What It Was, Was Football

Years ago,  Andy Griffith did a whole comedy routine with this title.  In the story he told, he was a southern rube, on his way to a prayer meeting, when he was somehow shunted into a football game which he said the object of was, "To run across a little pasture without gettin' knocked down or steppin' in something."

When I taught US history, I did tell the students that it  was the Puritans who brought what became football to America, and the game in those days actually sounds like what Andy described.

I first started following football when I was about eight years old. The game was different back then in the 1950's than it is now, and I'd like to talk about some of those differences.

First of all, football back then meant college football. There were pro teams, of course, all in the big cities of the east and in Los Angeles, but outside of those metropolises the college game reigned supreme. Television covered football, and on Sundays there was a choice between the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Browns games. The Redskins were truly awful in the late 1950's and watching them was simply painful. The Browns were led by the great Jim Brown, and they had a quarterback with the unlikely name of Milt Plum. The Browns attack was basically, "Brown to the left, Brown to the right, Brown  up the middle, and throw a pass if you absolutely must." I admit I didn't appreciate Jim Brown, and wanted much more passing.

Oklahoma, coached by Bud Wilkinson, was undefeated in 47 straight games in the middle 1950's. The string was broken when the Sooners lost to Notre Dame 7-0, I think in 1958. The game was on tv and I was rooting for the Irish.

The service academies had good teams back then. Army was excellent in 1958, I think it was, behind the Heisman Trophy winner that year, Pete Dawkins.  A few years later, Navy produced Heisman winners in Joe Bellino and Roger "the Dodger" Staubach. Navy played in the Orange Bowl game of 1961, I think, losing to Missouri.

There was no Bowl Championship game back then. The big four bowls, the Rose, Sugar, Cotton and Orange, had agreements with the various football conferences. The Rose Bowl was always between the champions of the Big Ten and the Pacific Coast Conference, the Southwest Conference champ hosted the Cotton Bowl, the Southeast winner played in the Sugar Bowl, and the winner of the Big Eight played in the Orange Bowl.

There were more independent colleges back then. Penn State often was in one of the big bowls, usually the Orange. Notre Dame was much sought after, but the Irish did not accept bowl invitations, believing their student athletes would miss too much class time if they went to a bowl. That seems charmingly quaint now.

There were lesser bowls, of course, but they weren't named after corporate sponsors. (And by the way, why doesn't Tidy Bowl sponsor a game? They'd be a natural, I think.) Instead, I recall the Bluebonnet Bowl, the Gotham Bowl, and the Bluegrass Bowl. All are gone now. The Liberty Bowl was still being played in Philadelphia.

The football  season was shorter. In northern climes, it ended by about mid-November. It stretched out a bit longer in the south, but there was always a hiatus between the regular schedule and the bowls. New Years Day was the finale, and those bowls were all in southern cities.

Most colleges played a ten game schedule. Ohio State coach Woody Hayes insisted that nine games was enough, and so that's all the Buckeyes played. That also seems quaint nowadays.

The pro season ended in mid-December. The NFL had twelve teams in two divisions and there was a league championship between the two top teams. There were no playoffs.

Living two doors down from my family in the late '50's was the Laurie family, who were from Baltimore and whose son Jackie, just my age, was a big Colts fan. I watched the 1958 NFL championship game with him and his father at his house. That was the famous sudden death game between the Colts and the New York Giants, played at Yankee Stadium. For younger readers, the Colts led most of the game but the Giants scored two quick touchdowns in the fourth quarter and only a last second field goal by Steve Mira forced overtime. It had never happened before. In the extra period, Johnny Unitas guided the Colts to the winning touchdown. It was the game that really put the NFL on the sporting map.

Now, a few things about the players. Sports medicine is far superior to what it was like half a century ago, so players are much more apt to return from injuries now. Greater care is taken to be sure they are fully recovered from injury now than back then. Players in those days were almost guaranteed to ave health problems later in life.

The equipment is better now too. Better helmets, face masks and clear shields keep players from some of the head injuries so many suffered from then.

On the other hand, playing more games there's a greater chance of injury. Finally, I wouldn't say the players are bigger now, but they're definitely heavier. A big lineman back then weighed about 270. The Detroit Lions had a defensive tackle who  topped 300 pounds, but he was the heaviest player in the league, I think. Now, a lineman below that weight is undersized. The heavier players means more violent collisions, I think, and carrying that much weight just has to be bad for their health.

Well, that's what I remember about football. The shorter season did leave Jackie and me much more time to argue about boxers and horse races.

(They were the Baltimore Colts then, not the Indianapolis Colts!)