Former Ohio State football star Don Vicic, who played both fullback and linebacker for the Lions, became a successful stockbroker in retirement
Don Vicic turned 90 on Jan. 3, which probably makes him the oldest living former B.C. Lions player.
Aside from a slight stoop, he could pass for 60. He still works out at the gym four days a week.
“My physio encouraged me to do something every half hour,” he relates. “‘Don’t sit and do nothing for an hour or two hours, kiss of death. Get up and do something.’ So I try to get up every half an hour and do some squats, and pushups.”
His remarkable health at 90 is part of a remarkable life story.
The son of a Slovenian immigrant who ran a grocery in Euclid, Ohio, Vicic became a football star at Ohio State, then came north to Canada in 1957 to play for the Lions. Post-football, he became a successful stockbroker.
Today, Vicic and his wife of 64 years, Ausma, live in a lovely home on the West Vancouver waterfront.
They met when Ausma was a stewardess on a Trans-Canada Air Lines charter flight for the Lions in 1958.
“After the game, you’re so tired and hurting, we’d load up with beer,” said Vicic.
“They just misbehaved,” said Ausma.
“I was so tired, I just slept on the floor at the back of the plane,” said Vicic.
Ausma told him he had to clear the aisle. Vicic was impressed, got her number and phoned her later.
She agreed to go out with him, but was surprised when he showed up at her door.
“It was funny because I thought he was somebody else,” she laughs.
“When I came to the door on our first date, she thought I was Randy Duncan,” he explains. “Randy was an all-American from Iowa.”
They hit it off right away. Vicic still carried Ausma’s Trans-Canada Air Lines photo in his wallet.
Vicic didn’t make the all-American squad, but had a stellar college career with Ohio State teams that won a national championship, the Rose Bowl and two Big-10 championships.
One of Vicic’s great memories is Ohio State beating the arch-rival Michigan Wolverines 17-0 before 97,363 screaming fans at Michigan’s stadium in Ann Arbour on Nov. 19, 1955.
Vicic had a great game, with a touchdown on offence and an interception on defence.
But the crowd was unruly, and there was no crowd control.
“We were peppered with snowballs all game long,” Vicic recounts. “By half-time (the fans) started to come on the field. (Quarterback) Frank Ellwood was calling a play, and somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I look around at a guy named Dave Besanko from Euclid, Ohio (Vicic’s hometown).
“I said, ‘Dave, what the hell are you doing here? We’re playing a game!’ He was drunk.”
So was much of the crowd. Near the end of the game the crowd rushed onto the field, and the referees called the game.
“We all ran out for our lives,” said Vicic. “There were fights all over the place, broken bottles, blood. It was a disaster. And this was a championship game.”
The B.C. Lions approached Vicic in 1956, after he starred in the all-star Blue-Gray game. But he had also been drafted by San Francisco in the NFL.
“We were stupid about Canada,” said Vicic, who was nicknamed Mr. Magoo by his teammates because he was shortsighted and wore contacts.
“I had never heard of Vancouver. I had never heard of Canadian football. But I thought, ‘I’ll talk to Moose.’”
That would be Moose Machinsky, captain of the 1955 Ohio State team, who had come north to play for the Toronto Argonauts.
“I went to see Moose and he looked at me and he said, ‘Don, Vancouver is the most beautiful city in the world,’” said Vicic.
“You’re going to make twice as much money — there was no money in the NFL (at that time) — and he said the Canadian dollar is $1.07 (to the American dollar).”
Vicic laughs. “He kicked me in the butt and said, ‘Get your ass up there!’”
So he did, at a salary of $10,000. Described as a “hard rock” six-foot-two and 215 pounds, Vicic played both offence and defence in 1957. But so many players were getting injured going two ways, he only played fullback the next three seasons, before switching back to linebacker.
He played in the Lions’ first Grey Cup appearance in 1963, but was cut the following year when he was switched back to fullback.
By then he had a thriving off-season career selling ads for CKNW.
“As my career was winding down, I was really scared,” he recalls. “How am I going to support this when this glorified existence is over?”
He read a book called Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
“It was just like (Mike) Tyson hitting me with a right,” he said.
“I used to blame everybody else for my problems, but it wasn’t ‘stupid other people,’ I was a dummy. (I thought) I’d better change my head and get some positive thoughts in there, because I was filled with negativity, and that changed my life.”
After CKNW, he had a sales training company with another former Lion, Tom Brown.
“I made a call on Mike Ryan at Ryan Investments, and I was trying to persuade him to put all his team on our course, so they’re more productive,” he said.
“He pulls out a sheet of paper. Now we’re talking about 1968. He pulls on a sheet of paper, and he (reads) Murdo McLeod, he made $130,000. Chuck Croft, $110,000. George Pappas, $100,000. Barry Gosney, $80,000.
“He looked at me and said, ‘You want to join us?’”
And he did, and thrived.
“It’s an environment where nobody can hold you back,” he said. “The more you want, the harder you want to work, the more time you want to put into it, the better you do.”
He retired in 2010. His friend George O’Leary asked him what he was going to do.
“I said, ‘I’m doing nothing, I worked my ass off for 45 years,’” said Vicic.
“He said, ‘Vicic, you’re gonna be dead in a year.’ I said, ‘George, what do you mean?’ He said, ‘You’d better have a passion for something. I want you to go home and write down four things you want to accomplish in the next five years. Write them out so you can visualize them.’”
He did it. “And I tell everybody, thanks to George, these have been the best 15 years of my life.”
