Nick Lassa
American football player (1895-1964)
Nicholas Anthony Lassa (July 11, 1898 – September 4, 1964), more popularly referred to as Long Time Sleep, was a professional American football player from the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana.
Biography
Born on July 11, 1898, Lassa was Native American and a member of the Pend d'Orielle tribe, one of three members of the confederated tribes of the Flathead reservation in Montana. He was given the name, Long Time Sleep, by his teammates because he was difficult to wake up in the morning.
Lassa attended and played college football at the Carlisle Indian School and Haskell Institute. Lassa eventually played in the National Football League in 1922 with the Oorang Indians.
The Oorang Indians were an all-Native American football team based in La Rue, Ohio and formed by Walter Lingo in 1922 to help promote his Airedale kennel. The team was organized by Jim Thorpe, who served the team as a player-coach. When the team formed, Lassa was the first player to arrive in La Rue.
Aside from football, Lassa enjoyed wrestling. He would make up to $50 (equivalent to $962 in 2025) for wrestling matches throughout the area.
The public source identifies “Nick Lassa” as american football player (1895-1964). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Nick, Lassa and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7027457. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1898, 1964, 1922 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nick Lassa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.