Warren Alfson

Warren Alfson (1915-2001) was a football player for the Nebraska Cornhuskers, as well as a player for the National Football League.

He was born and raised in Wisner, Nebraska. Alfson graduated from Wisner High School in 1933, where he was a halfback on the school's single wing football team. After graduating, Alfson worked and farmed for several years until earning enough money to attend the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Class of 1941, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. When he attended school, he decided to tryout for the Cornhusker football team (at the urging of fellow Wisner native Jerry LaNoue, a Cornhusker quarterback), but as a lineman. After one year on the freshman squad, he asked the school's permission to continue practicing, but to not play, so that he could get himself into proper condition as well as to wait for the upperclassmen ahead of him to graduate. This made Alfson the first recorded "redshirt (college sports)" in Cornhusker history, and likely the first in collegiate history.

Alfson's year of conditioning would pay off well, as he returned to become a three-year starter for Nebraska. In the era of single platoon football, he was a guard on offense, and a linebacker on defense, and he wore jersey number #22 throughout his Cornhusker career. He would ultimately become recognized as first team All Big Six Conference in 1939 and 1940, second team All-America in 1939, and he would earn first team All-America status in 1940, the year the Nebraska Cornhuskers went 8-2 and played Stanford in the 1941 Rose Bowl under coach Biff Jones.

Alfson would play one year with the NFL's Brooklyn Dodgers (NFL), and earned NFL All-Rookie status, despite being drafted in the sixteenth round due to his age (Alfson was twenty-five in 1940, and was nicknamed "Pops" and "Dad" by his younger teammates). However, World War II cut his career short, and Alfson (who had enlisted in the Navy in a special ceremony at the College All-Star Game) married and served in the war. After the war he returned to Wisner and farmed, and he also served on the Wisner school board as well as other organizations, and also briefly served as Wisner's mayor. He also took great pride in his Cornhusker connections, and attended many Nebraska games. In 2005, Alfson was recognized with 'honorable mention' recognition for the state of Nebraska's "Our Top 100" athletes of all time, as selected by the Omaha "World-Herald".

Alfson died in 2001. He had two daughters and one granddaughter.

External links

* [http://www.databasefootball.com/players/playerpage.htm?ilkid=ALFSOWAR01 Warren Alfson's NFL Career Statistics]
* [http://www.footballresearch.com/articles/frpage.cfm?topic=brooklyn Brooklyn Dodger Football History]
* [http://www.mineolaiowa.com/Nebraska100.swf Nebraska Top 100 Athletes]

References

*Babcock, Mike. "Go Big Red--The Ultimate Fan's Guide to Nebraska Cornhusker Football" (1998). New York; St. Martin's Griffin.