Sportscaster Dick Enberg was in the news recently as the winner of baseball’s Ford Frick Award. He’s also done some fine football work, of course, calling eight Super Bowls and serving as the radio voice of the Los Angeles Rams. (He’s already, in fact, in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.)
Since we’re closing in on Christmas, I thought I’d post these clips from his syndicated game show, Sports Challenge. This episode pitted three Kansas City Chiefs (quarterback Len Dawson, linebacker Willie Lanier and wide receiver Otis Taylor) against a trio of Miami Dolphins (fullback Larry Csonka, halfback Jim Kiick and wide receiver Paul Warfield) — the year after the teams played their classic Christmas Day playoff game, won by the Dolphins in double overtime, 27-24.
Four of these six guys are now in Canton (Dawson, Lanier, Csonka, Warfield), and another (Taylor) probably belongs there. It’s always surprised me that ESPN hasn’t tried to revive Sports Challenge, just for fun. Who doesn’t enjoy seeing pro athletes stumped by relatively easy questions about their game’s history? Check this out:
Nobody knew the answer – not even Dawson, who at the time of the alleged Greatest Game Ever Played was a third-string quarterback for the Steelers. (The others had yet to play pro ball.) That’s almost — almost — like players not knowing that Adam Vinatieri won Super Bowls XXXVI and XXXVIII for the Patriots. (You know what would have been a great follow-up question, by the way? “For 10 points, what is the correct spelling of Myhra?”)
As I said, though, many of the questions on Sports Challenge weren’t very, well, challenging. Like this one, also about the NFL:
Come on! Do we have to dumb things down that much?
I’ll finish with this clip from earlier in the show. Enberg talks about Garo Yepremian ending the Chiefs-Dolphins overtime thriller with a field goal and asks Csonka, “Where were you at that time?” You’ll love the response:
The players weren’t always well-versed in their game’s history, but at least some of them had a sense of humor.
Even if you’re not an NFL history buff, you’re probably familiar with the score of the 1940 title game: 73-0 (the Bears nipping the Redskins). Well, I’ve got a blowout that’s even bigger than that. It just didn’t happen in a league game. It happened during a postseason barnstorming tour in December 1936, when the Brooklyn Dodgers “shellacked” the semipro St. Louis Terriers, 100-0.
Such tours were fairly common in those Depression times. Before teams broke up for the season, they’d squeeze in a few more games — and paydays — against non-league clubs in warmer parts of the country. They didn’t always win them, either. The same afternoon the Dodgers trounced the Terriers in Wichita, the Chicago Cardinals lost to the Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Bulldogs in L.A., 13-10.
You know what else was played that day? The NFL championship game between the Packers and Redskins. Here’s your scoreboard for Dec. 13, 1936:
The ’36 Dodgers weren’t very good at all. They finished 3-8-1 and scored a grand total of 92 points. In other words, they scored more points in 60 minutes against the St. Louis Terriers than in 12 regular-season games.
Fortunately for them, their competition in Wichita was a scraggly bunch. In fact, it came out afterward that their opponents bore only a slight resemblance to the real St. Louis Terriers. One of the Terriers’ promoters, Jack Lally, told The Associated Press, “The scheduling of a National [Football] League team was ‘football suicide’ and a financially unsound idea this late in the season. And reports a St. Louis team was beaten so badly may hurt the sport here next year. Our objection is that we were not considered when plans for the game at Wichita were being drawn up — and Yates [James Yates, the promoter] represents only one-third of the team.”
According to the AP, “only three regular Terrier players were in the lineup.” Yates did supplement the St. Louis roster, though, with All-American back Ozzie Simmons, who had just finished his college career at Iowa. Simmons never played in the NFL because the league wasn’t hiring blacks then, but he managed to make his presence felt even in a 100-0 loss. He “turned in one run of 50 yards and completed one pass before leaving the game in the third period,” the wire service reported.
A sampling of the headlines that appeared over The 100-0 Story (in case you’re curious):
The New York Times:
The Boston Globe:
The Milwaukee Journal:
And finally, The San Antonio Light:
Now that’s the spirit. At least the Light grasped the utter ridiculousness of the game — one that was certainly worth an exclamation point or two. It’s also the only paper I’ve come across that provided much detail (courtesy of the wires):
Running wild, the Dodgers rang up 21 points in the first quarter, 12 in the second, 34 in the third and 33 in the fourth. The St. Louisans, led by the dark flash, Oze Simmons of the University of Iowa, were completely helpless, cowed and pulverized.
The 15 Brooklyn touchdowns were made by [Jeff] Barrett (5), [Joe] Maniaci (4), [Tony] Kaska (2), [John] Yezerski (1) and [Paul] Riblett (1). The Dodgers gained 274 yards by rushing and 300 on passes. In the last period, they bewildered the fans – and the Terriers more so – with seven laterals on one play.
Seven laterals on one play. Clearly, the Dodgers were enjoying themselves after the long slog of the NFL season. Yezerski, after all, was a tackle. (Wonder if he was the recipient of The Seventh Lateral — or if they threw him a touchdown pass on a tackle-eligible play.) Barrett and Riblett, for that matter, were ends. Which raises the question: Did Barrett actually have five TD receptions? Because that would match the NFL record shared by Jerry Rice, Kellen Winslow Sr. and Bob Shaw.
The game, by the way, attracted a crowd of 4,000. It figures out to 40 people per point, for those of you scoring at home.
The Steelers’ Antonio Brown has done something this season that hasn’t been done in a decade — and has been accomplished by only 10 receivers in NFL history. Care to guess what it is?
Answer: He’s racked up 1,000 receiving yards and thrown a touchdown pass in the same year.
Obviously, it’s much more common for a 1,000-yard running back to throw for a TD. For one thing, backs get their hands on the ball more than wideouts do. But with the Jet Sweep so popular these days, we might begin to see more scoring passes tossed by golden-armed receivers. Let’s hope so, anyway.
Here’s the short list of wideouts Brown has joined. Note that a couple of them — Randy Moss and Marty Booker — had two of these seasons.
1,000 RECEIVING YARDS AND A TOUCHDOWN PASS IN THE SAME SEASON
Year
Receiver, Team
Yds
TD Pass Details
2014
Antonio Brown, Steelers
1,498
3 yards to WR Lance Moore vs. Texans
2004
Drew Bennett, Titans
1,247
26 yards to WR Derrick Mason vs. Packers
2002
Randy Moss, Vikings
1,347
13 yards to WR D’Wayne Bates vs. Dolphins
2002
Marty Booker, Bears
1,189
44 yards to WR Marcus Robinson vs. Patriots
2001
Marty Booker, Bears
1,071
34 yards to WR Marcus Robinson vs. Falcons
1999
Randy Moss, Vikings
1,413
27 yards to WR Cris Carter vs. Giants
1996
Curtis Conway, Bears
1,049
33 yards to RB Raymont Harris vs. Cowboys
1995
Jerry Rice, 49ers
1,848*
41 yards to WR J.J. Stokes vs. Falcons
1983
Carlos Carson, Chiefs
1,351
48 yards to WR Henry Marshall vs. Chargers
1974
Drew Pearson, Cowboys
1,087
46 yards to WR Golden Richards vs. Giants
1962
Tommy McDonald, Eagles
1,146
10 yards to RB Timmy Brown vs. Redskins
1960
Bill Groman, Oilers (AFL)
1,473*
3 yards to E Al Wicher vs. Patriots
*led league
(Brown, by the way, leads the league in receiving yards with two games to go.)
Source: pro-football-reference.com
Steelers wideout Antonio Brown gets ready to show off his arm against the Texans.
Happened upon this the other day while nosing around the Internet. It’s gotta be, by at least five touchdowns, the worst movie that ever featured a former pro football player — in this case Rosey Grier, the Pro Bowl defensive tackle with the Giants and Rams in the ’50s and ’60s. (And believe me, there are a lot of candidates for this honor.)
For those of you who aren’t movie buffs, Ray Milland, Grier’s co-star in The Thing With Two Heads (1972), won the Best Actor Oscar in 1945 for The Lost Weekend, a film about a drunk who goes on a four-day bender. It might also have been during this “lost weekend” that the plot for The Thing With Two Heads was conceived. Here’s the trailer (and it’s perfectly all right if, at some point, you want to cover your eyes):
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the inspiration for Stuck on You, the Farrelly brothers’ 2003 take on conjoined twins. Unfortunately, neither Matt Damon nor Greg Kinnear ever played in the NFL . . . though they did play some high school ball:
After another season with double-digit losses, their fifth in six years, the Redskins need more than just a rebuild. In a perfect world, there would be a knock on the door in Ashburn, Dan Snyder would look nervously through the peephole, and Harvey Keitel would be standing there, ready to Do What He Does. The scene would go something like this:
A cleaner! That’s what the Redskins could use. Because, let’s face it, much of this “organization” is beyond saving, beyond even donating. Better to just dissolve it in hydrochloric acid — or whatever Harvey’s chosen solvent is — and start over.
It’s all a pipe dream, of course. The Redskins never really start over. They just change the curtains on the Titanic and head off in search of another iceberg. Fire the coach? Bring in a genuine general manager? Turn over two-thirds of the roster? What difference does it make unless you can also find a way to lock the owner in a broom closet? The team, after all, is Snyder’s toy. If he wants to leave it out in the rain, there’s only so much anyone can do about it.
A better question is: How can an owner like this even exist? Snyder, you see, is only part of the problem. The other part is the league itself, an enterprise so profitable that even a stumblebum like Dan can make money — and see the value of his franchise go up and up.
In the real world, a business that has been run as cluelessly and soullessly as the Redskins would end up filing for Chapter XI — or else be absorbed by a less clueless, less soulless competitor. But here we are, 16 years later, and Snyder is still behind the wheel, just like Jim Backus in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World:
(Bruce Allen, meet Buddy Hackett.)
That’s Dan Snyder’s true genius. He sank his fortune into a venture that’s 100 percent Dan Snyder-proof! Well, maybe not 100 percent. The occasional miracle does happen in the NFL (as fans in the Music City can attest). That’s pretty much what it would take, though, for anyone other than Daniel M. Snyder to be signing the Redskins’ checks in the foreseeable future.
Which brings us back to Harvey Keitel. Are you with me on this?
Statistics are hardly all-telling, but they can help quiet some of the noise surrounding a player. By “noise,” I mean the chatter that’s based more on impressions, gut feelings and personal biases than anything factual.
These days, Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III is one of the league leaders in noise. Coach Jay Gruden practically held his nose the other day when he announced that Griffin would start Saturday’s game against the Eagles (after Colt McCoy had been put on injured reserve). Gruden has made no secret of his displeasure with just about everything Griffin does — from holding the ball too long in the pocket to being inattentive to the finer points of “his craft” to staying on the ground too long after a sack (which made the coach wonder whether his quarterback was too hurt to run a Real Play in the closing minutes).
Griffin may not have textbook mechanics, but he somehow — miraculously — gets the ball to his target. See for yourself:
TOP 5 UNDER-25 QBS FOR COMPLETION % (MINIMUM: 750 ATTEMPTS)
Years
Quarterback, Team
Pct
2012-14
Robert Griffin, Redskins
63.66
1999-01
Daunte Culpepper, Vikings
63.33
2004-06
Ben Roethlisberger, Steelers
62.40
1991-94
Brett Favre, Packers*
61.86
2008-09
Joe Flacco, Ravens
61.70
*Also threw four passes with the Falcons as a rookie.
Maybe we just misunderstood Tarkenton. Maybe what he meant was: RG3 isn’t as incredible(!) as Tiger Woods was at the age of 5. (I think we can all agree with that.)
By the way, before anybody scoffs at Griffin’s completion percentage and says, “All he does is dink and dunk,” take a look at this:
ADJUSTED YARDS PER ATTEMPT FOR UNDER-25 QBS (MINIMUM: 750 ATTEMPTS)
Years
Quarterback, Team
AYPA
1983-86
Dan Marino, Dolphins
8.04
2012-14
Robert Griffin III, Redskins
7.43
2004-06
Ben Roethlisberger, Steelers
7.39
1999-01
Daunte Culpepper, Vikings
7.36
2011-13
Cam Newton, Panthers
7.25
So regardless of how long the ball is in the air, Griffin is getting good yardage out of his throws — more than any quarterback except Marino. (Note: I’m looking only at QBs since 1960. And yes, I realize that, with all the passer-friendly rule changes, these rankings are going to be tilted toward the present.) In terms of unadjusted yards per attempt, in case you’re wondering, he’s seventh at 7.55 (three spots behind Our Friend Fran, who comes in at 7.76.)
Two more things. RG3 is the least interception-prone under-25 passer ever. Doesn’t that count for something? Isn’t ball security part of being a good QB?
LOWEST INTERCEPTION % BY AN UNDER-25 QB (MINIMUM: 750 ATTEMPTS)
Years
Quarterback, Team
Att
Int
Pct
2012-14
Robert Griffin III, Redskins
999
20
2.00
2012-14
Andrew Luck, Colts
1,250
29
2.32
1999-01
Donovan McNabb, Eagles
1,074
25
2.33
2010-12
Sam Bradford, Rams
1,196
28
2.34
1985-88
Bernie Kosar, Browns
1,334
32
2.40
Last chart. File this one under: It Takes a Village. You can grouse about Griffin’s play all you want, but one of the biggest reasons he hasn’t won more is that his defense hasn’t exactly been the Steel Curtain.
FEWEST POINTS ALLOWED SINCE 2012
Rank
Team
Pts
1.
Russell Wilson’s Seahawks
718
2.
Colin Kaepernick’s 49ers
830
29.
Robert Griffin’s Redskins
1,236
OK, I’ve made my case – not for RG3’s impending greatness but for not giving up on him like Gruden (and others) seem inclined to do. “He will never make it,” Tarkenton said. “He will be out of football. He will be in the same graveyard as JaMarcus Russell and Vince Young.”
“He” is still 24. Aren’t we being a bit hasty?
Or to put it another way: In a decade, Griffin will be four years younger than Peyton Manning is now.
With the holiday season upon us — and Festivus just a week away — I thought I’d throw out a few gift suggestions for That Special Someone (who also happens to be a pro football fanatic). Some of these items might be hard to come by but, trust me, it would be well worth the effort.
● A pair of Frenchy Fuqua’s fiberglass clogs with three-inch heels — complete with goldfish in the heels (air pump included).
Fuqua, a running back with the Giants and Steelers and the ’60s and ’70s, is remembered less for his ball carrying than for his cutting-edge fashion. His bright-red “caveman outfit” was a real head-turner. How he described it to the Pittsburgh Press in 1976: “It had a strap over one shoulder, and one leg was a bell bottom and the other had fringes on it. But the greatest thing about it was the purse. It was a white fur purse that was shaped like a club.”
Frenchy’s signature accessory, though, was the aforementioned shoes. They looked something like this:
Problem was, the fish lasted only a couple of hours before suffocating. “I was getting’ so much pub because of the goldfish, I hated to stop wearing the shoes,” he said. “But I’ll tell you, you kick up some dead goldfish at a banquet, and pretty soon you get a real foul odor. You start feeling terrible about it, too. When some people found out they were dyin’, they got on me about bein’ cruel to animals. I thought about running a tube down my leg with an air pump that would supply constant fresh water to the fish.”
The shoes also were potentially hazardous to the wearer’s health. As he once told The New York Times, they “were a little slippery to walk in, being glass, so you’d have to hold on to a rail when you went down stairs.”
● The Joe Namath Butter-Up Corn Popper. Namath hawked everything from shaving cream to pantyhose to this, which was popular in college dorms in the ’70s:
● A VHS tape of Sammy Baugh’s 12-part serial, “King of the Texas Rangers.” Slingin’ Sam could do more than just throw touchdown passes. Being a Texan, he also could ride horses, shoot guns and beat up bad guys.
● Rosey Grier’s “Committed” album (1986).
Grier, one of the tackles on the Rams’ legendary Fearsome Foursome defensive front in the ’60s, could sing a little. In 1965 he and the rest of the Foursome appeared on the TV show Shindig! (with the other three, as you’ll see, doing little more calisthenics behind him):
A year earlier, Rosey had sung solo on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Here’s that clip:
Before 16-game seasons and 12-team playoff fields, the NFL played its championship game in the second or third week of December. Not much survives from those battles in the ’30s and ’40s, but there are a few clips available on YouTube. Here’s what I’ve found — from 1934, ’36, ’39 and ’41.
DEC. 9, 1934: GIANTS 30, BEARS 13
This was the celebrated Sneakers Game, so named because the Giants switched to “basketball shoes” (as they were called) in the second half to get better traction on an icy field. They then exploded for 27 points in the fourth quarter to ruin the Bears’ perfect season and keep them from winning a record-tying third straight title.
(It’s still the most points ever scored by a team in the fourth quarter of a playoff game. The ’92 Eagles are next with 26 vs. the Saints in this 36-20 win.)
We begin our film festival with back-to-back runs by the great Bronko Nagurski. Note the Bears are lined up in the T formation, with the quarterback taking the snap directly from center. They were only NFL club using the T in 1934. Everybody else opted for some variation of the single wing. Note also, on the first play, the man-in-motion flashing across the screen. That had been incorporated into the offense, too.
One more tackle-busting Nagurski run. What’s interesting about this play is that the Bears are in the single wing. They mixed it up, in other words — which must have been a nightmare for opposing defenses. Watch for the official slipping and falling at the end of the clip. The field was treacherous in spots.
Here’s a photo of Giants quarterback Ed Danowski (22) getting ready to crack the line. As you can see, he and his blockers are wearing sneakers, which were borrowed from nearby Manhattan College and rushed to the Polo Grounds by locker-room attendant Abe Cohen:
After the footwear change, it was all over for Chicago. The sneaks didn’t just give the Giants better footing, they enabled them to cut more sharply than the Bears could. Hall of Fame fullback Ken Strong scored the final two New York touchdowns — the first over the right side, the second up the middle. In the last part of the clip, he touches the ball down in the end zone, just like in the old days. (Thus the term “touchdown.”)
“Strong had been removed from the game in the first half with his left leg twisted,” Arthur Daley of The New York Times wrote. “He appeared out of it. But he came back in the second, apparently none the worse for wear.”
DEC. 13, 1936: PACKERS 21, REDSKINS 6
The ’36 title game should have been played in Boston, home of the Eastern champion Redskins. But the team didn’t draw well, so owner George Preston Marshall moved the game to New York’s Polo Grounds. (The next season, the franchise was in Washington.)
You’ll love the opening kickoff. According to the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Green Bay returner being picked up, carried back and slammed down is George Sauer (whose son, George Jr., starred for the Jets in Super Bowl III with eight catches for 133 yards, both game highs). Today, no doubt, Boston would have been hit with a personal-foul penalty.
The Packers led 7-6 at halftime thanks to this Hall of Famer-to-Hall of Famer heave from Arnie Herber to Don Hutson, good for a 48-yard touchdown:
Early in the second half Green Bay began to break it open. From the Sentinel: “Herber sent a long aerial down the field which Johnny Blood [another Hall of Famer] caught for a 51-yard gain, Don Irwin nailing him on the 9-yard line. After being halted three straight times on running plays, Herber found [end Milt] Gantenbein alone over the goal line and pegged one right in his arms for a touchdown.”
As the clip shows, Herber dropped back quite a ways before throwing the ball to Blood — 10 or 11 yards by my count. This was to give Johnny time to get downfield, but it’s also an indication of how unreliable pass protection was in that era. Linemen couldn’t use their hands yet, remember, and the concept of the pocket was still years off. (Plus, it was two years before there was a penalty for roughing the passer. Once the ball was released, the defense could pretty much whatever it wanted to the quarterback until the play was whistled dead.)
I’d be remiss if I didn’t insert this last screen shot. It’s of the Packers’ Lou Gordon — No. 53 — running around without a helmet. In 1936 headgear was still optional.
I’d also be shirking my responsibility if I didn’t include the lead paragraph of the game story that ran in the Boston Globe. It was written by John Lardner — Ring’s son — then 24 and working for the New York Herald Tribune. Can you believe it? The Globe didn’t even staff the game (probably because Redskins were abandoning the city). Imagine the Los Angeles Times not covering Super Bowls XXXIV and XXXVI because the Rams had forsaken L.A.
“. . . championship of the universe, and points south.” Classic.
DEC. 10, 1939: PACKERS 27, GIANTS 0
Steve Owen, the Giants’ Hall of Fame coach, missed the game because of his mother’s death. That left the team in the hands of assistant Bo Molenda, a former Packer. The site was switched from Green Bay’s City Stadium to Milwaukee’s larger State Fair Park because this was, after all, the Depression. If a few more tickets could be sold . . . . And indeed, the crowd of 32,279 produced a gate of over $80,000, a record for an NFL title game. The winning Packers reportedly earned $703.97 each, the losing Giants $455.57.
Green Bay turned it into a rout in the third quarter after Gantenbein (yes, him again) picked off a pass and ran it back to the New York 33. A touchdown — one that made it 17-0 — soon followed. The Sentinel again: “[Quarterback Cecil] Isbell, faking and veering the ball nicely, slipped back, wheeled and passed downfield to [back] Joe Laws, who was all alone to take the ball on the 6 and romp over without a man getting within yards of him.”
Aren’t those goalposts the greatest? They were the new, improved version that moved the posts off the goal line, where they could be an obstruction on running plays. (The goal posts weren’t moved to the back of the end zone until 1974.) The post-TD “celebration,” by the way, is just beautiful. A teammate comes up and . . . shakes Law’s hand.
In the fourth quarter, Packers linebacker Bud Svendsen intercepted another Giants pass and returned it to the New York 15. This time Green Bay turned to trickery. “A double reverse, with [Harry] Jacunski carrying on an end-around, brought the ball to the 1 yards,” the Sentinel reported, “and [fullback Ed] Jankowski pounded over the New York right guard for the score.”
Here’s that sequence – interception/double reverse/short touchdown plunge — that gave the Packers their final points:
DEC. 21, 1941: BEARS 37, GIANTS 9
Once again, the Giants took a licking. Of course, this Bears club — just a year removed from the 73-0 evisceration of the Redskins in the title game — was nigh unbeatable. The game was played two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which might have had something to do with the disappointing attendance: 13,341.
Behind by four touchdowns in the final quarter, New York ran a gadget play in hopes of getting in a parting shot, but the Bears blew it up. The New York Times’ account:
Just before the end, 9 seconds away, [Steve] Owen inserted Andy Marefos into his lineup. The next play was the one that had worked against the Redskins in their first game with the Giants. Hank Soar rifled a lateral [pass] to Marefos, who was supposed to heave a long one down the field.
Before he could get rid of the ball, the entire Bear team hit him at once. The pigskin popped out of his hand and [end] Ken Kavanaugh picked it up and trotted 42 yards to the end zone.
And then America — and many of these players — went off to war.
How much of a horror show was Johnny Manziel’s overhyped starting debut with the Browns? Pretty bad, to be sure — 54 net passing yards and zero points in a blowout loss to the Bengals. Still, I came up with three Hall of Famers who had a worse one, rating-wise, and various other legends and No. 1 overall picks who struggled mightily as well. That puts Manziel in the middle of this group:
HOW JOHNNY MANZIEL’S FIRST NFL START STACKS UP
Year
Quarterback,Team
Opponent
Att
Comp
Yds
TD
Int
Rating
Result
1983
John Elway, Broncos
Steelers
8
1
14
0
1
0.0
W, 14-10
2005
Alex Smith, 49ers
Colts
23
9
74
0
4
8.5
L, 28-3
1970
Terry Bradshaw, Steelers
Oilers
16
4
70
0
1
19.3
L, 19-7
1967
Bob Griese, Dolphins
Chiefs
22
11
101
0
2
25.0
L, 24-0
2014
Johnny Manziel, Browns
Bengals
18
10
80
0
2
27.3
L, 30-0
2009
Matt Stafford, Lions
Saints
37
16
205
0
3
27.4
L, 45-27
1989
Troy Aikman, Cowboys
Saints
35
17
180
0
2
40.2
L, 28-0
2004
Eli Manning, Giants
Falcons
37
17
162
1
2
45.1
L, 14-10
1979
Joe Montana, 49ers
Cardinals
12
5
36
0
0
49.3
L, 13-10
2012
Andrew Luck, Colts
Bears
45
23
309
1
3
52.9
L, 41-21
1998
Peyton Manning, Colts
Dolphins
37
21
302
1
3
58.6
L, 24-15
If you’re wondering how on earth Elway won that game — all the other QBs lost — the answer is: He sat out the second half with a bruised right elbow, and backup Steve DeBerg rallied the Broncos to victory.
As for Bradshaw, his first start wasn’t exactly well received by the Pittsburgh media. This how the Post-Gazette covered it. “I couldn’t hit the side of a building today,” Terry said. “I know I was late throwing the ball a number of times, which gave [the Oilers] a chance to cover up, but they were coming at me strong.”
But do the math. Elway, Bradshaw and Griese had worse days than Manziel did, and they went on to appear in a combined 12 Super Bowls, winning eight. I’m not in any way predicting similar success for Johnny Football. Just sayin’. First impressions can be deceiving.
A winter-themed post as the cold weather settles in:
Today’s NFL owners don’t have a whole lot of pizazz. Unless they’re announcing some charitable endeavor or hiring/firing somebody, they’re hardly ever in the spotlight. Most of them strike you as the kind of guys who, if they had a hobby, would probably make duck decoys.
It wasn’t always thus. In 1947 fans could open the newspaper and read this story about Alexis Thompson, the Eagles’ dashing young owner:
Thompson, who was 26 when he bought into the NFL, was what used to be known as a sportsman. He didn’t just employ athletes, he was one — in college at Yale and as an adult. Soccer, lacrosse, bobsledding; Lex was just a jock. He was even a member of the men’s field hockey team that represented the U.S. at the 1936 Olympics. (Don’t get too excited. It tied for last.)
This wasn’t the first time he’d been hurt on a bobsled run. Six years earlier he was training at Lake Placid and “broke an ankle,” The Associated Press reported, “when his bobsled skidded and crashed over the retaining wall. . . . Thompson entered the twenty-second curve on the mile course a bit too high.”
On another occasion “he suffered a crushed kidney in a spill on the Cresta bobsled run in Switzerland,” according to AP.
“I should have won the junior AAU [bobsled] championship last week,” he said in 1942. “It looked like a cinch. But what happened? One of my crew didn’t show up and I had to grab a guy right out of a saloon to take his place. Never been on a sled before in his life. All we got was second place. It’s a crazy game. I might give it up some time and go back to lacrosse.”
What a life Thompson led. He inherited millions at 15 from his father, a steel executive, and later started a profitable company of his own that sold eyewash. After his first marriage broke
Betty Grable’s famed poster.
up in the late ’30s, he became “more or less a permanent member of café society,” AP reported, “squiring first one beauty and then another. At one time it was Betty Grable, but for a good while now his attentions have centered upon Lana Turner.
His apartment in Manhattan is one of the fanciest, and Alexis throws parties with imagination and zest. Once, on Halloween, he hired an outside moving van, had it completely and tastefully furnished and loaded everybody inside.
There was absolutely no interruption to the party as it was transferred out to Alexis’ country place on Long Island. If anything, it gained momentum. The most fun, one of the guests cheerfully recalls, was bobbing for apples in champagne, of course.
Close friends of the young promoter prefer, though, to tell of his good deeds. Such as when he bought a set of tires for a taxi driver who was down on his luck, the lone stipulation being that Alexis got free rides for a month.
See what I mean? Granted, NFL owners tend to be older now and less physically active, but they don’t make ’em like Alexis Thompson any more. Robert Kraft and his lodge brothers are careful men, not guys who would risk going over the wall on a bobsled run just for the thrill of it.
