rayonsports.com

One of the most important figures in the 100 year history of the NFL being celebrated this year is former commissioner Pete Rozelle. He wasn’t considered very important when he first took over the job in 1959 following the death of then-commissioner Bert Bell. He was a young general manager of the Los Angeles Rams at the time and wasn’t a popular choice for the commissioner’s post. It took 23 ballots by the owners to get him confirmed for the job. He took over at age 33 and wasn’t shy about making changes to the game during his tenure. The NFL at the time was a 12 team league playing their games in half-filled stadiums and television wasn’t much of a part of the league’s plan, as only a few teams had local or regional TV contracts. He took over the same year a rival circuit, the new American Football League, was being formed with a plan to start play in 1960. Rozelle took immediate action to counter the new league. The NFL added an expansion franchise in Dallas and a year later in Minnesota, and allowed the foundering Chicago Cardinals franchise to move to St. Louis, effectively cutting off the AFL’s path to 3 different cities they were considering. The AFL’s Dallas franchise, owned by league founder Lamar Hunt, was forced to move to Kansas City after 3 seasons and an AFL team slated to be placed in Minnesota had to be quickly relocated to Oakland before it even started play. Rozelle recognized the power of the media to promote the game early on and negotiated a deal with the CBS network to carry NFL games regionally. He also championed the cause of shared revenue with the owners, which they agreed to. The shared revenue model still exists today and is a major reason the league is as competitive as it is. The owners awarded Rozelle with a five year contract to remain in his job in 1962. He faced a couple of his most important decisions the next seasons. Prior to the 1963 season, Rozelle suspended Green Bay’s Paul Hornung and Detroit’s Alex Karras for gambling, a powerful move on his part. In November of that year, however, he made a decision that he later said was his biggest regret during his tenure as commissioner. He allowed NFL games to be played on the weekend of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, a decision that was widely criticized. The rival AFL had cancelled their games and drew praise for that decision. Also, the AFL had negotiated a television contract of its’ own with NBC and began competing for players with the established league, landing a big fish when the New York Jets signed Joe Namath. When the New York Giants signed Buffalo placekicker Pete Gogolak, it started an all-out war between the leagues to “raid” each other’s rosters for star players. Established NFL stars like John Brodie, Mike Ditka and Roman Gabriel signed “future” contracts with AFL teams. Rozelle, realizing the battle between rival league owners was hurting the game, worked behind the scenes with Cowboys’ executive Tex Schramm and Chiefs’ owner Hunt among others to negotiate a merger of the two leagues. The negotiations were successful and in 1966 the merger was announced. Due to television commitments, the two leagues remained separate until 1970 but a common draft was instituted and an annual AFL/NFL Championship game was set up to be played after each season. During this time the AFL added expansion franchises in Miami and Cincinnati.

Pete Rozelle after the NFL/AFL merger was successful

By 1970, pro football was beginning to grow into the television monster it has become today. The annual championship game, which would become known as the “Super Bowl”, became the top sporting event in the country if not the world. Today the game has almost reached the status of becoming a national holiday. Before the leagues could effectively merge, Rozelle had to convince 3 NFL owners to move their franchises to the newly formed American Football Conference, since the NFL had 16 teams and the AFL only 10. Cleveland and Baltimore, two teams that had been merged from the old All American Conference in 1950, were chosen along with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Rozelle also came up with the idea of a weekly prime time game, and with his vision Monday Night Football was born and another network, ABC, was added to the league’s revenue stream. The man who was regarded as professional sports’ most successful commissioner presided over its’ golden era, but wasn’t without his troubles over the years. Oakland Raiders’ owner Al Davis was a constant nemesis, beginning in the days of the merger when Davis, who was AFL commissioner at the time, had to give up his post to allow Rozelle to preside over the newly merged leagues. He battled in the courts with Rozelle over moving his franchise from Oakland to Los Angeles and back again. (The Raiders are planning another move, to Las Vegas, next season.) When the Raiders won the Super Bowl following the 1980 season, Rozelle was put in the awkward position of having to award the Lombardi Trophy to Davis.

Rozelle presents the Lombardi Trophy to Al Davis

Rozelle retired from the commissioner’s post in 1989, citing health issues. Davis would later say he regretted giving Pete so much grief during his time as commissioner, and felt that he may have contributed to Rozelle’s health issues. Rozelle left with the sport in great shape and left behind a legacy that is unmatched by anyone in the game’s 100 years when it comes to how much he helped grow the game. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985 while still serving as commissioner and in 1990 the league instituted the Pete Rozelle Award to be given to the MVP of the game he helped create, the Super Bowl. Rozelle passed away of brain cancer in 1996. Taking a look at the sport today compared to when he took over: a 12 team league now has 32 franchises, the Super Bowl is the world’s most popular sporting event, the league’s players are among the most recognizable sports heroes and the annual draft of college players has become a cottage industry in itself.

Rozelle presides over the 1966 draft, on a blackboard

For one of this week’s NFL 100 features, we’ll look at a character who left a long and lasting legacy in the league as a player, coach and studio analyst, Mike Ditka. When he joined the Chicago Bears as a rookie tight end in 1961, he proceeded to redefine the position from what was always a blocker, almost an extra lineman next to the tackle, to a legitimate receiving threat. In that rookie year, he caught 58 passes and scored 12 touchdowns, a Bears’ rookie record, and was named NFL Rookie of The Year. He played 5 total seasons with Chicago and was a Pro Bowler in all of them. His rugged style of play earned him the nickname “Iron Mike”, as he not only changed the tight end position with his receiving ability but also was known for his yardage gained after the catch, regularly trucking defensive backs and linebackers on his way to picking up extra yards. A contract dispute with owner George Halas got Ditka traded to the Philadelphia Eagles in 1967. He played there for 2 years and then was traded to Dallas where he played his final 4 seasons. The highlight of his Cowboy days came in 1971 in Super Bowl VI when he scored a touchdown to help the team defeat the Miami Dolphins 24-3 to give legendary coach Tom Landry his first championship.

Mike Ditka, All Pro Bears’ tight end

Ditka retired in 1972 and was immediately hired to join Landry’s coaching staff in Dallas. He spent 9 years there, learning from the best. The Cowboys made the playoffs in 8 of those seasons and won the Super Bowl again in 1977. While serving as an assistant on Landry’s staff, Ditka wrote a letter to Halas, who he had a strained relationship with, saying he would like to return to Chicago as the Bears’ head coach when he was ready. Halas took him up on that request in 1982 when he went out on a limb and hired his old tight end to lead the Bears. Ditka held a team meeting upon taking the job and promised the players that if they stuck with him he would have them “in the dance” within 3 years. By 1985 he delivered. His ’85 Bears club reached “the dance”, the Super Bowl, and demolished the New England Patriots 46-10 in the game. Although it was the only title Ditka would win in Chicago, that ’85 Bears team is considered one of the greatest of all time, especially the defense. They had swagger, led by coach Ditka, his flamboyant quarterback, Jim McMahon, Walter Payton and William “The Refrigerator” Perry and even put together a video, the “Super Bowl Shuffle”, before they had qualified to play in the game. They were a confident bunch.

Tom Landry, Ditka’s coaching mentor

During the 1988 season Ditka suffered a heart attack and was expected to not be available for most of the season. However, he was back on the sideline as an advisor the next game and returned to his full time duties as head coach the following week. A couple of losing seasons in the early 1990s led to his firing in Chicago in 1992. He went on to coach the New Orleans Saints for 3 years, beginning in 1997, but that stint was largely forgettable and was “highlighted” by an ill-fated move in which Ditka traded his entire stock of draft picks to Washington for the rights to running back Rickey Williams, who never panned out in the Crescent City. Overall, it’s hard to think of the NFL’s 100 year history without mentioning Ditka. He and Tom Flores are the only 2 people who won championships as a player, assistant coach and head coach in league history, and Ditka was the first to achieve this. Today he is an icon in Chicago. He owns a chain of restaurants and regularly is on sports talk radio shows in the Windy City. He was a regular football studio analyst on ESPN for years before being dropped for voicing political opinions. Saturday Night Live had a running skit for years featuring Bill Swerski’s Superfans, a group of mythical Bears fans, including George Wendt, who worshipped “Coach Dikka”. Ditka, in 1988, was honored to be the first tight end inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton.

Coach Ditka Halloween costumes were once popular in Chicago

With the NFL season entering week 7, there is a game scheduled, between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs, which makes for a perfect Throwback Thursday feature for the NFL’s celebration of its’ 100 year history. That game was played on January 15, 1967 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and it was a historic event as it was to become the first ever Super Bowl game. The game was retroactively called “Super Bowl I” but in reality at the time it was simply called the AFL/NFL Championship Game, and was considered an afterthought, especially by the members of the established NFL. The game wasn’t sold out, but NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle made sure it received maximum coverage as the networks who aired each league’s games, NBC and CBS, were both allowed to broadcast it. One of Rozelle’s many attributes as commissioner was his ability to recognize how much media coverage had grown the game. The Packers were a powerhouse at the time, dominating their NFL competition, and were considered huge favorites in this game over the Chiefs, who had beaten the two-time AFL champion Buffalo Bills to reach this point. NFL people had ridiculed the new league as a “Mickey Mouse” operation made up of NFL rejects. Packer coach Vince Lombardi was extremely nervous about the game and how his team would approach it. He realized that although his club was superior, the Chiefs were well coached by Hank Stram and were made up of players who were also professional and would be highly motivated to prove they belonged on the same field with his team. Most of his players may have considered winning the NFL title as the pinnacle of their season and view this game as nothing more than an exhibition. Lombardi gave his team a short motivational speech prior to the game, telling them they “should be proud of their profession and that they could do a lot for the reputation of the league by playing their best” on this day.

Coaches Stram and Lombardi meet before the game

The game itself was competitive in the first half. The Chiefs may have thought they caught an unexpected break when Packer flanker Boyd Dowler re-aggravated an injury he had suffered in the NFL title game and was forced out. However, his replacement, wily old veteran Max McGee, was ready for the moment, even though some of his teammates claimed he was hung over from partying the night before. He opened the scoring by making a spectacular one-handed grab of a Bart Starr pass and carrying it into the end zone for a 37 yard touchdown. K.C. quarterback Len Dawson engineered a scoring drive early in the second quarter, ending it with a 7 yard toss to his fullback, Curtis McClinton, to tie the game. Jim Taylor scored on a 14 yard run and the Chiefs’ Mike Mercer connected on a field goal and Green Bay went into the half leading 14-10. The halftime show for the game was nothing like the extravaganzas put on today on Super Bowl Sunday, but Rozelle did kick up the entertainment a notch from a regular season game by adding jazz trumpeter Al Hirt, 300 pigeons being released, 10,000 balloons and a couple of guys in jet packs wearing football uniforms flying around the stadium as the bands played.

Flying jet pack football players at halftime

While the Chiefs had stood proud by keeping the game close for a half, the Packers asserted their dominance in the second half. Starr, who would be named the game’s Most Valuable Player, orchestrated a pair of third quarter scoring drives, the first ending on a 5 yard run by Elijah Pitts and the other on another TD toss to McGee, this time from 13 yards out, to extend the Packer lead to 28-10. McGee, who was used sparingly in the regular season, had a career day, totaling 138 yards and the 2 TDs on 7 catches. The Green Bay defense held Dawson and the Chiefs in check the rest of the day, and Pitts scored again from a yard out to seal the deal for his team at 35-10. One of the “highlights” of the second half came when Chiefs’ safety Fred “The Hammer” Williamson was knocked unconscious when his head collided with the knee of a Packer player. The flamboyant Williamson had boasted of planning to use his famed forearm “hammer” to knock multiple players out of the game, but he wound up on the receiving end of an errant blow instead. The NFL moguls and pundits got what they wanted out of the game as the Packers were dominant in the end. Lombardi even added to the fire, stating afterwards that even though the Chiefs were an excellent, well coached club, he thought there were several NFL teams who were better. It would take a couple of years for the AFL to be able to compete, but by Super Bowl III, when Joe Namath and his New York Jets delivered a “guarantee” and an upset win over the Colts, they gained their measure of pride.

Super Bowl I MVP Bart Starr

Our topic today for the NFL 100 post is a look at highly successful defensive coaches, or coordinators as they’ve come to be known today, who never quite succeeded when given their opportunity to become head coaches. Some of the greatest defensive minds went on to make it big as head men, including Tom Landry, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, George Allen and arguably the greatest of all time, Bill Belichick. “The Hoodie” almost made the list of failures after his brief tenure in Cleveland ended disastrously, but he was put in a bad situation there with owner Art Modell announcing he was moving the team to Baltimore. Belichick landed on his feet in New England and to this day is a highly successful head coach. So what coaches who had Hall of Fame worthy careers as defensive assistants never quite made the leap to success as top men? The list is long. We’ll start with Joel Collier. He was a bespectacled, mild mannered assistant under Lou Saban with the AFL’s Buffalo Bills in the 1960s and later guided the Denver Broncos “Orange Crush” defense to a Super Bowl. The Bills won back-to-back AFL titles in 1964 and ’65, mostly on the strength of their defense, the best in the AFL’s 10 year existence. He got a shot at the top job in Buffalo after Saban abruptly quit but failed miserably. When Don Shula’s Miami Dolphins were dominating the NFL in the early 1970s, one of the main components of their success was the play of their “No Name” defense, which suffocated opponents and got its’ nickname due to the fact that there were no star players on the unit. The man who coached that stifling defense was Bill Arnsparger. His success earned him the opportunity to be the head coach of the New York Giants, but in three years at the helm there, his teams posted a dismal 7-28 record and after being fired he returned to the Dolphins to work under Shula. He spent the next eight years there overseeing a defense that acquired another nickname, the “Killer B’s” due to many members of that unit having names that began with the letter B.

Bill Arnsparger and The Killer B’s

When the Pittsburgh Steelers were dominating the NFL in the 1970s, winning 4 Super Bowls, the one constant that drove that team was it’s defense, aptly known as “The Steel Curtain”. Even though their head coach, Noll, came from a defensive background, it was widely accepted that the man who orchestrated that unit was defensive coordinator Bud Carson. He was the coordinator for the team’s defense for the first 2 of the championships, then moved on to become D-coordinator for the Rams, Colts, Chiefs and Jets, all while waiting patiently for a shot at a top job. His chance finally came when Modell hired him to coach the Browns in 1989. He did well his first year as the Browns advanced to the AFC Championship game, only to lose to the John Elway-led Denver Broncos. Modell didn’t show him any patience, however. Carson was fired midway through the next season after the Browns started out 2-7. Although his overall coaching mark for the year and a half he got was slightly under .500, it’s tough to say that Carson was a failure. Unlike Belichick in the 1990s, he never got the chance to prove himself in another job. We’ll treat our next subject on this topic as a tandem. It’s the father/son duo of Buddy and Rex Ryan. Buddy was the coordinator of one of the most prolific defenses in NFL history, the 1985 Chicago Bears. The success of his “46 defense” got him a job as head man in Philadelphia, where he lasted five seasons. Rex Ryan was coordinator of the Baltimore Ravens defense that was dominant for years and helped win the Super Bowl following the 2000 season. Rex eventually parlayed his performance into head coaching jobs with the Jets and Bills. Unfortunately, neither of the Ryans was ever able to raise his teams above the level of mediocrity when given the chance to run the whole show.

Buddy Ryan was well loved by his Bears’ defensive unit

There is one coach who was recently elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame mainly for his work as a long-time defensive coordinator – Dick LeBeau. Actually, he deserved Hall consideration for his playing career alone, as he played 14 seasons and was a top cornerback. His story is a little different than the men we previously featured. He was defensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2000 but was thrust into the job of interim head coach when Bruce Coslet resigned. He held the job until 2002 but a paltry 12-33 record got him axed. He returned to being a D-coordinator, for the Steelers, and went on to have tremendous success. He never got another shot at being a head coach, but he may have been content to “stay in his lane” as a successful assistant. One name that shouldn’t really be mentioned here is Wade Phillips. He has followed the same path as the others on the list, having “failed” as a head coach but having great success as a defensive coordinator, to this day in fact, as he is currently guiding the Los Angeles Rams’ defense. He has been the head man for 5 different teams in interim and permanent status, but in my mind never really was shown much patience by any of the owners he worked for. His overall record as a head coach is 83-69, a pretty healthy winning percentage. Dom Capers has been a highly successful defensive coach over the years, but hasn’t had success when given a chance to be the head coach. Part of the reason for that is that his only two opportunities came with expansion franchises. Others who have not taken advantage of head coaching opportunities but who excelled as defensive assistants are Romeo Crennel, a Belichick disciple, Rod Marinelli, Jim Schwartz and Gregg Williams. The art of hiring a top head coach is something NFL owners over the years have failed at many times, and in some ways the NFL over 100 years was bound to have more failure than success among its’ teams. The men mentioned in this article, for certain, should be remembered more for the innovation and success they have brought to the game rather than their failure, which is really more of a failure on their owners’ part than theirs.

In celebrating the first 100 years of the National Football League, there are men and women who stand above the rest for their contributions to making the game great. There are none who stand any taller than Vince Lombardi, who was overlooked for coaching opportunities in the NFL despite a successful run as the top offensive coach for the New York Giants in the 1950s. He worked as a high school coach and as a college assistant at Fordham and West Point before getting his NFL opportunity with the Giants, whose top defensive assistant at the time was Tom Landry. Those 2 legends, along with head coach Jim Lee Howell, turned the Giant franchise into winners as they reached a pair of title games and won the title in 1956. Howell readily acknowledged the talents of his two top assistants, jokingly saying that his main job was “to make sure the footballs had air in them.” Despite the success, Lombardi was passed over for head coaching jobs, both in college and the pros, and he feared that his Italian-American heritage was being used against him in his failure to land a head coaching position. Finally, in 1959, the Green Bay Packers hired him as their new head man. The team was coming off of a one-win season and was a laughingstock in the league. Lombardi immediately turned around the team’s fortunes. They finished 7-5 and Lombardi was named Coach of The Year. His success was only beginning, however. The Packers won the Western Division title in 1960 and lost a heartbreaker to the Philadelphia Eagles in the championship game. The Packers were stopped just short of the goal line on the game’s final play, costing them the win. In the locker room afterwards, the coach told his team “This will never happen again. You will never lose another championship game.” He was true to his word, as that loss was the only postseason defeat his Packer teams would suffer. They went on to win 5 titles in the next 7 years, including wins in the first 2 Super Bowls.

Lombardi and his Packers celebrate NFL title

Lombardi stepped down as Packers’ head coach after the second Super Bowl win and stayed on as the team’s general manager for a year, but still had a yearning to coach, so he left the organization to become head coach of the Washington Redskins in 1969. He turned the Washington franchise around in his only season coaching there as they finished 7-5-2 for their first winning season in 14 years. Lombardi’s final numbers as a head coach were astonishing – no losing seasons, the 5 championships and an overall 105-35-6 record, including a 9-1 mark in postseason games. Unfortunately Lombardi’s tenure in Washington would only last that single season. After falling ill, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and passed away shortly after at the age of 57. On his deathbed, he told a visiting priest that he did not fear dying but regretted that he had not accomplished more in his life. The football world couldn’t have disagreed more with that sentiment. He was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame a year after his sudden death and the trophy awarded to the winner of the Super Bowl each year was named in his honor.

Vince Lombardi Trophy

Lombardi is a giant of the game for more reasons than just winning. He was a pioneer in improving race relations and treating black players as equals, and even embraced gay players. He always said he didn’t see his players as black or white, but only “Packer green”. One former black player, noting Lombardi’s disciplinary style, once jokingly said that the coach “treated us all equally….like dogs.” His reputation as a taskmaster wasn’t entirely true. He was a master at teaching the game, having been a teacher before getting into coaching. He instituted policies in Green Bay that insisted that the team only stay at hotels that treated his players equally, would make any establishment that was prejudiced against any of his players off-limits to his entire team and made crystal clear to his players that any of them who exhibited prejudice of any kind against another player would be thrown off the team. Some of Lombardi’s critics, as few as they are, have said that his accomplishments are tainted because his teams were loaded with future Hall of Famers. That argument doesn’t hold water when you consider that most of those players were already on the Packer roster before Lombardi arrived, and were underachieving on a losing team. Lombardi molded them into Hall of Famers. One other factor that made the coach an all-time great was his integrity. He was so admired for his upstanding character that in the 1960s Richard Nixon tried to recruit him to be his vice presidential running mate. Lombardi, being a staunch Kennedy Democrat, politely declined. His commitment to integrity is a lesson some modern day coaches could learn from.

Vince Lombardi’s quote about integrity

On this week’s NFL schedule of games, there is a contest to be played between the Los Angeles Chargers and Tennessee Titans. For our weekly Throwback Thursday feature, we settled on a game played between these two franchises when the Chargers were still in San Diego and the Titans were located in Houston as the Oilers. It was September 15, the opening day of the 1974 season and coach Tommy Prothro’s Chargers were visiting Houston’s Astrodome for a game against the Oilers, who were coached at the time by Sid Gillman. Gillman, of course, led the San Diego franchise to huge success in their American Football League years in the 1960s, and this was his first chance to take on the team that had let him go after the 1970 season. Gillman would hardly recognize the Charger team that came into the Astrodome to play that day. His star players from the AFL days like John Hadl, Paul Lowe, Keith Lincoln, Lance Alworth, Dave Kocourek, Ernie Ladd and Ron Mix were all either retired or dispersed across the league finishing out their careers with other teams.

Whether there was any sense of revenge or not, Gillman’s Oilers would take care of their coach on this day, as they ground out a 21-14 win over San Diego. The Oilers featured a balanced attack instead of Gillman’s usual vertical passing game. Their young quarterback, Lynn Dickey, was efficient, spreading the ball around among 6 different receivers. Ronnie Coleman was the bulwark of the running game, gaining 123 yards on 21 carries, although George Amundson stole his thunder by scoring 2 short rushing touchdowns and catching an 8 yard throw from Dickey to account for all of Houston’s scoring. Cid Edwards had 100 yards rushing for San Diego and Glen Bonner scored on a short TD run, while the other Charger touchdown came on a pass from the team’s young signal caller, Dan Fouts, to one of the few Charger players Gillman might recognize from his days as the team’s coach, receiver Gary Garrison. The Oilers, who had finished 1-13 the previous year, improved to 7-7 on the season under Gillman, but the future Hall of Famer stepped down to give his hand-picked choice as his replacement, Bum Phillips, a chance to take over in 1975. Prothro’s Chargers staggered to a 5-9 record and the franchise never worked their way out of mediocrity under his leadership. They finally fired him in 1978 and brought on Don Coryell, who would bring the team back to a level of respectability.

Oilers’ 1974 media guide prominently featured the bow-tie wearing Gillman

One of the most underrated things about pro football in the 1960s, which is the era I grew up with, is the quality of the television broadcasters who brought the games into our homes. Those memorable men are the subjects of this NFL 100 post. The National Football League broadcast their games regionally in the ’60s, and the team whose games were shown each week where I live were the Cleveland Browns. It was so great to hear the familiar voices of Ken Coleman and former Browns’ player Warren Lahr describing the action as my childhood idols, players like Frank Ryan, Jim Brown, Gary Collins, Leroy Kelly and Paul Warfield fought their way to victory each week. Coleman was also a long-time Boston Red Sox baseball announcer. Like many of the men we’ll feature here, he was equally good at being knowledgeable about multiple sports.  Jack Buck, whose son Joe is currently the lead play-by-play man for FOX, was another familiar early football broadcaster. He started doing American Football League games in the early 1960s on ABC, then became a regular on the CBS regional NFL games, first with the Chicago Bears and later for the Dallas Cowboys. He was part of the broadcast team for the famous “Ice Bowl” championship game between the Cowboys and Green Bay Packers. Like Coleman, Buck was also a long-time baseball announcer, doing St. Louis Cardinal games for decades. A couple of other familiar football voices belonged to Frank Glieber and Lindsey Nelson. Glieber split time during the decade among the Cowboys and Browns (after Coleman left) while Nelson, one of the all-time great voices of gridiron play-by-play men, worked games involving the Cowboys and later the Chicago Bears. Nelson was one of the most versatile sportscasters of his time, having done San Francisco Giants and New York Mets baseball, numerous college football bowl games, NBA and college basketball, golf and tennis. The New York market was a breeding ground for outstanding sportscasters of the era, and some of the best worked NFL games for CBS during the 1960s. Most notable was Chris Schenkel, who worked the New York Giant games for most of the decade. Two former players who were color analysts for Schenkel, Pat Summerall and Frank Gifford, eventually grew into major roles as play-by-play announcers, a transition that former players rarely are successful at. Summerall would go on to become the lead CBS announcer when the network went to national games, a role he would continue when the game rights moved to FOX. Gifford spent a single season as an analyst for Monday Night Football along with Howard Cosell before sliding into the play-by-play seat, where he would remain well into the 1980s.

Ken Coleman interviews coach Paul Brown

Other former players who found success in the booth as analysts were Red Grange, who called Bear games from the 1950s until CBS scrapped the regional teams in 1968, and Tom Brookshier, who analyzed games for his former team, the Philadelphia Eagles, throughout the decade before hooking up with Summerall as a permanent team in 1974. I mostly remember Jack Whitaker from later decades but he also was the Eagles’ CBS play-by-play man in the early ’60s. Don Criqui, another announcer who remained active well into the 1990s, got his start in the play-by-play seat with the expansion New Orleans Saints in 1967, and became a regular when the network scrapped the regional game pairings and assigned games by merit. Last but not least among the 1960s NFL on CBS broadcasters was Ray Scott. He was the Green Bay Packers’ regional broadcaster throughout the Vince Lombardi Green Bay dynasty years, so he became a well known voice across the country with the Packers being involved in so many postseason games. His philosophy of less is more was legendary – he didn’t talk for the sake of talking but just reported the action on the field with limited conversation and with his trademark smooth voice. “Starr….to Dowler…for the touchdown.” was a call one might hear during a Packer game. When CBS went to their merit system to assign broadcasters, Scott remained mostly doing Packer contests.

Ray Scott, flanked by Jack Buck and Frank Gifford, preview the “Ice Bowl”

The American Football League had it’s own brand of broadcasters in the ’60s, and the main play-by-play man was Curt Gowdy, who teamed with former player Paul Christman, and later with former Giant Al DeRogatis, who was controversial and in a way, was Howard Cosell before Cosell himself, an analyst you either loved or hated. Jim Simpson and Charley Jones were also familiar AFL play-by-play voices, and some of the analysts they teamed up with were Kyle Rote, another former New York player who made the move to the broadcast booth, George Ratterman, Elmer Angsman, Andy Robustelli and Lee Grosscup. All in all, they did a great job of bringing professionalism and excitement to fans of the new league, and were a big reason that the AFL was able to succeed.

Al DeRogatis (left) and Curt Gowdy

We seem to be on a run of legendary coaches in our latest NFL 100 posts, and this week is no exception as we feature a coach who many consider to be the father of the modern passing game, Hall of Fame legend Sid Gillman. Gillman cut his teeth as a coach in college as an assistant at Denison, Ohio State and Army before landing  head coaching jobs at Miami of Ohio and the University of Cincinnati. An 81-19-2 record as a college head coach got him noticed by the pros and in 1955 he was hired to guide the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams. The club was known for wide open offense and Gillman enhanced that reputation during his tenure there. They reached the league championship game in his first season but lost to the Cleveland Browns. It was a roller coaster ride for the coach for the remainder of his Ram career, although the offense was always capable. After finishing 2-10 in 1959, he was released but landed on his feet by being hired as the head coach of the new team in town, the American Football League’s Los Angeles Chargers. The Chargers, with their new coach roaming the sidelines wearing his trademark bow tie, were an immediate success and the type of team the new league was looking for – featuring an exciting wide open offense that stretched the field with a vertical passing game. The Chargers, who moved to San Diego in 1961 after a single season in L.A., won the Western Division title 5 times in the AFL’s first 6 seasons and captured the league title in 1963 with a rousing 51-10 rout of the Boston Patriots. Al Davis, a football icon who began his pro football career as an assistant on Gillman’s early Charger teams, once said “Sid Gillman brought class to the AFL. Being part of Sid’s organization was like going to a laboratory for the highly developed science of professional football.” Another Hall of Fame coach, Chuck Noll, was also on Gillman’s Charger staff in the AFL’s early years. Gillman left the Chargers when the AFL and NFL officially merged into one league in 1970, but returned for a short stint with the Houston Oilers in 1973 and ’74. His Oiler teams didn’t qualify for the postseason but he lifted the franchise out of the doldrums they had been in before leaving.

Besides Davis and Noll, many coaches either learned from Gillman or copied his offensive philosophies, including Bill Walsh, Bum Phillips, Don Coryell and Dick Vermeil. Coryell was head coach at San Diego State during Gillman’s Charger era and used to bring his team to Charger practices to observe. Vermeil actually hired Gillman as a consultant when he was coach of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1980. Another tribute to Gillman’s genius is the players he developed. His reputation as a quarterback guru played out when 2 of his Ram QBs of the 1950s, Billy Wade and Frank Ryan, won NFL championships, Wade with the 1963 Chicago Bears and Ryan with the 1964 Cleveland Browns. His resume also includes coaching all kinds of Hall of Famers, players like Norm Van Brocklin, Tom Fears, Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch, Les Richter, Ollie Matson, Lance Alworth and Ron Mix, as well as some Hall-worthy players in Ernie Ladd, Earl Faison, Keith Lincoln, Paul Lowe, John Hadl, Tank Younger, Andy Robustelli, Lamar Lundy and Jon Arnett. Gillman may have been a product of pro football of the 1950s and ’60s, but his legacy lives on in the way the modern game is played today.

Coach Gillman, Lance Alworth (19), John Hadl (21)

On this week’s NFL schedule, there’s a game to be played between 2 historic franchises who are struggling mightily this season – the Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins. For this week’s Throwback Thursday feature, we’ll harken back to a time when both teams were winning, and one in fact, achieved what was thought to be impossible, perfection. The game we’re featuring is Super Bowl VII, played on January 14, 1973 at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Dolphins, under coach Don Shula, entered the game undefeated and their opponent was coach George Allen’s “Over The Hill Gang”, a collection of grisly veterans molded into a competitive team by Allen ,who despised playing rookies and young players because of their penchant for making mistakes. Coming into the big game without a loss in either the regular season or playoffs was an amazing achievement for Miami, especially since they had lost their starting quarterback, future Hall of Famer Bob Griese, for a large portion of the year. The man who came to the rescue and kept the team’s record unblemished was old veteran Earl Morrall, who along with Shula had been subjected to ridicule just a few seasons prior when their Baltimore Colts’ juggernaut was shocked by the New York Jets in Super Bowl III.

Shula revived his reputation by building an instant winner in Miami and for the Super Bowl, even got his starting QB back as Griese, who had seen limited playing time in the AFC Championship against Pittsburgh 2 weeks earlier, was deemed ready to play full time. Griese was hardly needed in this game, as he threw only 11 passes all day, completing 8 of them, with the biggest being a 28 yard touchdown throw to Howard Twilley to open the scoring in the first quarter.  The rest of the game was dominated by the Dolphins’ “No Name” defense and the hard running of fullback Larry Csonka, who racked up 112 yards on 15 carries. Miami’s defense harassed Redskin quarterback Bill Kilmer, the ageless wonder who resurrected his career in Washington, all day, sacking him twice and picking off 3 of his passes. Two of the interceptions were by Dolphin safety Jake Scott, who would be named the game’s Most Valuable Player. The Redskins never seemed to pick up any momentum on offense and when Csonka’s backfield mate, Jim Kiick, scored on a one yard touchdown plunge in the second quarter to boost Miami’s lead to 14-0, the game appeared to be already out of reach. Then, in the fourth quarter, Washington gained some unexpected momentum on a play that is one of the most memorable in Super Bowl history. On a botched field goal attempt, Miami kicker Garo Yepremian picked up the ball and attempted to throw a pass. It wobbled straight up out of his hand for a fumble and ‘Skins cornerback Mike Bass snatched it up and returned it 49 yards for a touchdown to cut the lead in half. Shula was incensed but he didn’t need to worry. Washington stopped the Dolphins on the ensuing possession but when they got the ball back for one last try to tie the game, the “No Names” rose to the occasion and snuffed out Kilmer and the Redskins’ offense in a quick three and out to seal the victory and immortality as the only team in NFL history to achieve an undefeated season.

Years later, Shula and Yepremian joke about “The Pass”

One of last week’s NFL 100 posts featured one of pro football greatest but under the radar head coaches in Chuck Noll, architect of the great Pittsburgh Steeler dynasty of the 1970s. This week, we’ll feature the winningest head coach of all time in the NFL, the great Don Shula. Noll and Shula both played for Paul Brown in Cleveland, but prior to Noll’s rookie season, Shula was traded to the Baltimore Colts. He played there for 4 seasons and played a year in Washington before retiring. His playing days didn’t amount to much but in 1960 he would embark on a coaching career that would take him to the top of the mountain in the NFL. He signed on as the head defensive coach of the Detroit Lions (they didn’t designate them as “coordinators” at the time). After doing an impressive job there, he returned to the Colts as their head coach in 1963 and quickly made the team into a force in the league. They reached the title game in 1964 and 1968, losing to Cleveland in ’64 and then beating the Browns in ’68. They finished with an identical 10-3-1 record with Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers in 1965 and because of injuries were forced to use halfback Tom Matte at QB in a playoff game against the Packers to decide the Western Conference champion. The teams were tied 10-10 when Green Bay’s Don Chandler kicked a controversial field goal to win the contest 13-10. Replays appeared to show that the kick was actually no good, and it resulted in the NFL raising the goalposts to their current height. In the 1967 season, the Colts entered the regular season’s final week undefeated but a loss to the Rams, who also hadn’t lost a game, cost them the Coastal Division crown and a place in the playoffs despite finishing 11-1-2. Despite fielding competitive teams in all of his 7 seasons in Baltimore, it was a huge upset loss, to Joe Namath’s New York Jets in Super Bowl III, that ultimately got the coach the heave-ho there. He coached one more season after the loss but the Colts finished 8-5-1 and he was fired.

That turned out to be a major blessing for Shula. He moved on to take the reins of the Miami Dolphins, a foundering expansion franchise in the AFL, and built them into a powerhouse of the early 1970s that won back-to-back Super Bowls in 1972 and ’73. The ’72 season was remarkable in that the Dolphins finished 17-0 to become the only team in NFL history to go undefeated, a mark still unmatched today. His teams won with a pounding running game and a stingy defense dubbed the “No Name” defense because it lacked any big stars. Although the Steelers and Noll stole a bit of their thunder when they won 4 Super Bowl titles the rest of the decade of the ’70s, Shula kept his team competitive through 2 more decades until he retired as pro football’s winningest coach in 1995. Overall his teams reached 6 Super Bowls and won a pair, and while accumulating his record 347 victories he coached different styles of play, going from a star QB in Baltimore, John Unitas, to the bruising run game, stingy defense of his ’70s teams to a wide open passing offense with Dan Marino. He is a coaching legend indeed in NFL football lore – the winningest coach in the league’s 100 year history that is being celebrated this season.

Triumphant coach Shula carried off the field after Super Bowl VII