Sports: Football & Auto Racing
Born: October 11, 1941
Died: March 9, 2019
Town: Trenton, New Jersey
Joseph Auer III was born October 11, 1941 in Trenton, NJ. His parents, Martha and Joe Jr., moved Joe and his three siblings to Florida when Joe was a boy, but divorced when Joe was eight years old. Joe became a standout athlete for Coral Gables High School. Another star on the team was lineman Frank Lasky, like Joe a transplant from the NY-Metro area who excelled in multiple sports. Lasky went on to play in the NFL for the Giants.
A bright student with a head for all things mechanical, Joe loved to tinker with cars. He came by this interest honestly; back in New Jersey, his cousin Ray shared this passion and would go on to open a Buick dealership in Lakewood. Joe’s passion was running with the football and he was exceptional with the ball in his hands as a running back, receiver, and kick returner. He was also a standout at defensive back. As a senior in 1958, he and Lasky led Coral Gables to a state championship. Joe returned the opening kickoff in the state championship game for a touchdown.
Joe was heavily scouted by southern schools and ended up with a full ride at Georgia Tech, where he could study mechanical engineering. Bobby Dodd, the longtime coach of the Yellow Jackets, guided the team to a 19–12–1 record in the three years Joe played for the varsity, including Top 20 finishes and bowl appearances in 1961 and 1962. Joe was one of a cohort of runners in the team’s ground-oriented offense. He distinguished himself as Tech’s most sure-handed receiver out of the backfield. Following his senior season, he was selected by the Rams in the NFL draft and the Chiefs in the AFL draft.
Joe joined the Chiefs, who had just moved from Dallas to Kansas City. He didn’t figure to crack a backfield that included Abner Haynes and Curtis McClinton and his rights were traded to the Buffalo Bills. After spending the 1963 season on the taxi squad, Joe made the Bills in 1964 and was a special teams contributor on Buffalo’s championship teams in 1964 and 1965. In 1966, he was in Los Angeles, hoping to make the Rams, who still owned his NFL rights. As in his other two stops, the backfield was full, with Dick Bass, Tom Moore and Les Josephson figuring to get the bulk of the starts.
The Rams waived Joe, but fortunately he received an offer from the expansion Miami Dolphins. Unfortunately, this occurred in the midst of an airline strike, so getting to Florida involved a trains-planes-and-automobiles scheme that took more than a week. Joe distinguished himself as coach Ralph Wilson’s go-to guy in camp after veterans Rick Casares and Gene Mingo failed to impress. On the final play of the preseason, he scored a touchdown. The next time he touched the ball, he would make history.
On September 2, Joe stood in front of the Miami goal line awaiting the opening kickoff of the 1966 season. Mike Mercer booted the ball to Joe, who caught it on the 5-yard line. He tore right through the heart of the Oakland Raiders coverage team and no one laid a hand on him until Rodger Bird tripped him at the end of his 95-yard run. Joe tumbled into the end zone for the Dolphin’s first-ever touchdown. Danny Thomas, part-owner of the Dolphins, ran the final 50 yards down the sideline with Joe, without removing the cigar from his mouth, and embraced him in the end zone. After the game, Joe, told a reporter that the last time he returned the opening kick for a touchdown—as a high school star in the same stadium—the crowd was bigger.
Joe proved to be a workhorse for the 1966 team, which managed only three wins against 11 losses. He led the team with 416 rushing yards and finished second to Jim Nance in the AFL in all-purpose yards. Joe tallied eight more touchdowns that year; his nine scores represented nearly 40% of Miami’s touchdowns—by far the highest percentage in the league. He was a no-brainer pick for Dolphins MVP.
The 1967 season did not go as well. Worn down from his workload and competing against a group of newcomers, he slid down the depth chart and averaged fewer than three yards per carry. After muffing a punt in another Miami loss, he asked off of special teams, enraging coach Wilson, who basically benched him after that. Wilson observed that Joe “seemed to be in a daze sometimes.”
In 1968, the Dolphins drafted two future stars at Joe’s position, Jim Kiick and Larry Csonka. And the writing was on the wall. Joe hastened his departure when he flipped his dune buggy that summer with Csonka in the passenger seat. Csonka was unhurt, but Joe suffered serious abrasions on his shoulder and face, which made wearing his helmet and pads impossible. He sat out two exhibition games before the Dolphins waived him.
Wilson believed Joe could redeem himself on special teams and hoped to keep him on the taxi squad. Figuring he would agree, the Dolphins let him keep his playbook—going against decades of pro football tradition. However, Joe decided he could do better elsewhere. The Falcons needed a running back and he signed with Atlanta. When the two teams met that summer in a pre-season game, Joe offered the playbook back to the Dolphins—for a price. Joe figured the Dolphins owed him $500 for the two exhibition games before the team cut him. The league informed the team that it didn’t have to pay him because the dune buggy injury happened outside of work. Joe never offered it the Falcons, so it was not a blackmail scheme, and after lawyers got involved, he agreed to return it.
The 1968 Falcons were dreadful, going 2–12. Joe played on special teams and saw a handful of touches at running back in what would be his final season as a football player.
Joe turned toward his other first love and began building race cars. He established RaceCar Engineering and developed a reputation for delivering record-setting, championship-quality vehicles for NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup teams. In the early 2000s, Joe founded Competitive Edge Motorsports, which fielded NASCAR teams that enjoyed limited success. His drivers included Kevin Lepage, Tony Raines, Stuart Kirby, and Mike Garvey. Petty Motorsports took over the business in 2006.
George moved into the computer hardware and software business in the years that followed and passed away at the age of 77 in 2019.