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William Francis "Zeke" O'Connor, Jr. (born May 2, 1926) is a retired American football end who played five seasons in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and Canadian Football League (CFL) in the late 1940s and early 1950s. After retiring, O'Connor went into business and devoted himself to helping Nepalese Sherpas. O'Connor grew up in a large Catholic family in New York City and went to college at the University of Notre Dame. After starting for Notre Dame's football team as a freshman in 1944, he spent two years in the U.S. Navy during World War II and played for a service team at Naval Station Great Lakes that was coached by Paul Brown. O'Connor returned to Notre Dame in 1946 and graduated in 1947, but he did not play in his senior year because of a knee injury. O'Connor signed in 1948 with the Buffalo Bills of the AAFC, where he played for one year. He was then traded to the Cleveland Browns, another AAFC team coached by Brown. The Browns won the AAFC championship in 1949, but O'Connor was cut early the next year and played one season for the minor-league Jersey City Giants. He next had a one-year stint with the New York Yanks of the National Football League before his playing career in the CFL with the Toronto Argonauts. A late-game touchdown catch by O'Connor helped the Argonauts win the Grey Cup in 1952. O'Connor worked for Sears in Canada after his playing career, and served as the color commentator for Grey Cup broadcasts from 1956 to 1981. He became friends with the famed mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary and helped establish a foundation in his name to benefit Sherpas in Nepal. ==Early life and college== O'Connor was born in New York City and grew up in the Bronx, one of the city's five boroughs. He was the son of a police officer and part of a large Catholic family.〔 O'Connor attended Mount Saint Michael Academy, a Catholic school in the Bronx, where he played football and was voted the team's best end in 1942 and 1943. His large size – he was six feet, four inches tall – made him an attractive prospect for college football programs across the country, and he accepted a scholarship offer from Notre Dame.〔 O'Connor was a starter for Notre Dame as a freshman left end in 1944. The team finished the season with an 8–2 win–loss record under coach Edward McKeever, but O'Connor joined a V-12 Navy College Training Program in the middle of the year as World War II raged on. O'Connor played for a U.S. Navy team in a game against Army held in London in late 1944. In 1945, he played for a service team at Naval Station Great Lakes outside of Chicago that was coached by Paul Brown. He caught a touchdown pass that December in a 39–7 win over Notre Dame. O'Connor returned to Notre Dame in 1946, but coach Frank Leahy demoted him to the second team midway through the season as punishment for leaving the school's South Bend, Indiana campus to see a girl. He suffered a knee injury in a practice before the start of the 1947 season that kept him on the bench all year.〔 Notre Dame went undefeated in 1946 and 1947, and won the college football national championship both years by finishing first in the national polls.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bill O'Connor (American football)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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