JERRY SLOAN AND PROJECTING THE SIXTIES INTO THE MODERN NBA & NFL

I wrote another long essay, this one starting off as a sort of tribute to the late Jerry Sloan, one of my favourite basketball players when I was a kid. Thinking about Sloan's qualities led me to write another 1,000 words about how he and players from his era might project into the modern NBA, and THAT led to another 1,000 words about how NFL (and AFL) players from the Sixties might project into the modern NFL. It was an exercise that fascinated me...you can read it at my Patreon site, which is an extremely reasonable $3/month to subscribe to, and I was be starting my preseason looks at all the NFL teams soon...you can link to FMTE at Patreon here.

PETE RETZLAFF, TIMMY BROWN & THE 1960 CHAMPIONSHIP EAGLES

I've written a double-tribute to two Philadelphia Eagle greats who died in April, along with a look back at the Eagles' 1960 NFL championship season. And Timothy Brown's post-football acting career (you have seen Black Gunn, haven't you?). It's over at my Patreon column: https://www.patreon.com/posts/37414714

MITCHELL & MARSHALL: BOBBY MITCHELL, RACE & THE NFL

I've written another long essay on a recently-deceased NFL player. In this case it's Bobby Mitchell, Jim Brown's running mate in Cleveland and then the first player to break the NFL apartheid in Washington with the Redskins. You can read it at my patreon.com column, Friday Morning Tight End if you subscribe to it (£2/$3 a month) or at Medium by following this link which will bypass the paywall at a site which remains a good value.

JIM TAYLOR: FULLBACK, PACKER

When the news came that the Packers' great Jim Taylor had died aged 83, the first message I got was from a Philadelphia friend of mine. 'You can get up now Jim, the game's over,' it read. That was a reference to the 1960 NFL championship game, the only playoff game Vince Lombardi ever lost. The Packers were driving, but with about 20 seconds left Bart Starr couldn't find a receiver in the end zone, and dumped the ball off to Taylor, who broke a couple of tackles but was then wrapped up by Chuck Bednarik and Bobby Jackson. Bednarik sat on him for 12 seconds until the clock ran out, then gave Taylor the famous quote.

Jim Taylor was a winner and Jim Taylor was tough. Those two things defined him and I'd put the second one first. His face looked like it was chiseled out of stone: a crew cut topped rectangle with a flat nose and powerful jaw. He was a huge college star at LSU. I can remember seeing Billy Cannon star for them when I was young, in his Heisman winning season, but in 1957 when Cannon and Taylor shared the running duties, it was Taylor who was the focus of opposing defenses. He was drafted by the Packers, but didn't come into his own until Lombardi took over the team, and paired him and Paul Hornung, another Heisman winner. When you think of the power sweep you think of Hornung (or Donny Anderson or Elijah Pitts) running behind the two guards, Fuzzy Thurston (63) and Jerry Kramer (64) and Taylor, but the Pack also ran it the other way, with Taylor the ball carrier. He was also a receiving threat out of the backfield, a hard guy to tackle one on one in the open field.

His good fortune was to be a part of that Packer dynasty, whose greatest ability was to be able to separate themselves from good teams like the Colts or Giants or later the Cowboys when it mattered most. They had talent, but the talent grew because they fit and played Lombardi's system to perfection. In a sense, the idea that players on great teams tend to get overvalued (see all the Packers from that era in the Hall of Fame) also means they get undervalued as individuals as time moves on, and the numbers of that era get lost in the bigger shinier numbers of the present day.

Jim Taylor was also hampered by being only the second-best Jim to play fullback in his era, behind Jim Brown. But look what happened in 1962, when Hornung was suspended for the season for associating with gamblers. Taylor ran for 1,474 yards and19 touchdowns (in 14 games) and that was Brown's only season not leading the NFL in rushing. The Pack beat the Giants 16-7 in the NFL championship game on a frozen Yankee Stadium surface with the temperature at 17 degrees F (-8 C) and the winds at 40-50 mph. Green Bay's D ( led by game MVP Ray Nitschke) forced five fumbles.Taylor ran 31 times for only 85 yards, scoring the only TD (guard Jerry Kramer, subbing for an injured Hornung, kicked three field goals). Taylor, who it turned out was suffering from hepatitis and had lost 15 pounds in the week before the game, took a beating, mostly from Giants' MLB Sam Huff. He bit through his tongue and required six stiches on his elbow. Steve Sabol, whose father Ed had bought the film rights (a key step to becoming NFL Films) recalled the intense violence and profane trash talk between Taylor and Huff. Watching the game on black and white TV as a kid, I can recall it and a 60 Minutes segment called 'The Violent World Of Sam Huff as if they were one thing.

Fullbacks were not just blockers in those days. I recall, besides Brown and Taylor, John Henry Johnson, Nick Pietrosante (a local guy from my area), Johnny Olszewski, Jim Nance, Cookie Gilchrist and the likes: guys operating from two-back sets who did a bit of everything—think Larry Csonka as maybe the last great example of the genre.

Taylor was known as the kind of runner who would seek out potential tacklers and run through them, rather than try to avoid them. 'Jim Brown will give you a leg and take it away,' Lombardi said. 'Jim Taylor will give you a leg and ram it through your chest.' He was old school all the way, exactly what we thought of football players being when I was a kid. It makes me remember why I hesitated for an instant as a 13 year old high school freshman about which sport I was going to be given the kit for. But only for an instant.

Taylor played one best-forgotten season for the Saints in his adopted home town of New Orleans, then ran a business on the docks there. He didn't place much store in the modern game, which probably won't surprise you. As he said to Bob McCullough in My Greatest Day In Football, “Forget all that talk, I like action. Today’s athletes, they’re just full of so much conversation instead of keep your mouth shut and just do your job. I don’t even watch a game.” I would watch a Jim Taylor game any time.

Note: This feature also appears as a bonus at my football site: patreon.com/mikecarlsonfmte, where I preview all the week's games as well as write the occasional feature.  If you're interested in football, check it out...

IN MEMORIAM CHUCK BEDNARIK: MY NFLUK COLUMN

In the NFL offseason my NFLUK Friday Morning Tight End column becomes Friday Monthly Tight End, and this month's, which is up at the nfluk.com website (you can link to it here) was dedicated to Chuck Bednarik, who died last Saturday. Here's what I wrote:

REMEMBERING CONCRETE CHARLIE

If you've been reading my columns for any length of time you'll know I'm an apostate American in the sense of not believing more is always better, and I've been critical of many moves the NFL has made in the direction of more. But I have to say honestly that I admire the way in which they have turned the off-season into a non-stop attention-getter. I still would prefer to see the draft come in the next few weeks, but after the most fascinating free-agency period I can remember, and the creation of the 'veterans combine' (which falls way short of the return of a development league, but is a good step, and ought to be called the 'veterans pro day') I appreciate what the league has done to stay in the spotlight since the Super Bowl. If it gets any busier, I'm going to need my weekly column back in the off-season!

Iron Mike is, however, at heart old school, so this month's column won't be about any of the issues and moves that have filled your consciousness for the past few weeks. Instead, it's about Chuck Bednarik, because they didn't come any more old-school than Concrete Charlie.

You probably know he was the last of the full-time both-ways players, at center and linebacker. EJ Holub might have challenged his mark, but Holub, who played for the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs had nine knee surgeries, and played one or the other, mostly at linebacker until his knees forced the move back to center. In fact he started Super Bowl II at linebacker, and Super Bowl IV at center; no one else has ever done that.

But they couldn't keep Bednarik from playing both ways. In 1960, when the Eagles won the NFL title, he was 35 years old, and exclusively a center until Bob Pellegrini was injured in week five. Bednarik, formerly the middle backer, assumed his spot on the outside, which is where he was when he leveled Frank Gifford at Yankee Stadium. The hit put Gifford out of the game for a year and a half, with concussion symptoms, and was immortalised in John Zimerman's photo of Bednarik celebrating over Gifford's prostrate form. But when you watch the film you realise that Bednarik wasn't celebrating the hit, that the photo has been misinterpreted for half a century.

On film the hit looks like a body slam. I worked with Frank at ABC, and I recall his talking about it only once, in Kitzbuehel, Austria, where we were covering the skiing. He said it looked worse than it was, that it was the impact with the hard infield surface of Yankee Stadium that had done the real damage. He emphasized that the hit was perfectly legal (Giants' fans like to insist it was a clothesline) but came from his blindside. In fact, you see Bednarik do a great job of playing the scrambling quarterback, George Shaw, then chasing down Gifford after the catch.

But what's fascinating is watching Bednarik first go toward the fumbled ball, which the Eagles recovered behind the play. Zimmerman's photo was taken only AFTER Bednarik turned back to Gifford, looking back toward the Eagles' side of the ball, and he was celebrating the fumble recovery that sealed the Eagles' win.

Bednarik's second most-famous tackle came in the NFL championship game that year, when he stopped Jim Taylor on another pass play out of the backfield, Taylor had broken one tackle and slipped another, but Bednarik actually had some help with the stop, at the seven yard line, and with holding Taylor down until time had expired. But his quote remains famous: 'You can get up now, Jim, this game's over'. That game was the only playoff match Vince Lombardi ever lost.

Bednarik made the NFL's all-decade team for the 1950s as a center. He didn't make the 75^th anniversary team, although he probably should've got some recognition for being a two way player. Looking at film, seeing his athleticism down-field and his instincts at the line of scrimmage, I suspect linebacker may have been his better position. But during his career, his only real competition as the NFL's best center was Jim Ringo (Jim Otto in the Sixties AFL has now passed both) or maybe Chicago's Mike Pyle. At middle linebacker you could choose from the Bears' Bill George and Dick Butkus, the Lions' Joe Schmidt, the Packers' Ray Nitschke, or the Giants' Sam Huff.

I wrote Bednarik's obituary for the Daily Telegraph. It was designed for people who didn't know anything about football, but the details of his life are worth repeating. He was the son of Slovak immigrants; his father worked at the hearth (or 'heart', as Bednarik pronounced it) in a steel mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Chuck didn't start speaking English until he went to school, and became a football star at Bethlehem's Liberty High. But with World War II raging, he enlisted before graduation (his mother collected his diploma) and at the age of 18 found himself flying as the waist gunner in a B-24 Liberator. He flew 30 missions, and when he came back after the war his plans had changed. He'd intended to get a job at the mill to help his father; now the GI Bill sent him to the University of Pennsylvania, where he became a three-time All-American and finished third in the 1948 Heisman Trophy voting, playing center and linebacker. He was drafted first overall in 1949 by the Eagles, which meant he didn't even have to change stadiums; the Eagles played at Penn's Franklin Field.

The Eagles were the defending NFL champions, having won the famed 'Snow Bowl' 7-0 on Steve Van Buren's touchdown in 1948. That they had the first pick in the draft was the result of the NFL's 'lottery', which was soon discontinued. Bednarik moved right into the starting lineup, and the Eagles won the NFL title again in 1949. Through the Fifties, however, the Eagles were a team in decline. That changed when Buck Shaw arrived to coach in 1958, and in 1960 traded for quarterback Norm Van Brocklin from the Rams.

Bednarik's nickname reflected his hardness, but came because he was, literally, an industrial concrete salesman. He worked not only in the off-season but in season after the day's practice was over. After all, he had five daughters to support, and in those days even an NFL star's salary couldn't do it. And he didn't live large; all his life was spent between Bethlehem and Philly. He paid the price for his career: look at his snapping hand in that photo with another guy he tackled often, Jim Brown.

He retired after the 1962 season, aged 37, still being forced by circumstance to go both ways. Maxie Baughan, who was drafted to be his replacement at linebacker, and was a great one, called Chuck the best he'd ever seen. Bednarik headed the Pennsylvania state athletic commission, overseeing boxing and wrestling, but he also became one of football's most outspoken and entertaining curmudgeons. He complained about overpaid players and a soft game, and laughed out loud when reporters tried to compare Deion Sanders' occasional forays as a wide receiver to his two-way play. 'He couldn't tackle my wife,' Concrete Charlie laughed. He was a popular speaker, and once, at a charity roast of Frank Gifford, he arranged to have the lights shut off as he took the dias. When the lights came back on after a minute, he told the audience 'now you know how Gifford felt when I hit him.'

His family said he was suffering Alzheimers when he died, aged 85, and attributed that to his football career. Jim Brown called him 'a true gladiator'. For me, Chuck Bednarik symbolises better than almost anyone what football was about when I was young, and wanted to play. It was something you did on your way to being a man. Being a man was defined differently in those days, and in some ways that's for the better now, but Chuck Bednarik's passing reminds me that in many ways it's not, and being a man like Chuck was not a bad aspiration.

CLAY AND LISTON: THE PUNCHES ECHO FIFTY YEARS ON

Is it really fifty years since Cassius Clay stopped Sonny Liston, shocking the boxing world and inaugurating a new era in sports? The fight's anniversary has attracted lots of attention, and you could argue that it probably has not attracted enough.

As a boxing phenomenon, Clay-Liston ranks as one of the great upsets in history. The challenger was a 7-1 underdog, coming off a string of less than impressive wins over less than impressive opponents—remember he'd barely survived Henry Cooper; indeed many still argue that Angelo Dundee did indeed slice Clay's glove open, buying him extra time to recover.I worked with Angelo a few times, and never got a straight answer to that one.

Remember too that Sonny Liston was regarded as the baddest man alive, and merely finding someone willing to get in the ring and endure the punishment his fists provided was close to impossible. He'd beaten the former champ, Floyd Patterson, twice, in the first round both times. Since 1961, he'd spent barely six rounds in the ring. Yet Clay would taunt him, insult him, and brashly proclaim victory—even having a poem read on the TV show I've Got A Secret in which he promised 'a total eclipse of Sonny'. It was the beginning of a new era in sports in the same way the Kennedy triumph over Nixon in the televised debates began a new era in politics.

Even during the fight itself, there was a moment after the fourth when Ali, blinded, didn't want to continue, and Dundee had to push him back into the ring. Some say he'd got liniment from Liston's shoulder in his eyes, others that Liston's corner had put whatever coagulant they were putting on Sonny's cuts onto his gloves.

Ali exploded out after his eyes cleared in the fifth, and after taking punishment in the sixth Liston simply sat in his corner, refusing to come out. He seemed at the time like a confused wounded animal, resigned to his ultimate fate. Now we wonder if the fix was in. Seven to one is pretty long odds for a heavyweight championship (Jim Braddock won his title at 10-1) and that's hard for the wise guys to resist. There is a problem, though, and if we jump forward to the rematch in Lewiston, Maine, and the so-called 'phantom punch' it becomes clear. If that were indeed a dive, as so many have claimed, it was done the way dives are supposed to be done, literally by diving. You don't sit on your stool in your corner saying 'No Mas'. Doctors after the fight confirmed Liston had a torn tendon, and Sports Illustrated's Tex Maule said Liston had been unable to lift his arm.

But Clay had done the unthinkable. He'd humbled the baddest man in the world. More importantly, he'd said before the match that he would. He ran to the edge of the ring, pointed at the reporters, and yelled 'eat your words!'

This was something unprecedented in the ethos of sport. Sportsmen didn't brag, they didn't call untoward attention to themselves, and they never challenged authority, at least not with impunity. Like soccer players well into the late part of the past century, American sportsmen were supposed to be loyal, quiet servants (note that NFL players and coaches still call the owners 'Mr.' and the league gives the Super Bowl trophy to the guy who signs the checks). Clay changed all that. Joe Namath would soon follow in his footsteps, unafraid to state brag as fact, as would Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson, promoting himself relentlessly (only to be knocked cold by Donnie Anderson in the first Super Bowl).

It went beyond the undeniable flair Ali brought, the heavyweight who moved quick as a middleweight, the handsome fighter whose face stayed unmarked. Looking at footage of Joe Louis being interviewed after the first Liston fight, you think they're not just from different generations, they're from different planets. So too when Clay went crazy at the weigh-in, taunting the scariest man in the world. All those stare-downs you see before fights nowadays are a direct response to the first Clay-Liston fight.

You'll often read about Ali modelling his public persona after Gorgeous George; the young Ali was a big wrestling fan, and the adoption of wrestling promotion was a conscious choice by Clay. But if you watch his style, if you consider where he grew up and when, and who he was most likely to see, you would find it easy to conclude that much of his bombast and braggadoccio actually came not from George but from 'Classy' Freddie Blassie, the self-proclaimed 'King of Men'. I never thought it was coincidence that when Ali 'fought' the Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki, it was Blassie whom he chose to be his 'manager', and Blassie did much of the talking in what people assumed was an imitation of Ali's style.

This meant Clay had a huge appeal to kids around my age, who'd probably just gone through their own 'golden age' of wrestling, and recognised and enjoyed Ali's public bombast. I still have my 45rpm record Cassius Clay recorded, 'this is the story of Cassius Clay, the most beautiful fighter in the world today. He talks a great deal and brags indeedy, of a powerful punch that's incredibly speedy....This kid has power, speed and endurance; if you sign to fight him, INCREASE YOUR INSURANCE!...If Cassius says a cow can lay an egg, don't ask how...GREASE THAT SKILLET!' I was mesmerised.

The adult (white) world was torn. Sonny Liston had destroyed Floyd Patterson, a 'credit to his race', and was a scowling ex-con you would run across the street to avoid if you saw him coming. But Clay was 'uppity'; an odd way to describe someone so clever, articulate, handsome, energetic, and so much fun. Who could they root for? For me, and many of my peers, the choice was easy. We may not have been convinced that the cow could lay eggs, or that the big ugly bear would indeed be beaten, but it was an idea that spoke to us.

It's no coincidence that the Beatles visited Clay's training camp in Miami. Or that Clay and Liston were both in the audience in Miami when the Beatles played there on the Ed Sullivan Show. You could look at them the same way you looked at Clay. It wasn't just that they were different; the Beatles were quite as scrubbed clean as the Bobby Rydells and Paul Ankas of the white pop world, but like Clay they were livelier, a breath of fresh air in a stale business. And like Clay, they didn't seem in thrall to the business itself. I still remember a Time magazine profile of the Beatles, marveling that they weren't slaves to the profits of the music industry—that they spent their money on simple things, like beer and fags, or something like that. I remember how it struck me as just as odd as Time intended it to sound, as if there were something wrong with not chasing the lifestyle of showbiz. Of course all that would change pretty quickly, but I think you can also argue that both the Beatles and Clay saw the sudden celebrity they received as something less important than they were supposed to.

And you can argue that Clay used that celebrity in a way that made the most of it, something unmatched even by the most famous pop group in the world (George's Bangladesh and Lennon's sleep ins for peace notwithstanding).

After the fight, Ali was with Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke. You can watch him pull Cooke over to an interviewer at ringside, and say, 'talk to him he's a famous pop star'. This was a veritable black Mount Rushmore gathered just at the time Clay would make probably the most momentous off-field decision made by any sportsman of the century.

The next day Clay announced he was a Moslem, a member of the Nation of Islam (aka the Black Muslims) and that he was renouncing his 'slave name' and had taken the name Cassius X. A week later, Elijah Muhammad would rename him Muhammad Ali.

Asked about his conversion, sometimes with respect but more often with at best an assumption he had been somehow led astray, and at worst outright hostility, Ali's personality changed from pro wrestler to someone thoughtful and sincere. He argued with authority the positive tenants of his new religion,  echoing Malcom X's refusal to accept debate on someone else's terms. He demonstrated some of Jim Brown's massive inner strength and drive to self-determination. What this said to the black community has been explained by people better qualified than me to do that, but it had a wider resonance too. It came at just the right time, after Kennedy's assassination, when many verities seemed to be challenged. Lyndon Johnson was pushing the Civil Rights Act through Congress, and it cleared its first hurdle at the same time as the fight.

I'd been lured in by Ali's showmanship, now I was convinced by his seriousness and his sincerity. The same attitudes my own minister had instilled in me by riding freedom buses in the south, the same consistency of religious belief with moral action, was being demonstrated in front of me by a trash-talking (the phrase hadn't been invented yet) 22 year old. Within a few years Ali would refuse induction into the Army, be stripped of his heavyweight title, spend years in exile speaking to college audiences of kids just like me, and eventually win in the courts, and embark on his second career, with all its epic moments, the true stuff of classic heroism and tragedy.

When I applied for my conscientious objector status, I don't think I used Muhammad Ali as an example, or a reference, though Lord knows I used about every other public thinker I could find. I wasn't anywhere near as glib then as I am now, and there was more at stake too. But I'm sure I wished I could find the articulateness of Ali as I wrote my statement, the articulateness that belied the persona who could trump Joe Frazier or Howard Cosell with equal ease and precision.

The echoes of Cassius Clay remain even in the now sadly limited Ali. The courage of his public transformation would echo far more vibrantly today, but the impact it had on society is undeniable. You can argue it changed some history directly. You could argue it was a major factor in the split in the Black Muslims that saw Malcolm X assassinated. You could argue many people bought into Ali's pride and defiance without buying the rest of the moral package. You could argue he was among the most visible and successful opponents of the Vietnam War. And you can argue that he changed sport in America forever and for the better. Just as Jackie Robinson's entry to Major League Baseball pushed the issue of segregation in the wider world, so Clay's conversion to Ali pushed it further. Jim Brown and Bill Russell (at the table in the photo right, with Lew Alcindor--later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) taught us about dignity, but they had none of the impact of Ali. He said it himself, at ringside after the fight, 'I shook up the world!...I talk to God every day... I must be the greatest!'

JIM KELLY: THE INDEPENDENT OBITUARY

My obituary of Jim Kelly, best-known for Enter The Dragon, but for me at his best as one-third of Three The Hard Way, is in today's Independent; you can link to it here. The track of Kelly's brief career as a blaxploitation star might be said to reflect his relative lack of acting ability--he had a certain presence (which his combat pout, combined with tufts of chest hair that appeared to be glued on, and loud exhales during karate fights all did much to dissipate; see below left) but there is self-restrained cool and there is the inability to emote. Fred 'the Hammer' Williamson had more of a career, but little of it was worthwhile so perhaps Kelly was better off pursuing other avenues which gave him more satisfaction. You could say that was what Jim Brown did, first when he gave up football, and later when he withdrew from full-time acting.

What is odd is the way Bruce Lee's star rose, fuelled by his death, no doubt. Lee is closer to Kelly in acting terms than he was to, say, John Saxon--for all that Enter The Dragon is a cult film, none of the three actors had great careers afterwards. I wonder how much camp is involved in the whole blaxploitation revival --certainly we could look at almost all of Quentin Tarantino's later career as an excercise in camp, if not an effort to become a high-priced Larry Cohen. That Kelly didn't join the Original Gangstas cast, or thht Kung Fu Joe is a figure of some fun in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka says something about the continuing value of Kelly's role.

Still, he seemed to appreicate his late renaissance in fandom, and take it with good humour. Speaking of which, you really should go to you tube and watch that 2004 Nike Chamber of Fears commercial, in which LeBron James goes head to head with Kelly--it is absurdly weird.

HOW PRO FOOTBALL HOOKED AMERICA REVISITED

This Sunday, 3 February, I will be offering analysis of Super Bowl 47 on BBC2 (and BBC-HD) live from the New Orleans Super Dome. This will mark the sixth straight year for the BBC and me, and we've had five great games in a row, on top of the hype-fest of spectacle, and in contradiction of that adage that Super Bowls, like FA Cup finals, rarely live up to the hype. Back in 2008, before my first BBC Super Bowl, I wrote the following piece for bbc.co.uk--I was asked about it recently, so I thought I'd reprint it here. I intended to go back to my original copy, but when I looked at the piece as posted I thought it held up well enough as it was (if you want to check it on the site, here's a link). One thing that was edited out was that, at the time, Ray Berry was my favourite player (and I would wear his number, 82, in high school because of that). I probably should have mentioned that, after the game, having drunk whiskey and beer all afternoon, all the men  got their families together, and drove them home through the snow.  And I should also point out that in the five years since I wrote that piece, the price of a 30-second TV ad during the game has increased from $3 million to $4 million, only six per cent per year. Who says America isn't fighting inflation?

Millions watch the annual Super Bowl - a money spinner for advertisers

 

How pro football hooked America

By Mike Carlson US sports analyst

The Super Bowl, the championship game of America's National Football League (NFL), is the world's richest single sporting event. Nearly half of America will watch it on television on Sunday 3 February.
It's the most costly advertising platform in the world: each 30-second commercial will sell for $3m. There is no other day in the American calendar which unites so much of the country.

It hasn't always been so. Today the NFL may fairly claim to be "America's game" - even though baseball has always been referred to fondly as "America's pastime".
But not so long ago, pro football was not even gridiron's glamour game - that honour belonged to the college version of the sport. 

First Super Bowl
Their relationship was similar to the traditional status of British rugby. College football was the equivalent of rugby union, an amateur game played on Saturdays by gentlemen. The college "bowl" games, played on New Year's Day, in sunny parts of the country between teams from different regions who normally never met during the autumn season, were the equivalent of rugby's internationals.

Baltimore Colts v New York Giants, Dec 1958 Enlarge Image

Pro football, in those days, was America's rugby league: played primarily in the industrial north, on Sundays; a hard game played by hard men.
The first Super Bowl took place in 1967. At that point it was already clear that pro football was a business about to boom, thanks to television. No sport has ever been better suited to the small screen than American football, with its breaks between plays to invite analysis, and utilise technological innovations like instant replay, split screens, and isolated cameras. 

Colts and Giants
But the game that first showed pro football's potential to hook a mass TV audience took place almost a decade earlier, on 28 December 1958, in New York's Yankee Stadium, when the New York Giants met the Baltimore Colts for the championship of the NFL.

The Colts' quarterback, Johnny Unitas, played semi-pro football on Pittsburgh fields so devoid of grass they were sprayed with oil to keep the dust from rising

The NFL players with the highest public profiles were those who had been college stars, at big universities, and the Giants had more of them, particularly Frank Gifford, whose good looks and effortless grace at the University of Southern California inspired Frederick Exley's classic novel, A Fan's Notes.
I grew up in nearby Connecticut. My father, grandfather, and uncles were Giants fans; in fact, my father had played in college against the Giants' star defensive end, Andy Robustelli, who'd come from little Arnold College in nearby Bridgeport.
But "fan" meant something different then. When these men, aged from 30 to 55, watched the game, they didn't wear replica jerseys, paint their faces, or discuss their fantasy teams. The idea grown men might follow a game like children would have struck them as insane.
The Colts, in fact, were closer in spirit to my father and family. Their quarterback, Johnny Unitas, with his buzz-cut hair and high-topped boots, had played for little-fancied Louisville University. He played semi-pro football on Pittsburgh fields so devoid of grass they were sprayed with oil to keep the dust from rising.

Unitas led his team back into the game, at the end of normal time

The Colts had their own Italian defensive end, the fierce Gino Marchetti, playing alongside Art "Fatso" Donovan, and Eugene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb, a six-foot-five, 300-pound behemoth (by 1950s standards, that is - for today's game he'd be considered undersized.) The Giants had qualified for the final by beating the Cleveland Browns two weeks in a row, first in the season's final game, which brought them level at the top of their division, and then in a one-game playoff.
Their defence, anchored by middle-linebacker Sam Huff, closed down Cleveland's star runner, Jim Brown, (the future Hollywood actor) who recorded the worst performance of his career. 

Extra time
The championship opened with the Colts dominant. They led 14-3 at the half. But the Giants struck back in the second half, taking a 20-17 lead late in the game.
Unitas calmly led the Colts back. He had a pass-catcher, Raymond Berry, who ran precise patterns: Unitas could throw the ball knowing exactly where Berry would be. They combined on three consecutive pass plays, covering 62 yards. With the game about to end, kicker Steve Myrha booted a 20-yard field goal, levelling the scores at 20, and sending the contest to "sudden death" overtime. The first team to score would win.

Only quick-thinking by a television staffer, who ran on the field like a drunken fan to delay the game, allowed technicians to find and re-connect the cable

Extra time was a football first. Traditionally, gridiron games ended when the clock expired, and a draw was considered just reward.
But pro football needed a champion, and the idea of a soccer-style replay was never an option. The Giants won the coin-toss to receive the extra time kickoff, but struggled against the Colts' defence. They punted the ball away, and Unitas took over.
Keeping the Giants off-balance by combining runs and passes, he marched the team down the field. Then, America lost the television transmission. The foot-pounding of the visiting Colt supporters had knocked a cable loose. 

Record television audience
Only quick-thinking by a television staffer, who ran on the field like a drunken fan to delay the game, allowed technicians to find and re-connect the cable. Then, before an astounding (for the time) 45 million viewers, Alan "the Horse" Ameche carried the ball into the end zone from a yard out, and the Colts had won.

Football celebrity: The Cleveland Browns' Jim Brown later made it in Hollywood

I can still recall the whoops of my father, grandfather, and uncles as the game was won; a sound of amazed and excited relief, even though their team, the Giants, had lost. The game marked a turning point in many ways. It had attracted a record television audience, but the stadium had not actually sold out. Giants' owner Tim Mara would die a few weeks later, saddened by the result, but overjoyed at the rush of season-ticket requests that followed the contest.
The New York Times ran a magazine feature on Giants' linebacker Huff, and a CBS television documentary called The Violent World of Sam Huff would follow. People still loved their local college teams, but the pro game had announced itself as the better television spectacle.
Finally, the Super Bowl would cement pro football's new place in American consciousness. In the words of Tex Schramm, the former Dallas Cowboy general manager, "It was the time when people stopped doing and started watching".
On Sunday, more of them will likely be watching the Super Bowl than any show American has ever offered. And it all started with an overtime game half a century before.