Uniontown-born Ed Chlebek got around
Over the years Fayette County has produced some outstanding athletes that went on to great careers at local high schools, but others moved and forged their careers away from the local scene. Ed Chlebek, who was born in Uniontown, is one of those forgotten gems, as his family moved to Detroit, Mich. before his sophomore season in high school.
He attended North Union High School prior to the move.
“I remember playing little league in Uniontown for the Moose,” Chlebek said. “That little league group I played with probably was as good a little league group as you could get.
“The Benson team had Ernie Davis, Sandy Stephens and Bill Munsey. There were probably 15 or 20 guys that went on to play Division I football or baseball out of that little league.”
Chlebek lived in Evans Manor and played for North Union.
“I played football, basketball and baseball my freshman year at North Union,” he recalled. “Nick Bubonovich was the football coach, and Steve Furin coached basketball. I enjoyed playing for both of them.
“I was lucky enough to pitch a no-hitter and a one-hitter my freshman year in baseball. It turned out that baseball was my most productive sport, but football turned out big for me. I started playing football when I was five years old. I had six brothers, and we played every day.”
Chlebek’s family moved to Detroit following his freshman year after his father found a job at General Motors.
“My dad got a great job working for General Motors,” Chlebek reported. “Everything turned out great for the family. I attended Western High School. That was a great difference going from North Union to one of the biggest schools in Detroit.
It was a great, great move for a young kid. I played football, basketball and baseball, and we had a great group of guys. My senior class in high school produced eight Division I football players.”
Western had some very competitive teams in the Detroit City League.
“We were pretty good,” Chlebek opined. “I had a good relationship with all the coaches. I worked my way into significant football playing time my junior year. We won our division one year and played at University of Detroit Stadium.
The next year we were 8-0 and played in a rainstorm against a team that we had beaten, 42-0, which had beaten the team that wound up beating us 7-0 in the rain. We were one of the best teams in the state that year.
We were pretty good in basketball.
Northwestern High School was the power in the city back then. City schools weren’t allowed to compete in the state playoffs.
The baseball team was great. I started my sophomore year and pitched and played in the outfield. Most of our baseball team either signed a pro contract or went Division I.”
Chlebek graduated from Western High School in 1958.
“I had some scholarship offers,” Chlebek explained. “I was all set to go to Michigan. They were after me. It came down to the fact that I was pitching pretty well and was down at Tiger Stadium for a workout. I thought I wanted to play baseball in college as well as football.
Western Michigan would allow me to play both sports, Michigan would not, so I went to Kalamazoo.”
Chlebek wound up sticking with football at Western Michigan.
“When I turned out for freshman football practice we had a great freshman squad that went undefeated,” Chlebek stated.
“I got up there and looked at the depth chart, and I was sixth string. I said, ‘screw baseball’ I’ve got to work at football. I moved up and started before the end of the season and became the starting quarterback as a sophomore.”
Western Michigan posted a 4-5 record, 3-3 in the Mid-America Conference in 1959. In 1960, the Broncos were 4-4 overall and 2-4 in conference play. In 1961, Western Michigan was 5-4 overall and 4-1-1 in conference play.
“It went real well,” Chlebek said. “I had some good success, and we were getting into playing the bigger schools. I couldn’t have picked a better school.”
Chlebek led the Broncos to their first-ever postseason game as a senior in 1961 against New Mexico in the Aviation Bowl at Welcome Stadium in Dayton, Ohio.
“It was a fantastic experience to play in the bowl game,” Chlebek stated.
It wasn’t a memorable day for WMU. The Broncos were thumped, 28-12, by a Lobos team that featured future Dallas Cowboys running back Don Perkins.
The weather alternated between freezing rain and snow, but Chlebek still passed for 207 yards and a touchdown.
Chlebek completed 128 out of 218 passes for 1,758 yards at Western Michigan. He was a unanimous first team all-MAC selection and team MVP in 1961. He played in the 1962 All-American Bowl (postseason all-star game).
After college, Chlebek joined the Ottawa Roughriders of the Canadian Football League.
“I had a real good contract in Ottawa,” Chlebek explained. “Not much money, but I had a half-year guarantee. I played in probably four games. They had two great quarterbacks in Russ Jackson and Ron Lancaster. I liked the CFL and adjusted well in Canada.”
A few months later, he made his debut for Grand Rapids with the United Football League. Chlebek left the Grand Rapids Blazers the following year, only to sign a free-agent contract with the fledgling New York Jets.
The Jets were about to embark on their first season in the American Football League after rising out of the ashes of the defunct New York Titans franchise.
“We had Johnny Green, Lee Grosscup and Galen Hall,” Chlebek remembered. “I beat them all out and they kept me.”
Coach Weeb Ewbank put the 5-11, 175-pounder on the taxi squad, coming out of preseason camp.
“Weeb Ewbank was a great guy,” Chlebek opined. “He was very honest with me. He told me I was short. I could have stuck around and helped out. I just got into the game when Dick Wood got hurt.”
Chlebek was activated and played in two games that season, completing 2-of-4 passes for 5 yards.
“I went back and played in the Continental Football League,” Chlebek said. “I played about seven or eight years, and the football was pretty good. I did very well; I was lucky and signed a real good contract. I coached and played.
“My stops were Grand Rapids before the Jets, where I was league MVP. Then I played with Wheeling, Fort Wayne, New Jersey and Richmond. We were popular in Wheeling. I played there three years. When I was playing, I coached at West Liberty College and Bethany.
“We had some good players – guys like Jim Cunningham from Connellsville and Jake Olsavsky from Redstone. We had Hubie Bryant and John Emory.
“I enjoyed it because I was also coaching. I was getting prepared to get into the coaching ranks. I should have gotten into coaching a little sooner, but I enjoyed playing so much, and we were doing very well.”
Chlebek went into coaching fulltime about 1970.
“I was coaching baseball at Holy Redeemer High School in Detroit,” Chlebek offered. “We won three straight baseball championships. We beat Frank Tanana and Catholic Central in the finals at Tiger Stadium. We beat Bishop Gallagher.
I was helping out with football at Eastern Michigan. I moved around a great deal. I was at Eastern Michigan for about four years, then the Detroit Wheels of the World Football League. Dan Devine hired me at Notre Dame. I was there for a year and took the head coaching job at Eastern Michigan in 1976.”
His first EMU squad limped home with a 2-9 record, but he turned that around to go 8-3 in 1977.
Then Chlebek headed east to take the reins at Boston College.
He survived an 0-11 debut season in 1978. That was his only winless year in Boston College history. The Eagles were 5-6 in 1979 and 7-4 in 1980.
That 1980 season included a 30-13 rout of No. 11-ranked Stanford in the second game of the season, but back-to-back upsets to Navy and Villanova followed. Not even a season-ending five-game win streak was enough to keep irate Eagles fans from demanding Chlebek’s dismissal at the end of the year. They got their wish as Chlebek was let go.
“I was on the verge of turning things around,” Chlebek lamented. “We had a great recruiting class. It was a tough situation when I went there. We started to get better and we were developing. I couldn’t understand why they would bring me in to build a program and then let me go after three seasons.”
Kent State had just fired Ron Blackledge, who won just 8 of 33 games in his three seasons, and Chlebek was asked to turn the Golden Flashes’ program around. He couldn’t.
Kent State went 4-7 in 1981, a slight improvement over Blackledge’s final season, but the Flashes imploded in 1982. Chlebek was fired after Kent State went 0-11 in his final season. He wouldn’t get another head coaching job.
“Kent State was just a bad situation,” Chlebek stated. “It just didn’t work out there.”
He got in to pro football as offensive coordinator with the Toronto Argonauts in 1984.
“We won the Grey Cup Championship,” Chlebek said. “We had a tremendous quarterback from Tennessee in Condredge Holloway. That was a great team.”
He moved to the USFL with the Oklahoma Outlaws.
“I decided to hang it up,” Chlebek explained. “I had six kids. We had moved around a great deal. We moved to Naples, Fla. I did a football camp and built a house. I got into selling construction material and did well. I sent all six kids on to college.”
The six grown children are: Kim, Mark, Dave, Michelle, Sara and Matt. They all have college degrees. Chlebek, 70, and his wife of 47 years, Sue, still reside in Naples, Fla.
NOTE: Spots still remain for the Fayette County Hall of Fame Golf outing at 9 a.m. on June 25 at the Uniontown Country Club. Also, a few tickets remain for the banquet on June 26 at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus. You can sign up for the golf outing or get banquet tickets on the website: www.fayettecountysportshalloffame.com or by phoning 724- 430-4100, ext. 4886.
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” columns appear in the Sunday editions of the Herald-Standard. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.