jrn 362 - lecture eighteen

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of FootballRich Hanley, Associate ProfessorLecture Eighteen

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football


Review• America as nation and America

as culture changed dramatically in years between 1958 and 1970.

• But football endured, thrived and stood poised to rule the nation via games viewed on the device “that we all have been waiting for,” otherwise known as television.


Review• The launch of the AFL in 1960

expanded the footprint of pro football from the north in Boston to the mountain state of Colorado and forced the NFL to add teams in the upper midwest reaches of the football crescent and in the southwest.

• Television could not get enough football.


Old Guard/New Age• The 1960s represent the final

transition of college and pro football from its old-timey past to modernity.

• Walter Camp himself could not imagine that a game he developed to encourage manliness would ultimately glue Americans to their couches to watch for hours.


Old Guard/New Age• Scholar Joseph Campbell has

argued in his studies of mythology that transition periods are marked by chaos as the old and the new mix.

• In pro football, at least, the collision of the old and the new led to a new visual presentation of football’s ecstasy and violence as myth.


Old Guard/New Age• A number of men transformed

the pro game during this period but six stand out as key figures in this moment. They are:

- Johnny Unitas - Sam Huff- Jim Brown- Ed and Steve Sabol- Vince Lombardi


Old Guard/New Age• At the college level, the key

personalities were not as widely visible but nevertheless played pivotal roles in transforming the three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust approach to one that exploited the new technology of artificial turf.

• More on that group later.


Old Guard/New Age• As noted earlier, the 1958 NFL

Championship game elevated the quarterback of the Baltimore Colts, Johnny Unitas, to the status of icon.

• Johnny U., from the football crescent in western Pennsylvania, personified the grit and determination of old-school football.


Old Guard/New Age• Unitas was drafted in the ninth

round by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1955 but was cut.

• He played for a semi-pro team before Weeb Ewbank of the Colts signed him in 1956.


Old Guard/New Age• Unitas went on to lead the Colts

to championships in 1958 and 1959 and in Super Bowl V.

• Until the late 1960s, Unitas served as the face of the NFL and of the conservative old guard that resisted cultural changes sweeping the nation.


Old Guard/New Age• Unitas became the first star

quarterback of the television age, primarily because of his flair for the dramatic as exhibited in 1958.

• Nevertheless, Johnny U. represented the pre-1960s NFL in terms of his generational approach and personal presentation: high-top cleats and crew-cut style.


Old Guard/New Age• During his 18-year career, Unitas

threw for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns .

• For 52 years, he held the record of at least one touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games until Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints broke it in 2012.


Old Guard/New Age• The camera focused on Unitas

and other quarterbacks because the position was central to the game and the action.

• But coverage also required a villain to provide a storyline and dramatic motivation on each play.


Old Guard/New Age• In steps that villain: the middle

linebacker.

• The focus on the middle linebacker gave the defense a star of its own as the two-platoon system replaced the single-platoon structure that defined football for decades.


Old Guard/New Age• The first linebacker to become a

national celebrity was Sam Huff of the New York Giants, featured on a 1958 Time magazine cover piece.

• A CBS documentary titled The Violent World of Sam Huff portrayed the defensive player as a physically imposing figure standing against the artistry of the offense. Brain v. Brawn.


Old Guard/New Age• Like Unitas, Huff emerged from

the football crescent as it dipped into West Virginia near the border with western Pennsylvania, coal-mining country.

• The 6-foot-1, 230-pound linebacker starred at West Virginia before the Giants drafted him in 1956.


Old Guard/New Age• The October 31, 1960, CBS

broadcast of the documentary featured sounds recorded on the field to bring the viewer close to the game as played by Huff.

• For the first time, a defensive player would take center stage and illuminate play on that side of the line of scrimmage.


Old Guard/New Age• Linebackers were particularly

prized by television because they stood In direct opposition to the quarterback within the frame.

• Huff would soon be joined in the spotlight by Dick Butkus of the Chicago Bears.


Old Guard/New Age• And in large measure because of

the newfound popularity of defensive players, a linebacker from Texas – Tommy Nobis – commanded an expensive contract in the bidding war between the NFL and the AFL before the merger.


Old Guard/New Age• Huff, Butkus and other middle

linebackers such as Ray Nitschke of the Packers would command endorsements just as players on offense did.

• And soon enough, other positions on defense would share in the bounty with colorful nicknames promoted by teams and the media.


Old Guard/New Age• The Los Angeles Rams of the

1960s featured the Fearsome Foursome: Lamar Lundy, Merlin Olsen, Rosy Grier and Deacon Jones.


Old Guard/New Age• The Minnesota Vikings promoted

the Purple People Eaters: Alan Page, Carl Eller, Jim Marshall and Gary Larson.


Old Guard/New Age• Those groupings, in turn, set the

stage for Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain in the 1970s: Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Ernie Holmes and Dwight White.


Old Guard/New Age• Moreover, The Violent World of

Sam Huff provided context for television story lines featuring linebackers against quarterbacks.

• That meant a game between the Cleveland Browns and New York Giants would be transformed into a battle between Huff and Jim Brown, the greatest back of all-time.


Old Guard/New Age• Brown emerged as the first great

African-American star of the NFL.

• Brown was outspoken in support of civil rights and often defended the rights of players against owners.


Old Guard/New Age• Brown was a top Syracuse

running back drafted by Paul Brown in 1957 to star in the Cleveland backfield.

• Brown rushed for 12,312 yards until retiring after the 1965 season. He was named NFL MVP in his first year and again in 1958, 1963 and 1965.


Old Guard/New Age• Like the first great running back

in football, Red Grange, Brown also became a film star.

• He retired in summer 1966 to pursue his film career full-time instead of returning to the Browns after a dispute with owner Art Modell.


Old Guard/New Age• While Unitas, Huff and Brown

were redefining the role of star for the television age, the NFL and its commercial television sponsors sought to educate viewers as to the intricacies of the game.

• This is exactly the strategy adopted by Camp in the 19th century.


Old Guard/New Age• The Scott Seed Company, for

example, produced a booklet to be distributed through hardware stores throughout the U.S.

• Its title: How to Watch Football on TV.

• Guides of all kinds were distributed in stores frequented by suburban families.


Old Guard/New Age• At the same time the ground was

prepared for the vast audiences to come, a father-and-son filmmaker team from Philadelphia developed a company that would frame the game in cinematic terms that gave the NFL mythological status, complete with classical music.


Old Guard/New Age• Ed Sabol secured the rights to

film NFL games in 1962.

• His first game: the 1962 NFL Championship.

• In 1965, the NFL purchased Sabol’s company and renamed it NFL Films.


Old Guard/New Age• Sabol and his son Steve, an art

major at Colorado College, understood the game as narrative.

• Instead of textual, football was visual, more like the movies than a novel, Steve Sabol would later say.


Old Guard/New Age• NFL Films produced highlight

reels and programs that combined slow-motion visual artistry with sophisticated symphonic scores to create a heroic version of the game that audiences found irresistible.


Old Guard/New Age• Ed Sabol’s inspiration: a 1946

film titled A Duel in the Sun.

• The film used close ups of horses on the move, kicking up dust and thus revealing the physicality of movement.


Old Guard/New Age• Steve Sabol, an art major, said

his inspiration stemmed from the work of Picasso.

• Sabol said Picasso would look at a single image from multiple perspectives, and he wanted to do the same with football.


Old Guard/New Age• In fact, Steve Sabol said in a

published study that NFL Films sought “to show the game the way Hollywood portrays fiction.”

• In 1967, the full style and substance of NFL Films emerged in a work titled “They Call It Pro Football.”


Old Guard/New Age• They Call It Pro Football was

edited by Japanese filmmaker Yoshio Kishi.

• Kishi interpreted the footage of NFL games in a way that changed the highlight reel.

• He favored montages featuring what he called the “apex of action” instead of full plays. It worked.


Old Guard/New Age• Kishi saw two elements in play:

- Sex- Violence

• NFL Films documented both in copious amounts.


Old Guard/New Age• NFL Films turned the games into

cinematic spectacles.

• The booming voice of narrator John Facenda served as the perfect oral instrument to accompany the soundtrack and the poetic language as the action unfolded in slow-motion on the screen.


Old Guard/New Age• And Steve Sabol’s texts as read

by Facenda supplemented the visuals with writing straight out of Homer.

• Take this passage, for example, about the Oakland Raiders:


Old Guard/New Age“The Autumn Wind is a pirate

Blustering in from seaWith a rollicking song he sweeps

alongswaggering boisterously

His face is weather beatenHe wears a hooded sash …


Old Guard/New Age“With his silver hat about his head

And a bristly black moustacheHe growls as he storms the country

A villain big and boldAnd the trees all shake and quiver

and quake …


Old Guard/New Age“As he robs them of their goldThe Autumn wind is a Raider

Pillaging just for funHe’ll knock you ’round and upside

downAnd laugh when he’s conquered

and won.”


Old Guard/New Age• Sabol also contributed the

following expressions to NFL mythology:

- “The frozen tundra” to describe Lambeau Field in Green Bay.

- “It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun.”


Old Guard/New Age• And NFL Films coined the

expression for the Dallas Cowboys that has persisted for decades.


Old Guard/New Age• Ed Sabol borrowed the idea of

using microphones on players from CBS, which first used it for the pioneering Sam Huff documentary, and the AFL.

• CBS used it in practices.

• NFL Films used it in games, an extraordinary innovation.


Old Guard/New Age• The use of voices of coaches and

players on the field during games brought the action closer to the fans.

• For the first time, fans could hear the grunts of the players and listen in as coaches barked plays and berated officials.


Old Guard/New Age• Each week, NFL Films would

send highlight programs called This Week in Pro Football and Game of the Week to local television stations for airings either on Saturdays or Sundays, before kickoff.

• The programs served to give fans insight into the game and its players.


Old Guard/New Age• And that distribution helped

enormously when the best team of the period played in the smallest market – Green Bay – with a coach who represented a time that was quickly giving way to new social and cultural approaches to life.


Old Guard/New Age• Vince Lombardi represented the

personification of the Walter Camp vision of the game: discipline, intelligence, diligence and fidelity to authority, in the form of the coach.

• Lombardi, in fact, embodied the attributes of the great coaches who shaped the game prior to the 1960s.


Old Guard/New Age• From Walter Camp, Lombardi

took the necessity of teamwork.

• From Rockne, Lombardi took the importance of rhetorical devises to inspire his team.

• From Brown, Lombardi took the tactical approach for precision.


Old Guard/New Age• Lombardi thus stands as a

personality who represents the apotheosis of the best characteristics of coaching in the pre-modern (i.e., television) age of football.


Old Guard/New Age• And Lombardi added something

to the mix that was present in the locker room but not on the field: religion.

• Lombardi summoned a passage from the Bible to use as a metaphor to teach his approach to offensive football.


Old Guard/New Age• “Do you not know that those

who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.” First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians.

• And, Lombardi added, run to daylight.


Old Guard/New Age• Lombardi was born in Brooklyn in

1913, the son of immigrants from Salerno, Italy.

• After high school, he trained to become a priest but left after four years.


Old Guard/New Age• Lombardi attended Fordham,

where he was one of the legendary Seven Blocks of Granite in 1936, his senior year.

• The coach of Fordham was Jim Crowley, one of Grantland Rice’s Four Horseman of Notre Dame.


Old Guard/New Age• Lombardi graduated from

Fordham in 1937 and went to law school in the evenings while working for a finance company.

• But he loved football and became a high school teacher and coach at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, N.J.


Old Guard/New Age• He joined the coaching staff at

Fordham in 1947, and two years later moved to the staff at West Point under coach Red Blaik.

• There, he absorbed the two themes that served as his coaching scaffolding: simplicity and execution.


Old Guard/New Age• Lombardi joined the New York

Giants coaching staff in 1955 as offensive coordinator.

• Tom Landry, who became the first coach of the Dallas Cowboys in 1960, was defensive coordinator.

• The team won the NFL championship in 1956.


Old Guard/New Age• After the 1958 NFL

Championship game loss to the Colts, Lombardi joined the Green Bay Packers as head coach, his first top job since coaching a high school team in New Jersey a decade earlier.


Old Guard/New Age• The Packers were among the

first pro teams to use the pass to great effect, under coach Curley Lambeau.

• One of the great receivers of all time, Don Hutson, played in Green Bay.

• He played 11 seasons, setting numerous records, including some that still stand.


Old Guard/New Age• But by the time Lombardi arrived

at the end of the 1950s, Hutson had long since retired.

• The Packers had become a bad football team in the smallest city in the NFL, a throwback to the league’s early days when formed from the remnants of the old Ohio League.


Old Guard/New Age• Lombardi immediately put his

stamp on the team.

• He led punishing training camps, working the players through drills that were designed to instill a sense of personal toughness and fidelity to the coach.


Old Guard/New Age• In 1960, Lombardi led the

Packers to the NFL championship game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

• The Packers lost, and Lombardi vowed afterward that he would never lose another championship game, a vow he kept throughout the 1960s.


Old Guard/New AgeGreen Bay won NFL titles against the New York Giants in 1961, 37-0, and again in 1962, 16-7.


Old Guard/New Age• In December 1962, Lombardi

landed on the cover of Time magazine, securing a foothold in the world of celebrity by his presence under a tagline “The Sport of the 1960s.”

• Lombardi would come to define the decade from then until its twilight in 1969.


Old Guard/New Age• By 1962, it had become clear

Lombardi represented the old order as the culture shifted from the complacent 1950s to the turbulent 1960s in all ways but one.

• Green Bay drafted and signed African-American players even as the Washington Redskins maintained a whites-only roster.


Old Guard/New Age• The playbook reflected

Lombardi’s old-school approach in all other things.

• He took the quote from Saint Paul quite literally – and created a plan for his players to run to win by running to daylight, usually by operating one play.


Old Guard/New Age• That play is known as the Packer

sweep.

• “There’s nothing spectacular about it. It’s just a yard gainer, ” Lombardi states in a training film.


Old Guard/New Age• The Packers featured running

backs Paul Hornung of Notre Dame, Jim Taylor of LSU and Donnie Anderson of Texas to move the ball behind the steady QB Bart Starr.


Old Guard/New Age• In 1965, Lombardi led the

Packers to the first of an unprecedented three straight championships.

• The Packers beat Cleveland and its great running back Jimmy Brown (playing in his final game) in the mud.


Old Guard/New Age• In 1966 and 1967, Lombardi met

the team coached by his former colleague, Tom Landry, of the Dallas Cowboys, for the NFL Championship.

• In 1966 in Dallas, Green Bay won to earn a trip to the firs AFL-NFL championship against Kansas City.


Old Guard/New Age• The Packers beat the Chiefs in

that first game in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.


Old Guard/New Age• The next year, Lombardi and

Landry met again, this time in Green Bay in a game that became known as the Ice Bowl.

• The Dec. 31, 1967, game was played in temperatures that ranged from 13-below-zero to 15-below-zero on what became known as the “frozen tundra” of Lambeau Field in Green Bay.


Old Guard/New Age• The Packers took an early 14-0

lead but Dallas rallied late.

• The Cowboys grabbed a 17-14 lead with 4:50 left in the game.

• Green Bay quarterback Starr then led the Packers down the field from their own 32 yard line.


Old Guard/New Age• Chuck Mercein, a back from Yale,

made two key runs and caught pass in the drive that reached the Dallas one-yard-line with 13 seconds left.

• Green Bay called a time out, and Starr jogged to the sidelines to let Lombardi know what he had in mind: a quarterback sneak because the backs could not get traction.


Old Guard/New Age• Starr pushed forward behind a

block by guard Jerry Kramer to score and give the Packers a 21-17 victory for their third straight NFL Championship and a second trip to the AFL-NFL Championship, now called the Super Bowl.


Old Guard/New Age• More than 30 million fans

watched the game on television, cementing the league’s popularity while bearing witness to a myth-making event on an epic scale.

• Just two years earlier, football had become the most popular sport in America, surpassing baseball.


Old Guard/New Age• Green Bay went to the Super

Bowl and defeated the Oakland Raiders to win for the second straight year.

• It would be Lombardi’s last game as coach of the Packers, as he decided to leave the sidelines and focus his energies as general manager.


Old Guard/New Age• Lombardi joined the Washington

Redskins for one season as coach in 1969.

• He died of cancer on Sept. 3, 1970, age 57, before the start of his second season as Washington coach.


Old Guard/New Age• Like Rockne’s, Lombardi’s

funeral was a massive public event.

• More than 1,500 people – former players, coaches and fans – packed St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York for the services.


Old Guard/New Age• Lombardi was among the last of

the old-line coaches whose connections ran back to the 1930s to have great success in the league.

• Even George Halas of the Bears, whose connections with the league stretched back to its founding in 1920, called it quits, finally, in 1967.


Old Guard/New Age• Two years earlier in 1965, Amos

Alonzo Stagg, an end on the first All-American team in 1889 and an innovative coach who was the first to use a huddle, the center snap and award varsity letters, died at the age of 102.


Old Guard/New Age• Over the next generation,

coaches would become more like Paul Brown: men whose scientific approach would lead to innovations unseen since the development of the T-formation in the late 1930s by Halas himself.

• Even the mud of November and December would disappear in time.


Old Guard/New Age• And acceleration would be the

key, both on and off the field in terms of speed, finances and celebrity power: speed as represented by Bob Hayes, finances as represented by TV money and celebrity as represented by Joe Namath and presented by Roone Arledge.

jrn 362 - lecture eighteen

Education