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Tom Rowe

Contributor

NORWICH – Unlike Gale Sayers who would juke his way around or vault over his would-be tacklers like a spirited steed on an open Western range, or a pirouetting Jerry Rice saving an errant aerial with a one-handed catch that was so soft to the touch you’d feel safe with your two-day-old baby in his hands, or Tony Dorsett displaying the grace of a fast-charging cheetah en route to an antelope entrée – none of these gridiron visions would ever be confused for Tim Whitney.

And, on the hardwoods, you’d never mistake the 6-foot-1; 215-pound barrel-chested Whitney for a soaring Michael Jordan who donned butterfly wings whenever he needed to hover over the rim, or foolishly think that the pinpoint accuracy and deft ball handling of point guard John Stockton mirrored Whitney while he was playing the same position.

Whitney’s style of play on the football field and the basketball court was more like the opening line in the 1971 Ike & Tina Turner classic “Proud Mary.” There the St. Louis duo warbled “You know, every now and then I think you might like to hear something from us nice and easy. But there’s just one thing you see, we never do nothing nice and easy. We always do it rough.”