Charle Young, USC's first great tight end, dies at 75

This has been a difficult year for the USC football family. A number of Trojan football alumni have died, the latest being Charle Young, USC's first All-America tight end who won a national championship as a Trojan in 1972. Young died Tuesday at age 75. Charle Young was a three-time Pro Bowler who starred for the Philadelphia Eagles and then made Super Bowls with the Los Angeles Rams (XIV, 1980) and San Francisco 49ers (XVI, 1982). Young won Super Bowl XVI to earn an NFL championship. We wrote about him earlier this decade:

"Charle Young -- decades after his playing days were over -- developed a learning center for at-risk youth. He also continued to study in the classroom. He talked about those parts of his life's journey as well:

"'The center that I started was to change young people's attitudes,' Young says. 'A lot of times, it is their environment that they're in and the environment is a negative environment. Most people look at it and they blame them. It is not their fault that they're in that environment. If you change the environment, you change the person's thought pattern. If you change their thought pattern, you change their actions. If you change their actions, then they will improve.'

Young later said, "As I've gotten older, I've gotten wiser. And I am thankful to God that he has allowed me to live this long. A lot of people that I went to school with and grew up with and even played with on the Eagles are no longer here. But I am. And if I live to be 100 years old, that means that I have 33 1/2 years to go. Then the question falls on the table, what will I do with this time that I have? So I'm studying to be an ambassador, a purveyor of hope in a society that has no hope."