By Mike Pearson
FightingIllini.com
February is Black History Month and in celebration of the month, FightingIllini.com will be featuring a storytelling series of influential and impactful stories of African American student-athletes and coaches.
Tab Bennett: Trailblazer on Gridiron and Media
Tyra Perry: Big Ten's only African American Softball Head Coach
Believer: NFL Great Preston Pearson Starts with Humble Beginnings
Legacy: Jonelle Polk McCloud: Teaching Life Lessons Through Basketball
The Education of Morris Virgil
Govoner Vaughn: Illinois's Groundbreaking Star
Moe Gardner: Helping Scholars Study the African Diaspora
To opposing quarterbacks of the early 1970s, Illinois' No. 75 was a menacing defensive end who kept them scrambling.
To newspaper reporters and broadcasters, he was a creative, gracious and cooperative publicist.
And to legions of others around the nation, including hundreds of Champaign-Urbana youngsters for whom he volunteered, Theodore Anthony Bennett was an affable, gregarious and loyal friend who they simply knew as "Tab".
Tab Bennett held yet another prestigious moniker but, because of his humble nature, it was a title that he rarely acknowledged. As the Big Ten Conference's very first African American sports information director, he blazed a trail that today is significantly more commonplace in intercollegiate athletics.
Recruited to play football at the University of Illinois from his native Miami, Florida in 1969, the multi-talented Bennett nearly focused upon becoming a musician. In a January 19, 1975 story published by the Urbana Courier, the youngest of six children told reporter Nina Rubel the tales of his youth. He'd often rub shoulders with touring black jazz musicians who visited Miami.
"At that time, the black musicians could perform in Miami Beach but were not allowed to stay (in the hotels)," Bennett said. "My aunt had a spacious house in Miami, and jazz greats like Duke Ellington, Errol Gardner and Cab Calloway would often stay at her place. They attracted other musicians who held jam sessions on her porch and slept on the floor, if necessary."
"Because the brothers closest to my age were musicians, I almost didn't end up playing football. I toyed with the drums and was tempted to become a professional musician."
Bennett credited his father, William, and his mother, Martha, for dreaming about a world that wouldn't exclude African Americans.
"At my house, there was always a feeling of hope, of blossoming, of this (racist attitude) being temporary," Bennett said. "We were made to feel that life was a matter of deciding where to head, then making it happen."
Ultimately, a 13-year-old Tab turned to athletics, joining Dorsey Junior High's eighth-grade volleyball team and helping it win the state championship in 1962.
"I was six feet tall, weighed 140, and was all arms," he said.
In high school, the gangly freshman quit football on the initial day of practice at Miami's Northwestern High School, choosing to instead throw the shot and run on the 440-yard relay team. As a sophomore, at the suggestion of friends, he returned to football, playing as a 160-pound linebacker. Coaches shifted him to defensive end his junior and senior seasons, though the team won only one game.
Percy Oliver, a 1950s football letter winner at Illinois and the husband of Tab's English teacher, approached his old teammate and then UI's assistant coach, J.C. Caroline, and encouraged him to take a look at the athletically gifted youngster. In the Fall of 1969, Bennett journeyed up to East Central Illinois, joining an Illini freshman class that included future stars Mike Wells, Larry Allen and Jim Rucks.
Bennett eventually grew to 240 pounds and earned first-team All-Big Ten honors as a junior. He led the Illini in tackles for loss (11) and finished second in tackles with 91 stops, a total especially notable for a lineman.
As an undergraduate athlete, Bennett was a tireless volunteer in the community for underprivileged kids. He and teammates sponsored a free youth football clinic called "Start for Stardom."
"We were able to show how athletics can help kids, especially the black kids," Bennett was quoted in a 1972 story. "I wanted to be someone that they could identify with."
Despite an injury plagued senior season in '72, Bennett finished his Illini career as a second-team All-American. His 231 tackles ranked second in Illinois' record book only to Dick Butkus at the time. Bennett was selected in the ninth round of the 1973 National Football League Draft by the San Diego Chargers. He survived cuts in rookie camp, but team physicians recommended that he sit out the year after he incurred a significant ankle injury just days before the season began.
Instead, the UI advertising graduate abruptly ended his football career and returned to campus, serving an internship with Illini SID Norm Sheya. When Sheya returned to his alma mater at the University of Utah, then UI athletic director Cecil Coleman offered the position to the 24-year-old Bennett.
Employing the curricula he'd studied at Illinois, Bennett's innovative style proved to be groundbreaking in collegiate sports public relations. He immediately enlisted local artist Jack Davis to fashion an award-winning football poster for Red Grange's Golden Anniversary season. Illinois' once-bland football program covers changed from bland, industry-standard campus photos into colorful original artwork.
Fellow Big Ten SIDs admired Bennett's imaginative style.
"I will always remember Tab as a contemporary and as a true professional," said longtime Purdue University publicist Jim Vruggink. "He was one of a kind."
Veteran sportswriter Mike Imrem, now retired from the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, recalled Bennett for always going the extra mile for him and his fellow media members.
"Tab was one of the few athletes who had the personality to slip smoothly into the world of public relations," Imrem said. "I never met anyone in Champaign-Urbana who didn't know him and didn't like him. He would go out of his way to provide reporters with what they needed, whether it be historical details or interviews with players and coaches, or even getting hotel rooms when they were scarce on a football weekend."
Former UI sports information director Dave Johnson recalled that Bennett was especially sensitive to young people who were seeking careers in media.
"When I was a student reporter at the Daily Illini and WILL Radio, Tab was a larger than life figure who gave me his time and provided me with a helpful word of encouragement," Johnson said. "He put me at ease and became a major factor in my decision to pursue a career in public relations."
Bennett served as an Illini administrator until 1989 when he was seriously injured in an automobile accident. He died in March of 1994 at the tender age of 42, but his legacy as a visionary endures today.
