LEXINGTON, Ky. — Not far from the shining monument to legendary basketball coach Adolph Rupp in the Lexington Cemetery is the final resting place of a less remembered but still noteworthy figure in UK sports history.
A simple headstone reaching just a few inches above ground level marks the grave of Price McLean. His place in UK athletics lore is not evident by only the dates of his life accompanying his name on the stone: Jan. 13, 1901 to Oct. 7, 1923.
Oct. 7, 1923, was the day after an otherwise forgettable 14-0 Kentucky football win at Cincinnati. Shortly before halftime McLean, the center for the Wildcats, was kicked in the head, suffering what was thought to be only a minor injury at the time. A day later, he was dead.
The death of McLean may be a little-remembered footnote in UK football history a century later, but it was front page news in October 1923.
“Never in my life as a boy or minister have I known of a death that has so shocked the community as this one,” Rev. G.R. Combs said at McLean’s funeral, according to the Oct. 10, 1923, edition of The Lexington Herald.
A junior, McLean was playing his first season of varsity football in 1923. In the second game of the season, McLean took a blow to the head just before halftime.
Reports suggested McLean was visibly shaken immediately after the the play but appeared to quickly recover and continued to play until halftime. He was removed from the lineup in the second half after complaining of dizziness.
The Kentucky Kernel’s report from the game described a troubling scene that would raise no shortage of red flags today.
“The blow that he received temporarily blinded him, but on each play he would line up with his team and automatically charge with the linemen,” The Kernel wrote. “He was unable to remember his signals but with the aid of the guard who played next to him he passed the ball each time until the half closed.”
Despite that troubling sequence, his injuries were not believed to be serious after the game since he was able to walk off the field under his own power and accompanied teammates back to the hotel. McLean was put to bed on the train ride home, along with another injured player, but was alert the next morning at his family home on Stone Avenue just north of campus.
After eating lunch on Oct. 7, McLean was found unconscious in his room. He was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital where doctors discovered a blot clot had begun to form on his brain. A surgery to address the blood clot was initially believed to be a success, but at 7:30 p.m. McLean died while still in the hospital.
“The tragedy is unfortunate beyond the measure of words,” UK professor Enoch Grehan, a faculty representative on the university athletic council, told The Lexington Herald. “I knew the young man well. He was an admirable student, clean, capable, courageous as a lion, and his loyalty to the university, to its traditions and to his teammates was an inspiration at all times. He was gallant in victory and defeat alike. He was never known to flinch under fire.”
Two days later, UK classes were canceled as the university community gathered to mourn McLean’s death.
His teammates served as pallbearers in a funeral at the First Methodist Church. University President Frank McVey was the principal speaker at the service.
Messages of condolences poured in from across the country.
“We believe that his supreme sacrifice will make the world more appreciative of the inherent qualities of American college athletes,” Georgia Athletics Director H.J. Stegeman wrote in a telegram. “We believe that his supreme sacrifice will not be in vain.”
Despite McLean’s death, Kentucky returned to Stoll Field only six days later for a game against Washington and Lee. The only mention of McLean in the coverage of the game from the Lexington Herald or Lexington Leader was made in reference to the play of replacement center Curtis Sauer.
Not everyone shared the opinion of Georgia’s athletics director or the thousands of fans who flocked to Stoll Field for the Washington and Lee game.
In a speech delivered to the Farmers’ Union of Fayette County on the same day of the Washington and Lee game, Thomas B. Adams called for the university to eliminate football for the “best interests of humanity.”
Adams said students “were being killed and crippled for the amusement of a cheering crowd like the gladiators of old,” according to The Lexington Leader.
“The citizens of Kentucky are being taxed to support the state university, and I believe that we taxpayers should protest against our money being used to exterminate our boys on the football field, instead of educating them to useful occupations,” Adams said.
In a back-and-forth that would not look out of place today, Adams’ speech was met with a swift rebuttal from former deputy sheriff Cloud Bosworth.
“Too many of our youths are being reared under a glass case now, until they are becoming hot house plants,” Bosworth said. “Football develops their muscles and strength and makes men of them. And these kind of men are needed at this day and time.”
The debate was tabled after several members “expressed a desire to repair to Stoll Field and witness the football game between the teams of the University of Kentucky and Washington and Lee.” Adams declined an invitation to accompany them.
Survived by his mother, four brothers and one sister, McLean, 22 at the time of his death, was remembered fondly around the program for decades.
One of McLean’s four brothers, Charles Grandison McLean, joined Kentucky’s football team as a student manager in 1924. Later in his life, Charles McLean and his wife became close friends of legendary Kentucky coach Paul “Bear” Bryant.
A little more than a year after McLean’s death, his former classmates dedicated a plaque in his honor in the newly constructed grandstand at Stoll Field during the 1924 homecoming game. That structure came to be known as McLean Stadium.
Kentucky played at Stoll Field through the 1972 season before moving to Commonwealth Stadium, now called Kroger Field.
McLean’s classmates might have hoped the McLean Stadium name would last 100 years as it has at Cincinnati’s Nippert Stadium — named for the Bearcats’ center who died due to injuries suffered in a game later in the 1923 season — but his memory will have to be preserved in other ways.
“The Bluegrass has had her favorite sons, whose names resound on the lips of countless Kentuckians, but none will ever hold the place that Price McLean occupies in the hearts of his comrades,” the editors of The Kentuckian wrote in the 1923-24 UK yearbook. “A man indeed, with inexpressible good qualities that made his fellow students his chums and perpetuated his memory when death claimed him. It is saying the least when we say that he played the game of life as he fought on the gridiron — bravely, truly and cleanly. He gave his all to his alma mater, and died as he had lived — a man.”
