Old School Football Memories
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| Miami Dolphins QB- Bob Griese |
It was on January 9, 1977 that pro football entered my life and I witnessed (from what I can recall) was my first football game and NFL championship (Superbowl XI), and was immediately hooked. Months later I turned ten years old, started the fifth grade, and began rooting for what was then my favorite team, which was not m my beloved Cardinals, but rather the Miami Dolphins.
Why the Dolphins? I honestly have no recollection some 40 years later. It stemmed from a few things I think, I liked their uniforms, a lack of any good football in Chicago, and our family trip to Florida.
With that said though, exactly how it came to be that I became a Dolphins fan I don't really know for sure. They were by then a team on the downward slide, and the only one I really identified with on the team was their quarterback, the by then bi-spectacle Bob Griese, who, as luck would have it, in 1977, was quarterbacking a resurgent offense in the post-Csonka era. I wore the same style glasses that I immediately became a fan. I was such an over eager Dolphins fan that for the remainder of the 1970s I asked for literally every NFL licensed piece of merchandise a boy could find in the Sears and J.C. Penny's Christmas catalogs (more on that facet of football culture in a future article).
The Last Super Bowl
Sports are universally beloved. Geographically, the athletic competitions take on various forms; the NFL, NBA, MLB are strong in America; NHL in Canada; Premier League in Europe; and Cricket in India.
But the now legendary George R. R. Martin wrote about the downfall of them all in “The Last Super Bowl,” a fantastically written short story in February 1975’s issue of Gallery Magazine, a men’s magazine.
The story is actually two tales, as he covers the last Super Bowl which takes place in January 2016 and interjects the depiction of that Super Bowl, between the Green Bay Packers and the Hoboken Jets, and the downfall of real sports. Real sports, in the 2016 of Martin’s fictional world, have been overtaken in popularity by simulated sports.
Football in Baseball Parks
I am not sure why, but I have always loved the aesthetic of pro football being played in baseball parks. Something about the way the fields were aligned so that they fit just right into the tight confines.
When Howard Ruled Monday Night...
When I was a kid, Monday nights in the fall were truly an event of epic proportions for any preteen football nut like myself. For you see in the l970s Monday Night Football on ABC was the gold standard of football play by play, long before John Madden and Pat Summerall ever connected. Back in the day it was the game and the men who played it that mattered. Yet, what made MNF stand apart from all sports broadcasts was the magic of one man- Howard Cosell. Without Howard it would have been just a forgettable game, like it is now. John Gruden will never compare. With Howard it was an event, and even when the game was a blowout he still made it interesting. If only we could have Billy Crystal call the games now and take us all back in time, just for one one quarter even... Sigh :-(
Chicago's Farewell to the Cardinals
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The Magic of NFL Films
Without NFL Films would the game we now love and worship, here on this opening night of the 2016 season, be the game it is today. I contend that NFL Films and Steve Sabol have had a bigger impact on football then we may ever realize, for NFL Films has humanized the game we love and has allowed us to view it through a cinematic lens. The article below appeared in Sports Illustrated and was written well before the death of Steve Sabol, the iconic leader and visionary of NFL Films in 2012. His genius is seen in the film below., "That One Vintage Year.."
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