Bubba Smith Passes Away: NFL All-Pro, Star of Six 'Police Academy' Movies, Miller Lite Pitchman

Wherever you are, grab the closest Miller Lite, throw "great taste" and "less filling" to the wind, and drink up in good health. Bubba Smith - the Michigan State football All-American who went on to an All-Pro NFL career with the Baltimore Colts, Oakland Raiders and Houston Oilers, then a successful acting and endorsement career - has passed away in Los Angeles. He was 66 years old.

Smith died at his Baldwin Hills home, of causes not yet determined, according to the Los Angeles Times and the L.A. County coroner's office.

The 6-foot-7, 280-pound Smith played five seasons for the Colts after they made him the 1967 No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft. Those five seasons included a Super Bowl III loss to Joe Namath and the New York Jets and a Super Bowl V defeat at the hands of the Dallas Cowboys. After two seasons as a Raider and another two as an Oiler, he lost his NFL career to a 1976 knee injury.

He became perhaps most recognizable when he and NFL bruiser Dick Butkus engaged in a battle of philosophical differences over the merits of Miller Lite - is it better that the Milwaukee brew "tastes great" or that it is "less filling?"

With apologies to John Ratzenberger's Cliff Claven, it's a little known fact that Smith later developed a crisis of conscience about the ads' cultural impact and stepped down as Miller's pitchman.

"I went back to Michigan State for the homecoming parade last year," Smith's Los Angeles Times obituary quotes him as saying in 1986. "I was the grand marshal and I was riding in the back seat of this car. The people were yelling, but they weren't saying, 'Go, State, go!' One side of the street was yelling, 'Tastes great!' and the other side was yelling 'Less filling!'

"Then we go to the stadium. The older folks are yelling 'Kill, Bubba, kill!' But the students are yelling 'Tastes great! Less filling!' Everyone in the stands is drunk. It was like I was contributing to alcohol, and I don't drink. It made me realize I was doing something I didn't want to do."

Instead, Smith found some cult success as an actor. In addition to starring as Moses Hightower in six "Police Academy" comedies, his TV credits included the series "Half-Nelson," "Blue Thunder" and "Good Times," and arguably my personal favorite: an appearance as Al Bundy's high-school football rival "Spare-Tire" Dixon on one of my favorite "Married...with Children" episodes.