'Scuse Me While I Juke This Guy: The Short-Lived Football Career of Jimi Hendrix

A New York Times Magazine profile of former Washington governor Booth Gardner, mostly concerned with Gardner's campaign to legalize physician-assisted suicide, takes an unexpected turn when Gardner recalls coaching youth football in Seattle's Central District in the mid-50s. One of his players, says Gardner, was Jimi Hendrix.

Hendrix "didn't have an athletic bone in is body," according to Gardner, but the other kids on the team wanted him to play.

So in the season's last game, Gardner put Hendrix in at running back:

"On the first play he got clobbered,” Gardner said. “So I called time and told the kids to block hard and the next time he gained eight yards."

Seems Hendrix was a far gutsier runner than Shaun Alexander.

Hendrix's greatest football glory would come after his death, when somebody gave the '91 Huskies D the nickname "The Purple Haze Defense."