Of all the forgotten minor league players of the 1960s, two of my favorites are Jay Donovan and Larry Gergley. Neither one ever made an all-star team or made it in the NFL or AFL, but they both played six seasons in the high-level minors, presumably as starters — and they both “knew how to win.”
Donovan, a tackle on offense and occasionally on defense, came out of Boston College and joined the Daytona Beach Thunderbirds of the Southern Football League in 1963, the league’s debut season. The T-Birds went 12-2 before an overtime loss in the championship game.
In 1964 Donovan got a shot at the big time, going to camp with the Patriots. He didn’t make the cut, but stayed in the area and hooked up with the Boston Sweepers of the Atlantic Coast League. The Sweepers went 11-3 and then beat the Newark Bears in the title game.
Also in 1964, Gergley, a rookie defensive lineman from the University of Buffalo, was cut from two teams in Canada before catching on with Donovan’s former team in Daytona Beach. The Thunderbirds cruised to a 12-1-1 record, then rolled over Chattanooga to win the championship.
Donovan returned to Florida in 1965, where he and Gergley took part in a complicated franchise shift that basically involved the T-Birds moving to Orlando. They kept right on winning in their new home, with a 10-1-1 regular season followed by a 48-21 victory in the championship game.
The Southern League collapsed after the season, but the Newark Bears of the Continental League moved to Orlando for the 1966 and signed Donovan and Gergley. The renamed Panthers went 12-2 and won a first-round playoff before a 20-17 overtime loss in the title game. They went 11-3 a year later and swept two playoff games to win their first championship, then repeated in 1968 after a 10-2 regular season.
That was Donovan’s last year in pro football, but Gergley returned in 1969 for one more go-round. Orlando turned in yet another 10-2 season before suffering an upset loss to Indianapolis in the first round of the playoffs. The Continental League folded in the offseason, and that was the end of Gergley’s postgraduate football career.
To sum up:
Jay Donovan played from 1963-68 and was in a championship game each season. His team won four of them and lost twice, both in overtime. The overall record for his teams was 66-13-1 for the regular season and 7-2 in playoff games.
Larry Gergley played from 1964-69, four of those years as Donovan’s teammate, and played in five championship games; his teams lost only one of them, and that in overtime. Overall his teams went 65-11-2 in the regular season and 7-2 in playoffs.
I don’t know what kind of money the two of them made; it was probably something like $100 a game, with a bonus for winning the championship. But I bet they both enjoyed their careers about as much as anybody in minor league football could have.
Two unsung winners
Re: Two unsung winners
Bob, I treasure the article you wrote on my football hero, Don Jonas, a number of years ago.