Billy Shaw, a member of each Payments American Soccer League-winning groups within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, died Friday. He was 85. Shaw holds the excellence of being the one participant enshrined within the Corridor of Fame whose profession occurred fully within the AFL.
Serving to Buffalo to back-to-back AFL titles in 1964 and ’65, Shaw was a beginning guard all through a nine-year profession spent solely with the Payments. He earned first-team All-AFL honors in 5 consecutive seasons, with that stretch overlapping with Buffalo dominance within the upstart league.
“Billy Shaw holds the excellence of being the one member of the Professional Soccer Corridor of Fame to play his complete profession within the American Soccer League, however whereas that reality is worthy of noting and good to recite, it comes nowhere close to offering the explanation he was elected as a member of the Class of 1999,” Corridor President Jim Porter mentioned in a press release. “Billy’s all-around athleticism introduced a brand new dimension to the guard place and made the Nineteen Sixties Buffalo Payments a formidable opponent able to bruising opponents with a punishing dashing assault.”
A 1961 second-round Payments decide, Shaw went ninth total; the AFL started as an eight-team league. The Georgia Tech alum was additionally a 14th-round Cowboys selection — throughout the six-year interval during which the leagues held separate drafts. He joined the Payments for $11K, with a $5K signing bonus and a brand new automobile included within the deal. Shaw quickly grew to become a fixture at left guard for a Payments line tasked with defending quarterback Jack Kemp or paving lanes for fullback Cookie Gilchrist throughout the workforce’s Nineteen Sixties heyday.
As Kemp powered Lou Saban‘s workforce to a 22-5-1 file from 1964-65, Shaw was the one Payments offensive participant to earn first-team All-AFL honors in each seasons.
The Payments, who halted a possible Chargers AFL dynasty by beating them for each the 1964 and ’65 championships, misplaced to the Chiefs for the proper to trek to the primary Tremendous Bowl. Shaw stored rolling, gathering first-team All-AFL honors in 1966 and second-team acclaim in ’68. Shaw began 116 profession video games, not lacking a contest till his seventh season. By decade’s finish, the Natchez, Mississippi, native was the one Payments offensive participant to land on the AFL’s All-Decade first workforce.
