Portal:American football/Selected biography
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Harold Donald Carson (born November 26, 1953, in Florence, South Carolina) is an American collegiate and professional American football inside linebacker and defensive end, best known for his having played all thirteen of his National Football League seasons with the New York Giants franchise; for his having, over his professional career, been selected nine times to the Pro Bowl; for his having helped the Giants to the 1986 National Football Conference (NFC) East division championship and thereafter to the Super Bowl XXI title; for his having, whilst playing for the South Carolina State University Bulldogs, twice won the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) defensive player of the year award and his having been named, subsequent to the 1975 National Collegiate Athletic Association season, an All-America; and for his having, in part in view of such, been enshrined in 2002 in the College Football Hall of Fame, pictured, and in 2006 in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Having attended McClenaghan and Wilson Senior High Schools in Florence County, Carson matriculated in 1972 at South Carolina State University, for the team of which he played, principally as a defensive end, in every game across his four seasons. In his junior and senior seasons, Carson served as team captain and in each year earned defensive player of the year and all-conference honors in the MEAC, in the hall of fame of which he was subsequently enshrined, en route to his team's winning, in each season, the MEAC conference. In 1975, behind Carson, who tallied 117 tackles, more than any player in school history, and seventeen quarterback sacks, the Bulldogs recorded six shutouts and conceded just 29 points across ten games, fewer across a ten-game season than had any other Division II team previously.
Carson was selected by the Giants in the fourth round of the 1976 NFL Draft, and appeared in twelve games during the Giants' 1976 season, ultimately earning a starting middle linebacker position after the eighth week of the season and eventually earning all-rookie team honors. In 1977, he played in fourteen games and, as in 1976, recovered an opponent's fumble. Carson partook of all sixteen games contested by the Giants in each of the 1978 and 1979 seasons, over the two years recovering four fumbles, to one of which a touchdown was appended, and intercepting six passes and achieving selection to the NFC Pro Bowl side, which, in the latter year, he was unable to play due to injury; in the former year, his third in the league, Carson was named to the all-NFC team and second all-NFL team by The Sporting News and selected by head coach John McVay as a team captain. Having sustained injury during the 1979 season and having exacerbated such injury prior to the 1980 season, Carson played in just eight Giants games during the latter season, but returned, aged 27 years, to play the 1981 season in its entirety, once more recovering a fumble and earning selection to the 1981 Pro Bowl, in which he contributed to the NFC's permitting the American Football Conference just seven points.
The 1982 season was shortened to nine weeks in view of a strike action undertaken by the National Football League Players' Association, but the 1983 season was fully played, and Carson, although able due to injury only to play ten games, earned his fifth Pro Bowl selection; he was joined in the Pro Bowl by Lawrence Taylor, the second selection in the first round of the 1981 draft and also a 1981 and 1982 selection and in each year the NFL Defensive Player of the Year, with whom Carson would qualify for four subsequent Pro Bowls and with Brad Van Pelt, Brian Kelley, Frank Marion, and whom Carson formed a linebacking corps, known often as the Crunch Bunch in view of its physical nature, that, between 1980 and 1983, combined to catch sixteen interceptions and recover sixteen fumbles.
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