Red Bethea
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Bethea from 1931 Seminole yearbook
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| Florida Gators No. 48; 44 | |
|---|---|
| Position | Halfback |
| Class | Graduate |
| Career history | |
| College | Florida (1927–1930) |
| High school | Riverside |
| Personal information | |
| Date of birth | January 11, 1905 |
| Date of death | September 11, 1986 (aged 81) |
| Place of death | St. Augustine, Florida |
| Career highlights and awards | |
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Lee Roy "Red" Bethea (January 11, 1905 – September 11, 1986), sometimes referenced as Leroy Bethea, was an American football player. He played at the halfback position at the University of Florida and set the Florida Gators football single-game record with 218 rushing yards against the University of Chicago in 1930. His single-game rushing record stood until 1987. He was also selected as a second-team halfback on the 1930 College Football All-America Team.
Bethea, the son of a Georgia farmer, enrolled at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where he played at the halfback position for coach Charlie Bachman's Florida Gators football team from 1928 to 1930.
During the 1929 season, Bethea was considered "Florida's most consistent ball carrier" and "perhaps the niftiest runner in the conference." High praise for the conference with Gene McEver. The Miami Daily News wrote that Bethea had "speed, rhythm and power in his movement and stopping him is not easy." He helped lead the 1929 Gators to an 8–2 record and gained 79 yards on 17 attempts in the Dixie All-Star game held in Atlanta on New Year's Day in 1930.
The following year, Bethea was team captain of the 1930 Gators squad that compiled a 6–3–1 record. The high point of Bethea's career was Florida's 19–0 victory on October 18, 1930, over a University of Chicago team coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg. The victory was historic for the Florida football program, representing the first time the Gators had won an inter-sectional game outside the South. The Gators had previously lost all six games it had played in the North—to Indiana in 1916, Harvard in 1922 and 1929, Army in 1923 and 1924, and Chicago in 1926. Bethea was the star of the historic victory over Chicago, rushing for a Florida single-game record of 218 yards. The Associated Press called Bethea Florida's "siege gun," and noted that his rushing total was "better than the whole Chicago backfield." At the end of the 1930 season, the Central Press Association selected Bethea as a second-team All-American based on votes cast by 200 captains of college football teams polled in a nationwide survey.
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