All-Round Otto

As a boy, Otto Graham made a name for himself in the junior music circles of Waukegan, Ill., where his father was (and is) a high-school music director. In addition to piano and violin, which he still plays, Otto learned the oboe, English horn, French horn and cornet. Otto also had other talents which his father, an old semipro pitcher, approved and encouraged. He won high-school letters in football, basketball and baseball, found time to play tennis and golf and win awards in Junior Olympic track and field events around Chicago.

At 32, Otto Graham is as busy as ever, and even more successful. He is 1) the star quarterback of the Cleveland Browns,

2) the star of his own thrice-weekly TV show. At Home with the Grahams,

3) a salesman and assistant branch manager for. the Manufacturers Life Insurance Co., 4) a salesman-distributor-stockholder in a gift-package company, 5) a successful author (Otto Graham, T Quarterback), and 6) one of the busiest and most civic-minded speechmakers in the Cleveland area.

Pass Champion. Though he manages to sell half a million dollars worth of insurance a year, and though his chatty TV show has a high local audience appeal, Graham's football feats, as he well knows, are his main asset. Last week, after clinching their fourth straight division title in the National Football League with their tenth straight victory, the Browns gave Graham a well-deserved day off. But just to keep the crowd happy, Coach Paul Brown put husky (6 ft. 1 in., 195 lbs.) Quarterback Graham in the game for a few plays.

The results were spectacular--four straight pass completions good for 116 yds. Though no one was threatening Graham's position as the league's top passer, the exhibition served as a reminder that Graham leads the N.F.L. in passing yardage (2,481), in average gain per pass completion (16.3 yds.), and in percentage of completions (65).

Stitches Don't Hurt. Graham, says Coach Brown (who converted Otto from a Northwestern single-wing halfback), "is the first to admit how much he must depend on the work of other players." The other players, in turn, depend on Graham. During a tight game with the San Francisco Forty-Niners earlier in the season, Graham suffered a severe face gash (only his second injury in eight years of pro ball). The wound required 15 stitches, but Graham went back into the game, completed nine of ten passes, and the Browns finally won, 23-21. Next night, Graham was back on his TV show, bandaged face and all. Characteristically, he begged newsmen: "Don't represent me as a corny exhibitionist with a show-must-go-on attitude. Just explain that my mouth hardly hurts at all."

Last January, while Graham and his wife were in Los Angeles for the pro bowl game, their youngest child was taken ill and died before the Grahams could get home. "It set me thinking," Otto says. "It was the first adversity that ever hit me. Until then, the worst that had ever happened to me was to have a pass intercepted. It gave me a more serious outlook. Now, I just want to keep busy."

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