Frank Ryan (American football)

Ryan played football while attending R. L. Paschal High School in Fort Worth, Texas. He was recruited by college coaches from across the country, including Bear Bryant, and he was admitted to Yale University. Ryan declared a major in physics at Rice University,[1] becoming the first in his family not to go to Yale.[2] He was unable to establish himself during the course of his collegiate career, splitting time behind center with King Hill, who was receiving most of the snaps.

Given his desire to obtain a Ph.D., Ryan originally decided not to play professional football after the Los Angeles Rams chose him in the fifth round of the 1958 NFL Draft. He changed his mind after he was able to enroll at both UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley in pursuit of an advanced degree. Ryan then transferred back to Rice, where he studied during the off-season.[3]

Ryan attended graduate school during the first part of his playing career, and in 1965, he earned his Ph.D. from Rice.[5] He worked for seven postgraduate years under G. R. MacLane, a leading geometric-function theorist, and produced the dissertation "Characterization of the Set of Asymptotic Values of a Function Holomorphic in the Unit Disc".[3] In 1966, Ryan published two fundamental papers on the set of asymptotic values of a function holomorphic in the unit disc in Duke Mathematical Journal.[6]

Ryan received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1965.[7]

He started teaching at Rice during his career and, during his time with the Browns, he became an assistant professor at the Case Institute of Technology in February 1967. Ryan had a full teaching load,[8] which includes undergraduate and graduate courses, and conducting research in complex analysis.[9][10] While at training camp, Ryan taught math in the morning and went to football practice in the afternoon.[11] Ryan taught his last course at Case Western Reserve in the spring of 1971. He was promoted to associate professor that summer. After taking a leave of absence for the next three years, he resigned his faculty position in 1974.

Ryan learned computer programming and software through the Chi Corp., Case Western Reserve's then newly launched private computer company. He compiled advanced statistics to apply what he learned to football. The Browns were shown his results and liked the project but didn't offer the extra cash to move it forward.[3]

Ryan's second career was fodder for many jokes by sportswriters. Red Smith wrote that the Browns' offense consisted of a quarterback who understood Einstein's theory of relativity and ten teammates who didn't know there was one. Ryan was somewhat put off by the focus on his academic life, as he considered himself to be a regular football player.

Ryan considers Sir Edward Collingwood, an expert in meromorphic function and the theory of cluster sets, and Arthur J. Lohwater, the former editor of Mathematical Reviews, as mentors.[12] Ryan has an Erdős number of 3.[13]

Soon after his retirement from the Redskins, Ryan remained in the nation's capital when he was named director of information services for the U.S. House of Representatives. While there, he helped advance the computer age in politics by playing an integral role in establishing the body's first electronic voting system. This enabled voting procedures that usually ran for 45 minutes to be shortened to around 15 minutes. By the time he left the post, the office had an annual budget of $8 million with a staff of 225.[14]

Ryan resigned that post to become athletic director and lecturer in mathematics at Yale University on March 7, 1977. Ryan served in that position for ten years before resigning to become the school's associate vice president for institutional planning.

He was a member of the Rice board of governors from 1972 to 1976 and was recognized as a distinguished alumnus in 1987. Ryan became vice president for external affairs at Rice in August 1990, increasing annual gifts to the university to a three-year average of $32.8 million for the fiscal years 1992–94 from $21.4 million for the fiscal years 1988–90. In 1995, he resigned his post as vice president for external affairs at Rice, owing to differences with President Malcolm Gillis concerning the future course of external affairs. Ryan ended his institutional career as a professor of mathematics, and professor of computational and applied mathematics at Rice.[15]

Ryan was president and chief executive officer of Contex Electronics, which designed and manufactured cable and interconnect products for the computer and communications industries. Ryan also served as director for America West Airlines, Sequoia Voting Systems,[16] and of Danielson Holding Corporation. He was an advisory director of United Medical Care Inc.

Now retired, Ryan lives on 78 acres of heavily forested land[17] in Grafton, Vermont, with his wife, Joan, a retired sportswriter and nationally syndicated columnist for The Washington Post.[3] His wife was one of the first female sportswriters to ever grace a locker room (not to be confused with another sportswriter named Joan Ryan)[18][19] and also wrote a book on women in sports. The two Texans met in college, fell in love with Vermont while Ryan was on staff at Yale, and have been married since their senior year at Rice.[12]

In retirement, he now runs a sophisticated self-designed program that helps micro-analyze statistical behavior of the up-and-down pricing movement that underlies the pricing behavior of the futures market. He is also doing work on Oppermann's conjecture about the distribution of prime numbers.[3]

Ryan ranks fourth all-time among Browns quarterbacks with 13,499 passing yards and second behind Brian Sipe with 134 touchdowns. His 81.43 passer rating is fifth-best, behind Milt Plum, Baker Mayfield, Otto Graham, and Bernie Kosar.

Ryan's career numbers (including years with the Rams and Redskins): 1,090 completions in 2,133 attempts for 16,044 yards, 149 touchdowns and 111 interceptions. Ryan also rushed for 1,358 yards and six touchdowns on 310 carries.

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• Grossi, Tony (2004). Tales from the Browns Sideline. (Champaign, Ill.): Sports Publishing LLC. ISBN 1-58261-713-9
• Stewart, Todd, ed. (2004) Cleveland Browns 2004 Media Guide. New York: National Communications Group

• Career statistics and player information from NFL.com · Pro Football Reference
• Frank Ryan at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Frank Ryan's dissertation