NFL: Salata honored as Man of the Year by NFL Alumni’s local

chapter

Richard Dunn

Newport Beach’s Paul Salata, the founder of Irrelevant Week, will

be honored as Man of the Year at the NFL Alumni-Greater Los Angeles

Chapter Awards Banquet on Dec. 6 at the Long Beach Marriott.

“I like it,” Salata said of the award, “because it gives me a chance

to talk about my school (USC), my church and my newspaper.”

But, before his NFL peers crown Salata as the new millennium’s first

honoree, the locally famous philanthropist and all-time public hero will

celebrate a more important aspect of life on Sunday -- 50 years of

marriage to his wife, Beverly.

“That’s the golden anniversary, so it’s everything golden,” said

Salata, known for dramatic themes and parties during zany Irrelevant

Week, the annual tribute to the last player picked in the NFL draft.

Salata, known as a man of laughter, once surprised his wife on her

birthday by hiring the USC band to march up to the front door of his

Linda Isle home to serenade Mrs. Salata.

“We met at USC,” said Salata, who was an end at USC and caught a

touchdown pass for the Trojans in the 1945 Rose Bowl game, a 25-0 USC

victory over Tennessee.

“Yeah, (the touchdown) is what caught her eye,” he quipped. “And her

dad thought I could help him in gambling.”

Salata, who turned 75 on Oct. 17, has emceed or been the guest of

honor, the roaster or the roasteree, of an endless parade of events and

has received countless honors and memberships, including being honored

with a Lifetime Achievement Award on the national level by the NFL Alumni

in April 2000.

“I’m pleased because they’re my peers,” Salata said of the Man of the

Year recognition by the local chapter of the NFL Alumni, which previously

honored Maury Nipp (1998), Skip Giancanelli (1999) and Costa Mesa’s Jack

Faulkner (2000), the longtime Rams executive.

Salata, who survived cancer surgery in February and is off

chemotherapy, started Irrelevant Week with the sentiment of wanting “to

do something nice for someone for no reason.”

The hokey, tongue-in-cheek Irrelevant Week festivities, which raises

money for charities, has been a way to put college football’s so-called

underdog on the map.

“When I played, I was sort of a champion of the guy who never gets

recognized,” Salata said in a 1978 Sports Illustrated story that never

appeared in the magazine. “I always said if I ever could afford it, I was

going to do something for the guy you never heard of.”

Never a starter in college, Salata managed to play for the San

Francisco 49ers, Baltimore Colts and Pittsburgh Steelers, as well as the

Calgary Stampeders in the CFL. He laughs in claiming he invented the wide

receiver position, because he “didn’t like to block and kept moving

farther and farther out.”

Actually, Salata was pretty good, according to veteran Baltimore

sports editor and columnist John Steadman, who covered the Colts in 1950

when Salata played and once wrote: “Just wondering if the best pass

catching hands belonged to Don Hutson, Raymond Berry, Tom Fears or Paul

Salata.”

As for the madcap celebration every June in Newport Beach, Sports

Illustrated covered the 25th anniversary Irrelevant Week in 2000, which

was attended by numerous former Mr. Irrelevant honorees, including NFL

players Matt Elliott and Marty Moore.

The NFL lets Salata announce the last pick on the podium each year at

the NFL draft.

“No one else could think about doing something like that,” Steadman

once said.

Too bad the Sports Illustrated story didn’t make it into print 23

years ago, because Joe Jares’ bumped feature had a hot lede: “Paul Salata

is a screwball, an ex-professional football player and millionaire sewer

contractor, probably in that order.”