By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

Bobby Crockett of the Bills

Taken in Round 10 in 1966

Other pick in that round: The only player to participate in more NFL/AFL games than Crockett was Larry Cox of the Broncos.

The details: Crockett was an All-American at Arkansas, where he won a national championship in 1964. As a rookie, he was rushed into the starting lineup because of injuries at wide receiver. Bobby helped the Bills reach the AFL title game that season. A year later, Crockett tore ligaments in his knee in the first preseason game. He missed all of the 1967 season, and hung on as a reserve for the next two years. But Crockett was never the same after the injury. He retired and moved back to Arkansas, where he eventually bought and ran “Crockett’s Country Store” in Springdale.

Other 91s: Chuck Hurston took an odd route to and from Buffalo. The Bills drafted him in 1965 but waived him before the season. Kansas City claimed him, and the defensive end spent six seasons there. In 1971, the Chiefs let him go, and the Bills brought him back.

 

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

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