Johnny Edward Morris (born September 26, 1935) is a former

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 ...

halfback and wide receiver 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 major ...

. He spent his entire ten-year career with the

Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NF ...

, and is the franchise's all-time leader in receiving yards with 5,059. He attended the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

. Morris won an

NFL championship Throughout its history, the National Football League (NFL) and other rival American football leagues have used several different formats to determine their league champions, including a period of inter-league matchups to determine a true national c ...

in 1963. In 1964, he had his best season with 93 receptions for 1,200 yards and 10

touchdown A touchdown (abbreviated as TD) is a scoring play in gridiron football. Whether running, passing, returning a kickoff or punt, or recovering a turnover, a team scores a touchdown by advancing the ball into the opponent's end zone. In Ameri ...

s. In 1964, while still playing for the Bears, Morris joined

WBBM-TV WBBM-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. Owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division, the station maintains studios on West Washington Stree ...

in Chicago as a sportscaster. Except for a six-year stint at rival

WMAQ-TV WMAQ-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Telemundo outlet WSNS-TV (ch ...

, Morris remained at WBBM until 1992, serving for most of that time as sports director. He became good friends with film critic

Gene Siskel Eugene Kal Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the ''Chicago Tribune''. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted a series of movie review programs on television from 1975 until his d ...

when Siskel was hired by the station in the 1970s. During his time at WBBM-TV, he popularised the use of the

telestrator A telestrator is a device that allows its operator to draw a freehand sketch over a moving or still video image. Also known as a video marker, this device is often used in sports and weather broadcasts to diagram and analyze sports plays or inco ...

(a device for drawing over still or moving video images) in sports television, which was invented by fellow WBBM-TV employee Leonard Reiffel for his science-related TV series ''Dimensions on Tomorrow's Living'' and ''The World Tomorrow''. He also served as a football

color commentator A color commentator or expert commentator is a sports commentator who assists the main (play-by-play) commentator, typically by filling in when play is not in progress. The phrase "colour commentator" is primarily used in Canadian English and the ...

for CBS' NFL coverage from 1975 to 1986. He retired in 1996. His father was from Achladokampos, Greece (family name Μονοπορης, or Monoporis), while his mother was Swedish. While playing for the Bears, Morris was known as "Little Greek" and teammate Bill George was "Big Greek". Morris was married to sports reporter Jeannie Morris, whom he met at UC Santa Barbara, from 1960 to 1985. The two remained close after their divorce as television colleagues. Jeannie died December 14, 2020.

References

1935 births Living people American football running backs American football wide receivers Chicago Bears players UC Santa Barbara Gauchos football players Western Conference Pro Bowl players National Football League announcers Sportspeople from Long Beach, California Players of American football from Long Beach, California American football announcers Long Beach Polytechnic High School alumni {{runningback-1930s-stub