No. 18 | |||||||||
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Position: | Wide receiver | ||||||||
Personal information | |||||||||
Date of birth: | January 14, 1947 | ||||||||
Place of birth: | Tuscaloosa, Alabama | ||||||||
Career information | |||||||||
High school: | Long Beach (CA) Poly | ||||||||
College: | Stanford | ||||||||
NFL Draft: | 1969 / Round: 1 / Pick: 16 | ||||||||
Career history | |||||||||
Career highlights and awards | |||||||||
Career NFL statistics | |||||||||
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Receptions: | 385 |
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Receiving Yards: | 6,856 |
Touchdowns: | 60 |
Player stats at NFL.com |
Gene Washington (born January 14, 1947) was an NFL player for many years who played for the San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions as a wide receiver. During college, he played football for Stanford University. He is a member of Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity, and was their first black member. He was the director of football operations for the NFL until 2009. He is also on the board of the National Park Foundation. He has two children, a daughter, Kelly Washington who currently attends UCLA and a son, Daniel Washington who attends Pepperdine University.
Living and playing in California gave Washington the opportunity to appear in a number of films and television series. He also served as a commentator for NBC's NFL coverage in the early 1980s and sports anchor at KABC-TV in the late 1980s.
He was the guest of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a State Dinner for Elizabeth II and a State Dinner for Ghanaian President John Kufuor.
In 2015, the Professional Football Researchers Association named Washington to the PRFA Hall of Very Good Class of 2015