Where Are They Now: Gary Arthur

The Jets added two tight ends to their roster through the draft in 1970, Rich Caster and Gary Arthur.

Caster, out of Jackson State, was chosen in the second round. And Arthur, who earned first-team All-MAC honors three times with 66 receptions for 904 yards and six touchdowns while playing at Miami (OH) University, was selected in the fifth round.

“I’d been contacted by other teams and it just kind of surprised me. I don’t know why, but it did,” Arthur said. “But I was happy about it because they were kind of an established winner and had (Joe) Namath as their quarterback at the time. It was something I was excited about.

“(Only two years after from winning Super Bowl III), it wasn’t a team that was struggling or anything like that. It was a team with a lot of established veterans, and so that was a big positive. I was just happy to be drafted. I mean, I never expected any of that. I was happy to get a scholarship. That was the only way I was going to go to college. So this was just kind of icing on the cake.”

Going from playing in the MAC to the NFL would be one adjustment Arthur had to face. Another was moving from his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, to New York.

“It was quite a culture shift,” Arthur said. “Growing up in Dayton, just a pretty blue-collar upbringing, I had never really been any place much. And so it was a pretty different place to be going. But I knew a few people that had gotten jobs there that I’d gone to school with, and so I had some friends and contacts there that helped make the transition. So it wasn’t difficult. It was a lot of fun, actually. I really enjoyed New York.”

Fifty-three years ago, the Jets chose 19 players in the draft. Add that to the number of free agents they signed and the returning veterans, it wouldn’t have been difficult to get lost in the crowd and overlooked. Be an afterthought.

Arthur, however, didn’t find that to be the case.

“There were a lot of guys I liked and hung out with. (Veteran Pro Bowl offensive tackle and future…