- Larry Elkins
Infobox NFLretired
|width=
caption=
position=WR
number=26
birthdate=birth date and age|1943|7|28
deathdate=
debutyear=1966
finalyear=1967
draftyear=1965
draftround=1
draftpick=10
college=Baylor
teams=
*Houston Oilers
stat1label=Receptions
stat1value=24
stat2label=Receiving Yards
stat2value=315
stat3label=Touchdowns
stat3value=3
pfr=ElkiLa00
dbf=ELKINLAR01
highlights=
HOF=
CollegeHOF=60064Lawrence Clayton Elkins (born
July 28 ,1943 ) is a formerAmerican football player. He was a two-time All-American flanker at Baylor and later for the AFL'sHouston Oilers .College career
Elkins was an all-around athletic star at
Brownwood High School and turned down a $25,000 baseball offer to enroll at Baylor. One of the best receivers in Baylor history, Elkins caught seventy passes in 1963 to lead the nation. Elkins also played safety for the defense and returned kicks. In 1962, he had a ninety-two-yard punt return against TCU. For his career, he caught 144 passes for 2,094 yards with a school-record nineteen touchdowns. He still shares Baylor's single-game record for receptions with twelve, which he caught against Texas in 1963. He ranks number three in all-time career receptions and career receiving yards.Elkins was a consensus all-American his last two years — Baylor's first-ever two-time consensus pick. He played in the 1965
East-West Shrine Game , Coaches All-America Game, andHula Bowl . He was MVP of the Hula Bowl.Elkins was inducted into the Baylor Athletic Hall of Fame in 1976 and into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1994.
Professional career
He was drafted in the first round of the
1965 NFL Draft by theGreen Bay Packers and in the first round of the1965 AFL Draft by the Houston Oilers. He played for Houston from 1965 to 1968.But Elkins' pro career never really got off the ground. He suffered a knee injury in his rookie season with the Oilers and then broke his collarbone in a 1969 preseason game after earning a starting job with the
Pittsburgh Steelers . "Rather unlucky, I suppose," he told the Baylor Line in 2001.After football
After leaving football, Elkins became something of a globe-trotter. From 1971 to 1978, he worked for Brown and Root Inc. in the safety, health, and claims department, both in the United States and in Europe. From 1979-82, he worked with off-shore drilling companies in the
Gulf of Mexico and inAfrica . Elkins described the years of 1982 to 1989 as "various midlife crises endeavors, including stints with the artistic peoples in the entertainment business." He spent ten months renovating parts ofRobert Duvall 's horse farm inVirginia and took the actor all overTexas to research accents for his 1983 movie "Tender Mercies ". When Duvall won the Oscar for the movie that year, Elkins was there as his special guest. Elkins said he also rubbed shoulders withGene Hackman ,Robert DeNiro ,Meryl Streep , andRobert Redford during those years.After that, Elkins spent more than a dozen years in
Saudi Arabia , where he was a consultant for the country's Ministry of Water, which managed twenty-sixdesalination plants and several pipelines and pumping stations along theRed Sea andPersian Gulf .Now Elkins has retired and moved back to his hometown of Brownwood, where he lives in a little bungalow on a hilltop overlooking Lake Brownwood.
ee also
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