For the next 15 years, Otto was a fixture at center for the Raiders, never missing a single game due to injury, and played in 210 consecutive games.[10] He won one AFL/AFC championship in 1967 against the Houston Oilers with the Raiders,[11] but lost five: in 1968,[12] 1969,[13] 1970,[14] 1973,[15] and 1974[16] to the New York Jets, Kansas City Chiefs, Baltimore Colts, Miami Dolphins, and Pittsburgh Steelers, respectively, with all five teams winning the Super Bowl.
He played alongside Gene Upshaw, another Hall of Famer, at left guard from 1967 to 1974.[17] In the 1967 regular season, Oakland scored 468 points (33.4 points/game), leading the AFL, but lost Super Bowl II to the Green Bay Packers. In 1968, Oakland scored 453 points (32.4 points/game) in the regular season, again leading the AFL, and beat the Chiefs in the divisional round (unscheduled tiebreaker) before losing to the Jets. In the 1969 regular season, Oakland scored 377 points (26.9 points/game) to lead the AFL for the third consecutive year, and beat the Houston Oilers in the new divisional round of the AFL playoffs before losing to the Chiefs. In the 1970 regular season, the first year of the NFL-AFL merger, Oakland scored 300 points (21.4 points/game), ranking ninth in the 26-team NFL, and beat the Miami Dolphins in the AFC playoffs before losing to the Colts. The Raiders missed the playoffs for the first time in five years in 1971, despite scoring 344 points (24.6 points/game), second highest in the NFL.
The Raiders came back stronger in 1972, scoring 365 points (26.1 points/game), ranking third in the NFL, but lost 13–7 to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the divisional round of the AFC playoffs, the famous Immaculate Reception game, in which Otto also made the only pass reception of his professional career. In the 1973 regular season, Oakland scored 292 points (20.9 points/game), tenth in the NFL, and avenged their defeat to the Steelers, but lost to the Dolphins. In Otto's final year, 1974, Oakland scored 355 points (25.4 points/game), leading the NFL, and avenged their playoff loss to the Dolphins, but lost to the Steelers again. In 1975, he was replaced by Dave Dalby, in his fourth season out of UCLA. Otto was the last member of the Oakland Raiders inaugural team from 1960 to retire.
Otto was one of the original Oakland Raiders, and played during the team's full tenure in the AFL, from 1960 to 1969. He continued as a Raider in the NFL from 1970 to 1974, starting 210 consecutive games, playing a total of 308 games for the Raiders.[1][10] He was one of only 20 players to play for the entire ten-year existence of the American Football League, and one of only three players to play in all of his team's AFL games (along with teammate George Blanda and Gino Cappelletti).[10][18] Otto was also selected as The Sporting News All-League center from 1960 through 1969.[19] He was an All-Star in the first 13 of his 15 seasons – every year in the AFL from 1960 through 1969[1] and three of his five seasons in the NFL, being All NFL in 1970 and 1971 and second team All NFL in 1972.[10] He played in 12 All Star games and was All League 12 consecutive years.[10] He was also named the starting center on the AFL All-Time Team.[10] He is one of only three players (along with hall of famers Johnny Robinson and Ron Mix), who were on the All-AFL first team and the combined AFL/NFL all-decade team for the 1960s.[20]
During his career, the Raiders won seven divisional championships from 1967 through 1974, and were AFL champions in 1967, meeting the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl II.[10] Otto's offensive linemates with the Raiders included hall of famers Gene Upshaw, Art Shell, and Bob Brown.[21] Hall of fame and NFL 100th Anniversary All-Time Team coach Bill Walsh,[22] who was an offensive assistant coach with the 1966 Raiders said of Otto, "'He had techniques others tried to emulate but couldn’t. ... I used to marvel at his skills. He played every down with intensity.'”[6] Rival Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Bobby Bell, a hall of famer, 100th Anniversary All-Time teammate, and himself a member of the AFL's All-Time Team, said Otto was the best center he ever played against.[6]
Otto was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1980, his first year of eligibility.[1] In 1999, he was ranked number 78 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Football Players.[22] In 2019, he was revealed as being selected to the National Football League 100th Anniversary All-Time Team, being one of only four centers named.[23] In 2021, he was the 97th greatest player of all time listed by The Athletic.[24]
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Otto's body was punished greatly during his NFL career, resulting in nearly 74 operations, including 28 on his knee (nine of them during his playing career) and multiple joint replacements. His joints became riddled with arthritis and he developed debilitating back and neck problems.[25] In his book, The Pain of Glory, Otto described near-death experiences from medical procedures, including fighting off three life-threatening infections due to complications from his artificial joints. During one six-month stretch, he was without a right knee joint because he had to wait for an infection to heal before another artificial knee could be implanted. Otto eventually had to have his right leg amputated on August 1, 2007.[26] Despite his maladies, Otto said he had no regrets and would not have changed a thing even if given the opportunity to do it over again. He discussed his sports injuries as well as the concussions issue in a 2013 Frontline interview for "League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis" and the 1985 documentary "Disposable Heroes: The Other Side of Football", directed by Bill Couturié.[27][28]
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After his career, Otto worked for the Raiders during two periods, and then made a "small fortune" from Burger King franchises, liquor stores, a walnut orchard, and real estate in the Oakland area.[2]
Otto was also the subject of The Jim Otto Suite, a series of three multimedia works by American contemporary artist Matthew Barney, which served as a precursor to The Cremaster Cycle.[29]
Otto was elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1998.[30] He was the grandfather of dog musher Amanda Otto.[31]
Otto died on May 19, 2024, at the age of 86.[32][33][34][35]
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