QUINCY (WGEM) – LeRoy “Roy” Nothnagel’s Quincy High Sports Fall of Fame plaque describes him as “perhaps the most dominating football player in Quincy High’s history.”
It would be hard to disagree with that assessment of Nothnagel, a 1959 graduate who died July 6 at age 83 in the Minneapolis area, where he had lived since 1972.
“LeRoy was a helluva player,” said Dick Wentura of Quincy, a 1958 QHS graduate who played a couple of seasons on defense with Nothnagel.
“Like (former Alabama coach) Bear Bryant said, he was ‘mobile, agile and hostile.’ Plus, he was an extremely smart football player.”
Nothnagel, who played both ways as an offensive and defensive tackle, was a dominate player on the Blue Devils 1958 team that finished 7-1.
“He was a dominant blocker who could really move for a big guy,” Wentura said of the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Nothnagel. “That was a big guy back in those days.”
On offense, the Blue Devils rushed for 18 touchdowns behind Nothnagel’s blocking. Defensively, he was involved in 168 tackles in just eight games, a whopping average of 21 per game.
On special teams, he averaged 43 yards per kickoff and booted 10 extra points.
After the season, Nothnagel was recognized with numerous first team All-State and All-American selections, including selections by the Chicago Daily News and Champaign News-Gazette.
Among the national honors, Nothnagel was selected to play in the 1959 Prep North-South All-American game in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
In that game, Nothnagel was the leading tackler, scored a safety and was named as Most Valuable Lineman.
Nothnagel, whose given first name was Walter, played in a second All-American game and was again the game’s leading tackler, recording three sacks and recovering a fumble.
“Back in those days, you didn’t have all the media surrounding these kids like today,” Wentura said. “We never even heard of these all-star games and didn’t even know LeRoy even played in them. There just wasn’t the media coverage.
“Like a few years ago, the Brock (Jirehl) kid played in an all-star game in Hawaii and scored a touchdown and it was all over the local media.”
After his senior season, Nothnagel received more than 20 scholarship offers before deciding on the University of Iowa.
“I didn’t hear from him much after graduation because we both went our separate ways,” Wentura said.
“Even though Leroy was just 21/2 hours away in Iowa City, there was no TV, no ESPN back then. You just didn’t hear about it.”
Unfortunately, Nothnagel’s collegiate career was hampered by a back injury suffered in an automobile accident that killed a friend who was driving the vehicle.
At that point, Nothnagel had been drawing interest from NFL teams but that cooled due to insurance issues.
With a football career over, Nothnagel became a very successful salesman for national information systems companies such as Pitney Bowes and Bell & Howell. He believed athletics was a strong training ground for the business world.
Near the end of his business career, Nothnagel who won numerous sales awards, conducted training seminars for the sales staffs of the companies.
Nothnagel was also a pioneer.
He was the first patient in Minnesota to undergo an experimental heart surgery while conscious. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote a detailed story about the procedure.
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