Carter's Corner: Paying Tribute to Tiger Mayberry, Florida's First NFL Draft Pick
Wednesday, April 15, 2020 | Football, Scott Carter
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By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – More than 80 years later, we can only imagine what Walter "Tiger" Mayberry might make of what the NFL Draft has become.
This year's draft is a week away and several Gators, including projected first-round pick CJ Henderson, expect to hear their names called during the three-day event from April 23-25.
While the 2020 draft is going to be a remote affair due to the COVID-19 pandemic, each pick will be celebrated with familiar fanfare, from highlights and interviews on ESPN to reaction across social media. Walter "Tiger" Mayberry posing for a photographer on Florida Field. (Photo courtesy of Tampa Tribune archives)
Meanwhile, whether you're a lifelong Gators fan or a relative newcomer, there's a good chance you probably don't know much, if anything, of Mayberry, inducted into the UF Athletic Hall of Fame in 1982.
For starters, he is the first UF player ever selected in the NFL Draft. A two-way star for some mediocre Gators teams under head coach Josh Cody in the mid-1930s, Mayberry was the 61st overall pick in the 1938 draft.
The Cleveland Rams, preparing for their first season as part of the NFL, selected Mayberry in the eighth round during what was just the third NFL Draft, conducted on Dec. 12, 1937, at Hotel Sherman in Chicago.
Based on news reports from the day, Mayberry, who became the first Florida player to earn a spot on the All-Southeastern Conference first-team, hardly paid attention to his draft status and didn't know he had even been selected until much later. This despite the draft taking place only eight days after Mayberry, in the final football game of his career, gained 153 yards from scrimmage in front of a crowd of 7,000 at Florida Field to lead the Gators to a 6-0 season-ending victory over Kentucky. It was a typical performance from Mayberry during his time with the Gators.
He joined the program in 1934 and played on the freshman team. In his three years on varsity, the Gators won just 11 of 31 games, their most notable victory a 6-0 win over Georgia to snap a seven-game losing streak to the Bulldogs in 1937. He earned the nickname "Tiger" from his tenacity as a runner. If yards-after-contact were tracked in his day, Mayberry would have collected his share on the way to an 818-yard senior season.
Mayberry was a one-man attack much of his career, gaining national notoriety early in the '37 season when legendary Temple coach Pop Warner gave him rave reviews after the Gators traveled to Philadelphia and lost a Friday night game to the Owls in which Mayberry starred. He also punted and snagged 11 career interceptions, which still rank tied for seventh in school history.
Mayberry grew up in Daytona Beach and was a football and basketball standout at Mainland High. Benny Kahn, sports editor and columnist for the Daytona Beach News-Journal for decades, wrote glowingly of Mayberry's ability.
In late Tampa Tribune editor/columnist Tom McEwen's 1974 book "The Gators," he spoke to Kahn about Mayberry's dynamic ability.
"An unforgettable football star,'' Kahn said. "As a collegian at Florida, he was fast and deceptive. He could punt as well as he could run, and he could run as well as he could pass. He was a genuine triple-threat man."
In a rare feature story written about him during his college career, Mayberry was described as a young man with striking good looks, humility and a touch of shyness.
"I truly appreciate all of the headlines and nice things that are said, but I know that no one will even know who I am a couple months from now,'' Mayberry is quoted in the Atlanta Constitution his senior season.
History has proven otherwise.
A photo spread that ran in newspapers across the country prior to the 1937 season. (Photo: Courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times archives)
Mayberry never signed with the Rams or played in the NFL. He went to work as a tire salesman in Daytona Beach following his final season at UF and later enlisted in the Naval Reserve. Born March 14, 1915, in the military Walter Thomas Mayberry became a fighter pilot assigned to the U.S. Marine Corps.
He saw combat during World War II and as a member of the Marine Fighter Squadron 123, in the late summer of 1943, Lt. Mayberry was back in the national headlines when he was credited with shooting down three Japanese Zeros in an air fight.
A week later, as Mayberry was escorting bombers according to news reports at the time, he was shot down and captured in the Pacific Theater. Mayberry was never seen again, held hostage in a Japanese POW camp in the Rabaul District of Papua New Guinea.
According to Japanese records, Mayberry was reported killed during an allied bombing mission that targeted the prison camp at Rabaul on March 5, 1944. Other reports suggest he was executed by his captors. The U.S. military officially declared Mayberry dead in January 1946. He was buried at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, on March 21, 1950.
In his hometown, the local newspaper that first introduced him to the public during his schoolboy days at Mainland High, shined a spotlight on Mayberry's life on Memorial Day 2019.
It's a story worth keeping alive. Mayberry's place in Gators history is secure. He'll always be the program's first NFL Draft pick, but that turned out to be a minor part of his legacy.
A legacy still being shared all these years later, far past the expiration date Mayberry envisioned.
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