RYAN, FRANK BEALL (1936-2024) was an American Professional Football player, Doctor of Mathematics, Computer Scientist, professor, and senior IT professional, who led the CLEVELAND BROWNS to an NFL Championship victory in 1964.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, to the well-established family of Robert Willing Ryan, Sr. and his wife Frances Ryan (née Frances Beall), Ryan was named for his grandfather, surgeon Frank Beall. As a child, Ryan recalled being as interested in sports as he was inspired by aerospace dynamics. Despite claiming to be athletically clumsy, he was a starting quarterback by his senior year at R. L. Paschal High School. Six foot three inches and about 175 pounds, Ryan was scouted by coach Paul “Bear” Bryant of Texas A&M; possessing a knack for physics and engineering, however, Ryan’s parents hoped he would go to the family’s three-generation Alma mater, Yale University. Ryan ultimately elected to attend the Rice Institute (now Rice University), a then-athletically competitive school with a strong academic reputation.
At Rice, Ryan pursued a Bachelor’s in physics while playing under future College Hall of Fame coach Jess Neely. Though he injured his knee as a sophomore (a lingering wound which persisted during his professional career), he played as a Quarterback “about 20% of the time,” splitting the rest with future first pick King Hill (1958 draft). During their senior year, the duo would win the Southwest Conference with a 7-3 record, ranked no. 8 in the nation by the AP. Though they would later lose the 1958 Cotton Bowl 20 – 7 to Notre Dame’s Navy Midshipmen, Ryan passed the team’s only touchdown of the game (Hill kicked for the additional point in the play).
Ryan graduated Rice in 1958, and was accepted by both UCLA and U.C. Berkely for continued studies. Coincidentally, and apparently to his own surprise, he was also drafted as a fifth-round pick (no. 55) by the Los Angeles Rams, formerly the CLEVELAND RAMS. Though he had been prepared to quit football after college, Ryan decided to play with the Rams while pursuing a Master’s in Mathematics at UCLA. He showed potential as a backup for future NFL champion Bill Wade - throwing a 96-yard touchdown to Ollie Matson against the Steelers - but became frustrated with management. Ryan asked to be traded at the end of a wishy-washy 1961 season, and was picked up by the Cleveland Browns for Larry Stephens, plus the third and sixth 1963 draft picks. The same year (1961), Ryan completed his Master of Arts in Mathematics at Rice, having transferred there to study during the Spring. His thesis is titled “Regularly Branched Coverings and an Application to Blaschke Products with Certain Boundary Characteristics.”
Ryan found himself starting for the Browns after quarterback Jim Ninowski was injured against the Steelers. He flourished under new head coach Blanton Collier, who helped him focus on the mechanics of the body, throw, and target. During the 1963 season, Ryan threw 2,026 yards and 25 touchdowns for a 10 – 3 record when fielded, but the Browns narrowly missed the playoffs to the New York Giants. During the 1964 season, Ryan threw 2,404 yards for 25 touchdowns, including three to Gary Collins in a 27 – 0 Championship victory against the Baltimore Colts (coached by DON SHULA). Only six months later, in June 1965, Ryan was awarded his Ph.D. from Rice University; he had been continuing his scholarship (and teaching students) during the off-season. Ryan’s dissertation, titled “A Characterization of the Set of Asymptotic Values of a Function Holomorphic in the Unit Disc,” has been digitized and published by Rice University.
Ryan continued to play for the Browns until the end of the 1968 season. He led the team to the 1965 Championship game, where they lost 23 – 12 to the Green Bay Packers, and 1966 playoffs, where they lost to the Cowboys. His injuries catching up to him, Ryan was traded as a backup to the Washington Redskins (now the Commanders)–but he was becoming more active as a programmer than as a player. In 1969, he applied computer programming skills acquired with the Cleveland-based Chi Corporation (affiliated with the CASE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, where he had been hired in February 1967) to compile advanced statistics for game analysis. His coach, Vince Lombardi, pitched in $35,000 to support the novel initiative. Ryan was only fielded for two games with the Redskins, and retired after the 1970 season; over the course of his 13-season career, he passed a total 16,042 yards (14.7 per completion) and 149 touchdowns. With the Browns, he held a 52 – 22 – 2 record when fielded.
Ryan continued to teach graduate-level mathematics at the Case Institute (by now Case Western Reserve University) until Spring 1971, though he wouldn’t resign until 1974. On July 1st 1971, he was selected by representative Hays of Ohio, to direct the newly-created House Information Systems. Along with numerous statistical and data-analysis projects, Ryan oversaw the implementation of Congress’ first computerized voting system, first used (for a quorum vote called for by Hays) on January 23rd, 1973. Ryan became director of Yale Athletics in 1977, and worked to reduce department overspending; he was appointed associate vice president for institutional planning in 1987, and left the school in 1988. After a few stints in the private sector, Ryan returned to Rice to work as Vice President of External Affairs between 1990 and 1994. He retired to Grafton, Vermont.
Though the press and media made a big deal of “Dr. Ryan” and his alleged I.Q. of (depending on who was reporting) 150, 155, or 160, Ryan did not personally enjoy such coverage. He felt that the moniker robbed others who were, as his wife said in 1965, “authentic geniuses, men who finished college in two years,” and said of himself that “if [he had] one gift, it [was his] ability to concentrate.” Nonetheless, Ryan was dedicated to mathematics, and greatly enjoyed math education, which he viewed as both a responsibility and as a venue for discovery: “I wanted [my lectures] to reveal things to me as well as to the students,” he said. Ryan never stopped focusing on mathematics, having delivered a lecture in 2013 entitled “The Prime Number Filtrate, or, An Easy Way to Find Primes (Sort Of)”.
Ryan married Joan Ryan on March 1st, 1958; she was a fellow student at the Rice Institute, and would become a columnist with the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER. The couple raised four sons, including one Frank “Pancho” Jr., and remained together until his passing on January 1st, 2024, from Alzheimer’s Disease complications. In a statement, Ryan’s family suspected Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) as a contributor to his condition and its progression. Though CTE was not well-understood during the days of Ryan’s professional career, Ryan made efforts to raise awareness about it later in life. Ryan’s brain [had arranged for his brain to be] was donated to Boston University’s CTE center for research.
Justin Evans