Richard Cecil Churchman (born March 14, 1958) 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 ...

defensive back In gridiron football, defensive backs (DBs), also called the secondary, are the players on the defensive side of the ball who play farthest back from the line of scrimmage. They are distinguished from the other two sets of defensive players, the ...

who played two seasons with the

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...

of 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) where he earned a Super Bowl ring. He played

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

and attended

Pearland High School Pearland High School (PHS) is an American public high school, located in Pearland, Texas, south of Houston. It is one of three high schools in the Pearland Independent School District, and serves parts of Pearland and most of the city of Bro ...

Pearland, Texas Pearland ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, within Brazoria County, with portions extending into Fort Bend and Harris counties. The city of Pearland is a principal city within the metropolitan statistical area. At the 2020 U.S. census, t ...

College Career

Churchman played for the Texas Longhorns from 1976-1979, the last three as a starter, playing on a team that was ranked #1 for most of the season and which came one-win away from winning the National Championship in 1977. In that season, the Longhorns suffered numerous injuries at quarterback, and when their only healthy QB had to come out for a single play to change his torn uniform, Churchman was sent in for one play to hand the ball off to Johnny "Lam" Jones. Jones ran the ball 70 yards for a touchdown. The next season, the team finished #9 after winning the Sun Bowl and the season after that was #12 after losing the Sun Bowl. in 1979 he made the All-Southwest conference team. In 1992, he was named to the Austin American-Statesman Longhorns' All-Centennial Team.

Pro Career

Churchman was drafted by the 49ers in the fourth round of the

1980 NFL Draft The 1980 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 29–30, 1980, at the New York She ...

. During the third pre-season game he suffered a knee injury that would later end his career. He was a rookie starter in his first season, when the 49ers defense featured four rookie starters and in a game against the Patriots, he caught two interceptions as the 49ers recorded a club-record six interceptions in a game. He finished the season on the injured reserve list with a pair of injuries to the thigh and shoulder. In the offseason he had the first of 3 knee surgeries. In 1981, he started the season still recovering from his knee injury, but saw playing time early in the season. In October he underwent another knee surgery and spent the rest of the season on the injured reserve. The San Francisco 49ers won

Super Bowl XVI Super Bowl XVI was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion San Francisco 49ers and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Cincinnati Bengals to decide the National Football League (NFL) champ ...

and he earned a ring, but he did not play in that game or any of the playoff games. He had a third knee surgery in early 1982. At the start of the 1982 season, he was cut by the 49ers.

Later life

Churchman returned to Texas, earning a Business degree and then went to work for Lockheed where he was a business manager for the company's Tomahawk Cruise Missile Project. Later he moved to Richland, WA, where he worked as the controller and director of finance and accounting for Lockheed's Mission Support Alliance that provided services to cleanup contractors.

References

External links

Just Sports StatsFanbase profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Churchman, Ricky Living people 1958 births American football defensive backs Texas Longhorns football players San Francisco 49ers players People from Pearland, Texas Players of American football from Brazoria County, Texas Players of American football from Harris County, Texas Pearland High School alumni