Sports

Andre The Giant Almost Played For The Washington Redskins In The Most Boring Position Ever

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There was a time when André the Giant was the biggest sports draw on the planet. Think of the media circuses that surround The Rock, LeBron James and Johnny Manziel (the “Johnny Football” side, not the pending NFL bust side) and now melt and mold all of that star power into one colossal attraction. A man who happened to be over seven feet tall and who could drink entire countries under the table.

Andre was a spectacle and a prove money printing machine. For this reason, André was often moonlighted in other sports. For example, “the eighth wonder of the world” André fought professional boxer Chuck Wepner in an unscripted (depends who you ask) boxer against wrestler fight in 1976. The event drew big money so it would only be natural that other sports would want to cash in on the ATM from Grenoble, France.

So you’re probably thinking only combat sports would be interested in the Andre’s service. Nope. Turns out, according to Joe Theismann, the NFL was just as interested in the giant. Theismann’s Redskins almost had André under contract to play on special teams.

“I will say this though: one of the forerunners of football 12 months a year was George Allen, our old coach with the Redskins,” Theismann said. “George used to try and make some kind of a big deal,  usually in the first two weeks of May. I remember one year he sent me to New York to Toots Shor’s, and I got a picture taken — and you can look it up online, — with Andre the Giant.

“[Allen] had talked to Vince McMahon Sr.,” Theismann went on. “This was the type of progressive mind that he had; he talked to Vince McMahon Sr. and said ‘Look, I’m thinking about maybe bringing Andre the Giant in, signing him, so that he can come in and block field goals and extra points for us.’ Now, I don’t know whether it was true or not, but if you look up the picture, I look like an infant. Is that unbelievable or what? Look at his head! And I’ll tell you something, I shook his hand and I lost my arm. I mean, it went all the way up to my elbow. I had no forearm or anything.

“But that was George: he just always kept the Redskins name out there. He was a great promoter of the football team. He understood the marketing aspects of the game of football.”

Whether any of this is true, even with the above picture of André holding up an adorably lifelike Joe Theismann doll, is debatable. The rumor is that the Redskins had a $100K offer on the table to the André but there’s never been any record of André trying out or even talking to the Redskins. Let’s just pretend Andre did try out, blocked every field goal attempt, and then body slammed John Riggins into a table full of Gatorade cups.

It’s probably better that André didn’t play in the NFL. How pissed would you be to see a 7’4 mastodon only on special teams? I’d be livid he wasn’t on the D-line just crushing quarterbacks or chopping running backs in half.

Thankfully for Redskins fans, André went of to wrestle in the big ring in the sky in 1993. If Dan Snyder caught wind of all this, he’d have André tied up under contract for the next five years. Actually, a 59-year-old wrestler who never played a down of organized football would have been the best Snyder signing ever.

[via With Spandex]