Frank Ryan (American football)

Ryan was born on July 12, 1936, in Fort Worth, Texas. Ryan was named for his grandfather Frank Beall, a noted surgeon in Fort Worth, and was the second child of Frances (Beall) Ryan and Robert Willing Ryan Sr. Ryan played football while attending R. L. Paschal High School in Fort Worth. He was later inducted into the Fort Worth Independent School District Wall of Fame. He was recruited by college coaches from across the country, including Bear Bryant then coaching at Texas A&M, becoming the first in his family not to go to Yale. He was unable to establish himself at quarterback during the course of his collegiate career, splitting time behind center with King Hill, Given his desire to obtain a Ph.D., Ryan originally decided not to play professional football after the Los Angeles Rams chose him in the fifth round of the 1958 NFL draft. He changed his mind after he was able to enroll at both UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley in pursuit of an advanced degree. Ryan then transferred back to Rice, where he studied during the off-season. Ryan's college teammate Hill was drafted first overall in the 1958 draft by the Chicago Cardinals, and future Cleveland teammate quarterback Jim Ninowski was selected by the Browns in the fourth round. ==Professional career==

in 1959. Los Angeles Rams Ryan spent the first four years of his career primarily in a reserve capacity, making $12,000 per year. made Ryan expendable. Ironically, the Rams did not start Gabriel during his first four years. With no other candidates to compete with, Ryan established his leadership and held on to the starting role for much of the next six seasons. In his first full season as a starter, 1963, Ryan threw for 2,026 yards and 25 touchdowns with only 13 interceptions, helping the Browns to a 10–4 record. Thirteen of those touchdowns went to Gary Collins, who tied for the league lead in receiving touchdowns that year. 1964 In 1964, Ryan established himself as one of the league's best passers. He threw for 2,404 yards and repeated his 1963 performance by completing 25 touchdown passes, which was enough to lead the league. But Ryan was also a clutch performer during the Browns' memorable 10–3–1 season. Needing a win in the December 12 regular season finale against the New York Giants to clinch a berth in the NFL title game, Ryan completed 12 of 13 passes for five touchdowns and ran for a sixth touchdown in the 52–20 win. Two weeks later in the championship game against the Baltimore Colts, Ryan hit Collins for three touchdowns to win the title, 27–0. However, a study of the film by Cleveland coaches in the weeks after the game exonerated Marchetti. After winning the championship, Art Modell raised his salary to $25,000, up from about $18,000 per season. 1966 In 1966, he bounced back with a superb season, leading the league with 29 touchdown passes despite playing with intense pain. Ryan's output helped alleviate the absence of the legendary Jim Brown, who had retired prior to the start of training camp. His 29 touchdown passes in 14 games ranks second in Browns franchise history to Brian Sipe, who got 30 in a 16-game 1980 season. 1967 On January 25, 1967, Ryan underwent an operation to repair the remaining effects of his injury. The surgery eliminated the pain, but also affected his throwing motion. In the 1967 season opener, Ryan's injury woes continued as he sprained both ankles in a 21–14 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. Battling through that malady, along with shoulder and knee troubles, Ryan led the team to a 9–5 record to reach the playoffs. The season would see Ryan suffering a concussion from a head-to-head collision with Dick Butkus. He was knocked out in the second quarter but came back to throw three touchdown passes in the third quarter to will his team to a 24–0 victory. Ryan later stated that it was this collision that necessitated the cervical disc replacement he underwent after retiring. 1968 Ryan's tenure as the Browns' starting quarterback came to an abrupt end following a 1–2 start to the 1968 season. Browns' head coach Blanton Collier replaced Ryan with Bill Nelsen, who went on to lead the team to a division title. The official conclusion of Ryan's time with the Browns came on September 9, 1969, when he was released, but new Redskins' coach Vince Lombardi quickly signed Ryan as a backup to future Hall of Fame quarterback Sonny Jurgenson. In 2005, the Browns named Ryan a Browns Legend. Washington Redskins Despite throwing only one pass during the 1969 season, Ryan returned for the last of his 13 years in the NFL in 1970, playing for coach Bill Austin after Lombardi's death from cancer in September 1970, before officially announcing his retirement on April 13, 1971. With his accurate throwing arm, his 14.7 yards per completion still ranks as one of the all-time leaders. ==Academic career==

Ryan attended graduate school during the first part of his playing career, and in 1965, he earned his Ph.D. from Rice. He worked for seven postgraduate years under G. R. MacLane, a leading geometric-function theorist, and produced the dissertation "Characterization of the Set of Asymptotic Values of a Function Holomorphic in the Unit Disc". Ryan received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1965. Ryan started teaching at Rice during his career and, during his time with the Browns, he became an assistant professor at the Case Institute of Technology in February 1967. Ryan had a full teaching load, which included undergraduate and graduate courses, and conducting research in complex analysis. While at training camp, Ryan taught math in the morning and went to football practice in the afternoon. Ryan taught his last course at Case Western Reserve in the spring of 1971. He was promoted to associate professor that summer. After taking a leave of absence for the next three years, he resigned his faculty position in 1974. Ryan learned computer programming and software through the Chi Corp., Case Western Reserve's then newly launched private computer company. He compiled advanced statistics to apply what he learned to football. The Browns were shown his results and liked the project but didn't offer the extra cash to move it forward. Ryan had an Erdős number of 3. ==Post-NFL career==

Soon after his retirement from the Redskins, Ryan remained in the nation's capital when he was named director of information services for the U.S. House of Representatives. While there, he helped advance the computer age in politics by playing an integral role in establishing the body's first electronic voting system. This enabled voting procedures that usually ran for 45 minutes to be shortened to around 15 minutes. By the time he left the post, the office had an annual budget of $8 million with a staff of 225. Ryan resigned that post to become athletic director and lecturer in mathematics at Yale University on March 7, 1977. Ryan served in that position for ten years before resigning to become the school's associate vice president for institutional planning. During the late 1970s a Yale employee informed Ryan that many thousands of nude photographs of young men in front, side and rear poses with metal pins sticking out from their spines had been discovered in a room in Payne Whitney Gymnasium. Ryan investigated, finding that they depicted decades of Yale freshmen whose posture had been documented as part of a questionable study on the long-term effects of posture. Ryan then quickly called in a document-disposal expert who shredded and then burned the photos. Ryan was a member of the Rice board of governors from 1972 to 1976 and was recognized as a distinguished alumnus in 1987. Ryan became vice president for external affairs at Rice in August 1990, increasing annual gifts to the university to a three-year average of $32.8 million for the fiscal years 1992–94 from $21.4 million for the fiscal years 1988–90. In 1995, he resigned his post as vice president for external affairs at Rice, owing to differences with President Malcolm Gillis concerning the future course of external affairs. Ryan ended his institutional career as a professor of mathematics, and professor of computational and applied mathematics at Rice. He was inducted into the Rice Athletic Hall of Fame in 1973, and was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus for mathematics and education. Ryan was president and chief executive officer of Contex Electronics, which designed and manufactured cable and interconnect products for the computer and communications industries. Ryan also served as director for America West Airlines, Sequoia Voting Systems, and of Danielson Holding Corporation. He was an advisory director of United Medical Care Inc. In retirement, he ran a self-designed program that helps micro-analyze statistical behavior of the up-and-down pricing movement that underlies the pricing behavior of the futures market. He also worked on Oppermann's conjecture about the distribution of prime numbers. ==Personal life==

Ryan lived on 78 acres of heavily forested land in Grafton, Vermont, with his wife, Joan, a retired sportswriter and nationally syndicated columnist for The Washington Post. was a sportswriter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, The two Texans met in college, fell in love with Vermont while Ryan was on staff at Yale, and had been married since their senior year at Rice, getting married on March 1, 1958. Ryan was buried in Sportsmans Road Cemetery in Stamford, Vermont. Suspecting he may have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), Ryan arranged to donate his brain to the Boston University CTE Center. He was survived by Joan Marie (Busby) Ryan, his wife of 65 years, and children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. ==NFL career statistics==

Ryan ranks fourth all-time among Browns quarterbacks with 13,499 passing yards and second behind Brian Sipe with 134 touchdowns. His 81.43 passer rating is fifth-best, behind Milt Plum, Baker Mayfield, Otto Graham, and Bernie Kosar. Ryan's career numbers (including years with the Rams and Redskins) were 1,090 completions in 2,133 attempts for 16,044 yards, 149 touchdowns and 111 interceptions. Ryan also rushed for 1,358 yards and six touchdowns on 310 carries. Regular season Postseason ==References==

• Grossi, Tony (2004). Tales from the Browns Sideline. (Champaign, Ill.): Sports Publishing LLC. • Stewart, Todd, ed. (2004) Cleveland Browns 2004 Media Guide. New York: National Communications Group ==External links==