Frank Broyles is best known as the College Football Hall of Fame coach who won seven SWC championships and a 1964 national title at Arkansas. He also was a popular color commentator alongside Keith Jackson covering football games for ABC Sports. As a 1941 senior at Decatur Boys High, Broyles was perhaps the best all-around schoolboy athlete in Georgia. In football, playing in the single-wing offense, the red-headed Broyles was a passer, runner, kicker and punter who scored 112 points and 15 touchdowns on a 7-2 team. In basketball, he averaged 17 points and led Decatur to the Class B semifinals. In baseball, he batted .420 and was his team’s ace pitcher. He played football and basketball at Georgia Tech. As the Yellow Jackets’ quarterback in 1945, Broyles set the Orange Bowl record for passing yards (304), a mark broken 55 years later by Michigan’s Tom Brady. Broyles was the Chicago Bears’ third-round NFL Draft pick in 1946. The Basketball Association of America, which later merged with another league to form the NBA, also drafted Broyles in the third round, but Broyles went straight into coaching. Among his many honors are inductions into the Georgia Tech Sports Hall of Fame (1960), the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame (1971) and the College Football Hall of Fame (1983). Broyles passed away in 2017 at age 92.
