Roy "Moonie" Winston

Sport: Football

Induction Year: 1991

University: LSU

Induction Year: 1991

A Baton Rouge native, Roy “Moonie” Winston was a prep (Istrouma) and college (LSU) All-American who played 15 seasons (1962-76) with the Minnesota Vikings as a standout linebacker. He played in four Super Bowls (IV, VII, IX and XI), was the Vikings’ Most Valuable Defensive Player in 1972, and was named to the Vikings’ Silver Anniversary Team in 1985. He had 835 career tackles and 649 career solo stops. Team captain of LSU’s 1961 SEC Champions, Winston was an All-SEC and All-America offensive guard as a senior. He played left field for the LSU baseball team that won the 1961 SEC baseball title.

Roy Winston turned down a professional baseball offer to accept a football scholarship to Louisiana State University. But after his rookie season in the National Football League, he was second-guessing that decision.

Coach Norm Van Brocklin of the Minnesota Vikings called the fourth round draft choice into his office. “When we got you,” Van Brocklin said, “the scouts said you were a short offensive guard or possibly a linebacker. Well, you can’t play either one.”

Winston, a 6-0, 217-pound All-American guard at LSU, who played both offense and defense in his collegiate career, told the coach the Vikings hadn’t played him at the position they told him he was best suited for – outside linebacker.

For “Moonie” Winston (who got his nickname from the comic strip character “Moon Mullins” because of his full, round face), outside linebacker would be his last stop before the bus stop.

He was in the starting lineups in following year, and stayed there for 13 seasons as a member of the “Purple People Eaters.”

“The thing I’ve always said about Roy is, ‘Here’s a guy who is 6 feet tall and 220 pounds…he’s not supposed to be playing in the NFL.’ But you can forget that,” said former Vikings teammate Lonnie Warwick. “The things I remember about Roy are that he had a tremendous quickness and a great knowledge of the game. He looked at so much film, he knew what the other team was going to do. That gave him a great advantage. He always had the best grades when the coaches looked at the films.”

Winston, who was the Vikings’ defensive Most Valuable Player in 1972, has only one regret about a National Football League career that ended in 1976. His Vikings were 0 for 4 in Super Bowls.

“If I would have won it just once, it would have been a crowning moment to a long and wonderful career,” he said. But it just wasn’t meant to be. I’ve always said it’s better to be second than third or fourth. But, seriously, it feels like something was not fulfilled. It’s like a void.”

As a rookie, Winston had a base salary of $12,000 and a $4,000 bonus. In his final season, his salary had climbed to $70,000. But Winston said he had nobody to blame but himself for playing his entire career at bargain basement prices.

“I got my minimums mixed up,” he recalled. “Jim Finks, who is now with the New Orleans Saints, was the Vikings’ general manager then. He never refused me what I asked. I just didn’t ask for enough. I’d always ask for the minimum, and he’d give it to me. I would present my case, and he would look it over and say, ‘O.K.’ Then, after I walked out, I would realize he got me again.”

At Istrouma High, Winston won All-State honors in both football and baseball. Istrouma teams coached by James “Big Fuzzy” Brown won state football titles in all of his last three years, but the baseball team fell to Fair Park in a best-of-three series for the state championship.

“We went to Shreveport for the first game, and played in Texas League Park . It was the best park we’d ever played in, and I hit a two-run home run over the scoreboard in left-center for a 2-0 victory. Then they came to Baton Rouge and swept a doubleheader from us, although I hit another homer in the final game.”

A baseball scout, “Shaky” Cain, called Winston and asked him how much money it would take to keep him out of college. “I didn’t know scouts were watching me,” he recalled. “I was intimidated a little bit. I thought about a baseball career, but there was a lot of pressure to go to LSU and that’s what I decided to do.”

He played on the freshman squad when the Tigers won the national championship in 1958. The following year, he was a guard on the Chinese Bandits as Coach Paul Dietzel’s team extended its winning streak to 19 games before a one-point loss to Tennessee knocked LSU out of the No. 1 position in the wire service polls. Winston was on the first team the next two years, playing in the Sugar Bowl as a sophomore and the Orange Bowl as a senior – when the Tigers ended the Dietzel era with 10 straight victories capped by a 25-7 Orange Bowl romp past Colorado.

LSU opened its 1961 season with a 16-3 loss to Rice, and was trailing Texas A&M in the fourth quarter a week later. Then Winston blocked an Aggie punt to turn the game (and the Tigers’ season) around. After LSU beat his Ole Miss team 10-7, Johnny Vaught said the 1961 Tigers were “just as good a team this year as they were in 1958 and 1959.” Dietzel called that game his greatest victory, and Winston won all-conference and All-America honors at the end of the season.

The previous spring, he helped an LSU baseball team coach by Raymond Didier win the Southeastern Conference championship.

A shoulder injury in 1975 hastened the end of Winston’s professional football career. “I tried to come back,” he recalled. “I had an operation, and played in 1976. After the 1977 Super Bowl, I decided to call it quits.”

Winston didn’t know the “Purple People Eaters” nickname got started. “After Alan Page joined the team in 1967 and linebacker Wally Hilgenberg and free safety Paul Krause came aboard a year later, it just kind of came out of nowhere and grew on us. In 1968, we led the league in a lot of categories and wound up with the nest overall defense,” he said. “A couple of years later, we had three or four shutouts in a 14-game season. That was unheard of at that time.”

“I feel extremely fortunate to be involved with the people I was involved with over all the years. And I’m talking about players as well as coaches.”