Bob Lilly

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Bob Lilly
Date of birth	July 26, 1939
Place of birth	Throckmorton, Texas Source BobLilly.Com
Position(s)	Defensive Tackle
College	Texas Christian
NFL Draft	1961 / Round 1/ Pick 13
Pro Bowls	11
Honors	NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team NFL 1970s All-Decade Team
Statistics	Pro Football Reference DatabaseFootball
Team(s)
1961-1974	Dallas Cowboys
College Hall-of-Fame
Pro Football Hall of Fame, 1980

Bob Lilly (born July 26, 1939) is a former American football player and photographer.

Born in Throckmorton, Texas, Lilly originally made a name for himself as an All-American football player at TCU and star defensive tackle for the Dallas Cowboys from 1961 to 1974.

1 College Football career
2 Professional Football career
3 Photography
4 Trivia
5 External links

[edit] College Football career

A two-time All-South West Conference pick and a consensus All-American while at TCU.

A year before joining the Cowboys, Lilly was selected for the Kodak Coaches’ All-America team. One award that was part of this honor was a 35mm camera and a year’s supply of film. Making immediate use of this gift, Lilly began taking photographs of people and places he encountered during his NFL career.

[edit] Professional Football career

As the number one draft pick in 1961 (and the Cowboys first ever draft pick), Bob went on to be All-Pro 7 times, and played in 11 Pro Bowl games.

Lilly began his career as a defensive end in 1961 but midway though his third season Cowboys coach Tom Landry moved him to defensive tackle. As a tackle, Lilly was a first-team All-NFL choice every year from 1964 through 1969, then again in 1971, and 1972. The only years he missed first-team honors was his final two seasons in the league and in 1970 when he was a second-team choice

Lilly's agility and quickness helped him score four defensive touchdowns in his career. His first was returning a interception 17 yards in 1964 while the other three came on fumble recoveries.

Lilly was extremely durable during his career, making 196 consecutive regular-season games. The only game he would miss in his career was the 1973 championship game against Minnesota due to a leg injury.

Affectionately known as "Mr. Cowboy," his name was the first inscribed in the "Ring of Honor" above Texas Stadium.

Bob Lilly was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1980. The Sporting News named him a member of the All-Century NFL Team and "the greatest defensive tackle in NFL history".

In 1999, he was ranked number 10 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, the highest-ranking defensive lineman and the highest-ranking Cowboy.

[edit] Photography

When he began traveling with the Cowboys, Lilly took his camera with him wherever he went. Before and after games, he spent an increasing amount of time studying and photographing old sports stadiums. When he was not busy wreaking havoc in the opposing team's backfield, Lilly was learning to appreciate the subtler lines of architectural forms and the interesting ways light and shadow played across them. He began to notice the more abstract effects of composition, paying greater attention to unique angles of certain structures, or the juxtaposition of one building with another. It was also during this time that Lilly began to focus on nostalgic themes, such as old street lanterns, closed fueling stations and railway yards.

After retiring from the NFL and moving to Waco, Texas, Lilly’s photographic interests broadened to include other natural settings—particularly those cast in the light of a rising or setting sun. He was quickly drawn to scenes that recalled his childhood in Throckmorton, Texas. Rural themes such as old paint-chipped barns and churches, or windmills creaking in a sea of golden grass, appear consistently throughout Lilly’s work. Remembering family fishing trips to Pagosa Springs and Durango, Colorado in his early teenage years, Lilly began taking photographs of the mountains of this region—capturing mineshafts iced in snow, preserved alongside trout-filled, babbling streams.

Lilly’s work was featured as a cover story in the June 2004 issue of Petersen’s Photographic. Some of his newer projects include a multicolored geyser near Hind’s Peak and the Saguaro cacti of Arizona

[edit] Trivia

Bob Lilly was the first draft pick in Cowboys franchise history.
Lilly missed just one NFL game during his 14 year career
Has been at the induction of each ring of honor inductee
He was the first player who spent his entire career with the Cowboys to be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame