JRN/SPS 362 - Lecture Seventeen (October 22, 2025)

Here is the presentation that accompanied Lecture Seventeen.

1. JRN /SPS 362 Story of Football Rich Hanley, Professor Emeritus Lecture Seventeen

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3. JRN/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.

4. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 drove the expansion.

5. JRN/SPS 362 Story of 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 for hours.

6. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 old and new led to a new presentation of football’s ecstasy and violence as myth.

7. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Several men transformed the pro game during this period but five stand out as key figures in this moment. They are: - Johnny Unitas - Sam Huff - Jim Brown - Ed and Steve Sabol - Vince Lombardi

8. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 later.

9. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The1958 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.

10. JRN/SPS 362 Story of 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.

11. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

12. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Unitas became the first star quarterback of the television age, but Johnny U. represented the pre-1960s NFL in his personal presentation: high-top cleats and crew-cut hair. Yet he represented the shift to a mark of the new age: passing.

13. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

14. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

15. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Broadly, the defense could provide that role. With a two-platoon system in place, stars could be developed and cultivated on that side of the ball. And the media noticed.

16. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The middle linebacker evolved into the villain on the defense, standing in opposition to the quarterback within the frame of the television and still cameras.

17. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Among the first defensive star was Chuck Bednarik of the Philadelphia Eagles. “Concrete Charlie” was also one of the last stars to play on both offense and defense. But the camera focused on his play as a linebacker.

18. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age On Nov. 20, 1960, Bednarik’s awkward hit on Frank Gifford of the New York Giants became a defining moment for defense – and startled fans who thought Gifford might be fatally injured. Gifford suffered a concussion and returned to play two years later as a diminished presence.

19. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

20. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

21. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The October 31, 1960, CBS broadcast of The Violent World of Sam Huff featured sounds recorded on the field to bring the viewer close to the game. For the first time, a defensive player took center stage to illuminate play on that side.

22. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age By the mid 1960s, Huff would be joined in the spotlight by Dick Butkus of the Chicago Bears. Butkus had played at the University of Illinois, the same school that produced the first star of the game in Red Grange 40 years earlier.

23. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

24. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

25. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The Los Angeles Rams of the 1960s featured the Fearsome Foursome: Lamar Lundy, Merlin Olsen, Rosy Grier and Deacon Jones.

26. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The Minnesota Vikings promoted the Purple People Eaters: Alan Page, Carl Eller, Jim Marshall and Gary Larson.

27. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

28. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The Sam Huff documentary 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 great running back.

29. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

30. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

31. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Like 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.

32. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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, following the strategy adopted by Camp in the 19 th century.

33. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 . Its target: suburban men, who needed to understand the game to top their neighbors.

34. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

35. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 .

36. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

37. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 compelling.

38. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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. Think of Remington’s painting discussed earlier this semester.

39. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

40. JRN/SPS 362 Story of 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 .

41. JRN/SPS 362 Story of 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.

42. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Kishi saw two elements in play: - Sex - Violence NFL Films documented both in copious amounts.

43. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age NFL Films transformed games into cinematic spectacles presented as highlights. 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.

44. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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:

45. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age “The Autumn Wind is a pirate Blustering in from sea With a rollicking song he sweeps along swaggering boisterously His face is weather beaten He wears a hooded sash …

46. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age “With his silver hat about his head And a bristly black moustache He growls as he storms the country A villain big and bold And the trees all shake and quiver and quake …

47. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age “As he robs them of their gold The Autumn wind is a Raider Pillaging just for fun He’ll knock you ’round and upside down And laugh when he’s conquered and won.”

48. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.”

49. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age And NFL Films coined the expression for the Dallas Cowboys that has persisted well into the 21 st century.

50. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 Roone Arledge, who mic’d AFL players for ABC. NFL Films deployed the technique for game highlights.

51. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

52. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 players.

53. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

54. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Vince Lombardi represented the personification of the Walter Camp vision of the game: discipline, intelligence, diligence and fidelity to authority. Lombardi, in fact, embodied the attributes of the great coaches who shaped the game prior to the 1960s.

55. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

56. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

57. JRN/SPS 362 Story 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.

58. JRN/SPS 362 Story of 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.

59. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

60. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

61. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

62. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

63. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

64. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

65. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

66. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Hutson compiled 99 career touchdown receptions, a record that stood for more than four decades. When he retired in 1945 after 11 years, Hutson, held 18 NFL records, including 488 career receptions. That was 200 more than his closest competitor.

67. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age But by the time Lombardi arrived at the end of the 1950s, the glory days had long since ended. The Packers were a bad 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.

68. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

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72. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

73. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age But rallied under Lombardi, who vowed to never lose a championship again. Green Bay won NFL titles against the New York Giants in 1961, 37-0, and again in 1962, 16-7.

74. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 on.

75. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 Black players even as Washington maintained a whites-only roster.

76. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The playbook, meanwhile, 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.

77. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

78. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The Packers featured running backs Paul Hornung of Notre Dame, Jim Taylor of LSU and Donnie Anderson of Texas over this period to move the ball behind the steady QB Bart Starr of Alabama.

79. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 Jim Brown (playing in his final game) in the mud.

80. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 first AFL-NFL championship against Kansas City.

81. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The Packers beat the Chiefs, 35-10, in that first game in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum .

82. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 fell to 15-below-zero.

83. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

84. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

85. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Starr pushed forward behind guard Jerry Kramer to give the Packers a 21-17 victory for their third straight NFL Championship and a second trip to the AFL-NFL Championship, called the Super Bowl.

86. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 surpassed baseball to become the most popular sport in the U.S.

87. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

88. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

89. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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.

90. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Lombardi was among the last of the old-line coaches whose connections ran back to the 1930s. Even George Halas of the Bears, whose connections with the league stretched back to its founding in 1920, called it quits, finally, in 1967.

91. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football 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 perfected the center snap and awarded varsity letters, died at the age of 102.

92. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Over the next generation, coaches would become less like Lombardi and more like Paul Brown: men whose scientific approach would lead to continuous innovations unseen since the development of the T-formation in the late 1930s by Halas himself. Even the mud would disappear.

93. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age And the new keys would be speed, money and celebrity. Speed as represented by Bob Hayes; finances as represented by TV money; and celebrity as represented by Joe Namath and presented by Arledge, whose innovations with AFL coverage were widely copied.

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96. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Lombardi represented the last of buzz-cut pro football in terms of his approach to the game: rigorous and relentless repetition of simple plays such as the Packer sweep. The world, though, had changed, and so had the NFL by the time he died in 1970.

97. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Two men played pivotal roles in the change from the Lombardi era to one signified by celebrity and spectacle: Namath on the field and Arledge off it. A player named George Sauer, though, detected that something had gone awry in both the old and the new eras and wrote about it.

98. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Namath would leave Alabama and coach Bear Bryant as a coveted player in the 1965 draft. Drafted by the Jets after Alabama lost the Orange Bowl, Namath arrived in New York with a $427,000 salary and swagger to match.

99. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The AFL-NFL merger was driven in part by sizeable contracts signed by college stars such as Namath with the Jets and Tommy Nobis with the NFL Atlanta Falcons. But it was Namath who had the wattage to illuminate the game’s ascendancy to pop culture status .

100. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Ironically, Namath shared the same geographical background as the great Unitas. Both were from western Pennsylvania, in the football crescent, and Namath would be coached by Weeb Ewbank, who won the 1958 NFL Championship.

101. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Namath emerged as a bona fide celebrity a decade after that game. The quarterback led the Jets to an 11-3 record in 1968, including a game that underscored his importance to the NFL. It was the “best game no one saw. ”

102. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age On Nov. 17, 1968, the Jets played the Raiders in Oakland. It was the west coast game for NBC. The lead changed six times in the first 59 minutes, with the Jets taking a 32-29 lead with 1:05 left on a field goal by Jim Turner.

103. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The Raiders launched a drive after the Jets’ field goal and were moving when NBC cut to Heidi on all affiliates east of Denver after a commercial. The reaction was immediate and massive.

104. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Phone lines jammed NBC’s switchboard, making it impossible for executives to call the west coast to reconnect the game feed. The NYPD received so many calls that true emergencies went unanswered for awhile.

105. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The Raiders, meanwhile, scored a touchdown with 42 seconds left to take the lead. The Jets fumbled the ensuing kickoff, and the Raiders scored again to win. NBC ran a crawl to update viewers but the network even blew that.

106. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age According to published accounts, the crawl occurred just when Heidi’s paralytic cousin tried to walk, sucking the emotion out of the scene. NBC issued a formal apology 90 minutes after the game.

107. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age That would be the last time the Jets would lose that season. The Jets met the Raiders again in the AFL championship game at Shea Stadium in New York, and a Namath pass to Don Maynard – who played in the 1958 game – set up the winning score.

108. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In the NFL, the 13-1 Baltimore Colts met the 10-4 Cleveland Browns in the championship game to determine who would meet in the Super Bowl. Led by backup quarterback Earl Morrall substituting for the injured Unitas, the Colts routed the Browns in Cleveland, 34-0.

109. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age That set up a Super Bowl III showdown between the team that defeated the Giants in 1958 against another team from New York, this one led by a quarterback who reflected the emerging culture of the period.

110. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Baltimore coach Don Shula was born in the football crescent in Ohio and had played under Paul Brown in Cleveland. In 1963, he replaced Ewbank – a Paul Brown assistant coach at one time - as coach of the Colts.

111. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Baltimore was favored by as many as 16 points, as few gave the Jets and the AFL much of a chance against the establishment Colts who had manhandled the Browns in the NFL championship game. And the Colts had the injured Unitas in reserve.

112. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Namath and Unitas were opposites from head to toe. Namath wore white cleats; Unitas high-top black ones. He also had long hair, not a crew cut. Tex Maule of Sports Illustrated described Namath as “the folk hero of a new generation.”

113. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Even the helmet decals represented the old against the new: - The Colts’ horseshoe emblematic of the old West. - The Jets name and projected movement emblematic of the jet age.

114. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Namath added a sense of unbridled confidence as well, shattering the pro forma humility embedded in football’s honor code. He not only predicted the Jets would win; he guaranteed it. And he remained true to that.

115. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The Jets proved to be more physical and skilled than the experts had reckoned when installing the Colts as a 16-point favorite.

116. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Namath threw a total of 28 times, completing 17 for 206 yards. The Jets’ Matt Snell ran for a touchdown and Jim Turner kicked three field goals to lead New York to the 16-7 win.

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119. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The counterculture had seemingly won football. Namath became the most celebrated athlete in America after that victory that shocked the nation and gave the AFL the credibility its teams needed as it headed toward the full merger in 1970.

120. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age A year later, the Kansas City Chiefs, showcasing a plan known as the “offense of the 70s” for its creative vitality, stunned the old-school-style Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV, giving the AFL its second straight win against the establishment.

121. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Outside the game, Namath represented the transformation of athlete into a celebrity for the age of color television, rock music, sex, drugs and all the other signifiers of the period. But Namath appealed to the older generation, too, who admired his boyish charm and sex appeal.

122. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In the process, Namath redefined masculinity as presented by NFL players. He wore furs, and he served as a spokesperson for pantyhose, for example, and his apartment featured shag carpeting among other hip design elements.

123. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age This was the birth of the cool for the NFL.

124. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The reality of Namath, however, differed from the presentation. He retained the conservative intellectual infrastructure common to pro football’s culture. After the Super Bowl, he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and toured U.S. military posts.

125. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age And his celebrity as an individual would only be permitted to go so far. When confronted by commissioner Pete Rozelle with allegations that gamblers cavorted at his nightclub Bachelor’s 3, Namath said he would retire rather than sell it.

126. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Namath later agreed to sell his interest in the club so he could play football. The tears at the press conference announcing his retirement would soon evaporate.

127. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Namath would never win another championship after that culture-changing victory over the Colts and Johnny U. Like Grange and Jim Brown, Namath heard Hollywood’s call and starred in film and appeared on stage. He even had his own talk show.

128. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Namath would retire in the mid 1970s after a series of knee injuries and a short-lived move to Los Angeles. But he had set the template for the quarterback as celebrity, and he single-handedly proved that a star could carry the game into prime-time television.

129. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age As Namath pushed the idea of quarterback as modern celebrity, Roone Arledge pushed it firmly in the direction of entertainment as head of ABC Sports. Arledge would take the epic myths constructed by NFL Films and transform the stories into prime-time entertainment.

130. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The origin story of prime-time NFL football begins with the 1966 merger with the AFL. NFL Commissioner Rozelle, who engineered the pact and the multiple anti-trust exemptions from the U.S. Congress, wanted to extend the NFL into prime-time.

131. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age With Friday and Saturday nights blocked due to the agreement with Congress for the exemption, the NFL looked for another night to colonize. Rozelle and Arledge collaborated on the decision.

132. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Arledge had earlier established his football credentials with his work in televising the early AFL games. He later invented one of the most popular sport programs in television history.

133. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In Wide World of Sports, Arledge combined a sophisticated appreciation of technology to old-fashioned showmanship to his productions. Arledge was among the first to use satellites for live coverage of sporting events from Europe, for example.

134. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age But why pro football – a game available on Sundays - in primetime? Arledge said in published interviews that each game would be an event unto itself as there were so few football games anyway.

135. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Arledge said that he saw the way the lights bounced off the helmets, creating an aura around the players, creating a sense of both sex and drama. He convinced ABC affiliates that a single game on a single night would draw viewers in every market.

136. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The game would be presented not as “coverage” but as an entertainment spectacle in its own right. That gave the game a production value that enhanced the drama and narrative trajectory.

137. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Arledge deployed techniques he perfected in Wide World of Sports programs and later in broadcasts of the Olympic Games.

138. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age “What we set out to do was get the audience involved emotionally,” Arledge said in an article in Sports Illustrated. “If they didn’t give a damn about the game, they might still enjoy the program.”

139. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Just as the Sabols had perfected their cinematic presentation with on-player microphones and tight shots of the action, Arledge sought to make the game “up close and personal” for the television audience only in real time, without the benefit of the art of film editing.

140. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Arledge deployed the use of multiple games pointed, counter intuitively, away from the action. That transformed coverage toward the spectacle of the game to widen the audience.

141. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age For example, cameras focused on cheerleaders, which helped to draw in male viewers, and unusual characters in the crowd. Shots of players in tight-fitting uniforms attracted the female viewer.

142. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The Monday Night Football broadcast used nine cameras instead of the usual five deployed for Sunday broadcasts to keep the show moving. MNF also introduced handheld cameras for sideline tight shots of players and cheerleaders for close-ups.

143. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Director Chet Forte explained his tactics in moving the action around the game:

144. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age “What I wanted to do on Monday Night Football was get away from the conformity of CBS and the dictum they laid down for their directors: a wide shot to a tight shot, a wide to a tight, over and over. I wanted to gain impact with enormous close-ups …

145. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age “I wanted to see all the action bigger…. More meaning by going tighter. It’s a little more strain on the cameramen, but they never complain.” Arledge, meanwhile, completed the show-biz approach with a team guaranteed to create fireworks – and ratings

146. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age For its September 1970 debut, MNF teamed a professional play-by-play announcer, Keith Jackson, with the glamorous former New York Giant Frank Gifford and the opinionated Howard Cosell to provide some sharp edges to analysis instead of the usual fare.

147. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The first game in September 1970 featured Joe Namath and the Jets against the Cleveland Browns. The Browns won the game, and Monday Night Football was here to stay.

148. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age But Arledge worked to refine the form over the next year to move even closer to making the announcing team entertainers. He replaced Jackson with Don Meredith, a folksy former quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys who played in the famous Ice Bowl in 1967 .

149. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age With Gifford handling play by play, Meredith and Cosell provided a running commentary based on the old hayseed versus city slicker trope.

150. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Monday Night Football became an event above the game it nominally covered with the tight shots, quick edits and chatter in the booth, particularly between Meredith and Cosell. In the language of the day, Monday Night Football became “a happening.”

151. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age That “game as happening” meant that the NFL had transcended sport. With Monday Night Football, the NFL merged pop culture and would come to dominate the instrument that lorded over American culture for generations: television.

152. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age The triumph of Monday Night Football as the focal point of pop culture meant that it could replicate and strengthen itself simply by being itself. Celebrities such as John Lennon showed up in the booth to be part of the spectacle.

153. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In December 1980, reality intruded in this grand spectacle. Cosell at first did not want to go live on the air with it, but he eventually delivered the news that Lennon had been shot and killed in New York. The news stunned the audience.

154. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In triumph and tragedy, Monday Night Football underscored the NFL’s cultural role as more show than anything else. Arledge’s approach influenced how NBC and CBS covered games.

155. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age But ABC’s Monday Night Football had its critics – particularly among traditionalists – who saw how Old Guard/New Age had trumped the essence of Walter Camp’s game. The celebrity aspect undermined team and humility gave way to show-boating.

156. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Not since the Harvard player accused Princeton players of assault in the 1920s had players emerged to publicly assail the game with such energy and vitriol. Former players wrote books highly critical of the game.

157. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In 1971, Bernie Parrish, a defensive back for the Cleveland Browns, wrote about the 1964 championship season in the context of farce. He revealed stories of owners cavorting with gamblers and the infiltration of the game by organized crime.

158. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age They Call It A Game was a best-seller, showing that the country wanted to read about the inside story of football instead of simply consuming the positive material coming from the television networks and the NFL.

159. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Dave Meggysey of the St. Louis Cardinals wrote non-fiction books and appeared on television talk shows to discuss the game’s brutality, racism, drug abuse and win-at-all-costs mentality, among other things.

160. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In 1968, Meggyesy became probably the first NFL player to use the national anthem as a platform for a protest. Rozelle told players they should stand during the anthem, with helmet under left arm, right hand on heart, facing the flag. Meggyesy held his helmet down and looked down to the ground.

161. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In Out of Their League , Meggyesy noted the violence, he noted how players were scared, and he documented the treatment of players by sadistic coaches and how college coaches exploited players and held little respect for academics.

162. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age “If we can play football, the country is not disintegrating,” said Meggyesy about the decision to play football two days after the Kennedy assassination in the context of showing how the game served as a distraction from larger, darker issues confronting the country .

163. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In 1973, a former wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys named Pete Gent fictionalized his experiences in the NFL with North Dallas Forty . Gent compressed a season of pathologies into an eight-day period in the life of protagonist, wide receiver Phil Elliott.

164. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Elliott describes the violence in football as reflecting “the technomilitary complex that was trying to be America.“ The movie, released in 1979, starred Nick Nolte as Elliott.

165. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age George Sauer emerged as one of the more interesting former players who openly criticized football. His criticism stung more than that of others; his dad was a star at Nebraska and the family hailed from the heart of the football crescent in Ohio.

166. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Sauer played for the University of Texas but sought to leave after the 1964 season and the team’s loss to Alabama and Joe Namath in the Orange Bowl. He wanted to sign with the Jets.

167. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Texas’ coach Darryl Royal refused to let Sauer leave, stating he had a year of eligibility left and thus could not play in the pro league. But Sauer won the argument and turned pro, to join Namath in New York (Sauer’s father was director of player personnel with the team.)

168. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Sauer teamed with Don Maynard to give Namath a lethal combination of receivers. Sauer was a more than capable wide receiver, if not a major star, throughout his career. In 1966, for example, he was team MVP.

169. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In the epic Super Bowl victory against the Colts, Namath consistently turned to Sauer who caught eight passes, the most on the team. That isn’t surprising, given that Namath and the introverted Sauer were close despite the sharp differences in personality.

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174. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age But in 1971, at the age of 27, Sauer retired to become a writer. Sauer said at the time he was “generally dissatisfied with the game the way it is played now.”

175. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Sauer elaborated in a critique in the San Francisco Examiner. He wrote: “I know that several times I have found myself in the locker room, caught up in it all and acting like a 7-year-old. After years of this kind of living, what else can you be but an adolescent?”

176. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Sauer added that the game “can really touch you as a human being if you are permitted to touch others as human beings. But this is difficult when you have the Vince Lombardi-style of coach hollering at you to hate the opponent, who really is just a guy like you in a different color uniform.”

177. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age In 1983, Sauer wrote in the New York Times that, “Football is an ambiguous sport, depending both on grace and violence. It both glorifies and destroys bodies. At the time, I could not reconcile the apparent inconsistency.

178. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age “I care even less about being a public person. You stick out too much, the world enlarges around you to dangerous proportions, and you are too evident to too many others. There is a vulnerability in this and, oddly enough, some guilt involved in standing out.”

179. JRN/SPS 362 Story of Football Old Guard/New Age Despite these critiques, football thrived as never before. Innovations in rules and tactics and new stars kept football fresh. Critics gnawed around the edges, but they never touched the game’s place at the core of America’s dream life.