Chuck Boerio was a key defender for Coach Ray Eliot's unbeaten Illini national and Big Ten championship team in 1951.
At just 5-11 and 187 pounds, the U.S. Air Force veteran spent his summers as a young adult working in the coal mines near his southern Illinois home in Kincaid. The intensely-competitive Boerio became a central character in Eliot's memorable speech to a group of fellow coaches called "The Proper State of Mind."
The moment came in game two of the 1951 season against 15th-ranked Wisconsin, which featured All-America fullback Alan Ameche, and visited Memorial Stadium to face No.