Category Archives: 1930s

Snow in Buffalo

The NFL has moved the Bills-Jets game to Detroit this week because the show, of course, must go on. Even when the president of the United States gets assassinated, the show must go on in pro football. In the current case, it’s due to an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against Mother Nature, who dumped six feet of snow on Orchard Park and forced the Bills to find another venue. So the game will be played Monday night, not Sunday afternoon, and the site will be Ford Field, not Ralph Wilson Stadium.

It wasn’t always thus. In the days before TV mega-contracts, postponements and even cancellations were hardly unheard of. Sometimes all it took was slow sales ticket sales or the threat of bad weather to get owners to reschedule — or to bag the game entirely. Why don’t we revisit some of these episodes so you can get a better feel for The Way Things Were?

We begin with a couple of games in New York that were snowed out Dec. 5, 1926 — one between the Giants and Bears at the Polo Grounds, the other between the Brooklyn Horsemen and Duluth Eskimos at Ebbets Field. (And yes, I’m as surprised as anybody that a game involving the Eskimos could be snowed out.) Here’s how The New York Times reported it:

What’s interesting about the first game is that it was the second of back-to-backers for the Bears. They’d lost the day before to the Frankford Yellow Jackets in Philadelphia — their only loss of the season, it would turn out, and one that would leave them second behind the Yellow Jackets in the final standings. (This was before the league staged a title game to determine its champion.)

I’m kind of amazed George Halas, their owner/coach/end, didn’t insist that the game be played at a later date — for the New York payday as much as for the potential W. But as you can see from the Bears’ 1926 results, it was just canceled (though they did play twice more before calling it a season).

Then there was the time in 1936 the Eagles and Pirates (as the Steelers were called then) got the brilliant idea to move one of their games to Johnstown, Pa. Naturally, there was a flood that caused a postponement. Well, almost a flood. The Pittsburgh Press put it this way:

Two years later, Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney caused a stir by putting off a game against the Cleveland Rams because — brace yourself — he had too many players banged up. The Rams were none to pleased about it, as you can see in this Press story:

What’s interesting about this tempest in a leather helmet is that the teams wound up playing the game in December in New Orleans. It was the first NFL game ever played in the Big Easy. (Why New Orleans, you ask? Answer: During the Depression, clubs that didn’t draw well at home would play anywhere they could get a decent guarantee. The next year, the Rams played their season finale against the Eagles in Colorado Springs.

Moving along, in 1954 the Browns pushed their Oct. 3 home game against the Lions back to Dec. 19 because they weren’t sure if the Indians would need Cleveland Stadium for a World Series game against the New York Giants. (The Indians didn’t. The Giants completed their shocking sweep the day before.)

This created a bizarre situation. When the Browns and Lions finally did meet, all the other teams had completed their schedules — and Browns and Lions had already wrapped up their conference titles. So they played on consecutive Sundays in Cleveland . . . with the whole pro football world watching. The Lions won the first game 14-10, and the Browns won the one that really mattered 56-10. What’s that, a 50-point swing in the space of a week?

I could go on, but I’ll finish with the infamous Bills-Patriots postponement in 1961. The game was supposed to be played on a Friday night in Boston but, with Hurricane Gerda looming, was held over to Sunday. Almost predictably, Gerda ended up being the Brian Bosworth of storms — dozens of area high school contests went on as planned that night — and Buffalo coach Buster Ramsay was convinced the delay was “a deliberate attempt to upset my team. . . . A bush-league trick.”

The Patriots actually had to get the city council approval to reschedule to Sunday. They were using Boston University’s Field, you see, and BU didn’t have a permit for games on the Sabbath, according to The Boston Globe.

When the Bills and Pats finally did play, the weather — 35 degrees with 25-to-30 mph winds — was far worse than it had been Friday night. A mere 9,398 showed up to shiver, and Ramsey’s worst fears were realized: His club came out flat and fell behind 45-0 in a 52-21 loss.

At least we know Buffalo’s postponement this weekend wasn’t “a deliberate attempt to upset” the Jets. There’s real snow on the ground — alps of it. And it’s nice nobody had to go to the Detroit city council to get them to OK a Sunday game. Now Rex Ryan’s bunch just has to keep the Bills from running off to a 45-0 lead.

Source: pro-football-reference.com

Sept. 28, 1942 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The dead guy J.J. Watt just tied

Last week we had the Bears bringing the 1923 Rochester Jeffersons back from the dead. This week we have J.J. Watt, the Texans’ all-world defensive end, dredging up a player from 1938: Jay Arnold, a wingback for Bert Bell’s Eagles. To quote Flounder in Animal House . . .

As ESPN.com’s Tania Ganguli was good enough to note:

On Sunday in Cleveland, in a 23-7 win over the Browns, Watt became the first player since Arnold to catch two touchdown passes, return an interception for a touchdown and return a fumbled football for a touchdown all in the same season.

Watt, of course, did it as a defensive end. That’s probably more impressive than a two-way back in the ’30s doing it. After all, you wouldn’t expect a D-end to grab TD passes. In Arnold’s day, on

Eagles wingback Jay Arnold strikes a pose.

the other hand, a back could be expected to do just about anything, even kick. (And Jay did a little of that, too. In fact, he booted three extra points that season. So he still has a leg up — literally — on J.J.)

What’s cool about this cross-generational connection is that there’s virtually nothing else to remember Arnold for. Watt is a two-time Pro Bowler and pass-rushing maniac who’s building a case for Canton, but Jay had a mostly invisible career in which he scored all of six touchdowns and gained a grand total of 616 yards. He just happened, in 1938, to score TDs on both sides of the ball — and in three different ways. (Within a decade it became much harder to do this because, after the war, pro football evolved into a more specialized, two-platoon game. Fewer and fewer guys played both ways.)

But enough of that. Let’s take a closer look at Arnold’s ’38 season. Here’s something that might interest you: He scored three of those four TDs — on a reception, fumble return and interception return — in a single half, the first half of a 27-7 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates. (They weren’t the Steelers yet.) They were the first three scores of the game and staked Philly to a 20-0 lead.

Nobody else in NFL history has had a game like that. Indeed, only four other players — Watt being the latest — have even had a TD catch, interception TD and fumble TD in the same season. (You’ve gotta love George Halas being one of them.) And again: Arnold did it in two quarters. The United Press summarized his heroics this way:

Did you notice how The Jay Arnold Story just got better? The “Whizzer” who coughed up the ball for the Pirates was their hotshot rookie running back, Byron “Whizzer” White. So Arnold not only had a once-in-95-NFL-seasons game, one of his scores was the result of a fumble by a future Supreme Court justice.

Arnold’s other touchdown that year also had some significance. It came in Detroit on the last day of the season against a Lions team that, had it beaten the Eagles, would have forced a playoff with the Packers for the Western Division title. To their horror, Philadelphia jumped out to a 14-0 first quarter lead and upset them 21-7, with Arnold scoring the second TD on a 7-yard pass from fullback Dave Smukler. This is from The Associated Press:

The Texans still have six games to play, so Watt may yet outdo Arnold. As he said afterward, “There’s a lot of season left, so hopefully that’s not the end of it.” But let’s not forget, Jay has those three PATs as his hole cards. Wherever he is.

Source: pro-football-reference.com, Spalding’s 1939 National Football League Official Guide.

Friday Night Fights X: Joe Savoldi vs. Man Mountain Dean, 1934

The Bears’ signing of “Jumping Joe” Savoldi, the star fullback from Notre Dame, late in the 1930 season was a national story. Savoldi had been booted out of school in mid-November when it was discovered he was married — a no-no for college athletes back then — and George Halas was quick to get him in a Chicago uniform, even if he had to pay a $1,000 fine because Savoldi’s class had yet to graduate. (This, remember, was several years before the NFL had a draft. Teams were free to sign any player they wanted.)

Despite making great money with the Bears, Savoldi played just three games for them — the only games of his pro football career. He then turned to wrestling and, according to

Savoldi practices the Flying Dropkick.

wrestlingdata.com, had over 600 matches in the next 23 years (and briefly held one of the dime-a-dozen heavyweight “titles”). Years later, he explained the sudden switch to Frank Blair of the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

His Bears teammates, he said, weren’t too thrilled when they found out what Halas was paying him, and

they quit blocking for me. . . . Here I was getting some $4,000 a game with my cut of the gate, and my teammates in the line and backfield were being paid $50 to $125 per man. . . . If I was worth 20 times as much as they were, I could make my own touchdowns without any help. After I had been riddled a dozen times trying to hit the line or sweep off tackle, I just fell down and stayed there. I didn’t have a chance.

So they took me out and kept me on the bench after the second game — not because I couldn’t play football, but [because] the other guys wouldn’t play and block for me. I had a contract for 18 games after that first season, with a guarantee of $500 a game, but I didn’t want any part of that pro football. I went into wrestling. In that business you don’t need blockers.

As you might expect of a wrestler with 600 bouts, Savoldi took on anybody and everybody, from legends like Strangler Lewis and Jim Londos to ex-football players like Bronko Nagurski (his former Bears teammate), Gus Sonnenberg, Jim McMillen, Sammy Stein, Mayes McClain and Roy “Father” Lumpkin.

Nagurski was the champion himself for a while. Wrestlingdata.com has him beating Savoldi three out of three, but it seems to have missed this match in 1938:

During World War II, Savoldi performed some kind of “secret mission” for the U.S. government. Jack Cuddy of The Associated Press wrote about it in 1945. Savoldi wasn’t able to provide him with much detail — it was all very hush-hush — but Cuddy had his suspicions. Joe, he noted, had been born in Italy, and not only was fluent in Italian but knew a fair amount of French.

All Savoldi told him was that he was “on special assignment. Yes, I am permitted to tell you what areas I visited. They were North Africa, Sicily, Italy — including Salerno — and France — including Normandy. Yes, I was under fire — plenty of times. No, I wasn’t wounded. This scar on my cheek and these cauliflower ears came before the war.”

After he retired from the ring, Savoldi trained the famed Bobo Brazil, whose signature move was the concussion-causing Cocoa Butt. Jumping Joe’s specialty, naturally, was the Flying Dropkick, which he demonstrates — to great effect — in the following clip. His opponent is Man Mountain Dean. They crossed paths several times, but I’m pretty sure this bout was in 1934.

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

The name’s the same

Spent the better part of the morning trying to put together sets of Triplets — quarterback, running back, receiver — who share the same last name (even if they didn’t play on the same club or in the same era). There was no fudging allowed, either. For instance, you couldn’t try to team Kerry Collins with Cris Collinsworth or Trent Green with BenJarvus Green-Ellis or, heaven forbid, Rob Gronkowski with Bruce Gradkowski. The receiver could, however, be a wideout or a tight end. The rules weren’t totally inflexible.

Anyway, it was harder than I thought it would be. There just aren’t many surnames that are very common in NFL/AFL history. I almost hurled my laptop, Frisbee style, when I was two-thirds of the way to paydirt with Jim and Leroy Kelly — Hall of Famers both — but couldn’t come up with a receiver any better than Reggie, the underwhelming tight end for the Bengals and Falcons.

Smith is another one. You’d think that would be a gimmie — Emmitt at running back, Jerry (or Jimmy or Steve or Rod or Jerry) at receiver and . . . good luck finding a quarterback worth a darn.

If you work at it, though, you can dig up some nice threesomes. Here are my nominees for:

BEST SETS OF TRIPLETS SHARING THE SAME LAST NAME

[table width=”450px”]

Last name,Quarterback,Running Back,Receiver

Young,Steve*,Buddy*,Charle (TE)

Johnson,Brad,John Henry*,Calvin

Sanders,Spec,Barry*,Charlie* (TE)

Anderson,Ken,Ottis,Flipper

White,Danny,Whizzer,Roddy

Jones,Bert,Dub,Homer

Green,Trent,Ernie,Roy

Williams,Doug,Ricky,Roy

Collins,Kerry,Tony,Gary

Mitchell,Scott,Lydell,Bobby*

[/table]

*Hall of Famer

Only a few of these guys didn’t make at least one Pro Bowl or — in the case of pre-Pro Bowl players — all-pro team. Flipper Anderson didn’t, for example, but, hey, he holds the record for receiving yards in a game (336). In fact, he’s held it for 25 years, which is pretty remarkable considering how long receiving marks tend to last. And granted, Scott Mitchell was nothing special as a quarterback, but he did throw 32 touchdown passes one year for the Lions.

The first three listed are my gold, silver and bronze medalists. As for the others, you can order them however you like. I’m not sure it makes much difference. It’s kind of cool, by the way, that

Spec Sanders

Dub and Bert Jones are a father-son pairing. Dub, of course, is one of three NFL players to score six TDs in a game.

One last thing: I was fibbing about the no-fudging rule. Spec Sanders wasn’t technically a quarterback; he was a single-wing tailback for the New York Yankees of the All-America Conference in the ’40s. (He did play one season in the NFL, however, and intercepted 13 passes as a DB to lead the league.)

I included Spec because in 1947 he had one of the greatest offensive seasons of all time, throwing for 1,442 yards and 14 touchdowns and rushing for 1,432 yards and 18 TDs. (In his spare time, he ran a kickoff back 92 yards for another score.)

One day I spent a couple of hours on the phone with him, reminiscing about his playing days. He was utterly self-effacing, not the least bit impressed with his football feats. Just makes me want to keep his name alive.

From the New York Yankees’ 1948 media guide.

Helmetless players on parade #1

From time to time, since we’re in the midst of The Great Concussion Discussion, I’ll post photos I’ve come across of helmetless NFL players from the early days. The league didn’t make headgear mandatory until 1943 — two years before socks were required, by the way. Which makes you wonder: How did we get from there to the Fashion Police?

I found this photo the other day while nosing around The New York Times’ archives. It’s from a Giants-Bears game at the Polo Grounds in November 1934. The big bareheaded fellow in the middle, watching Ken Strong score a touchdown for New York, is Chicago’s left tackle, Link Lyman. We know this because, if you blow the photo up, you can see he’s wearing No. 12. That was Lyman’s number, according to the Bears’ media guide that year.

So we have a Hall of Famer scoring and a Hall of Famer, sans helmet, unable to prevent him from scoring. Nice. (In Link’s defense, it looks like the play might have been run away from him.)

But here’s what’s even better: Lyman’s NFL career began in 1922 with the Canton Bulldogs, who won the title his first three seasons. (They were the Cleveland Bulldogs in ’24.) Strong’s career, meanwhile, ended in 1947, by which time he was 41 and strictly a kicking specialist. So when you’re looking at this photo, looking at Lyman and Strong, you’re essentially looking at the first quarter-century of the NFL.

Note, too, in the background, how every seat seems to be filled — in the depths of the Depression, no less. The Times put the crowd at 55,000.

“[Bears running back] Red Grange, who attracted professional football’s largest crowd of more than 60,000 back in 1925, did not even get into the game as a substitute,” the newspaper reported. “Giant[s} officials clamed that yesterday’s crowd was the largest, college or professional, to see a football game in New York this year.”

Pro football in 1934 wasn’t quite the colossus it would become in the postwar years, but it was getting there.

Backup QBs to the rescue

In an eye blink Sunday, Cardinals fans went from dreaming about winning a Super Bowl on their home field to wondering whether there might be room for them on the Arizona State bandwagon. That’s the usual reaction, gloom and doom, when a starting quarterback goes down, especially the quarterback of an NFL-best 8-1 team.

The Cardinals weren’t a lock to take the title, but the way Carson Palmer was playing — he was 12-2 in his previous 14 starts before blowing out his knee against the Rams — they were definitely on the short list. Their defense, after all, has allowed more than 20 points only once (and all but won the last game by scoring two touchdowns). But now they have to look to Drew Stanton for salvation, the 30-year-old QB who has thrown 280 career passes.

Wonders never cease in these situations, though, and that’s not just a phrase. It’s truly amazing how often a backup quarterback has either led a team to the NFL title or kept his club in contention until the starter returned to finish the job (or at least come close). We’re not talking about a miracle here and a miracle there. We’re talking one, two, three . . . a slew of examples.

Almost every decade has a story like this — beginning with 1934, the NFL’s third championship game, which was won by a backup quarterback wearing sneakers on the frozen turf. That would

Ed Danowski

be Ed Danowski, a rookie (and New York kid) who’d done more running than passing before the No. 1 QB, Harry Newman, got hurt with three games left in the season.

The Giants were so panicked by the loss of Newman that they arranged to borrow Warren Heller from Pittsburgh, which had completed its schedule. (Crazy, isn’t it? The Giants still had three games to play, and the Pirates, as they were called then, were already done.) But the league disallowed the transaction after some owners squawked, leaving the Giants’ fate in the hands of Danowski. He wound up leading them to a key win over the second-place Boston Redskins in his first start, and was one of the heroes of the victory over the Bears in the legendary Sneakers Game, throwing for one touchdown and running for another.

And that’s just one for-instance. Here are 11 others that come to mind:

● Tobin Rote, 1957 Lions — Rote had been splitting time with Bobby Layne when Layne broke his ankle in the next-to-last game. With Rote under center, Detroit caught fire in the postseason, overcoming a 20-point deficit to beat the 49ers and obliterating the Browns 59-14 in the championship game (the last of the Lions’ three titles in the ’50s).

● Earl Morrall, 1968 Colts — Ol’ Flattop stepped in for Johnny Unitas, who missed virtually all of the season with an elbow injury, and guided Baltimore to a 13-1 record and the NFL championship, winning the MVP award in the process. Alas, the feel-good story had a horrible ending: a 16-7 loss to the AFL’s Jets in the Super Bowl, due in large measure to three interceptions thrown by Morrall.

● Mike Livingston, 1969 Chiefs — Livingston didn’t exactly tear it up after Len Dawson was sidelined with a partially torn ACL, but he did win all six of his starts to help Kansas City get in the playoffs. By this time Dawson was operational again, and he quarterbacked the Chiefs to victories over the Jets and Raiders to win the AFL crown and the NFL’s Vikings to capture the Super Bowl.

● Earl Morrall, 1972 Dolphins — Ol’ Flattop was four years older, 38, when he did for the ’72 Dolphins what he’d done for the ’68 Colts. He didn’t just hold the fort until Bob Griese recovered from a fractured leg, he won 10 straight starts, including the playoff opener over the Browns. Then Griese came off the bench in the AFC title game against the Steelers, rallied Miami to a 21-17 victory and remained the QB in the Super Bowl, which the Dolphins also won to cap their perfect 17-0 season. But without Morrall, it might never have happened.

● Mike Kruczek, 1976 Steelers — Kruczek was the Eddie Danowski of ’76, a rookie quarterback who was suddenly thrust into a starting role because of injuries to Terry Bradshaw. He didn’t need to shoulder that much of the load because Pittsburgh’s defense was nigh impenetrable that year, pitching five shutouts, and running backs Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier both topped 1,000 yards. Still, he went 6-0 during Bradshaw’s absence, putting the Steelers in position for a record-tying third consecutive championship. They might have won it, too, if Harris (bruised ribs) and Bleier (sprained toe) hadn’t been sidelined for the AFC title game.

● Vince Ferragamo, 1979 Rams — A third-year QB, Ferragamo got his big chance when Pat Haden broke his finger in Week 10. He responded by winning six of seven starts, leaning heavily on a staunch defense, as the Rams advanced to their first Super Bowl. They even led the heavily favored Steelers in the fourth quarter, 19-17, but then Bradshaw and John Stallworth burst their bubble with this famous play:

● Jim Plunkett, 1980 Raiders — The 32-year-old former No. 1 overall pick had fallen completely off the radar until Dan Pastorini broke his leg in the fifth game. But with a better supporting cast than he had in New England, Plunkett became the quarterback he was always supposed to be, leading Oakland to the championship that year (and again in ’83). Say this for the guy: He was a finisher. In the AFC title game and Super Bowl, he posted passer ratings of 155.8 and 145

● Jeff Hostetler, 1990 Giants — Phil Simms’ late-season foot injury opened the door for Hostetler, who was pushing 30 and had spent nearly six years as an understudy. He made the most of the opportunity, playing steady, interception-free ball in the last five games, all victories, including memorable postseason stare downs of the 49ers (15-13) and Bills (20-19 in the Super Bowl). His mobility (200 rushing yards, two touchdowns) brought a new dimension to the Giants offense.

● Erik Kramer, 1991 Lions — Undrafted coming out of North Carolina State, this one-time CFLer took over for Rodney Peete (torn Achilles) halfway through the season and guided Detroit to seven wins in a row, the last a 38-6 horse-collaring of the Cowboys in the second round of the playoffs. On that one he completed 29 of 38 for 341 yards and three TDs, with no picks. The NFC championship game against the Redskins didn’t go quite as well, but it was still a heck of a run. (And of course, the Lions haven’t gotten that far since.)

● Kurt Warner, 1999 Rams — We might never see another season like Warner’s. He was like Bill Murray in Caddyshack (except he really did win the Masters — or the Super Bowl, at least).

It still seems incredible, all these years later. Warner, a product of the Arena League and NFL Europe, was slated to play behind Trent Green that season. But then the Chargers’ Rodney Harrison bent Green’s knee the wrong way in a preseason game, and Kurt proceeded to toss 41 touchdown passes, win both the NFL MVP and Super Bowl MVP awards and take his first steps toward Canton (I’m guessing).

● Tom Brady, 2001 Patriots — Brady, the 199^th pick in the previous year’s draft, had hardly set foot on the field when Jets linebacker Mo Lewis knocked Drew Bledsoe out of the lineup in Week 2 with this crushing hit:

That was the last game Bledsoe started in New England. Brady took the job and ran with it, winning an improbable ring that year — thanks to a couple of last-second field goals by Adam Vinatieri — and two more in 2003 and ’04.

And now we have Stanton trying to add his name to the list. He doesn’t have the crunching ground game Kruczek had at his disposal, the offensive talent that glittered around Warner (and others) or a Hall of Fame coach running the show (as Livingston, Morrall, Kruczek, Hostetler and, almost certainly, Brady did). But as we’ve seen over the decades, from Danowski on down, there are more championship quarterbacks in the NFL than we think. All they need, some of them, is a break — of a leg, an ankle or some other part of their competition’s anatomy.

“In Defense of the Competitive Urge”

Let’s take a break from quarterbacks for a moment and talk about a lineman. The one I had in mind was Jerry Ford, the former University of Michigan center. Forty years ago, Ford, then the vice president of the United States, wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated in which he reflected on his playing days and the state of athletics. It’s wonderful — every last word of it — and remains relevant today.

(Little did SI know that, just a month later, Vice President Ford would become President Ford when Richard Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal.)

Ford was a very good player for the Wolverines, good enough to be invited to the East-West Game and the College All-Star Game, the latter an annual contest that pitted graduating seniors

The 1935 College All-Stars roster.

against the defending NFL champions. The Packers and Lions, he says, both offered him $200 a game — this was before the draft had been invented — but he opted to join the football staff at Yale, figuring he could get his law degree there in his off hours. You know who else was an assistant for the Bulldogs then? Pro Football Hall of Famer Greasy Neale, who would lead the Philadelphia Eagles to two titles in the ’40s.

Ford tells a funny story about Curly Lambeau’s attempt to recruit him for Green Bay. Some other sound bites that will hopefully encourage you read all of “In Defense of the Competitive Urge”:

● “It is a disgrace in this country for anyone not to realize his or her potential in any sport.”

● “[W]e have been asked to swallow a lot of home-cooked psychology in recent years that winning isn’t all that important anymore, whether on the athletic field or in any other field, national and international. I don’t buy that for a minute. It is not enough to just compete. Winning is very important. Maybe more important than ever.

“Don’t misunderstand. I am not low-rating the value of informal participation. Competing is always preferable to not competing, whether you win or not. . . . [But] if you don’t win elections you don’t play, so the importance of winning is more drastic in that field. In athletics and in most other worthwhile pursuits first place is the manifestation of the desire to excel, and how else can you achieve anything?”

● “Under [coach] Harry Kipke, Michigan used the short-punt formation, which was popular then, and as the center I fancied myself the second-best passer in the lineup. If I’m dating you, the center in the short punt or single wing is not just a guy who sticks the ball in the quarterback’s hands. Every center snap must truly be a pass [between the legs], often leading the tailback who is in motion and in full stride when he takes the ball. I don’t mean to be critical, but I think that is why you now see so many bad passes from center on punts and field goals. They don’t have to do it enough. I must have centered the ball 500,000 times in high school and college.”

● “[T]here is obviously a deep American involvement in and a great social significance to the game. No game is like football in that respect. It has so many special qualities, among them the combination of teamwork involving a large number of people, with precise strategies and coordination that are essential if anyone is going to benefit. The athletes are highly skilled, but subservient to the team. Yet if they do their job, they give an individual an opportunity for stardom. I know of no other sport that demands so much, and returns so much.

● “The sports news is glutted with salary disputes and threats of strike, of demands and contractual harangues, of players jumping from one league to another, or owners threatening to pull their franchises out of this or that city unless demands are met or profits improve.

“[W]hat scares me is that the fan may ultimately be abused, if he has not been already. The money has to come from somewhere. Traditionally, the somewhere is the fan’s pocketbook — and in the electronic age in which we live, the advertiser’s. At what point will the fan become disillusioned? When he comes to the conclusion that the team he is supporting has no reciprocal interest in his affection, I think there will be a withdrawal of support. It might not come today, or this season, but it will surely come.”

And how’s this for prescience?

● “When I was in China a few years ago I was astounded by the number of basketball courts. They were everywhere — in school yards, outside factories and farms. Boys and girls were playing basketball at age three and four, with miniature balls and undersized baskets. The sizes and heights were graded to coincide with the age group, something we might consider here, even up to the professional level. . . . In 1972, when I received the college Football Hall of Fame award at the Waldorf in New York, I remarked on this new Chinese passion for the old American game, and I said that one day soon we would have to cope with a seven-foot Chinese Wilt Chamberlain.”

Again, do yourself a favor and read The Whole Thing.

University of Michigan center Jerry Ford.

Memorable midseason trades

Wish there were more trades like the one that sent Percy Harvin from the Seahawks to the Jets, if only to liven things up during non-game days. The NFL, unfortunately, is different from other sports. Baseball, basketball and hockey are veritable swap meets at times, but rarely is there a deal during the pro football season that attracts much attention — or has much impact, really.

Part of it is that the deadline falls so early (though it’s been pushed back to the Tuesday of Week 9 — October 28 this year). Another part is that the salary cap limits clubs’ ability to add and subtract players. Then, too, there’s a playbook to be learned. You can’t plug a quarterback into your lineup as easily as you can a right fielder.

The early deadline is an anachronism dating to the days when weaker teams would unload salaries late in the season to cut their losses (thus becoming even weaker teams, which did nothing for the young league’s image). The latter is no longer an issue, of course — it’s hard to lose money in the NFL — and the former, as I said, is problematical because of the cap. So why not extend the deadline to, say, December 1? It would enable contending clubs to address weaknesses created by injuries and help the also-rans stockpile draft picks for rebuilding. Win-win.

The only thing teams would have to do to create a more lively in-season trade market is hold some money back — that is, not spend to the cap. But I doubt there’ll ever be much support for a later deadline because, well, owners don’t think like you and I do.

The Harvin deal motivated me to compile a list of 10 notable midseason trades. I’m not going to suggest these are the 10 biggest midseason trades; I might have overlooked (or underestimated) a few. And if I have, please submit your own nominations. What’s interesting is that none of them took place later than 1990. Since the institution of free agency in 1993, clubs have essentially adopted the attitude of: Why pay for something today that you might be able to get for nothing (except, perhaps, millions of dollars) tomorrow?

10 NOTABLE IN-SEASON TRADES IN NFL HISTORY

● 1938 — TB/QB Frank Filchock from the Pirates (Steelers) to the Redskins for an undisclosed amount of money (and possibly a draft pick).

This was one of those Salary Dumps I referred to earlier. Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney had signed running back Whizzer White to a huge contract, and the team wasn’t winning. So in mid-October he got rid of several players, including Filchock, a promising single-wing tailback who had been the 14^th pick in that year’s draft. Frankie had some fine years in Washington as Sammy Baugh’s alternate, then moved to the Giants in 1946 and led them to the championship game. (He’s also remembered for getting caught up in the attempt to fix that game, which caused him to be banned from the league for three seasons.)

● 1958 — QB Bobby Layne from the Lions to the Steelers for QB Earl Morrall, a 1959 No. 2 (OG Mike Rabold) and ’60 No. 4 (DT Roger Brown).

The deal reunited Layne with his old Lions coach, Buddy Parker, who had quit and taken the Pittsburgh job. Bobby played some of his best ball in the second half of that season, as the Steelers finished on a 6-0-1 tear to wind up third in the Eastern Conference. He also gave the perennially losing franchise some much-needed credibility in the late ’50s and early ’60s. His only failure was that he never got Pittsburgh to the title game. Brown, by the way, turned out to be a stud defensive tackle for the Lions, a 300-pounder who went to six Pro Bowls. And Morrall had some great moments with the ’68 Colts and undefeated ’72 Dolphins.

● 1974 — QB John Hadl from the Rams to the Packers for two No. 1s (both Top 10), two No. 2s and a No. 3 in the next two drafts.

Nowadays, three of the picks would be in the first round (8, 9, 28) and the other two in the second (39, 61). This was your basic desperate-for-a-quarterback move by Green Bay. Problem was, Hadl, who’d been a first-team all-pro the season before, was 34, and his best football was behind him. Two years later, the Packers dealt him to Houston for QB Lynn Dickey. Who the Rams drafted with the Hadl picks: DT Mike Fanning, CB Monte Jackson, C Geoff Reece, CB Pat Thomas, C Geoff Reece. Jackson and Thomas went to multiple Pro Bowls. The fifth pick from the deal, a ’76 No. 1, was sent to the Lions as compensation for signing free agent WR Ron Jessie, a Pro Bowler in his first season with L.A.

● 1980 — RB Chuck Muncie from the Saints to the Chargers for a 1982 No. 2.

Muncie was tremendously talented and equally troubled (read: drugs, alcohol), which is why his price was so reasonable. But Chargers coach Don Coryell was assembling a Super Offense

Chuck Muncie

around Hall of Fame QB Dan Fouts and decided to take a chance on Chuck, who had already been to one Pro Bowl (and would go to two others). San Diego made it to the AFC title game in Muncie’s first two seasons, losing to the Raiders and Bengals, but then his demons undid him again and he was packed off to the Dolphins. Who the Saints drafted with the Chargers pick: LB Rickey Jackson, who’s now in Canton.

● 1981 — WR Wes Chandler from the Saints to the Chargers for Nos. 1 and 3 picks in 1982. Chandler was another of Coryell’s offensive additions (along with Muncie and TE Kellen Winslow, San Diego’s first-rounder in ’79). He went to three Pro Bowls with the Chargers, and in the nine-game ’82 strike season averaged 129 receiving yards a game, a record. Who the Saints drafted with the San Diego picks: WR Lindsay Scott (69 career receptions) and DB John Krimm (nine NFL games). In other words, not much.

● 1981 — DE Fred Dean from the Chargers to the 49ers for a 1982 No. 2 and the option to switch No. 1s in ’83.

For instant impact, you won’t find many better deals than this one. Strengthened by Dean’s Hall of Fame pass-rushing abilities, San Francisco went on to win the Super Bowl that season and again in ’84. What’s truly amazing, though, is what happened after San Diego chose to swap first-rounders in ’85 (moving up from 22 to 5 to take LB Billy Ray Smith). The Niners then traded the 22^nd selection back to them for two No. 2s (36, 49) and turned them into Pro Bowl RBs Wendell Tyler (via a trade with the Rams) and Roger Craig (via the draft). To recap: Dynasty-bound San Francisco got Dean, Tyler and Craig, and the Chargers got Smith and CB Gil Byrd (the 22^nd pick). Nice.

● 1983 — CB Mike Haynes from the Patriots to the Raiders for a 1984 No. 1 and ’85 No. 2.

Haynes, a holdout, didn’t want to re-sign with New England. And when Al Davis finally worked out a trade for him — a tad after the deadline — the league tried to disallow it. But Davis

Mike Haynes

ultimately prevailed, and the cornerback combination of Hall of Famer Haynes and Pro Bowler Lester Hayes turned the Raiders defense into a total monster, one that destroyed the Redskins, one of the highest-scoring teams in NFL history, in the Super Bowl later that season. Who the Patriots drafted with the Raiders picks: New England packaged the ’84 No. 1 (28^th) with their own (16^th) to get the first overall pick and selected WR Irving Fryar, who had a very good 17-year career (most of it with other clubs). The No. 2 brought DB Jim Bowman. Remember, though: The Pats went to the Super Bowl themselves in ’85 — and beat the Raiders in the playoffs to get there.

● 1987 — RB Eric Dickerson from the Rams to the Colts for three No. 1s and three No. 2s spread over the next two drafts, plus RBs Greg Bell and Owen Gill. The trade also involved the Bills, who came away with LB Cornelius Bennett, Indianapolis’ unsigned No. 1 pick that year (and the second overall selection).

What a blockbuster. Dickerson was one of the biggest names in game, a Hall of Famer whose 2,105-yard rushing season in 1984 is still the record. So why did the Rams deal him? Contract issues. In Indianapolis he rejoined his coach at SMU, Ron Meyer, who showcased him the way John Robinson had in Los Angeles. (In other words, this was the running back version of the Layne trade.) Backs tend to have shorter primes, though, and Eric rushed for more yards with the Rams (7,245) than with the Colts (5,194). Still, Indy made the playoffs in ’87 — for the first time since moving from Baltimore – so it’s not like Jim Irsay didn’t get anything out of the trade.

As for the Rams, Gill didn’t gain a single yard for them, but Bell was their leading rusher in 1988 and ’89, when they reached the postseason. Who they drafted with Colts’ and Bills’ picks: RB Gaston Green, WR Aaron Cox, RB Cleveland Gary, LB Fred Strickland, LB Frank Stams and CB Darryl Henley. Only Green ever made the Pro Bowl (once), and Henley wound up in prison for cocaine trafficking and other felonious activities.

● 1989 — RB Herschel Walker from the Cowboys to the Vikings for the kitchen sink.

There were enough picks and players involved in this trade – 18 in all, including three No. 1s and three No. 2s – to give you a headache. Dallas’ major acquisitions, through the draft, were RB Emmitt Smith, the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, and five-time Pro Bowl SS Darren Woodson. (The rest were pretty much role players.) As for Walker, he was a disappointment in Minnesota, though the Vikings also got a third-round selection in the deal that they turned into WR Jake Reed, who had four 1,000-yard seasons. With Smith, the Triplets (Troy Aikman-Michael Irvin-Emmitt) were complete, and the Cowboys became the team of the ’90s, winning three Super Bowls in four years.

● 1990 — QB Steve Walsh from the Cowboys to the Saints for Nos. 1 and 3 picks in 1991 and a No. 2 in ’92.

Once Jimmy Johnson decided on Aikman as his quarterback, he auctioned off Walsh, his former University of Miami QB, who he’d taken in the ’89 supplemental draft. The New Orleans first-rounder, which Johnson traded to the Lions, didn’t bring much in return, but the third-rounder, OT Erik Williams, was voted to four Pro Bowls. The second-rounder is the great What Might Have Been. Jimmy used it to move up and draft WR Jimmy Smith, who washed out in Dallas but had 11 tremendous seasons with the Jaguars, catching 862 passes and going to five Pro Bowls. Walsh quarterbacked Saints to the playoffs in ’90, going 6-5 as a starter, but didn’t have many more career highlights.

Sources: pro-football-reference.com, prosportstransactions.com, various Sporting News Football Registers.

For Rex Ryan’s eyes only

That was a tough way for the Jets to lose Thursday night — on a Hail Mary 58-yard field goal try by Nick Folk that failed to clear the big paw of Patriots defensive tackle Chris Jones. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rex Ryan, assuming he could get himself to sleep afterward, had a dream like this:

For the record, that’s one, two, three, four 1936 Green Bay Packers knocking through 50-yarders. This is from a promotional video filmed in Hollywood after the Packers beat the Boston Redskins to win the NFL title. No. 7 is Hall of Fame fullback Clarke Hinkle, No. 57 is tackle Ade Schwammel, No. 52 is guard Tiny Engebretsen and No. 59 is center Frank Butler. (I’m going by the all-time uniform numbers listed in the Packers’ 2014 media guide. It’s also possible No. 59 is tackle Ernie Smith, who did most of their kicking.)

As you can see, all of them are good-sized guys. Teams back then liked kickers with “a heavy leg.” They figured it helped get more distance. Note, too, the white footballs — which were used for night games because they were more visible and were used in this instance for the same reason, so the camera could pick them up in the distance.

Imagine having four players on your team capable of booting a 50-yarder. Of course, it was more of a kicking game in those days, so it was a skill you developed if you had the ability. It wasn’t unusual for a club to rotate several kickers — depending, perhaps, on the distance of the kick. Some kickers were better on the shorter ones, some were better on the longer ones.

80 years ago: Marty Glickman vs. Sid Luckman

This doesn’t have anything to do with pro football, per se, but it’s kinda cool nonetheless. Here’s the headline that ran across Page 9 of the Brooklyn Eagle on Oct. 13, 1934:

Yes, that’s Marty Glickman, the future sportscaster (Giants, Jets, Knicks, etc.), who helped the Madison High hand mighty Erasmus Hall a 25-0 loss, its first in the regular season in four years. But that’s not why I’m posting about it. I’m posting about it because in the second quarter, Glickman intercepted a

Sid at Columbia

pass and returned it 75 yards for a touchdown. The passer? Sid Luckman, Erasmus’ single-wing tailback, who would go on to quarterback the Bears to four NFL titles. For more details, read the story by the Eagle’s Harold Parrott.

Glickman reminisced about the game in the autobiography he wrote with Stan Isaacs, The Fastest Kid on the Block:

Two plays stand out from that game. I was the tailback and signal caller in the single wing, and early in the game I quick-kicked on third down. I kicked it over Luckman’s head — he was the safety — and the ball rolled dead at about the 8-yard line. It must have gone about 65 yards. It completely surprised them. We held, Luckman punted out, I caught the ball at midfield and ran it back to the 35-yard line. We scored a couple of plays later. . . .

Later, Luckman threw a pass diagonally downfield that I intercepted at our 25-yard line. Both Sid and I were off to the side, and he was the only one who had a shot at me. He tried to race over and tackle me, but there was no way he could catch me. Whoosh, I went 75 yards for the touchdown, and we won the game. We later beat Roosevelt, 12-0, for the city championship.

Luckman had another memory of his rival in his autobiography, Luckman at Quarterback:

We fought each other tooth and nail in every game we played, with the result that we became chums off the field, almost inseparable each summer, though all we had in common was a charley-horse I handed Marty on one play, and a bruised ear he gave me on a hard tackle. How did we become friends? I guess Ma Luckman was responsible for that. Ma never did like “feuds” of any sort, and especially failed to understand how the papers could dare write that Luckman and Glickman were ready to “tear into each other again next Saturday.” Her little boy, she sincerely felt, had no such malice in his heart.

So she called up Marty’s folks and invited them over for supper, figuring on patching up the “feud.” The next day Marty and I took in a pro game at the Polo Grounds and watched someone else fight it out for a change.

Actually, Glickman was more celebrated for his track exploits than his football prowess. (Note that Parrott refers to him as “the city’s 100-yard champion sprinter.”) Two years later, at HItler’s

Marty the U.S. track man

Olympics in Berlin, he was in line to run in the 4-by-100-meter relay, but he and another Jewish member of the U.S. team, Sam Stoller, were replaced at the last minute. Guess why.

If you wanted to do an American version of Chariots of Fire, Glickman and Luckman would be the perfect athletes to build it around. Sid, of course, had his own burdens to bear. His father was convicted of murder in 1936 and spent the rest of his life in Sing Sing prison. One of these days, maybe I’ll get around to writing a screenplay.

Finally, in case you missed it: The Madison-Erasmus game was played at Ebbets Field, home of the baseball and football Dodgers, before a crowd of 20,000. That was more than the football Dodgers drew, on average, that season (less than 12,000, if Total Football‘s figures are accurate). Football in the ’30s: a different world.

PRO FOOTBALL DALY

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