Vic Bottari (December 21, 1916 – January 6, 2003) 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 ...

player. Bottari, nicknamed "Vallejo Vic" attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and starred as a halfback, leading the Golden Bears to a win in the 1938 Rose Bowl where he was voted the most valuable player of the game. He scored both of the Bears' touchdowns and rushed for 137 yards on 34 carries in their 13-0 win over Alabama in the Rose Bowl. In his three years with Cal, he gained 1,536 yards on 388 carries, which ranks him 15th on Cal's all-time rushing list. He also scored 22 touchdowns and kicked 13 PATs, and his 145 career points puts him 14th on the school's all-time charts. He was the captain of Cal's 1937 "Thunder Team" that won the school's last national football championship with a 10-0-1 record. He was a two-time first-team all-Pacific Coast Conference halfback and is in three halls of fame: the

College Football Hall of Fame The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were vote ...

(1981), University of California Athletic Hall of Fame (1986), and Rose Bowl Hall of Fame (1996). He was also voted a first-team member of the Pacific-10 Conference's "All Century Team" in 2001. Bottari was drafted by the

Brooklyn Dodgers (NFL) The Brooklyn Dodgers were an American football team that played in the National Football League from 1930 to 1943, and in 1944 as the Brooklyn Tigers. The team played its home games at Ebbets Field of the baseball National League's team, the Broo ...

in the fourth round in 1939 but chose not to pursue a career in the NFL.

References

1916 births 2003 deaths All-American college football players Players of American football from Vallejo, California American football halfbacks California Golden Bears football players College Football Hall of Fame inductees Saint Mary's Pre-Flight Air Devils football players {{runningback-1910s-stub