Roberts starred at Brownsville and Penn
During the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s Fayette County was a fertile recruiting ground for college football. One of the schools that was a must stop on the recruiting trail was Brownsville High School.
One of the many college players the Brownies produced was Lou Roberts who was a standout on the gridiron and the hardwood for Brownsville in the mid-1940s.
“I think the 1940s was the highlight of Brownsville football,” Roberts opined.
Roberts played on some competitive football Brownsville teams, his sophomore year (1944), the Brownies posted a 6-2-1 record before going 6-3 a year later and 8-0-1 during his senior campaign in 1946, the tie was a 6-6 game against arch rival Redstone.
“Redstone was the team that Coach Andy Sepsi developed the year before he came to Brownsville,” Roberts recalled. “The 1946 team only surrendered three touchdowns during the season, it was a big defensive team. I think the team liked to get six points or 13 points or 14 points and just sit on it and we probably called the plays that way to. That was Brownsville football.”
Roberts played offensive and defensive end at Brownsville and played with some talented teammates, like Chuck Drazenovich and Bert Sutton.
“It was during the war and right after the war and people just wanted some entertainment,” Roberts stated. “Football was about the only thing out there at that time and Brownsville had always been a football town, going back to the ’30s they had great teams then. I don’t think we had a tremendous amount of talent, but we were well coached and we knew how to block and tackle and we were disciplined. Earl Bruce, who I had as coach my sophomore and junior years, was a taskmaster and Andy Sepsi was and Charlie Slick, who was the backfield coach, they were all good sound coaches.
“Talent-wise, we did have a couple of special players like Drazenovich and Sutton. I played with them one year and I had a friendship with Bert for years. When I went to the University of Pennsylvania everybody wanted to know about Bert Sutton.”
Roberts was All-Fayette County in 1945 and was All-County, All-WPIAL, All-Big Six and All-State in football in 1946.
Roberts played center on the basketball team even though he was only 6-0 and 188 pounds.
“I liked basketball to a degree,” Roberts offered. “Losing all the time wasn’t the greatest thing in the world and many of the ballplayers that I started with in junior high and high school dropped out because they were too old to play and I was just a young kid, but they dropped by the wayside. I thought we’d have a good team, but didn’t realize how much older everybody was.”
When Roberts graduated in 1947, he was a hot property for a college football scholarship.
“I probably had about 20 offers,” he recalled. “I was interested in going to the best school I could go to. Penn was big time football at that time, playing Army which was number one or two in the nation and Navy was up at the top. There wasn’t an Ivy League at that time.”
Roberts played freshman ball in 1947 and then played offensive end for Quakers teams that went 5-3 in 1948 and 4-4 in 1949. He switched to safety in 1950 when the Quakers posted a record of 6-3.
“Chuck Bednarik, who I played with, was the greatest,” Roberts said. “I played with him one year as a sophomore in 1948 and broke into the lineup in the second game. He was mean and in those days he was big at 230. George Mungar was the coach and he was a real gentleman.
In Roberts’ three years on varsity, the Quakers never had a losing record. In that span, Penn posted victories over football powerhouses Navy (three times), Virginia and Wisconsin. Roberts blocked a kick in 1948 at Columbia. Chuck Bednarik recovered it for his only collegiate touchdown. It sparked a 14-point comeback win for the Quakers. Roberts graduated from the Wharton School of Business in 1951.
Roberts played in the 1950 Blue-Gray All-Star game, but was on the losing squad as the South won 21-13.
The decision to go to Penn was a good one. “Yes, I’m totally satisfied,” Roberts explained. “Earl Bruce wanted me to go to Penn State when he became freshman coach at Penn State. I got a great education at the Wharton School of Business.”
Roberts entered the Navy after he graduated.
“I was sent to Great Lakes Naval Air Station,” he remembered. “I played football and captained the team and it was a good caliber of football and we had two or three pros on the team.”
When Roberts left the Navy he was an officer, in 1955 he went to work for IBM and retired in 1993.
Roberts, 82, resides in Stamford, Conn., and has been married to his wife, Elizabeth, since 1955. They have a daughter, Joanne.
“I wanted to mention how much I appreciated the old Brownsville Telegraph sports editor Bob Petriello,” Roberts said. “He supported Brownsville sports at an unbelievable level and many of the guys owe him a lot.”