I went to Placer High School with intense linebacker Jim Otto Jr.
When he didn’t like the questions I was asking about the football team, Jr. gathered some teammates and picked me up and threw me in a dumpster.
CBS came to our school in 1983 to do a story on great athletes and their sons. They covered a Placer Hillmen football game featuring Jim Otto Jr. on the playing field while his dad cheered him on from the stands.
Jim Otto Sr. (former all-pro center for the Oakland Raiders) owned a string of fast food restaurants in Auburn (45-minutes drive north of Sacramento).
In 1984, he was approached to advertise in the Auburn Journal. According to the Sports Editor Ron Knies, Otto wanted an article written about him before he’d advertise. Knies refused.
"Why?" I asked.
"You know why," Knies responded. "It’s a matter of pride."
Otto advertised on the local radio station KAHI AM 950 (from 1981-83, I did a weekly news report for the station and then I worked there in the news department from 1985-1987).
We used Otto Sr. as a color commentator for the 1985 Placer County Sheriffs vs. the Nevada County Sheriffs football game.
I guess the station came to view him as difficult as I replaced him for the 1986 game.
I was able to draw on my expertise at flag football and apply it to tackle (I never liked that form of football, too rough).
I guess Otto wasn’t told. I remember him laboring up the stairs to the booth with his bad knees to see the three of us going great guns without him.
Shortly after graduating in 1984, Jim Otto Jr. found God and became a much nicer person.
Jim Otto Sr. had his right leg amputated on August 1, 2007.
