Logo of a small college football team that plays in the Gulf South Conference, the University of West Alabama Tigers. Their program was formed in 1938 and won an NAIA national championship in 1971. They also have 11 bowl appearances, with 5 victories, in their long HBCU history. Tiger alums who have gone on to play pro football include Malcolm Butler, Deon Lacey, Seth Roberts, Charles Martin and Tyreek Hill.
2016 Panini Prizm football card of pro football wide receiver Tyreek Hill, an active player who is in the seventh year of his NFL career. After spending the first 6 in Kansas City, Hill was traded to the Miami Dolphins in 2022. Nicknamed “Cheetah” due to his incredible speed, he has been a six-time Pro Bowler and was named to the NFL’s All Decade team for the 2010s as a punt returner. Hill helped the Chiefs win Super Bowl LIV. His career has been marred by off-the-field issues involving alleged domestic assault and child abuse.
In past NFL history, the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants, two of the oldest NFL franchises, have met in some memorable games. They play each other again on this week’s NFL schedule, so we will travel back in time to highlight a game they played against each other. Although they have clashed multiple times in the league championship game in the 1930s, ’40s, ’60s and ’90s, our featured game is a regular season meeting, played on November 1, 1959. The significance? It marked the first game that Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi, a Brooklyn native and former Giant offensive assistant, returned home to face his former team.
Giants/Packers program from 11/1/59
In the mid to late 1950s the Giants were an NFL juggernaut under head coach Jim Lee Howell. They reached the title game 3 times and won it in 1956 over the Chicago Bears. Howell’s main offensive assistant was Lombardi, and the architect of the defense was Tom Landry, who was destined to move on and become the first head coach of the Dallas Cowboys in their inaugural season in 1960. Howell, keenly aware of the combined genius of his top 2 aides, used to joke that his job was to just roll out the footballs to the team and then get out of the way.
That, of course, was an exaggeration, and on this day it was proven that Howell deserved a lot of credit also for the success of his team. New York limited the Packers to just 9 first downs and 160 total yards as they pounded out a 20-3 win over Lombardi’s troops. The Giants’ offense didn’t exactly shine either, but fullback Alex Webster, who would go on to coach the team in future years, had a respectable day to lead the club. He totaled 90 yards combined rushing and receiving, and scored the game’s only 2 touchdowns on runs of 3 and 7 yards. Future broadcasting legend Pat Summerall completed New York’s scoring with two 49 yard field goals. The Giants had one big advantage over the Packers in the game. Their quarterback was Charlie Conerly, a veteran who had guided them to a title. Green Bay’s signal caller was journeyman Lamar McHan. Bart Starr was on the team’s roster but hadn’t yet convinced the coach he was ready to lead the team. That would change later in the season, and Starr would then go on to take the Pack to 6 championship games in 8 years, winning the last 5. Included in the title run were 2 victories over the Giants, in 1961 and 1962.
Lombardi strolls the Packer sideline
This menacing-looking creature is the logo of a long defunct college football program, the Morris Brown College Wolverines. Their gridiron program was discontinued in 2003. The historically black college had a good football pedigree during the time it was active, sending a good amount of players to the pros for a school that size. Those alumni include Ezra Johnson, Alfred Jenkins, George Atkinson, Charlie Bivins, Tommy Hart, Nick Ferguson and Donte Curry.
1962 Topps football card of former pro football fullback Alex Webster, who spent his entire 10 year NFL career with the New York Giants. He played briefly in the CFL before joining the New York club. Webster was a two-time Pro Bowler and twice was named a second team All Pro, and helped the Giants win the NFL title in 1956. After retiring as a player he served as head coach of the Giants from 1969 through 1973, and was named NFL Coach of the Year in 1970. He is a member of the New York team’s ring of honor.
As the NFL enters week 4 of it’s 2022 schedule, the always entertaining NFC East rivalry between Dallas and Washington is on the menu. For this week’s Throwback Thursday feature we’ll reach way back to November 4, 1962 for a matchup between the 2 clubs. It was week 8 of the season, and both the Cowboys and Redskins were competitive in the NFL’s tough Eastern Division. The New York Giants and Cleveland Browns were dominant forces in the division, and even the lowly Pittsburgh Steelers were playing well that season. Washington came into the contest with only a single defeat at 4-1-2 (ties were common in those days with no overtime) while Dallas was still in it’s infancy, in only their third season under coach Tom Landry. Still, Landry had guided them to a respectable 3-3-1 mark.
Landry, always the innovator, implemented a system on his offense in which he alternated his quarterbacks, something that would be scoffed at in today’s game considering the fragile egos of today’s signal callers. Playing 2 quarterbacks was relatively common in those days, but mostly coaches would make an in-game change solely due to poor performance or injury, since the quarterbacks took brutal beatings back then. Landry took the ploy to extremes as he changed QBs at will regularly during a game. Whether it was a sound strategy or not, it worked out well for the Cowboys on this day. Young Don Meredith got the first kick at the can. After the teams traded first quarter field goals, he connected with Lee Folkins on an 11 yard touchdown pass. Old soldier Eddie LeBaron got his turn next, and he delivered with a 23 yard scoring toss to fullback Amos Marsh. Meredith then took another turn and found J.W. Lockett on a short 4 yard throw to put Dallas in front 24-3. In the final quarter Amos Bullocks scored on a 4 yard run, then LeBaron returned and led a drive culminating in a 14 yard TD toss to Frank Clarke.
Now the rout was on. Redskin coach Bill McPeak then made the move common to the era, replacing the ineffective Norm Snead at quarterback with backup Galen Hall. Hall put together a scoring drive that he finished off himself with a touchdown scamper from a yard out. Marsh was the offensive star for the Cowboys with 10 carries for 109 yards on the ground and 3 receptions for 53 yards and the TD through the air. Dallas left town with an impressive 38-10 victory in tow, but as the season wore on both teams took a nosedive in the standings, finishing fourth and fifth respectively in the 7 team East, each with losing records.
Coach Landry eventually settled on the younger Meredith as the full time starter later in the decade, but he did revert to the alternating tactic again in the early 1970s with Craig Morton and Roger Staubach. The Cowboys finally shed their “can’t win the big one” label in 1971 when he gave Staubach the job full time. They defeated Miami that season for their first Super Bowl title.
1960 Cowboy QBs LeBaron, Meredith, Don Heinrich
Used from 1933 until 1936, this is the logo of a franchise from the National Football League’s bygone days, the Boston Redskins. The team entered the NFL in 1932 as the Boston Braves but changed their name the following year. Owner George Preston Marshall moved the team to Washington in 1937 and won the league championship that year. Their first coach, William “Lone Star” Dietz, claimed to be part Sioux. Players on the roster from the Boston years include Turk Edwards, Wayne Millner, Rick Concannon, Jim Musick and Hall of Famer Cliff Battles.
1963 Topps football card of former pro football fullback Amos Marsh, who played 7 seasons in the National Football League with Dallas and Detroit. He was chosen for the NFL’s All Rookie team in 1961. A powerful runner who earned the nicknames “Moose” and “Forward Marsh”, he also returned kicks for the Cowboys, and his 101 yard kickoff return was a franchise record that stood for 29 years. Marsh died in 1992 after suffering a series of strokes caused by diabetes.
A pair of meandering NFL franchises meets on the league’s week 3 schedule, the Las Vegas Raiders and Tennessee Titans. For this week’s Thursday Throwback feature, we’ll highlight an American Football League championship game played between them on New Year’s Eve, 1967. At the time, the Titans were located in Houston as the Oilers, while the Raiders were still in their original home – Oakland. One of pro football’s most nomadic franchises, the Raiders moved from Oakland down the California coast to Los Angeles, back to Oakland and eventually to their current home in the Nevada desert.
At this point, Al Davis, who temporarily left the franchise to become AFL commissioner during merger talks with the NFL, had built his team into a dominant force in the AFL. An October loss to Joe Namath and the New York Jets was the only blemish on an otherwise perfect season as Oakland finished 13-1, winning the AFL’s Western Division crown by a whopping 4 games over rival Kansas City. Houston, under coach Wally Lemm, reversed their fortunes from the previous season, turning a 3-11 record into a 9-4-1 mark that proved good enough to win the Eastern Division title and a trip to Oakland for the championship match.
Although Lemm’s club managed to wrestle the crown from three-time East champion Buffalo and the up-and-coming Jets, they proved to be no match for the Raiders in the title game. Oakland’s rugged defense smothered the Oiler attack, holding them to 146 total yards on the day and forcing 4 fumbles and an interception. Offensively, Raider quarterback Daryle Lamonica completed only 10 passes, but 2 of those went for touchdowns, 17 yards to tight end Dave Kocourek and 12 yards to Bill Miller. Oakland’s offense demolished the Oilers with a relentless ground attack, as both Hewritt Dixon (144) and Pete Banaszak (116) ran for over 100 yards. Dixon’s total included a 69 yard scoring run. Lamonica added a 1 yard touchdown run and George Blanda booted 4 field goals to complete the Raiders’ scoring in a 40-7 rout of the Oilers that was never much of a contest. The beleaguered Houston club could only manage a fourth quarter 5 yard TD pass from Pete Beathard to Charley Frazier, avoiding a shutout but not being very satisfied with the result.
Having bulldozed through the AFL in winning 14 of 15 games, the Raiders appeared to have a team capable of competing with the NFL’s juggernaut Green Bay Packers in the second Super Bowl, following a 35-10 thrashing of Kansas City by the Packers the previous season. Vince Lombardi’s troops, after all, had to muster every ounce of fortitude they had to dispatch the Dallas Cowboys in the “Ice Bowl” to make it back to the big game. Alas, Oakland’s lack of experience showed in the game, and mistakes led to another resounding Packer victory, 33-14.
FB Hewritt Dixon outruns Oiler defenders
Logo of the University of California at Santa Barbara Gauchos, a school that has had a football program twice in it’s existence. Although they haven’t fielded a gridiron team since 1969, the Gauchos have had some representation in the pro ranks, as former players Johnny Morris, Dave Chapple, Sam Cathcart and coach Mike Martz have spent time in the NFL.