1981 Topps football card of former safety Jeff Nixon, who played six seasons in the NFL for the Buffalo Bills. He led the team in interceptions in his rookie year with 6. A knee injury ended his career in 1984, and since retiring, he has worked to keep retired NFL players informed of their rights regarding pension and medical benefits. Nixon, an accomplished guitar player, has also worked for 20 years as a youth employment director for the city of Buffalo.
In celebrating 100 seasons of the National Football League, one name that cannot be left out is that of one of the game’s most influential, and controversial people, Al Davis. A native of Brockton, Massachusetts who was raised in Brooklyn, he started his career in coaching in the 1950s, working as an offensive line coach at various universities, and also worked as a scout for a year with the Baltimore Colts in 1954. The formation of the new American Football League in 1960 gave Davis his coaching opportunity in the pros, and it was there that he cemented his legacy as an icon of the game. He joined Sid Gillman’s staff as receivers coach in 1960 and parlayed the Chargers’ success into landing the Oakland Raiders head coaching job in 1963. He was an immediate success in Oakland, guiding the previously foundering club to a 10-4 record, good for second place in the AFL’s Western Division, behind the eventual AFL champion Chargers. The Chargers had won the West despite the fact that Davis’ Raiders had beaten them twice. Davis was named AFL Coach of The Year for turning Oakland’s fortunes around. He remained Raiders’ coach for 2 more seasons when, with the AFL now embroiled in a war for survival with the established NFL, he agreed to take the position of AFL commissioner in 1966 when Joe Foss resigned. Foss had quit because he felt the battle with the NFL was a losing one, and the AFL owners felt Davis was a fighter who would work hard to win against the older league.
Davis (2nd from right) with the Chargers’ 1960 coaching staff
The owners wanted a fighter, and they got one in Davis. He implemented a plan where AFL teams would raid their NFL counterparts of their stars, preferably the quarterbacks, by signing those players to “future” contracts. The AFL signed Roman Gabriel of the Rams and John Brodie of the 49ers to those types of contracts, sending the NFL owners into a panic. Unbeknownst to Davis, a secret agreement was reached among a group he wasn’t included in, including NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Dallas executive Tex Schramm and Chiefs’ owner and AFL founder Lamar Hunt. The new agreement was basically a peace treaty merging the 2 leagues, voiding the “future” contracts and establishing a common draft of college players, while also including a plan to play a championship game between the 2 leagues, a game that would grow into the Super Bowl. Also, the 2 leagues would merge into a single entity, the National Football League, with teams divided into the National and American Conferences, in 1970 when the leagues’ separate television contracts were set to expire. Davis was furious with the agreement, feeling that he was undermined in his efforts to “win the war” with the NFL. To appease him, he was offered the position of AFL President since the merger also called for his position as AFL commissioner to be dissolved. He refused the job and eventually returned to the Raiders in an executive role as one of 3 “managing general partners”, with him getting a 10% ownership share of the club. He used a controversial move in 1972 to gain control of the franchise. One of the 3 partners, Wayne Valley, was in Munich for the Olympics, and while he was gone Davis drew up a revised agreement that gave him controlling interest in the team and the other partner signed it. Valley sued to overturn the new agreement but lost his case, since under California law it only took 2 of the 3 partners to validate it. Davis seemed to never get rid of the chip on his shoulder of losing out to Rozelle in the merger fight, and spent a lot of the next few decades fighting Rozelle and the NFL in court over various issues, including the right to move the Raiders to Los Angeles when he couldn’t get a new stadium built in Oakland. Things didn’t work out in L.A. either, and Davis relocated the franchise back to Oakland after 14 seasons, even though the team would be forced to play home games in the same old stadium they had left behind in 1982. The nomadic club will move again, this time to Las Vegas, beginning next season. The half century of fighting with the league in the courts aside, Davis was a genius when it came to the actual football side of things. He built the Raider franchise into one of professional sports’ most successful and popular teams, winning 3 Super Bowls along the way and establishing the “Silver and Black” team colors as well known in fans’ eyes. His mantras of “Commitment To Excellence” and “Just Win, Baby” are still widely associated with the team, even though they fell on hard times in the last few years of Davis’ life.
Al Davis flipped off the NFL for most of his football ownership days
As much of a renegade and a thorn in the side of the NFL as Davis was, he was also a visionary in the game and charitable when it came to his Raider “family”. He hired the first African American head coach, Art Shell, the first female front office executive, Amy Trask, and was the second to hire a Latino coach, Tom Flores. He retained close ties with all of his former players, who all returned the love. He was always true to his mantra of “Once A Raider, Always A Raider”. It was common to see old Raiders of the past like George Blanda, Jim Otto or Willie Brown around the team facility or in Davis’ owner’s box on game day. Despite being a maverick who fought the NFL for 50 years or more, the Pro Football Hall of Fame still overlooked all the controversy and inducted Davis into Canton in 1992.
Logo of the Oakland Raiders football team, used for only a single season in 1963, when they were members of the American Football League. It was the first year the team changed their primary colors from black and gold to the silver and black they are known for today. The Raiders, under new coach Al Davis, went 10-4 in ’63 and finished second in the AFL’s Western Division. Key players on that team, which had a 1-13 record the previous year, were Cotton Davidson, Tom Flores, Clem Daniels, Art Powell, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, Jim Otto, Bo Roberson and Ken Herock.
1962 Fleer football card of former pro football center Jim Otto, an undersized lineman who worked hard enough to enjoy a 15 year career in the AFL and NFL, all with the Oakland Raiders. Known for his unusual “00” jersey number, he was an All-AFL player for all of the league’s 10 year existence, and an easy choice for the AFL’s All Time team. Otto was then a 3-time Pro Bowler after the team joined the NFL. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1980, his first year of eligibility.
Most of the early stars of pro football are long forgotten but in this year of celebration of the NFL’s 100th season it’s good to remember those players and the contributions they made to bring the sport forward into the public eye. There is no player who contributed more to that cause than Harold “Red” Grange. In the 1920s, baseball was the undisputed national pastime, since it was the era of the sport’s most famous player, Babe Ruth. College football was also popular but the pro game, in it’s infancy then, was regarded as a savage game and there were even prominent politicians who wanted to ban the sport. Grange was a highly popular All American player for the University of Illinois, to the point that when he was a 22 year old just out of college, people tried to convince him to run for Congress. He chose to sign with the Bears and play pro football, however. The Bears then went on a 19 game, 67 day barnstorming tour of games around the country, with “The Galloping Ghost”, Grange’s nickname, as it’s star attraction. And an attraction he turned out to be, as crowds of up to 70,000 showed up to see him play.
Red Grange, pro football’s first gate attraction
New York Giants’ owner Tim Mara had previously been critical of Grange signing with the Bears, citing a rule that teams shouldn’t sign college players. However, he negotiated a game with the Bears to be held in New York and over 70,000 fans turned out for the match. The gate receipts from that game helped keep the Giants’ franchise from folding. The barnstorming tour was a brutal one, and when injuries began to mount on the players, most notably Grange, the promoters began the practice of having a week’s rest period between games. That practice, for the most part, became a standard for the NFL, and pro football in general, that still exists today. Critics who had denounced pro football from the start began comparing the barnstorming tours to a traveling circus rather than a professional sports league. That criticism was most likely a big factor in the league’s founders and executives pulling the pro teams together to form a more unified, organized association with uniform rules for all.
Red Grange on the cover of Time magazine in 1925
Of course, Grange was only one of many early marquee players who lifted the game out of it’s “circus” reputation to a stature as a major sport, and it’s been argued that injuries caused a decline in his abilities and his name rather than exploits on the field kept him in the news. He did make plays to help the Bears win championships in 1932 and 1933, so I’m not sure that argument holds water. Grange, being a major name in the news, also was recruited to star in silent films and in 1931 starred in a 12 part serial The Galloping Ghost, playing himself. That exposure in movies was good publicity for both Grange and the NFL, as the league could brag that one of their own stars was also a very popular figure among non-football fans. Being as well known as he was, Grange became a motivational speaker after he was finished playing and had dabbled in coaching as the Bears’ backfield coach. He also was once offered the team’s head coaching job but turned it down, expressing that he wasn’t interested in being a head coach at either the college or pro level. He was successful as a broadcaster starting in the 1950s as he worked both college games for NBC and regional telecasts of Bears’ games for the Dumont Network and CBS. Grange was one of the earliest names known to pro football fans, and it was only right that he was included in the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s inaugural class of inductees in 1963. He passed away in 1991 and he hadn’t been involved in the NFL for over 50 years, but when the NFL began to honor those who had been the brightest stars in their long history in this celebratory season, The Galloping Ghost was one of the first to be mentioned.
Grange and Lindsey Nelson in the broadcast booth
Logo of a defunct college football team, the Vermont Catamounts. They started play in 1886 but discontinued their football program in 1974. They were members of the Yankee Conference at that time. They have a very short list of players who went on to play pro football, the last being Frank Triglio in 1946. The only others to play more than a single season in the pros are Art Harms and Lou Little.
1933 Goudey Sport Kings Gum football card of former pro back Harold “Red” Grange, one of the earliest star players to help put the pro game on the map. He signed with the Chicago Bears after an All American college career and was the star attraction as the team went on a barnstorming tour of the country, in the days before the NFL was an organized league. “The Galloping Ghost” played for 9 years and was a two-time All Pro, a member of 2 Bear championship clubs and was named to the NFL’s All Decade team for the 1920s. After retiring as a player, Grange was the Bears’ backfield coach for 3 seasons, starred in a few Hollywood movies and broadcast Bear games for CBS television. He was a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, inducted with the inaugural class in 1963.
The National Football League’s two New York franchises will do battle this weekend on the league’s schedule, and we’ll highlight the first ever meeting between the 2 teams for this week’s Throwback Thursday feature. It was an innocuous game played at Shea Stadium on November 1st, 1970. There was nothing extraordinary about the game, except for one large detail – it was the first ever game played between the two New York franchises in history. 1970 was the first year of the merger of the NFL and AFL, and the climate between the 2 leagues, which now were together as one, wasn’t exactly a climate of togetherness. The old guard NFL still felt that they were superior, but evidence pointed to the contrary. The AFL had won the 2 previous Super Bowls by upsetting heavily favored NFL teams. The Jets, behind a brash guarantee from Joe Namath, had stunned the football world by upsetting the Baltimore Colts following the 1968 season, and to prove that game was no fluke the Kansas City Chiefs, who had been soundly defeated in the first Super Bowl by Green Bay, followed up with a surprisingly easy win over the Minnesota Vikings in ’69. So this was much more than just any old regular season game. Pride was on the line for the NFL and AFL people, who still harbored some bitterness toward each other. The Jets, only 2 years removed from their shocking title, were at a big disadvantage on this day. Their star quarterback and undisputed leader, Namath, was sidelined for the season with a broken wrist and the signal calling duties went to journeyman backup Al Woodall. The Giants, on the other hand, had future Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton at the helm.
The Jets, who had won only one game going into this matchup, were still a proud club. They battled through a scoreless first quarter and broke the ice in the second stanza when Woodall hit running back George Nock for an 8 yard touchdown to give his club a 7-0 lead. Pete Gogolak added a field goal to cut the lead to 7-3 at halftime but the Giants took control in the third quarter. The Jets added a Jim Turner field goal to up their lead to 10-3 but the G-men would do all the scoring from that point on. The Big Blue defense entered the fray when they tackled a former teammate, fullback Chuck Mercein, for a safety to cut the lead to 10-5. Then Tarkenton took over, finding Bob Tucker and Clifton McNeil on short scoring throws to open a 19-10 lead. Gogolak put the finishing touches on with another field goal, the only scoring in the fourth quarter, and the Giants won by a final count of 22-10 to restore a small slice of old guard pride to the NFL and claim Big Apple bragging rights for the time being over the team that had embarrassed the league just a couple of seasons earlier.
Giants’ Fran Tarkenton surveys the Jet defense
Used from 1948 until 1954, this is an early logo of a college football team from the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Duke Blue Devils. The team, whose program began play in 1888, plays in the conference’s Coastal Division. They won unofficial national championships in 1936 and 1941, and compiled a 6-8 record in bowl games over the years. Blue Devil alumni who have had success in pro football include Sonny Jurgensen, Brian Baldinger, Wray Carlton, Bill Bryan, Dave Brown, Mike Curtis, Al DeRogatis, Bob Matheson, Ed Newman, Ace Parker, Chuck Walker and current players Daniel Jones, Jamison Crowder and Breon Borders.
1972 Topps football card of former pro football running back George Nock, who had a short four career in the AFL and NFL with the New York Jets and Washington Redskins. His pro career didn’t amount to much, but he was a team captain in college at Morgan State, where he earned a degree in psychology. He also is a bronze sculptor, and created “Legends Plaza” on the Morgan State campus.