Vaughn Mancha

October 7, 1921 – Vaughn Mancha, a center from the University of Alabama, was born.

According to an article on nolefan.org, Mancha suffered from the loss of vision in one eye due to a childhood accident, but that didn’t deter him from having an extremely productive football career at both the collegiate and professional levels.

Due to his injury, Mancha was unable to serve in the military, so the patriotic young man joined the Merchant Marines to support the war effort. After the fighting was over, Vaughn enrolled at Alabama and became a four-year letterman and one of the best football players in school history. For the Tide, he was a two-way player, manning both the center and linebacker positions.

In 1948, the Boston Yanks picked Mancha in the NFL draft. A knee injury cut short his NFL playing career, so Vaughn got into coaching. He started at Livingston State, which would eventually become the University of West Alabama. In his first year at the helm in 1949, his team knocked off Florida State. The two teams did not play again, but a couple of years later, in 1952, the Florida State brass decided to hire Mancha as an assistant coach, a role he held for five seasons.

In 1957, Mancha moved to New York City, where he coached the linebackers at Columbia University while pursuing a graduate degree at the school. After a few short years in the Big Apple, he returned to the Seminoles to become their Athletic Director. It was during the twelve seasons that Mancha served in that role that the Florida State program became a national powerhouse, as they played other big-name schools, and this spread to other sports teams at the school as well. The National Football Foundation voted Mr. Mancha into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1990.