Bill Putich
American football player
Bill Putich was an American football player who played quarterback and halfback for the University of Michigan Wolverines football teams from 1949 to 1951.
Playing career
A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Putich played only 13 minutes of a possible 540 as a sophomore in 1949. He earned the nickname 'One-Play-Putich' in Michigan's 7–3 win over Michigan State in 1949; Putich appeared for only one play in the game, throwing a touchdown pass to win the game.
Putich took over as the starting quarterback for the 1950 Michigan Wolverines football team. After a 14–7 loss to Michigan State in his first start, some questioned his selection as the starting quarterback. Sports writer John F. Mayhew wrote a column in defense of Putich, noting that he was inexperienced but showed promise. Mayhew noted:Putich is an eager, hard-working, intelligent football player. He's good enough to have the complete faith of Backfield Coach George Ceithaml, one of Michigan's best quarterbacks and a man who should really know. Given a reasonable break, he'll prove it too.
Putich proved Mayhew correct in leading the 1950 team to a 9–3 win over Ohio State in the famed Snow Bowl game, a Big Ten Conference championship, and a 14–6 win over the University of California in the 1951 Rose Bowl.
The public source identifies “Bill Putich” as american football player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bill, Putich and American.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bill Putich” 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.