Tommy Brooker, a star end and placekicker on Alabama’s 1961 national championship team who later became a prominent Tuscaloosa businessman and driving force behind the school’s A-Club Charitable & Educational Foundation, has died after a long illness. He was 79.

Longtime sports writer Kirk McNair, a close friend of Brooker’s, confirmed his death to AL.com. Brooker had been in failing health for the last several years, McNair said.

Brooker, born Oct. 31, 1939, in Demopolis, was part of coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s first Alabama recruiting class in 1958. That group, which also included Pat Trammell, Billy Neighbors, Bill Oliver and Mal Moore, among others, teamed up to lead the Crimson Tide to a national championship in their senior season of 1961.

That Alabama team allowed just 25 points all season, winning six games by shutout. They capped the year by beating Arkansas 10-3 in the Sugar Bowl and finishing No. 1 for the first of six times during Bryant’s tenure.

“We had gotten to where we were really good,” Brooker said in a 2018 interview with AL.com. “We’d done all the things coach Bryant asked us to do. He told us the first time he ever met with us, that ‘if you do these small things, you may think they’re incidental. Little-bitty things you do every day. If you don’t do them one day, come back the next day and make up the difference. Our goal every day was to achieve 110 percent. … We did those things he asked us to do. He said ‘I guarantee you, at the end of four years, you’ll be national champions.’”

Brooker was a third-team All-SEC pick and an Academic All-American at Alabama, and was drafted by the Dallas Texans of the upstart American Football League in 1962. He played five seasons with the Texans (who later became the Kansas City Chiefs), but the most memorable moment of his pro career came as a rookie.

In the 1962 AFL championship game, the Texans and Houston Oilers were tied after regulation, and again after an overtime period. Less than three minutes into the second overtime, Brooker kicked a 24-yard field goal to give the Texans a 20-17 victory and the championship.

Brooker had also been drafted by the NFL’s Washington Redskins and “some team in Canada,” as he recalled. He settled on the AFL after playing in a postseason all-star Game.

“I got to meet the Redskins people up there,” Brooker said. “I didn’t like them because they didn’t care whether we won or lost that all-star game. I hadn’t ever been around anybody who didn’t want to win. I left that thing thinking ‘well, I’m going to negotiate with the Texans.’ I negotiated a contract that was satisfactory at the time. I wound up going to Dallas about two days later.”

Tommy Brooker was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 2009 (file photo)bn

After his football career ended in 1966, Brooker returned to Tuscaloosa and started his own construction company. He also served as a volunteer coach under Bryant, working with kickers.

It was in 1968 that Brooker’s most lasting legacy with Alabama was formed. Following the premature death from cancer of his close friend Trammell, Brooker was among several former Crimson Tide players who created the A-Club Educational & Charitable Foundation, the fundraising arm of Alabama’s alumni athlete organization.

To this day, the A-Club Foundation raises money for former Alabama players and their families who are in need, as well as other charitable ventures. Among the first to benefit were Trammell’s then-young children, Pat Jr. and Juliana.

“We were at Pat’s funeral, sitting in the Holiday Inn, sitting around the bed, probably 12 of us,” Brooker recalled last year. “Coach Bryant was in there. He was walking around smoking them Chesterfield cigarettes, spitting out tobacco seeds. He said ‘I should have my ass kicked for not starting a foundation.’ … We took that as a demand and a command, to start a foundation. That was about (December) 14th or 15th when they buried (Trammell), and from there to the end of December, we started a foundation that had tax-exempt status. We got tax-exempt status in April of (1969). We were on the books at the end of December.

“… We started the foundation and started receiving contributions. (Bryant) was one of the first ones to donate.”

In later years, Brooker ran Tommy Brooker Realty in Tuscaloosa. A 2009 inductee into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, he remained active with the A-Club Foundation until the end of his life.

Brooker’s wife, Margaret, died in 2017. He is survived by sons Todd and Blake, and several grandchildren.