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The Mines. Sam Huff knows the value of a dollar. He was born in 1934 in a West Virginia mining camp called Edna Gas that was caught tight in the squeeze of the Depression. Sam and his five brothers and sisters spent their early years in one of a row of identical five-room company houses. Sam's father worked as little as one day a week in the mines, often had to queue up for free flour. The specter of the mines and a sooty lifetime behind a No. 3 shovel hung over all the boys in the coal country. Sam decided early that he was going to finish high school, no matter what, and there he found football. When Sam made the Class-B all-state team as a 200-lb. tackle for Farmington High School, Coach Art ("Pappy") Lewis of West Virginia University began dropping by to watch him play. "He was hunting all over the field for people to knock down even then," says Lewis. With a full scholarship to West Virginia, Huff majored in physical education (C plus grades) to get ready for a coaching career, dutifully plowed through such classes as Ballroom Dance, Fundamentals of Basketball, and Wrestling, got creditable B's in advanced biology and history courses. In his senior year in 1955, Huff had made All-America, was the third-draft choice of the Giants.
The Job. At first, the Giants did not quite know what to do with him; at 230 Ibs., he seemed a little too light for the defensive line, a step too slow for offensive guard. But in the third game of the season, the Giants' middle linebacker was hurt, and Sam Huff got the job. He has been behind the Giants' line ever since.
Football has been good to Sam Huff. When he married Mary Fletcher, his classmate sweetheart, in their senior year of high school, his friends were heading for the mines. Now the Huffs and their two children, Robert Lee ("Sam") Huff Jr., 7, and Catherine Ann, 2, live in their own house in Rock Lake, W. Va. Last year Sam bought a 25-acre farm in nearby Farmington to raise Shetland ponies. "When he was a kid, we couldn't afford a pony," says his father, who lives on the farm. "Sam wants every kid in the area to have the chance to ride a pony."
Off the field, Sam Huff is an unassuming extravert with a reputation as a waitress kidder, a dislike for liquor (two beers make him woozy), and a quiet determination to get to bed around 10 every night. But the game has left more of a mark on him than the slightly twisted nose in his handsome, square-jawed face. Sometimes he worries that the mean streak he works up for his profession of violence will affect him permanently. "You've got to watch that you don't take it off the field with you," says Sam. "You get guys who say, 'Oh, you're a big football player. Well, I don't think you're so tough.' You feel like poppin' them, but you can't."
The game has also left Huff with strong pride in his playing reputation and a fierce desire to become one of the great defensive players in the history of the game. "There's no telling how good Huff can become," says one Giant official. "He's still far from his potential."