Author Archives: Dan

Gordie Howe in a leather helmet

With the NHL playoffs just around the corner — and the Concussion Issue continuing to hover over the NFL — I thought I’d write a quick post about the time, long before it was fashionable, Red Wings legend Gordie Howe wore a leather helmet.

This was during the 1950-51 season. In the playoffs the previous spring, Howe had gone head-first into the boards — the Maple Leafs’ Ted Kennedy was his intended target — and suffered a fractured skull and serious facial injuries. Doctors had to perform emergency surgery to stop a brain hemorrhage.

When Howe returned to action in the fall, he experienced headaches and, once, a dizzy spell. So his bosses convinced him to put on a leather headgear (plastic helmets not yet being in vogue).

“We just don’t want to take chances,” general manager Jack Adams said. “I’ve wanted Gordie to wear a headgear for a long time and finally talked him into it on the train coming back from Toronto.”

Here’s the best photo I could find of it (from the Dec. 15, 1950, Lowell Sun in Massachusetts). The contrast is poor and the figures a little faint, but you can make out Howe’s helmet.

Howe eventually discarded the thing, tough guy that he was. The league made helmets mandatory for incoming players in 1979, his 32nd and final pro season, but veterans had the option of going without them — and Gordie did. Here he is, late in his career, mixing it up with Quebec’s (better-protected) Curt Brackenbury.

The NFL’s 82-year-old PAT “problem”

Sometime soon the NFL is expected to do something about the extra point. What that something is will be decided by the Competition Committee, the owners and possibly the ASPCK (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Kickers). It’s beginning to bother me, though, that I haven’t heard Two Little Words very much, words that should be a big part of this discussion:

Point value.

By point value, I’m talking mainly about the relationship between the touchdown (six points) and the field goal (three). Since the league was founded in 1920, a TD has almost always been worth more than two field goals because the PAT has been virtually automatic. This, to my mind, is as it should be. Driving the length of the field and punching the ball across is more of an accomplishment than, say, getting stopped twice at the 30 and booting a pair of 48-yard field goals.

The Warriors’ Stephen Curry: 91.6%. NFL kickers: 84%.

That’s especially true nowadays, when a field-goal try has about the same success rate as a Stephen Curry free throw. Last season kickers made 84 percent of their three-pointers (61 percent from 50 yards and beyond). The year before they were even more accurate (86.5).

One of the arguments for dickering with the PAT is to reduce the impact of these specialists, which is far out of proportion to the time they spend on the field. So why, I ask, would you want to change the rule so that there would be more unsuccessful point-afters, as the league is reportedly considering? Because if there are more of those — by either run, pass or kick — then you have more instances of a touchdown being worth only six points . . . the same as two field goals.

I’d rather have a TD worth seven points — as it’s essentially been for decades — and give the scoring team a chance for a bonus point from the 2-yard line – or wherever the odds would be closest to 50/50. No kicks allowed. (There are more than enough of those.)

Then you’d have an Exciting Play after every touchdown and games would sometimes decided by the proficiency of a team’s extra-point offense (or defense). Wouldn’t that be preferable to what we have now? If you wanted to add some spice to it, you could give the D the opportunity to score a point by returning a fumble or interception the length of the field (something the league is also said to be weighing). Seems only fair.

This, of course, would involve burying the two-point conversion. Let’s face it, there’s always been a certain illogic to it. For moving the ball two yards, the offense scores as many points as the defense does for tackling the ball carrier in the end zone for a safety — and almost as many as a kicker does for booting a 64-yard field goal. Again, it all goes back to point value.

Pro football doesn’t the need a gimmick like that. Scoring is at historic levels; in each of the last three seasons it’s topped 45 points a game, equaling the previous best three-year stretch from 1948 to ’50. The Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl, meanwhile, drew 114.4 million viewers, a record for the game. The NFL’s customers are clearly satisfied, whether the PAT is reimagined or not.

It would do the league no harm, that I can see, to leave the point-after exactly as is. (Would it make one dollar less?) But it could do it some harm if four or five goal-line plays were added to each game. All we’d need is a star player or two to suffer a season-ending injury — for the sake of a measly additional point — and we’d have sports-talk-show hosts shrieking, “What the #%&@! were they thinking?”

(Note: The short-lived World Football League adopted, in 1974, a rule like the one I’m proposing. After a touchdown, which was worth seven points, the ball was marked at the 2 ½-yard line, and the scoring team could add another point via a run or pass. The “action point,” it was called.)

There are reasons the extra point has, over the decades, fought off attempt after attempt to eliminate it. Its history, in fact, is infinitely more interesting than the play itself. The play itself is a metronomic bore: snap, hold, kick. (Or as I like to think of it: We interrupt this game to bring you the World Cup.) It also has never seemed like much of a football play, even if it does involve the foot.

Worse, it’s utterly predictable. Only once in the last nine seasons, near as I can determine, has a game been decided by a missed PAT — this one between the Cardinals and Cowboys on Dec. 25, 2010. (Merry Christmas!)

At least as early as 1933, there were folks in the NFL lobbying to get rid of the point-after. That was the year the Giants’ Tim Mara sought to “abolish” it and replace it with “a 10-minute overtime period in the event that the regulation game ends in a tie,” The New York Times reported.

Mara pointed out that of 58 league games played during the past season only one was decided by the extra point and that [10] . . . resulted in ties.

“In every sport but football authorities have sought to avoid a tie score,” Mara declared. “No matter whom you are rooting for you don’t want to see a game end in a tie. The game has reached such a stage now that few field goals are attempted. The one desire seems to be a touchdown.”

So that, maybe, was the first grenade lobbed in the PAT’s direction. The league was choking on tie games, and the point-after wasn’t helping to break those ties (which is one of the things it was supposed to do).

Bert Bell, as owner of the Eagles and later as NFL commissioner, made the quashing of the extra point a personal crusade. He did everything he could to get it stricken from the rulebook. One of his main arguments was that the change would “do away with the one-point spread in which gamblers are so much interested,” he said in 1951. This, he predicted, would cut down “gambling by 60 percent.”

Not long afterward he pushed for touchdowns to be revalued at seven points — thereby making the PAT superfluous. The Times referred to it as his “perennial suggestion.” It was voted down, 7-5.

Lloyd Larsen, the Milwaukee Sentinel columnist, joked that Bell might have had an ulterior motive. “Could it be,” he wondered, “that his real concern is the cost of footballs [$17 per] kicked into the crowd?”

Actually, there might have been some truth to this — in the early years, anyway. One Sunday in 1935, Bell nearly ran out of footballs during a blowout loss to the Bears in Philadelphia. Chicago’s Jack Manders kept booting extra points into the stands, and the fans kept keeping them as consolation prizes. By the third quarter, only one usable ball was left. So after their last two touchdowns, the Bears waived their right to a PAT and just lined up for the kickoff. That explained the unusual final score: 39-0.

In 1968, almost a decade after Bell’s death, the NFL and AFL conducted a joint experiment with the point-after. In the 23 interleague preseason games that year — this was before the merger, remember — teams were given the option of running or passing for the point from the 2-yard line. Kicks were verboten.

But while the provisional rule jazzed up some otherwise dreary exhibition games, it never gained much traction with the owners — and was deposited, along with all the other brainstorms whose time had not yet come, in the dustbin of history.

And now here we are, almost half a century later, wrestling with the PAT question again. I just wish, while we were mulling the issue, the words “point value” were being thrown around more often. Two field goals should never equal a touchdown. They just shouldn’t.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Nobody hated the PAT more than NFL commissioner Bert Bell (shown here working in the schedule -- with dominoes).

Nobody hated the PAT more than NFL commissioner Bert Bell (shown here working on the schedule — with dominoes).

1959: a draft like no other

The 1959 NFL draft was full of Famous Lasts. It was last draft that was 30 rounds long. (It was reduced to 20 the next year.) It was the last draft of Bert Bell’s commissionership. (He dropped dead at an Eagles-Steelers game the following October.) It was the last draft — for a decade, anyway — that didn’t have the shadow of the rival AFL hanging over it. (Though the CFL siphoned off some talent in the ’50s.) And it was the last, first and only draft in which one team — the Los Angeles Rams — picked 12 players before another team — the Pittsburgh Steelers — picked any.

Think about the Rams/Steelers thing for a moment. It would be almost impossible, after all, for it to happen today. A general manager would have to pull a (modified) Mike Ditka and trade away his entire draft, while another accumulated — through deals, compensatory picks, what have you — five extra selections. Good luck with that.

It was unusual enough for 1959, even with each club getting 30 picks. Everything just came together, perfect-storm-like. You had a Rams team, with a GM named Pete Rozelle, taking the stockpiling of selections to a new level; and you had a a Steelers team, with wheeler-dealer coach Buddy Parker pulling the strings, trading picks for veterans at an unprecedented rate (one that wouldn’t be duplicated until George Allen and his Over the Hill Gang invaded Washington).

When the pre-draft dust settled, the Rams had a dozen selections in the first seven rounds — all in the first 80 picks. (There were only 12 franchises then, remember.) The Steelers, meanwhile, had traded their first seven choices and didn’t pick until midway through Round 8, when they took Purdue running back Tom Barnett.

This, as you can imagine, caused something of a stir. Chicago Cardinals GM Walter Wolfner, not a big fan of swapping the Future for the Present to begin with, compared what the Steelers did to “borrowing money from a loan shark to pay somebody else.

“I am bitterly opposed to trading away draft choices because it defeats the purpose of the draft, which is supposed to equalize strength in the league,” he said. “By trading [for additional] draft choices, strong teams can afford to draft ‘redshirts,’ and in that way the strong get stronger and the weak weaker.”

(FYI: Redshirts were players who had been in college for four years (which made them eligible for the draft) but still had some eligibility left. They also were called “futures” because, even after being selected, they usually returned to school for their final season before turning pro. The better NFL clubs — clubs that might not be as desperate for immediate help — could use more of their picks on these players . . . and perhaps steal a guy or two they might never have had a shot at.)

Not everyone agreed with Wolfner, though. To other GMs, an asset — be it a player or a draft choice — was an asset, to be used as a team saw fit. As Rozelle put it, the swapping of veterans for picks “has helped us and we believe has been helpful to other clubs. No one can say the Eagles didn’t help themselves by getting [quarterback Norm] Van Brocklin [for, among other things, a No. 1]. Some of the clubs who do not have the budgets for scouting and cannot utilize their choices to the extent others can, through astute trading oft times help themselves.”

The Rams invested heavily in their player-personnel department. In fact, they were trailblazers in that area. Art Rooney’s Steelers, on the other hand, were more of a mom-and-pop operation, though Parker was trying to change that. Buddy, who merely wanted to turn around a habitually losing franchise as quickly as possible, had no misgivings about the extreme lengths he was going to. “There is no adverse effect on the public,” he said, “– as long as we win.”

And the thing is, Parker was making progress. His second Steelers team, in 1958, had gone 7-4-1 — the second-best record in franchise history. As for the Rams, their draft-driven rebuild was nearly complete. Or so they thought. They’d finished a game out of first in the Western Conference in ’58 and, with all the high picks in ’59, were determined to overtake the title-winning Colts.

Anyway, here’s how it all unfolded, how the Rams wound up with 12 selections in the first seven rounds and the Steelers with none:

RAMS PICKS

● 1 (2^nd overall) — From the Eagles for QB Norm Van Brocklin. Drafted: RB Dick Bass. Bass still had a year of eligibility at Pacific and didn’t join the Rams until 1960.

● 1 (9) — Own pick. Drafted: T-DT Paul Dickson.

● 2 (16) — From the Redskins for QB Rudy Bukich (who Washington waived before the end of the ’58 season). Drafted: QB Buddy Humphrey.

● 2 (20) — Own pick. Drafted: HB Don Brown.

● 3 (31) — Own pick. Drafted: FB Larry Hickman.

● 3 (33) — From the Steelers for WR Jimmy Orr and DE Billy Ray Smith. Drafted: DB Tom Franckhauser.

● 4 (43) — Own pick. Drafted: FB Blanche Martin.

● 4 (44) — From the Bears for DB Jesse Whittenton and WR Bob Carey. The Rams were supposed to get OT Kline Gilbert, but he decided to retire. So they settled for a fourth-rounder (which would be a mid-second-rounder now). Drafted: LB John Tracey.

● 4 (45) — From the Steelers for FB Tank Younger. Drafted: DE Bob Reifsnyder.

● 5 (56) — Own pick. Drafted: E John Lands.

● 6 (69) — Own pick. Drafted: C Dave Painter.

● 7 (80) — Own pick. Drafted: DB Eddie Meador.

STEELERS PICKS

1 (8) — To the 49ers for QB Earl Morrall and OG Mike Sandusky. 49ers drafted: OT Dan James.

2 (19) — To the Lions for Hall of Fame QB Bobby Layne. Lions drafted: OG Mike Rabold.

3 (33) — To the Rams for WR Jimmy Orr and DE Billy Ray Smith. Rams drafted: DB Tom Franckhauser.

4 (45) — To the Rams for FB Tank Younger. Rams drafted: DE Bob Reifsnyder.

5 (55) — To the Packers for HB Dick Christy. Packers drafted: OG Andy Cvercko.

6 (67) — To the Lions for HB Tom Tracy. Lions drafted: DT Dick Guesman.

7 (79) — To the Redskins for LB Ralph Felton. Redskins drafted: QB Mitch Ogiego.

(Note: If a player doesn’t have any stats to click on, it’s because he never played in the NFL or AFL.)

Layne, Orr and Tracy were terrific additions to the Steelers offense. The Rams’ biggest “hits” in the draft were Bass, a two-time 1,000-yard rusher (and three-time Pro Bowler), and Meador, who intercepted 46 passes (and went to six Pro Bowls). What’s more, two months later, Rozelle had enough of a surplus to swap nine players for Ollie Matson, the Cardinals’ Hall of Fame back. Brown (20^th pick), Hickman (31) and Tracey (44) were included in the deal.

But the Steelers and Rams both went backward in ’59 — Pittsburgh to 6-5-1, L.A. to a ghastly 2-10 (which cost coach Sid Gillman his job). Not long after that, Rozelle was running the league from the commissioner’s office in New York, and Parker was busily trading away even more draft picks. In 1960 he had only two selections in the first six rounds.

It’s one of the more fascinating aspects of the early NFL: the extremes. There simply wasn’t the parity that exists today — not nearly. Some franchises had money to spend, some had a lot less money to spend. The difference between the best teams and the worst teams was often much greater. And, of course, one club could make 12 draft picks before another club could make even one. Strange, but true.

Source: pro-football-reference.com, prosportstransactions.com, Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

After the 1959 draft, the Rams gave the Cardinals nine players for this guy: RB Ollie Matson.

After the 1959 draft, the Rams gave the Cardinals nine players for this guy: Hall of Fame back Ollie Matson.

Chris Borland and the future of the NFL

Dan Pompei wrote a piece for Bleacher Report not long ago that began like this:

There are not many footprints on the path Chris Borland has chosen to walk. His approach to the NFL, and life after it, represents a way of thinking that is very different from the thinking of most of his football forefathers.

Fifty years ago, or even 10 years ago, promising players considered the NFL a destination — not a rest stop on life’s highway. They did all they could to extend their shelf life. They didn’t consider shortening it, as Borland has, retiring after a standout rookie season with the 49ers.

But as time — and eras — have passed, so too have perspectives on the role football should play in a player’s life.

Actually, in the league’s first 40 years, many of Borland’s “football forefathers” thought like he did, considered the NFL a short-term gig. Unlike today, the game didn’t lend itself to a long, lucrative career. In the single-platoon era (1920-49), players often played the entire game, or close to it. The travel, too — on trains, buses and even in private cars — was more onerous. Some teams would be on the road for a month or more.

You also could make the case that competition for jobs was greater because there were fewer of them. In 1941, the last season before the war, there were 330 roster spots in the league and just 11 players who were 30 or older (oldest: 33). Last year there were 1,696 roster spots and 331 thirtysomethings (oldest: 42). Nobody ever talks about that when they talk about the early days: that it was harder to break into the league and harder to stay there — which, naturally, led to shorter careers.

Let me throw a few more numbers at you so you’ll get the complete picture. This is how many players in each decade played in all 10 seasons of that decade:

1920s: 3

1930s: 2

1940s: 5

1950s: 18

1960s: 74

1970s: 109

1980s: 92

1990s: 158

2000s: 163

2010s: TBD (but likely more than 163, Chris Borland or no Chris Borland)

From the ’20s through the ’50s, the prevailing philosophy seemed to be: play four or five years if you can, burn off any testosterone left over from college, sock away some dough (provided there’s some dough to sock away) and, in the offseasons — which were quite a bit longer then — try to prepare for your Next Life (in coaching, business, teaching, whatever).

George Halas’ Bears teams weren’t just successful on the field, they were successful off it. Several players, for instance, found the time during the season to go to medical and dental school. According to a 2011 story about John Siegal, an end in the ’30s and ’40s, his “typical day would spin the heads of today’s multimillionaire athletes. He attended Bears practice from 9 a.m. to noon, then headed to Northwestern University for dentistry classes from 1 p.m. until 5. One teammate, fullback Bill Osmanski, attended school with him; Halas had agreed to pay the pair’s tuition in addition to their salary.”

(Of course, clubs were more concerned for the players’ welfare in those days. As the Bears’ 1937 media guide noted: “A form of cod-liver oil is taken daily by the players when cold weather sets in.”)

Time and again, Halas would tell his team, “Football is a means to an end.” And in those leaner times, it was the soundest of advice. No player was so well paid that he could retire on his NFL earnings; he’d better have a Plan B (if not a Plan C).

Tom Harmon during his Rams days.

But beyond that, there was more of an understanding that the human body wasn’t built for such punishment — not over the long haul, at least. Doak Walker, the Lions’ Hall of Fame back, quit in 1955 after just six seasons. Tom Harmon, the first pick in the ’41 draft, played a mere two years (after a lengthy stint in the military) before going into sportscasting. The “indestructible” Bronko Nagurski took the knocks for eight seasons, then decided professional wrestling was a safer — and better-paying — alternative (though he came out of retirement in ’43 when the Bears were shorthanded). None of this was unusual.

But as you can see in the decade-by-decade figures, things began to change in the ’60s. The money got better, the medicine improved, the jobs multiplied — and suddenly you had players staying in the game until they were literally wheeled out on a gurney.

It also could be argued that modern players are more dependent on the game than they used to be — because the job has become so time-consuming, in-season and out. Who today could squeeze in med school classes around all the practices, meetings, weight-room sessions, public-relations appearances and everything else on the football calendar? It’s increasingly hard to lay almost any kind of groundwork for Life After Football. (We won’t even get into the dubious college “education” some of these guys receive, “learning” that sometimes doesn’t equip you to do much more than retain your eligibility.)

In recent years, a time bomb has gone off — the Concussion Issue — and people have begun to wonder whether the game has gotten too hazardous to the players’ health, whether this is the beginning of the end for Pro Football As We Know It. First of all, the game has always been too hazardous to the players’ health. No league has left a longer trail of broken bodies than NFL. It’s more a question of: How much are the players — and the fans who cheer them — willing to put up with? Will the risk of CTE cause young athletes to turn to other sports, or will the fame and fortune of football be too much of a lure? And even if a kid does opt to play the game, will he, as he grows older, try to limit the damage, as Borland did (and as players in the early decades did, though their retirements weren’t always of their own volition).

Then there’s the matter of whether the NFL will continue to be as popular if it takes such a toll on its participants — or whether it will remain as profitable if concussion settlements spiral out of control. You even have folks like Malcolm Gladwell suggesting football will become “a ghettoized sport, not a mainstream American sport” — that it will draw most of its players from the lower economic classes, those who have fewer “options” and “for whom the risks are acceptable. . . . It’s going to become the Army.” (Except, perhaps, in such places as Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where it’s engrained in the culture.)

Here’s the thing, though: David Robinson made over $116 million in his 14 seasons in the NBA – and that doesn’t include endorsements. Yet his son, Corey, is a wide receiver at Notre Dame and may well be headed for an NFL career. In this instance, in other words, you have an extremely wealthy family — and a very intelligent dad, from my experience — who have spawned, of all things, a football player.

I could make the same point about Denzel Washington’s son, J.D., who was a running back at Morehouse College and spent a year on the St. Louis Rams’ practice squad. I ask you: How many NFL players come from more well-to-do backgrounds than Corey Robinson or J.D. Washington?

As long as a sport offers the chance for glory — never mind an eye-popping paycheck — it will attract players across the economic spectrum, I’m convinced. These players might, in the years to come, spend more time weighing the risk vs. the reward, and that’s a healthy thing. But the idea that vast numbers of them will simply stop playing, like Borland, is a bit farfetched. What it figures to come down to, ultimately, is the fans — and whether they, knowing the game’s consequences (loss of motor and cognitive function, etc.), stop watching. That’s when the league will really be in trouble.

But that, too, seems a bit of a stretch. This, after all, is America, the world’s biggest reality show. Pro football can almost be thought of as a spinoff of Fear Factor. Or is it the other way around?

Source: pro-football-reference.com, basketball-reference.com

Former 49ers linebacker Chris Borland: one and done.

Aaron Baddeley, meet John Brodie

They went bonkers in Golf Land Thursday over Aaron Baddeley’s miracle shot in the Valero Texas Open. It came at the par-4 17^th hole, which was playing 336 yards and slightly downwind. The play by play:

1. Baddeley goes for the green and pulls his tee shot into the woods.

2. Baddeley takes an unplayable tie, trudges back to the tee and tries again.

3. Baddeley lets ’er rip a second time and holes out for a birdie.

“I hit it and started walking,” he said, “and then heard the crowd going nuts.”

This reminds me of a shot John Brodie, the erstwhile 49ers quarterback, once pulled off in a PGA Tour event. Brodie dabbled on the Tour during the offseason — he later won on the Champions Tour — and on this day in 1959 he was playing in the second round of the Bing Crosby Pro-Am at Pebble Beach.

At the 110-yard seventh hole, he plunked his tee ball into the Pacific (which isn’t that hard to do, especially if the wind kicks up). Here’s a visual:

The 110-yard seventh hole at Pebble Beach.

So Brodie got another ball out of his bag, teed it up, and this one proved much more obedient. It went right in the cup – for a par 3. Or as The Associated Press put it:

John Brodie, San Francisco 49er[s] quarterback, aced the 110-yard seventh hole at Pebble Beach but had to settle for a par 3. He had knocked his first tee shot over the green and into the ocean.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Rejected rule changes

It’s at the spring meetings that the NFL attends to its rule book — and reminds fans that “We’ll decide what is and isn’t a catch.” What’s far more interesting, though — to me, anyway — are some of the rules that have been rejected over the decades, especially in the formative years. Let me run down a handful of them, just for fun. You’ll be amazed at some of the proposals.

● 1938 — Some in the league were concerned about the increasing proficiency of punters. Their ability, “from inside midfield,” to knock the ball out of bounds inside the 10 was too often putting the opponent “strictly on the defensive with no chance to open up offensively,” The New York Times reported. “. . . The coaches . . . do not consider this a matter of skill and feel it restricts the offensive aspects of the game until a score is made [by the defense] or the half ends.”

The proposed solution: declare such a punt a touchback, “just as if it had gone over the goal line,” which would enable the offense to start from the 20 instead of being pinned deep in its own territory.

Every attempt was being made in those days to unshackle offenses. The previous season, after all, fewer than 26 points had been scored in the average game. But this particular rule change never got off the drawing board.

● 1941 — The NFL still had limited substitution in the early ’40s, and it was up to the umpire to make sure teams didn’t sneak more players into the game than they were allowed. The rules committee actually considered the “installation of an honor system among coaches in regard to the number of substitutions so as to lighten the duties of the umpire,” The Associated Press said.

● 1944 — AP: “Earl Cavanaugh, veteran league head linesman, is sponsoring the proposal for awarding a point for a ‘field goal’ on a kickoff. Among other things, he says, this would discourage out-of-bounds kickoffs, which slow up the game.”

Let’s not forget, you kicked off from the 40 then, and the goal posts were on the goal line. With a little wind at your back, especially, you had a decent chance to score an extra point.

● 1945 — Steelers owner Bert Bell and Eagles coach Greasy Neale pushed for the adoption of sudden-death overtime to cut down on the number of tie games. The New York Times: “The rules committee said in rejecting the proposal . . . that the league hardly had enough players now for 60 minutes of competition.”

That’s right, the NFL considered regular-season overtime at least 29 years before it was voted in. The league was rightly concerned, though, about having “enough players” to get through games. Rosters were only 33 that season, and many guys didn’t get discharged from the military until the fall.

● 1953 — International News Service: “National Football League club owners . . . voted last night against a boost from six to seven points for a touchdown and elimination of the extra point.”

● 1955 — Redskins owner George Preston Marshall wanted to “abolish the use of any and all types of facemasks,” AP reported. He was convinced they caused more injuries than they prevented.

By the mid-‘50s, of course, almost all players were wearing a mask — and with good reason: They wanted their driver’s-license photo to look as good as possible. When the wire service took an informal poll of the Washington roster, it found that 32 of 33 players disagreed with their boss.

“If they took my facemask away,” tackle Don Boll said, “I’d quit football. I broke my nose seven times in college when I didn’t have a mask. The University of Nebraska spent $1,250 on me for plastic surgery.”

Defensive back Norb Hecker added: “With the Rams I lost six teeth, which were accidentally kicked out. I also fractured my left cheekbone. For a mask? Yes, sir.

● 1957 — Someone floated the idea of “allowing the punter [to stand] no more than 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage,” according to AP. “The latter change was designed to eliminate too many fair catches by forcing quicker punts and keeping more men on the line to block.”

● 1958 — This was the year college football added the two-point conversion. “The rule,” Time magazine said, “was designed to cut down tie games, give leading teams a chance to exert extra pressure and trailing teams a better chance to catch up.” NFL owners turned thumbs down on the proposal initially (though the AFL embraced it when it started up in 1960).

Cardinals general manager Walter Wolfner looked at it this way: “The ball has to be moved an awful long distance for six points, so why only three yards for two points?”

The league eventually changed its mind, but it wasn’t until 1994 — 36 years later. Some things take time.

At any rate, this year’s rule discussions were pretty mundane compared to other meetings. Maybe the owners should have reconsidered “awarding a point for a ‘field goal’ on a kickoff.”

The NFL and the NCAA Tourney, Part 2

One more link — long forgotten — between pro football and March Madness:

In March 1947, when the NCAA Tournament was just nine years old, Holy Cross, a small Jesuit school in Worcester, Mass., won the championship by beating Oklahoma in the final, 58-47. The Crusaders were first Eastern team to take the title, prompting one New England coach to say they were “the greatest thing that has happened to New England basketball since its inception as a sport 50 years ago in Springfield.” He was probably right.

NBA legend Bob Cousy was a freshman guard on that HC team. But the guy I want to talk about is the Crusaders’ coach, Alvin “Doggie” Julian. Why? Because less than two months after winning the NCAA tourney, he joined the coaching staff of the NFL’s Boston Yanks — while still hanging on to his college job, of course. You could do stuff like that back then.

Here’s the headline that ran in the May 8, 1947, Boston Globe:

According to the story, Julian had been serving as a football assistant at Holy Cross under Ox DaGrosa, but a “clash of temperaments” caused him to look for other fall employment. When the Yanks’ Clipper Smith offered him the position of backfield coach, he jumped at it — with the understanding it wouldn’t interfere with his college basketball duties. The seasons overlapped a bit, though, and it’s possible Doggie missed the Yanks’ last two games (on the road against the Steelers and Redskins) to devote his full attention to his hoopsters, who returned their entire starting lineup and stood a good chance to repeat as champs.

Julian had actually played some pro football in the ’20s after graduating from Bucknell. He was an end for the Pottsville Maroons during their Coal League days in 1923 and ’24, before they “graduated” to the NFL. Anyway, when the Yanks’ 4-7-1 season was over, Doggie guided Holy Cross to a third-place finish in the NCAAs, then coached the Boston Celtics for two years before returning to the college ranks at Dartmouth.

It was a unique career, to say the least, one that put him in the basketball Hall alongside his favorite ball handler, Cousy.

I’ll end with a couple of archival treasures — a photo of Doggie with his winning HC team (he’s the fellow in the suit on the right) . . .

. . . and a screen shot of his bio in the Yanks’ 1947 media guide.

Chuck Bednarik in his own words

Stuff the Eagles legend (May 1, 1925-March 21, 2015) said:

● “Backing up the line, that’s where a fellow can get plenty of action. There’s always something to do — make a tackle, intercept a pass. Sure, it’s nice to carry the ball, but there’s no thrill like backing up the line.” (1948)

● “I have played 14 years, and I’m counting the games that are left this season. Four, three, two, one, and then I’m hanging up my shoes. I’ve had it. I know I’ve said this for several years, but I’ve never been more sincere in my life. I told my wife the other day, I’ve played one year too long as it is. The pay has been good, though. There are two ways I never wanted to go out. One was with an injury. The other was with a poor team. I hate to quit on such a poor season.” (1962)

● “Joe Namath is a hell of a ballplayer. But as a human being he’s a hell of a creep. If he thinks he can break rules . . . then who does he think he is? . . . I don’t think long hair and athletics mix. Take Joe Pepitone, who used to play for the Yankees. Boy, would I like to be the catcher on a close play at the plate with him coming down the third-base line.” (1970)

● “The NFL had 12 teams when I played. Brother, you separated the men from the boys. You either had it or you were gone. Today, with 40-man squads and 26 teams, it’s too thin. Take quarterbacks, for example. Each team has two quarterbacks. That’s 52 quarterbacks. I want anybody to pick me out 10 outstanding quarterbacks now and six really good ones. They’re not there. There just aren’t that many good ones.” (1971)

The Hit: Bednarik lays out the Giants’ Frank Gifford. Note ball to right.

● “Every now and then people come up to me and say, ‘Oh, you’re the guy who put it to Frank Gifford.’ [Sportscaster] Howard Cosell keeps saying I blind-sided Gifford, but that isn’t true at all. He was running a down-and-in and, coming from my left linebacker position, I caught him head-on but cleanly. It was like a Mack truck hitting a Volkswagen. Frank had caught a pass, and when I tackled him the ball flew out of his hands and we recovered. I was so ecstatic over that that I jumped up and down in the air with my fist clenched. I didn’t know Frank was unconscious. Later, when his wife came to see him in the hospital, he said to her, ‘Honey, it was a clean tackle.’ We’re very good friends. He has even had me as a guest in his home. No sir, I was not a dirty player. Nobody ever accused me of that.” (1977)

● “Steve Van Buren of the Philadelphia Eagles was the best running back of his time, 1944-51. You can’t match yesterday’s apples with today’s oranges. But you can enjoy both.” (1984)

● “[The NFL champion 1960 Eagles] were the kind of team that you wondered how you kept winning. There were no superstars. I hate that, anyway — ‘superstars.’ To me, nobody is super except God.” (1986)

● “No question I could still go both ways [in today’s game], but I wouldn’t. I’d specialize, and I would last longer. I would be worth millions. It would be Lawrence Taylor’s salary plus 10 percent. And you know they try to compare me with linebackers like Dick Butkus, Willie Lanier and Sam Huff. There’s no comparison. They were mostly interior linebackers. I was a roving linebacker — protecting the middle and the sweeps. Plus, I centered the ball, I punted, I sometimes kicked off. My game called for so much more versatility.” (1992)

● “The positions I played [as a two-way player], every play, I was making contact [with an opponent], not like that . . . Deion Sanders. He couldn’t tackle my wife. He’s back there dancing out there instead of hitting.” (2005)

● “I’ll be 80 on May 1, and I know if they offered me $5 million, I could come back and snap the ball on punts and kicks. I know I could. I’d play one year and then retire.” (2005)

QB Norm Van Brocklin (11), Coach Buck Shaw and Bednarik (60) after winning the '60 title.

Quarterback Norm Van Brocklin (11), Coach Buck Shaw and Bednarik (60) after winning the ’60 title.

NFLers in the NCAA Tournament

More than a few NFLers have played college basketball — especially in the two- and three-sport eras – but only a handful have made much of a mark in the NCAA Tournament. Here are the five most notable ones (and a handful of others who also took part in March Madness):

● Antonio Gates, TE, Chargers, 2003-present — As a junior, Gates led 10^th-seeded Kent State to the Elite Eight, averaging 18.8 points and 7.3 rebounds in the tournament. He was the game’s

Antonio Gates: Once a hoopster, always a hoopster.

high scorer with 22 when Golden Flashes knocked off third-seed Pittsburgh in the Sweet 16. Alas, he was a tweener by NBA standards, a muscular 6-4, so he opted for a pro football career. San Diego signed him as an undrafted free agent and, 788 catches and 99 touchdowns later, he’s on his way to the Hall of Fame.

● Tony Gonzalez, TE, Chiefs/Falcons, 1997-2013 — Gonzalez joined California’s 1996-97 basketball squad late because the football team played in a bowl game. By the time the tournament rolled around, though, he was starting at power forward — and making a major impact. In Cal’s first-round game, he scored the Bears’ final 5 points (and 13 in all) to help the Bears edge Princeton. In Round 2, he had a team-high 23 in a victory over Villanova. His future was clearly in the NFL, though, and the following month the Chiefs drafted him 13^th overall. He went on to break virtually all the records for tight ends and figures to be voted into the Hall as soon as he’s eligible.

● Sam Clancy, DE, Seahawks/Browns/Colts, 1983, ’85-93 — Clancy was an even bigger bruiser than the first two guys, measuring 6-7 and bulking up to 288 in the NFL. He was the star of Pittsburgh’s 1981 NCAA tourney team, posting a double-double (22/13) in the opener against Idaho and racking up 16 points and 6 rebounds in the Panthers’ second-round loss to North Carolina (the eventual runner-up). The NBA’s Phoenix Suns selected him in the third round, but after a year in the Continental Basketball Association he turned to football and spent the next decade as a pass-rushing specialist. In 1991, his best season, he had 7.5 sacks for Indianapolis.

● Ron Widby, P, Cowboys/Packers, 1968-73 — Widby was a fabulous all-around athlete at Tennessee, good enough to lead the nation in punting (1966), win SEC Player of the Year honors in basketball (1967) and earn letters in baseball and golf. In his one NCAA tournament (’67), he totaled 43 points and 13 rebounds in the Vols’ two games. Following a brief stint in the American Basketball Association with the New Orleans Buccaneers, he punted for Dallas and Green Bay for six seasons. He was voted first team all-pro by the AP in 1969, when he led the NFC with a 43.3-yard average, and went to the Pro Bowl in ’71, the year the Cowboys won their first Super Bowl.

Terry Baker in action for Oregon State.

● Terry Baker, QB-RB, Rams, 1963-65 — Baker had an incredible final year (1962-63) at Oregon State. In the fall he guided the Ducks to a bowl berth, won the Heisman Trophy and was the first player taken in the NFL draft. And in the winter he started at guard for an OSU basketball team that reached the Final Four. In five tourney games, he averaged 10.4 points, with highs of 21 against San Francisco and 15 in the Elite Eight against Arizona State. As it turned out, it was the peak of his career. His arm — he was a southpaw — wasn’t strong enough for the NFL, and the Rams eventually moved him to running back. By 1967, after a season in Canada, he was out of football.

● Sixth man: Cornell Green, CB/SS, Cowboys, 1962-74 — Like Gates and Clancy, Green didn’t play college football. But Dallas was intrigued enough by his size (6-3, 208) and agility to offer him a contract — and understandably so. His senior season at Utah State, the Aggies made it to the Sweet 16, and he scored 27, 26 and 20 points in their three tournament games. That got him drafted in the fifth round by the NBA’s Chicago Zephyrs, but he decided to give pro football a shot instead. He wound up going to five Pro Bowls (three as a cornerback, two as a strong safety) and appearing in four NFL title games. He also gets bonus points for being the brother of Pumpsie Green, one of the great nicknames in baseball history and the first black player for the Red Sox.

Other bench players:

● Jack Dugger, T, Lions/Bears, 1947-49 — Dugger was a 6-3, 230-pound lineman who had a nondescript pro career. But near as I can tell, he’s the only NFL player to play in two Final Fours — with Ohio State in 1944 and ’45. Of course, the Final Four was different then. The semifinals were held in separate locations, the sites of the East and West regionals, after which the winners convened for the championship game (at Madison Square Garden in those years). In the ’44 semis, Dugger scored 8 points in a loss to Dartmouth, and in the ’45 semis he scored 4 in a loss to NYU (featuring the great Dolph Schayes).

● Red Hickey, E, Steelers/Rams, 1941, ’45-48 — In the 1941 NCAA tournament, Hickey’s Arkansas Razorbacks made it to the Final Four, where they were defeated by Washington State (with Red contributing 3 points). But his real talents lay elsewhere. As an NFL receiver, he tied for fourth in the league once in touchdown catches (7 in ’48), and as the coach of the 49ers in the early ’60s, he gave us the Shotgun offense, remnants of which can still be seen today. His son Mike was the Jets’ player personnel director in the ’80s.

● K.C. Jones, DB, Rams (training camp), 1955 — Ah, what might have been. The Rams drafted Jones out of curiosity in the last round in ’55 — the year he and Bill Russell helped San Francisco win the first of back-to-back NCAA titles. During his brief time in camp, he pretty much invented the bump-and-run style of pass defense, frustrating receivers with what can only be described as a full-court press. (And while his teammates constantly complained about his hand-checking, there was nothing in the rules preventing it.) Jones had the size (6-1, 200), athleticism, toughness and smarts to be another Night Train Lane, but basketball was his true calling, and he went on to glory with the Boston Celtics as — what else? — a defensive stopper.

Clarification: Yes, Vikings legend Joe Kapp played hoops at California in the late ’50s — the Bears’ glory years under Pete Newell. But no, he never got into a Final Four game. While he did appear in three tournament games in 1957 and ’58, going scoreless, he wasn’t on the team in ’59, when Cal won the NCAA title. Why? “I couldn’t play basketball [that season] because of the Rose Bowl,” he once said. (The Bears lost in Pasadena to second-ranked Iowa, 38-12.)

Sources: Encyclopedia of College Basketball by Mike Douchant, The Encyclopedia of the NCAA Basketball Tournament by Jim Savage, pro-football-reference.com, sports-reference.com.

In the 1997 NCAA Tournament, Tony Gonzalez led Cal with 23 points in a win over Villanova.

In the second round of the 1997 NCAA Tournament, Tony Gonzalez led Cal with 23 points in a win over Villanova.

The New Yorker’s careless fumble

Most fans – I would hope – are aware of James Harris’ contribution to pro football history. In 1969, as a rookie with the Bills, he became the first black quarterback to begin the season as the starter. He went on to have a decent career, too, winning 18 of 22 regular-season starts with the 1974-75 Rams and going to the Pro Bowl the first of those years. On arguably his best day, he threw for 436 yards.

James Harris during his Rams days.

When Harris retired recently as a senior personnel advisor for the Lions, The New Yorker decided to call attention to it — and to remind everybody of Shack’s (as he was called) sociological significance. Great. Wonderful. Bravo. What isn’t so great is that the author — unaware, apparently, of what was going on at Michigan State in those days — unfairly impugned an honorable, color-blind coach, Duffy Daugherty.

Here’s what Samuel G. Freedman wrote in the magazine’s Sporting Life column:

Amid the oppression of the segregated South, Harris thrived on the football field. He was an all-state quarterback on a state-championship football team in high school. In order to continue to play quarterback in college, Harris turned down a scholarship offer from Michigan State, which wanted to turn him into a tight end. At the time, there was a persistent color barrier throughout college and professional football: no matter how successful they were, black quarterbacks were forced to change position — to receiver, to running back, to defensive back — and cede their responsibilities to the white players who were believed to be smarter and better leaders. So Harris went to Grambling State University, a historically black school, to play quarterback under the legendary head coach Eddie Robinson.

My problem with this is the way Freedman lumps in Michigan State with the many programs at that time that either excluded blacks or wouldn’t in a million years have let one of them play quarterback. Daugherty was guilty of neither offense.

On the contrary, he already had a black quarterback on the roster, Jimmy Raye, who was the backup in 1965 and the starter the next two years. It was in 1966, you may recall, that Michigan State played its famous 10-10 tie with Notre Dame — the “Game of the Century,” it was dubbed — and ranked second in the final polls.

That Spartans team wasn’t unusual just because it had a black QB, by the way. It also might have had the most diverse roster in major-college football. Defensive end Bubba Smith, linebacker George Webster, running back Clinton Jones, wide receiver Gene Washington, Raye — all the biggest stars were black. According to a story last fall in the Detroit Free Press, the squad “had 20 [blacks] — including 11 starters.” This was unheard of in the mid-’60s.

Michigan State also had a Samoan running back (Bob Apisa) and a barefooted Hawaiian kicker (Dick Kenney). Daugherty was an equal-opportunity coach in every way. (He was even one of the first, in 1960, to have a soccer-style kicker. One week he was so dissatisfied with the length of his team’s kickoffs that he recruited a Dutch kid off the soccer team and gave him the job.)

At any rate, to suggest there was some kind of “color barrier” at Michigan State is beyond ludicrous. What Texas Western, with its all-black starting five, was to the integration of college basketball in 1966, the Spartans, in my mind, were to the integration of college football: a great leap forward.

It just so happens that Raye, a longtime NFL assistant coach, has collaborated with Tom Shanahan on a book about those remarkable Spartans teams: Raye of Light. His motivation, he told the Free Press, was to “to pay homage to Duffy Daugherty, who had enough courage to be willing to coach and accept, to extend a branch to recruit black athletes in the South, to give them an opportunity to get an education and play Big Ten football. He was color-blind.”

The book’s forward is written by Tony Dungy, who followed Raye’s path as a Big Ten quarterback, pro defensive back and NFL coach. Because of Jimmy’s exploits, Dungy dreamed of playing for Michigan State. But Daugherty retired, and Tony wound up at Minnesota under Duffy’s former assistant, Cal Stoll.

“How did we arrive at the point where African-Americans would have an opportunity to coach teams in the Super Bowl?” Dungy writes. “I believe it all stems back to the Big Ten and the influence those players had on the rest of the country. This book documents the efforts of Duffy Daugherty and his staff in recruiting black players from South.”

If Daugherty wanted Harris, a sturdy 6-foot-4, to switch to tight end, there was nothing racist about it. It was just a miscalculation on the order of, oh, Joe Paterno wanting Jim Kelly and Jeff Hostetler to be linebackers. Duffy was way ahead of his time in the equal-opportunity department – and should be remembered as such. To group him with the segregationists is a crime.

Sources: pro-football-reference.com, college-football-reference.com

Michigan State’s Jimmy Raye takes off and runs against Notre Dame in 1966 — the famed 10-10 tie.

PRO FOOTBALL DALY

The whole 100 yards — and sometimes the end zones, too.