Another dark day loomed large in the college football periphery on December 17 as Hall of Fame Alex Kroll breathed his last. The ‘Loyal Son’, a College Football Hall of Fame and the pivotal figure in Rutgers football history, had been an asset to the football community. But we are all helpless to the inevitable truth of life. Death. At the age of 87, the mogul surrendered to senility, marking an improbable loss to our society. A family lost their source of strength, a caring husband, a beloved father, and a grandfather. No tribute can clearly reflect the severe pain the family is undergoing, but still, the legend deserves anything but a pale goodbye.

The CFB world can’t help but mourn the loss of a stalwart who left an immense amount on his plate to be cherished through the future. The social media walls looked howling with nonstop RIP and prayers for the aggrieved family.

Taking a trip down memory lane, we still catch the goosebumps when we see the prized linebacker take the Scarlet Knights to an unprecedented height, hitting a 17-1 record during a short couple of seasons. The epic 1961 with a 9-0 mark is still fresh in the memory. The breakout year saw Rutgers clinch a No. 15  rank in the final Associated Press Top 25 poll and evened up the score to the national champion Alabama as the only undefeated and untied team in the country. The road moved only upward.

”The reason why I’m so touched by the honor of them is because they honored Rutgers in two ways. One, because in 1961, they rose above whatever cosmic or demonic interference was keeping Rutgers away from an undefeated season. And they’ve honored Rutgers by what they’ve done after they left,” the ultimate of a storied team left emotional after the team inducted into the 2014 class of Athletic Hall of Fame.

Kroll’s Rutgers’ arrival and rise to the height of immortal fame is not short of a fairytale.

Alex Kroll and his 1961 legacy that transcends through life and death

The Leechburg, Pennsylvania, native kick-started his career at Yale. After rendering two years of service in the Army’s military police, he brought his talents to the Rutgers camp, and the rest is a beguiling history. Not only just he collectively make a part of the 1961 Athletic Hall of Fame, but also his mammoth individual contributions in Piscataway earned him the individual Rutger Football Hall of Fame. But living a team of glory was a different sort of satisfaction.

”I played for a lot of teams, growing up in western Pennsylvania in the ’50s when it was the fertile crescent of college recruiting, and started out at Yale when they were (ranked) in the top 20 in the country. I played for the New York Titans, an incarnation of the Jets, after Rutgers. And I’m telling you, I’ve never seen a group of men fused behind a single goal, a mission, so completely,” the departed star came clean on his thought about being a part of the 60’s Rutgers,

It was special in all ways. Kroll, the unofficial leader of the prized team, shares great chemistry with coach John F. Bateman and all of his peers. He might still utter his philosophy to his otherworldly mates, “Men, we’re now a member of a very elite fraternity,” with the same urge to retain integrity and quality of football.

May his group of successors in Piscataway hear him and continue to carry the torch forward!