Sunday, November 13, 2016

The Freakin' Weekend (1970)

Strike up the band ...


There's a lot of football happening this 1970 weekend, and Ebony is just in time with its helpful lineup of "man-sized football snacks" ...








(This issue also features a compelling double-truck promotion of the Ebony-Jet Record Club ...)


(But I digress ...)


Here are the Nov. 15, 1970, NFL matchups:











Now let's all hope this video of This Week In Pro Football is still up at YouTube.




The NFL Monday Night Football game has the Cardinals at Dallas.





45 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. For Patio Snack Rolls: "We know what Americans like."

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    2. Hear, hear! I might get myself a Patio TV dinner for lunch today.

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  2. NBC's The Wonderful World of Disney is showing Monkees, Go Home on this Sunday night 1970, and it looks very good.

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  3. The Cornhuskers are ranked fourth in the nation; No. 20 Kansas State is in Lincoln with its flashy quarterback, Lynn Dickey, who was featured in Sport earlier this fall with a chance to steal the Big 8. But it's 14-0, Nebraska, after one quarter ...

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  4. Final: 51-13. Nebraska's really good. Attendance was reported at 67,894 at Memorial Stadium. For all but about 15 years of my whole life, I've lived in towns that were smaller than 67,894 people.

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  5. How the Top 10 fared Saturday, Nov. 14, 1970:

    1. Notre Dame (8-0) and Joe Theismann beat Georgia Tech, 14-7.

    2. Texas (8-0), the defending champ, beat Texas Christian, 38-0. I hope these two teams play again for the national championship. Fake 1970 me went to the Cotton Bowl last year, and that game was awesome.

    3. Ohio State (8-0) beat Purdue, 10-7. Sport also did a Q&A earlier this year with four stud college quarterbacks. Theismann was one. Ohio State's Rex Kern was another.

    4. Nebraska (5-0-1) beat Kansas State, 51-13.

    5. Michigan (6-0) beat Iowa, 35-0. I think it says 6-0, anyway. I think the Chicago Tribune is making its type smaller.

    6. Stanford (6-2) lost to Air Force, 31-14. Stanford's Jim Plunkett was another of the four Sport quarterbacks.

    7. Arkansas (8-1) beat Southern Methodist, 36-3.

    8. Auburn (7-2) lost to Georgia, 31-17.

    9. Louisiana State (7-1) beat Mississippi State, 38-7.

    10. Tennessee (701) was idle.

    The fourth Sport quarterback was Ole Miss's Archie Manning.

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  6. The 2-5-1 Saints come to Miami to play the 4-4 Dolphins, and Tom Brookshier says the locals are riding Don Shula to bench fourth-year-quarterback Bob Griese (in favor of John Stofa, presumably).

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  7. New Orleans--featuring its all-Ohio State backfield of Tom Barrington and rookie Jim Otis--leads 10-7 early. And then four times Miami drives into Saints territory, only to fumble three times and see the fourth possession squandered on a Griese overthrow to the end zone. There's a throw in this clip to the flat where Griese flings the ball under heavy pressure, and Jim Kiick has to wrestle the ball away from a streaking New Orleans defensive back. If that pass had been returned for a touchdown and 17-7 Saints lead, and the Dolphins had gone on to slip to 4-5, I wonder if that would've been the end for Bob Griese (and start of John Stofa) in Miami.

    But, alas, Griese hits a deep pass to his new stud receiver, Paul Warfield, and then Kiick has a 56-yard run later in the game. And Miami wins, 21-10.

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    Replies
    1. Pro Football Reference says Bob Griese's career ends up being comparable with those of Terry Bradshaw, Drew Bledsoe, John Hadl, Donovan McNabb, Roman Gabriel, Jim Kelly, Ben Roethlisberger, Jim Hart, Mark Brunell and Phil Simms. But Griese's first three seasons--and Griese was in his fourth season in 1970--compare most closely with the first three years of Mark Rypien, Doug Williams, Pat Haden, David Carr, Neil O'Donnell, Drew Bledsoe, Jason Campbell, Jay Schroeder, Jake Plummer and Jim Plunkett.

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  8. Replies
    1. There is so much good stuff happening in these paragraphs in such economical ways ...

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  9. Replies
    1. That first paragraph that appears here is actually the second paragraph of Cooper Rollow's story. Here’s his lede: “GREEN BAY, Wis., Nov. 15—The old master of suspense wrote another electrifying chapter to his personal success saga today."

      The lede is fine, but the second, "Bart Starr, his right arm throbbing" paragraph is a quintessential "nut graph." You could read Cooper Rollow's second paragraph alone and be sufficiently up to speed with what happened in yesterday's game. My favorite part is how he mentions the number of people at the game. There were only about 88,000 people living in Green Bay in 1970, but this football game drew 57,000 people (and they were screaming). That's a meaningful fact about humanity.

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    2. The "green grass ahead of me" quote is evocative as all get-out, and I imagine the first dozen paragraphs pretty much wrote themselves as soon as Cooper Rollow heard it come out of Bart Starr's mouth.

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  10. Replies
    1. I don't know what the post-game protocol was in 1970, but my guess is that Cooper Rollow went and got this quote himself in the Bears' locker room. This is the kind of key, specific detail that an athlete can/will give a reporter immediately following an event when they're exhausted in every way--if the athlete is actually asked a key, specific question and her or his decisions at that moment. Athletes so often sound dull because they get general, vague questions with no possible clear answer (e.g., How much did you guys want this today? "Ummm? ... 12.8 much?")

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  11. Replies
    1. More terrific detail from inside the statistics here, and Cooper Rollow wouldn't've had the boys at Football Outsiders feeding him material.

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  12. Unfortunately for the Bears, they did not give Starr much of a rush during the vital last minute and 40 seconds. Instead of putting the heat on Starr, the Bears went back into their "prevent" defense with only three men on the line.

    Percival had just missed a 43-yard field goal attempt which would have clinched victory for the Bears when Starr brought the Packers up to the scrimmage line at the Green Bay 20.

    Fresh troops had been sent in to help Starr in the per- sons of Larry Krause and Perry Williams after Donny Ander- son and Jim Grabowski had handled the running back chores for the bulk of the game.

    "We needed some guys with some energy who weren't all tuckered out," Starr said. "I can't say enough about the way Krause and Williams played in the clutch."

    On first down at the 20, Starr hit his old crony, End Carroll Dale, on the right sideline for 18 yards. After missing Krause, the Packer whipped the ball to Hilton over the middle for 29 yards to the Chicago 33.

    One minute and 20 seconds remained when Starr hit Krause for 11 yards and first down at the 22. A six-yard shot to Williams followed by an 1l-yarder to Krause left 29 seconds showing on the scoreboard.

    With the scrimmage line at the 5, a Bear was offside, and Starr, reacting quickly, threw the ball out of bounds. The Packers had no timeouts remaining, and this gave him time to receive instructions from the bench during the automatic timeout after officials walked off the penalty-half the distance from the goal line.

    The Bear defense, which had played an outstanding game, braced for the one final effort, but as soon as Starr headed to his right with the football, it was obvious he was going to make it.

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    Replies
    1. Note that without overreaching and assigning blame (when he really wouldn't know who to blame), Cooper Rollow points out the problem of the Bears' prevent strategy late in the game. Maybe that was the head coach. Maybe it was a defensive coach. Maybe it's that the players made mistakes and did the wrong thing. Maybe it's a mutiny in the huddle. Maybe the coaches the best plays they could understanding the limitations of their players in such a late-game situation. Whatever. Who knows? All Cooper Rollow knows is that there was a problem, and he says so.

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    2. And, of course, the point about the Chicago penalty and the lack of Packer timeout is brilliant.

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    3. (Incidentally, note that Bart Starr never in his paragraphs does anything but praise other people--even his opponents. I know some people would say, well, it's easy to be a nice guy when you win, and I know some people might think that Bart Starr was just being political. Pishposh. I think Bart Starr knows how to live and treat people right.)

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  13. Replies
    1. Devastating, late blame paragraphs from Cooper Rollow here--again, though, without overreach. He doesn't say the third-down struggles were Jack Concannon's fault--just that they happened under his watch. It's interesting, by the way, that Cooper Rollow didn't quote Jim Dooley in this story.

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    2. The headline on the wire-service AFC roundup two pages later in the Nov. 16 Chicago Tribune was, "Carter Paces Bengal Upset of Browns." That's Virgil Carter, who had a falling out last season with Jim Dooley and who ended up via waivers in Cincinnati after Greg Cook was injured.

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  14. In the Bears' defense of their 3-6 seasons so far, it must be noted that they are missing one very key component to their attack. The truly amazing Gale Sayers played in only two games this season. He had his second 1,000-yard-rushing season last year after hurting his right knee, but he never did look right. This year, it was his left knee that was injured. Hoptown 1970 me just hopes he gets all of the rehabilitation time he needs and returns next season or whenever and gets on to the second half of a terrific career; Sayers is only 27, after all.

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