Editor’s note: In the Colorado Classics series, The Denver Post takes a look at individuals who made their mark on the Colorado sports landscape and what they are doing now.
Alex Burl could run faster than anyone else in Colorado and earned the title “Mr. Track and Field.”
Burl won city and state championships at Manual High School under coach Gil Cruter. He then went to Colorado A&M (now Colorado State), where he was Skyline League champion in the 100- and 220-yard dashes three years in a row. He ran in the days of the cinder tracks, before synthetic surfaces came into vogue, and still ran the 100-yard dash in 9.3 seconds in 1956.
“When I was growing up, I made up my mind that I wanted to be the fastest man in the world and I wanted to play pro football,” Burl said. “I figured out what I had to do in order to be able to do those things. I made sure my study habits were such that I would be eligible to compete.”
Burl also played football, first for coach Al Oviatt at Manual and then for Bob Davis at A&M. He was in Fort Collins in the era during which the school produced a number of future NFL stars such as Gary Glick, Jack Christensen, Dale Dodrill and Jim David.
Bob Blasi, who went on to build the football program at Northern Colorado in Greeley, was another teammate.
While Burl was a fixture in the NCAA track and field championships as well as the Olympic trials in his day, he went the distance in football as well. He started at running back and at defensive back, playing in the one-platoon system.
After his senior year with the Aggies, he played in the old College All-Star Game in Chicago’s Soldier Field that pitted the top collegiate seniors from across the country against the defending NFL champions.
“As far as football goes, that game probably was the biggest thing,” Burl said. “We lost, but it led me to playing two years for the Chicago Cardinals.”
He is a member of the Colorado State University Hall of Fame and was the first African-American to win the prestigious Nye Award, given to the university’s outstanding senior male athlete, in 1954.
He earned All-America honors three times in track and field as well as plaudits in AAU and military competition.
Burl entered public education and eventually coached football at Manual and Denver West high schools.
“I was big on trying to motivate my players,” Burl said. “I thought back to when I was growing up, and I pointed out they should be the best they could be and if they did, they’d be successful. It’s just a matter of them making up their minds.”
Burl began a family tradition. Sons Gary, Farley and Gerald won state high school championships in their events at Manual. They came under their father’s thumb at home and during summer recreation programs.
“He was strict,” Gary Burl said. “He was demanding, and most of his pupils are doing well. As we were growing up, we heard that if we turned out to be half as good an athlete as our dad, we’d do just fine. We knew he was a heck of an athlete. I think everyone here knew about him.”
Gary Burl noted there wasn’t as much media attention in his dad’s day.
At 75, Alex Burl has become a spectator. Knee and hip replacements have slowed him down and even cut into his fishing. But he makes it to all the high school events to watch the younger members of the Burl clan compete.
But he still has a title.
Jerry Stevens, a prominent member of the powerful Denver East High School track and field teams in the mid-1960s, came under Burl’s gaze in the summer programs as he grew up. Stevens is an attorney in Denver.
“We had a lot of positive role models, and he was one of them,” Stevens said. “He always was very positive. He told us we could do anything if we wanted to badly enough. We looked up to him because we knew he was a great athlete who also was a great person. To this day when I see him, I can’t call him anything other than Mr. Burl.”
Staff writer Irv Moss can be reached at 303-954-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com.
