NFL68 Update: Griese Ran For One Score, Threw For Another

This confounds me, as this was not the Dolphins 1968 logo or helmet. The dolphin did not fully pierce the sunbrite until 1974. Am I confused or missing something? pic.twitter.com/oMFdJUyqqN

— Bill Hetrick (@Dolphan_Bill) March 8, 2019

This beautiful Tweet late Thursday night has touched off a grand back and forth over the last couple of days, which includes a lot of chin-scratching emojis JPEGs of football cards and magazine scans:

Bill Hetrick @Dolphan_Bill

so, "officially," Dolphin pierces/not pierces star brite in 1966 and 1967; pierces in 1968, does not pierce from 1969-73, permanently pierces from 1974 to present. Even though they ruined the Dolphin in 1997 and blew it up in 2013.

Zac @Zacctastic

@Dolphan_Bill

Fascinating. That is a huge sun-piercer logo compared to 74+. We must get to the bottom of this. 

Bill Hetrick @Dolphan_Bill

it is enormous. I'm gonna have to take a moment . . .

Kevin Gallagher @KevG163

Bill, it is strange. Just did a quick scan through some Dolphins photos from the 1966-1970 era. In 1967, there were examples of the dolphin piercing AND not piercing the sunbrite. 1968...all photos I saw had it piercing the sunbrite. 1969 and 1970 had it not piercing.

Shawn Hairston @JetJacket

Who knew that orange circle was supposed to be the sun? I always figured it was a hoop the fish, I mean the dolphin, was jumping through like in a show at Sea World.

Bill Hetrick @Dolphan_Bill

see, this is a stunningly educational platform

Bob Gassel @bobgassel

I have studied this for decades, please trust me on this this...this is the logo the Dolphins used from the 4th game of 1966 thru 1968....

Bob Gassel @bobgassel

For first three games of 1966, and all games from 1969 thru 13th game of 1973, all players wore the “non-piercing” version...

Bob Gassel @bobgassel

For final game of 1973 regular season thru Super Bowl 8, some players (mostly lineman) started wearing a smaller version of the old full-piercing logo...which became the permanent logo in 1974.

I enjoyed this all a good bit. In conclusion, I "loved" the three @bobgassel Tweets; I followed @Dolphan_Bill, and the NFL68 Dolphins came from 17-0 behind at halftime to win at Buffalo, 21-17! HURRAH!

Previous and future NFL68 reports:

-- NFL67 wrap (as posted Jan. 13, 2015)
-- NFL Draft, with rest in peace, Jack Zanger (as posted April 25, 2013)
-- Sports Illustrated and Tex Maule's big ideas (as posted April 26, 2013)
-- Season preview, "May be the best of the long series of exemplary Packer clubs" (as posted Jan. 19, 2014)
-- Week 3, with Mr. and Mrs. John Brodie (as posted Feb. 1, 2014)
-- Week 4, with Norm Van Brocklin and the Falcons (as posted Jan. 20, 2014)
-- Dec. 7, 1968, A very bad weekend for Rams fans
-- Week 14, "An Empire Collapsed on Lambeau Field" (as posted Jan. 19, 2014)
-- The last Playoff Bowl? (as posted Jan. 6, 2015)
-- "'Heidi' Comes Back Like Plague At NBC" (as posted Jan. 7, 2015)
-- NFL68 wrap (as posted Jan. 11, 2014)
-- Super Bowl III continued (as posted Jan. 12, 2015)
-- Paper Lion in Hoptown (as posted April 21, 2015)
-- NFL Action on TV (as posted June 28, 2015)

-- NFL69 wrap (as posted Jan. 11, 2016)
-- NFL70 wrap (as posted Jan. 17, 2017)
-- NFL71 wrap (as posted Jan. 16, 2018)

-- NFL72 wrap (as posted Feb. 2, 2019)
-- NFL78 so far (as posted Jan. 31, 2019)

-- NFL79 so far (as posted April 15, 2015)
-- NFL14 so far (as posted Jan. 28, 2019)

-- NFL15 so far (as posted Sept 13, 2015)
-- NFL16 so far (as posted Jan. 8, 2017)

What's Happening This Weekend (in Hoptown, in 1969)?

Well, we could go to a movie.

The movie I'm most interested in among these is Yours, Mine and Ours, which is really sweet and wonderful. I love Lucille Ball, and I especially love Lucy when she plays it more straight. I was mistaken in thinking this movie was a blood ancestor of Brady Bunch; regardless, I like it a great deal.

I looked at about 10 minutes of the Don Knotts movie on YouTube, and it's, basically, what if Hugh Hefner visited Mayberry? It's always good to see all of the Andy Griffith Show bit players turn up in his movies, at least.

There's always good, ol' TV, of course ... a Dragnet rerun, for example ... baseball on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon ... the "Coaches All-America" football game ... etc., etc. There's always TV! Actually, the program I'm most interested in is this hour-long NFL Action program that has turned up most Sunday afternoons during this NFL offseason. I just discovered the following description of the series in the May 15, 1969, Chicago Tribune, and it sounds like a very, very compelling program!

How about dinner and dancing?

The restaurant is a tough choice, but I'd probably end up at Jerry's to get my astronaut print. The Alibi Club looks like a literally "happening" place, but--who's kidding who here?--I'm probably heading to the Legion to see Sonny & the Satisfies.

Plenty of more exotic fare to choose among, too. Boy, Beech Bend really knew what it was doing, hosting those "county days" for each area Kentucky county. That's probably where I'm heading; I love Bowling Green and that drive across U.S. 68 from Hoptown.

What's On At The Movies (1969)?

Every time I watch this movie, it occurs to me how absolutely formative it was to the whole life plan I developed for myself through my 20s and early 30s. Starting with the scene of Jacqueline Bisset standing outside Alan Alda's shower ... and if you put that touch-football game on the grounds at, say, Cumberland Falls State Resort Park ... through the "George, come dance with me" montage, ... well, ... wow ... it took me a good number of years here to recover from that fantasy.

5 stars, highly recommended. And hooray for football!

Super Bowl III Continued

My weekend observance of Super Bowl III today begins its second year. The Baltimore Colts and New York Jets are getting ready to kick things off in the comments of this post, and most everyone on Jan. 12, 1969, is expecting "Another NFL Romp."

Oh, Kentucky (1969)

Six months after its worldwide debut, Yellow Submarine is coming to Hopkinsville's Alhambra Theatre tomorrow 1969. And that means you have just one more day to get in to see this little number:

Other news of note from the Jan. 6 and Jan. 7 editions of Hopkinsville's Kentucky New Era:

Rest in Peace, Earl Morrall and Dotty Shula

I was talking to Mom the day after Earl Morrall died, and, being a proud Evansvillian, Mom, before discussing Earl Morrall at all, felt compelled to proclaim that "we would've still won every game in 1972" had Bob Griese not been injured and Morrall remained on the bench all season.

I think that might be true, but, nonetheless, I've always been thankful for Morrall's work. For a little while over the winter, I was reading his pre-Dolphins biography, In the Pocket: My Life as a Quarterback. I'd gotten as far as his trade from the Giants to the Colts when the KHSAA basketball tournaments, UK's big run, the start of A's season and the Bullets' playoff appearance took me off the track of reading about pro football in 1968.

Anyway, here are a couple of paragraphs from Page 126 of Earl Morrall's book that I thought were interesting and sweet:

The next week the trade was made and I flew down to Baltimore to get ready for the season. Jane, after doling out the kids to neighbors and friends in Connecticut, came down the next weekend to launch a desperate search for housing. She got the newspapers and a radio station to make announcements about our plight but none of the calls she received panned out. One woman offered to rent us a house if we would look after her fourteen cats. A man called to say that he had a tenant house on a farm available if I would help out with the barnyard chores. And a couple of perverts called.

After a long search and some fervent pleading, Jane finally found a two-bedroom unfurnished apartment in suburban Towson. She rented some primitive furniture and bought kitchen utensils at Woolworth's. Dotty Shula and some of the other wives loaned us a vacuum cleaner and other appliances. In addition to the four youngsters, we have a live-in girl, and we're normally a five-bedroom family. When I came home to the apartment at night, it was seldom less than chaos. I was never able to start studying the Colt playbook until everyone was in bed and asleep, usually around eleven o'clock or so.

Rest in peace, Earl Morrall, and rest in peace, Dotty Shula.

Super Bowl III Observed

I'm observing Super Bowl III this weekend. The game, pitting the National Football League-champion Baltimore Colts and American Football League-champion New York Jets, was played in Miami on Jan. 12, 1969 (tomorrow, 45 years ago).

I've been reading about the 1968 professional-football season off and on over the past several months, and it has been a lot of fun. You might remember from last January's HP coverage that Super Bowl II was again won by the Green Bay Packers, this time over the Oakland Raiders. (Also, you might think that I would remember sitting down and doing this whole big, three-week-long observance of Super Bowl II just 12 months ago, and, in fact, I did remember it enough to look it up today in kicking off this weekend's fun. But I had forgotten stuff like posting pictures of my football-card Packers and Raiders and looking up the TV shows I might've watched over Super Bowl II weekend, and I had those same innovative ideas all anew again while I was still in bed this morning imagining how I might observe Super Bowl III weekend.)

Well, it has been a giant year of change in pro football in 1968--the Packers severely declined with Vince Lombardi off the sidelines, and, while the Raiders were great again, the Jets excelled on the strength of a maturing Joe Namath. The NFL Films episode recapping the 1968 season (5 stars, highly recommended), written by James Green, dubbed it "the year the game won." And Mike Rathet, writing the season review for the Super Bowl game program, opened, "The unusual aspect of pro football, vintage 1968, was that while the Play was still the thing, the Players on center stage weren't always the ones trumped in the Playbill." I don't know exactly what "the year the game won" or "the Play was still the thing" means, but I think those are the kinds of statements that writers write when they are in the midst of what feels like a tectonic shift in the history of whatever they're writing about. The ground underneath them is changing, but it hasn't yet settled down enough to make definitive statements about the new landscape.

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say for now. I'll continue in the comments. Here are some pictures and other stuff.

Here's how the NFL Eastern Conference Capitol Division came out.

Here's how the NFL Eastern Conference Century Division came out (that's my daughter's foot in front of fourth-place Pittsburgh's Andy Russell).

Here's how the NFL Western Conference Coastal Division came out.

Here's how the NFL Western Conference Central Division came out.

Here's how the AFL Eastern Division came out.

Here's how the AFL Western Division came out.

Here's the Jan. 6, 1969, Sports Illustrated recapping the NFL and AFL championships (Tex Maule has got this whole thing figured out).

Here's the Saturday, Jan. 11, 1969, Miami News previewing tomorrow's big game.

Here's the program for today's game.

Here are some great George Bartell paintings of the season's big stars. These appear on pages 44-47 of the game program.

Here are the lineups from the program (against an enticing Coca-Cola ad).

Here are the football cards I have for the Colts (that's our kitty, River).

Here are the football cards I have for the Jets.

Here's the "Tudor^® Tru-action Electric football game" on which I might play a pretend version of Super Bowl III over the next few weeks (that's our Christmas 2013 tree; yeah, it's still up).

And here's the episode of The Hollywood Palace that aired on ABC on Saturday night, Jan. 10, 1969.

As always, Hooray for Christmas™, Hooray for Football™ and Hooray for TV™!

Previous and future NFL68 reports:

-- NFL67 wrap (as posted Jan. 13, 2015)
-- NFL Draft, with rest in peace, Jack Zanger (as posted April 25, 2013)
-- Sports Illustrated and Tex Maule's big ideas (as posted April 26, 2013)
-- Season preview, "May be the best of the long series of exemplary Packer clubs" (as posted Jan. 19, 2014)
-- Week 3, with Mr. and Mrs. John Brodie (as posted Feb. 1, 2014)
-- Week 4, with Norm Van Brocklin and the Falcons (as posted Jan. 20, 2014)
-- Week 10, with Dolphins helmet anomaly (as posted March 9, 2019)
-- Dec. 7, 1968, A very bad weekend for Rams fans
-- Week 14, "An Empire Collapsed on Lambeau Field" (as posted Jan. 19, 2014)
-- The last Playoff Bowl? (as posted Jan. 6, 2015)
-- "'Heidi' Comes Back Like Plague At NBC" (as posted Jan. 7, 2015)
-- NFL68 wrap (as posted Jan. 11, 2014)
-- Super Bowl III continued (as posted Jan. 12, 2015)
-- Paper Lion in Hoptown (as posted April 21, 2015)
-- NFL Action on TV (as posted June 28, 2015)

-- NFL69 wrap (as posted Jan. 11, 2016)
-- NFL70 wrap (as posted Jan. 17, 2017)
-- NFL71 wrap (as posted Jan. 16, 2018)

-- NFL72 wrap (as posted Feb. 2, 2019)
-- NFL78 so far (as posted Jan. 31, 2019)

-- NFL79 so far (as posted April 15, 2015)
-- NFL14 so far (as posted Jan. 28, 2019)

-- NFL15 so far (as posted Sept 13, 2015)
-- NFL16 so far (as posted Jan. 8, 2017)