Curtis Lamar Rouse (July 13, 1960 – May 3, 2013) was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

offensive lineman In gridiron football, a lineman is a player who specializes in play at the line of scrimmage. The linemen of the team currently in possession of the ball are the offensive line, while linemen on the opposing team are the defensive line. A numbe ...

who played six seasons in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL) with the

Minnesota Vikings The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansion ...

and the

San Diego Chargers The San Diego Chargers were a professional American football team that played in San Diego from 1961 until the end of the 2016 season, before relocating to Los Angeles, where the franchise had played its inaugural 1960 season. The team is now ...

Early years

A graduate of

Lucy Craft Laney High School Lucy C. Laney Comprehensive High School (Laney High School) is a public high school in the Laney-Walker district of Augusta, Georgia, United States. It was formed in 1949 by combining the A. R. Johnson and Haines Normal and Industrial Institute. ...

in Augusta, Georgia, Rouse attended the

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UT-Chattanooga, UTC, or Chattanooga) is a public university in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. It was founded in 1886 and is one of four universities and two other affiliated institutions in the ...

. He played on Chattanooga's 1979

Southern Conference The Southern Conference (SoCon) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Southern Conference football teams compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly ...

championship team as a

sophomore In the United States, a sophomore ( or ) is a person in the second year at an educational institution; usually at a secondary school or at the college and university level, but also in other forms of post-secondary educational institutions. In ...

. During his senior year, he was named to the All-Southern Conference team and played in the

Senior Bowl The Senior Bowl is a post-season college football all-star game played annually in late January or early February in Mobile, Alabama, which showcases the best NFL Draft prospects of those players who have completed their college eligibility. Pr ...

Professional career

Rouse was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in the 11th round of the

1982 NFL Draft The 1982 NFL draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held April 27–28, 1982, at the New York She ...

. He played

offensive guard Offensive may refer to: * Offensive, the former name of the Dutch political party Socialist Alternative * Offensive (military), an attack * Offensive language ** Fighting words or insulting language, words that by their very utterance inflict inj ...

offensive tackle Offensive may refer to: * Offensive, the former name of the Dutch political party Socialist Alternative * Offensive (military), an attack * Offensive language ** Fighting words or insulting language, words that by their very utterance inflict inj ...

, and

special teams In American football, the specific role that a player takes on the field is referred to as their "position". Under the modern rules of American football, both teams are allowed 11 players on the field at one time and have "unlimited free substitu ...

for the Vikings from 1982–1986, including all sixteen games in the

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP is officially completed (this is consid ...

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast A ...

, and

1985 The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a ...

seasons. Released by the Vikings following the 1986 season, he played one final season with the San Diego Chargers in

1987 File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, k ...

. During his playing career, he was the heaviest player in the NFL at 350 pounds. On August 5, 1997, at age 37, Rouse suffered a massive

stroke A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...

at his home in

Clarksville, Tennessee Clarksville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Tennessee, United States. It is the fifth-largest city in the state behind Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. The city had a population of 166,722 as of the 2020 United States ce ...

; his weight had ballooned to almost 500 pounds at the time.Tell It Like It Is: These Guys are Too Fat
''Orlando Sentinel'', August 5, 2003 He was initially not expected to survive, but as of November 1997, he had regained approximately 90 percent of his speech. In 2003, the ''

Chattanooga Times Free Press The ''Chattanooga Times Free Press'' is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is distributed in the metropolitan Chattanooga region of southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. It is one of Tennessee's majo ...

'' placed him on Tennessee-Chattanooga's All-Century Football Team, and in 2005 he was elected to the university's Athletics Hall of Fame. On Friday May 3, 2013, former

teammate

Greg Coleman Gregory Jerome Coleman (born September 9, 1954) is a former American football punter who had a 12-year career in the National Football League playing for the Cleveland Browns, the Minnesota Vikings, and the Washington Redskins. He attended Flo ...

announced on his

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

that Rouse had died. He was 52

Sources

*Ballew, Bill. ''Tough Enough to be Vikings: Minnesota's Purple Pride from A to Z''. Asheville, North Carolina: Old Norse Publishing, 1999. (pages 276-277) *Barreiro, Dan. ''After Stroke, ex-Viking Rouse is Beating the Odds''. ''

Minneapolis Star Tribune The ''Star Tribune'' is the largest newspaper in Minnesota. It originated as the ''Minneapolis Tribune'' in 1867 and the competing ''Minneapolis Daily Star'' in 1920. During the 1930s and 1940s, Minneapolis's competing newspapers were consolida ...

''. 18 November 1997.

External links

Curtis Rouse Career Stats from databaseFootball.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rouse, Curtis 1960 births 2013 deaths American football offensive guards American football offensive tackles Chattanooga Mocs football players Minnesota Vikings players San Diego Chargers players Players of American football from Augusta, Georgia