Rick Casares

Richard Jose Casares (July 4, 1931 – September 13, 2013) was an American professional football player who was a fullback in the National Football League (NFL) and American Football League (AFL) for twelve seasons during the 1950s and 1960s. Casares played college football for the University of Florida, where he was standout fullback and kicker. Casares played professionally for the Chicago Bears and Washington Redskins of the NFL, and was a member of the expansion Miami Dolphins of the AFL.

Rick Casares was born in Tampa, Florida, in 1931. When he was 7 years old, his father was killed in a gang shooting; his mother sent him to live with an aunt and uncle in Paterson, New Jersey. At 15, Casares became a Golden Gloves boxing champion in the 160-pound division. When he was offered a professional boxing contract, his mother refused to permit it, and he returned to Tampa.

From the age of 15, Casares lived in West Tampa with his mother, and he attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Tampa, where his teachers introduced him to high school sports as a way to keep him in school. The Jefferson coaches discovered the 190-pound, six-foot-one-inch freshman when he picked up a javelin for the first time and threw it. Casares played high school football, basketball, and baseball for the Jefferson Dragons, and he was also a track and field athlete. He was an all-state football and basketball player, and the Dragons won the city football championship in 1948 and 1949.

The Tampa Tribune recognized Casares as one of the Tampa Bay area's 100 greatest athletes of the previous century in 1999. In 2007, fifty-seven years after he graduated from high school, the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) recognized him as one of the thirty-three all-time greatest Florida high school football players of the last 100 years by naming him to its "All-Century Team."

After graduating from high school, Casares received an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where he played fullback for coach Bob Woodruff's Florida Gators football team from 1951 to 1953. Casares quickly became the star rusher of the Gators' backfield. As a 210-pound, six-foot-two-inch sophomore in 1952, he scored the first touchdown of the Gators' first bowl game, a 14–13 victory over the Tulsa Golden Hurricane in the January 1, 1953 Gator Bowl, and was a second-team All-Southeastern Conference (SEC) selection and an honorable mention All-American. In 1953, he was a team captain. Woodruff ranked Casares as the Gators' best back and one of their three best kickers of the 1950s.

Casares was also a member of coach John Mauer's Florida Gators basketball team, and led the team in scoring and rebounding with 14.9 points and 11.3 rebounds as a sophomore in 1951–52, and 15.5 points and 11.5 rebounds as a junior in 1952–53. In basketball, he was a third-team All-SEC selection in 1952; as basketball team captain in 1953, he received second-team All-SEC honors.

Casares' college career was cut short when he was drafted into the U.S. Army after his junior year. He was later inducted into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as a "Gator Great." As part of an article series for The Gainesville Sun in 2006, he was recognized as No. 37 among the top 100 players of the first 100 years of Florida Gators football.

Casares was selected in the second round (eighteenth pick overall) of the 1954 NFL draft by the Chicago Bears, but was offered a $20,000 annual contract with Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts. Instead, he accepted owner George Halas's $10,000 offer to become a member of the Chicago Bears, and after fulfilling his military service obligations, he played for the Bears from 1955 to 1964. In the fourth game of the 1955 season, against the Baltimore Colts, he ran for an 81-yard touchdown. He finished his rookie season with 672 yards in 12 games, and earned a spot in the Pro Bowl.