I'm pretty sure Super Bowl VI--on Sunday, Jan. 16, 1972--was the first featured on TIME's cover, and there's starting to be quite a bit of mirth-making in the culture around the priorities-out-of-balance spectacle of the game specifically and football generally.
This all reminds me of the handwringing among my ilk (and me, to some extent) in the 1980s about whether R.E.M., U2 or Natalie Merchant had "sold out."
I ultimately sided with the sellers back then, too. Those ads are from the pull-out Super Bowl advertising supplement published in the Jan. 10, 1972, Sports Illustrated, and so is this beautiful thing:
I am rooting for Miami in today's game, but most of the (so-called) "experts" appear to be picking Dallas.
There has been so much great stuff work put out on today's game by the reporters, editors, photographers, illustrators, agate typists and other artists at America's great newspapers. I appreciate all of them and their work, and I want to give a special shout-out for the fine treatment provided by the Toledo (Ohio) Blade.
The Apache Belles obviously put in their work, too, and thank you to those folks, too (spoiler alert, resultwise, in the following video).
Thank you to NFL, TV and Internet for making this full-game video available, and thank you, HP, for giving me a framework for getting to have so much fun!
This Week in Pro Football is a syndicated program that airs at different times in different markets in 1971--Friday nights in Chicago and Saturday afternoons in Salt Like City, for example--so check your local listings. But, by all means, check them, because This Week in Pro Football is outstanding (and has absolutely the best set in all of television history), even when Pat Summerall isn't available to join Tom Brookshier for the fun.
Then Miami beat Kansas City, 27-24, in an AFC game that started at 3 p.m. Central but ended up needing two overtimes to decide.
In the early game on Sunday, Dec. 26, the defending-champion Colts won at Cleveland, 20-3. There were reports out of Baltimore after the Colts lost to the Patriots in Week 16 that the team might've thrown that game in order to play the Browns (and not the Chiefs) in the first round of the playoffs, but the team denied such suggestions.
This whole weekend is going to be huge for football, of course, with New Year's Day 1972 falling on a Saturday. We've got the Sugar, Cotton, Rose bowls all tomorrow afternoon and then, that evening, for the national championship, ...
The NFL conference championships are Sunday, Jan. 2, with the Cowboys and 49ers squaring off for the second year in a row for the NFC title and then the Colts and Dolphins playing for the AFC. I am very nervous about the Miami game, and I might just have to limit myself to only listening on the radio.
You know, I just love to play pretend. I always have, and I still do. My (real) wife and daughter and I went to Chicago this (real) past week, and we had a great time (really). Part of the great time for me was that (pretend) Hoptown 1971 me went, too. TheChicago Tribunehasbrowsable archives online, andthe Museum of Classic Chicago Television has a robust YouTube channel. These really make it easy for a 48-year-old man in 2017 to pretend he's on vacation in Chicago in 1971.In fact, there's so much great old stuff available online, my pretend 1971 vacation figures to keep going for a good while even though my real 1971 vacation has ended.
Real 1971 me actually did live near Chicago. When I was 2 or 3, my dad took a job with a construction company in Highland Park, Illinois, a swanky northern suburb, and so my parents, younger (but still older)brother and I moved from Evansville, Indiana, to an apartment there. It was a huge deal with implications for my whole family and me forever.
For one thing, I don't think Mom and Dad would've ever moved to his old-home Kentucky directly from Evansville. He hadn't gotten far enough away from it, either geographically or rhythmically, either for himto pine sufficiently for it or for her to be convinced that being away from Kentucky was diminishing him. But, by 1973, we are moving away from the Chicago traffic and economic and social pressures toPaducah, and, ultimately, I'm writing forThe Heath Post(as opposed toThe Reitz Picayuneor whatever the public high-school newspaper is called on the west side of Evansville).
Another thing is that the move to/from Chicago turned my family into people who at least think of ourselves as fearless counterculturists. At the front end the move in 1970, my mom and dad become the peoplein their Silent Majority circles who leave the known (a house they built amid their families) to the ... well, maybe even worse than the unknown, the familiar-and-feared (Chicago in the near wake of the 1968 riotsand Democratic National Convention). Then, three years later, after a period of lavish, modern living with stuff like Mexican restaurants and professional sports, we choseagainstthat life and moved to cheapproperty in Kentucky for Dad to teach himself (from books checked out of the Paducah Public Library!) to make and sell primitive pottery (kind of like the old brick-making Wöhlers back in dear old Detmold).These life choices have no precedent in our broader family, and they aren't depicted in TV sitcoms or long-distance commercials. To this day, my Mom and Dad's pod of the family is thought of as the kooky pod,and we like it that way. Highland Park is a big reason why.
Finally, the move turned me into a bit of an only child. I came along late--my dad was about to turn 43 when I was born in 1968, and my mom was almost 40. They already had 16-year-old and 11-year-old boysand a 14-year-old girl, so, by the time I came along, they had already checked all of the Greatest Generation parental boxes like lead a Boy Scout troop, serve as an elementary-school Room Mother and pour abackyard swimming pool. Even though one brother moved with us to Highland Park, the relocation was sort of like a retooling of a sitcom (Coach and Shelley Long are out, and here come Woody Harrelson andKirstie Alley). Instead of parenting another hand-me-down Evansville kid, Mom and Dad tried some different stuff with me. I was hardly ever spanked. They took me to the library and neighborhood park a lot. Iplayed with G.I. Joes andSun Oil football stamps. I watched a lot ofMister RogersandSesame Street. Part of all that was the inevitable churn of kid culture over 10 years, but part of it was about raising an only-ish child in a suburban Chicago apartment instead of a fourth kid in the same, ol' Evansville ranch.
So, anyhow, going back to Chicago last week with my own spouse and child was pretty evocative stuff. And I found myself evoked in quiet moments to pretend all sorts of fun stuff--that I was real 1971 Dad, thatI was real 1971 kid me, that I was Hoptown 1971 adult me, that I was the son of Hoptown 1971 me, that I was Hoptown 1971 me with real 2017 daughter in 1971, etc. Pretending is fun, but, when you are assophisticated and experienced of a pretender as I am, it can get pretty complex to keep the storylines straight.
The scenario I spent the most time pretending was 48-year-old me vacationing from Hopkinsville in 1971 with wife (kind of real wife) and my 8-year-old son (kind of real 1976 me plus a little real 2017 daughter), and, in this happy storyline, it was just absolutely driving the boy insane that his dad kept wanting to drive the routes and find the sites in the 1939 Illinois and Indiana WPA guides. This was a blast.
We need a new muffler. Or something—I don’t know anything about cars. But we need something. The car is really loud. The engine is loud.Plus, Dad has the radio cranked up and the window cracked, so hiscigarettesmoke blows out of the car.
It’s a little boring in the dark because you can’t seeanything, but it’s also kind of nice. This seat’s comfortable. I’m in the backseat, stretched out. I’malmost too tall now to do this, without folding my legs at the knees. But, fornow, it’spretty comfortable.
It’s just a little cold. Just a little.
The Bulls are on the radio. We’re still in Indiana, but wemust be getting close to Chicago. I collect basketball cards, and I likehearing the names. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Bulls play on TV, but Iknowmost of these players from the cards. I wonder if Jerry Sloan is nice. Dadloves Jerry Sloan.
It smells kind of cold. It does. The air from the window isa little chilly. It and the smoke are back here. It smells good. I smell alittle gasoline, too. I like smelling gas.
I wonder if Mom’s asleep. Dad hasn’t said hardly anythingsince supper. What time is it?
It’s boring, but I like the driving out in the country morethan in the cities at night. In the cities, it’s good because the lights flashinto the backseat and I can look at my cards. But Dad’s nervous about drivinginthe traffic, and Mom’s nervous about looking at the map, and that makes menervous. In the country, like I said, it’s boring, but it’s also kind of nicebecause nobody’s nervous. Dad’s just driving, smokingcigarettes, listening tothe Bulls … I think … maybe he’s just thinking. I’ll bet he’s not evenlistening to the game; I’ll bet he’s thinking about something else. And I thinkMom might be asleep, or she’s just sortof sitting there looking out the windowat the dark. I don’t know. But it’s kind of nice, even though it’s kind ofboring.
This seat’s pretty comfortable. I’m getting sleepy.
Initially, I was going to have us all pretend to stay at this place, but that's too little of progress on Day 1 of driving even to pretend. So, we got to Chicago all in one day--it just took a while (real and pretend).
And I think this place is where we pretend stayed (my parents and I stayed at this place in real 1978) ...
I imagined all sorts of places we might and might not have gone while we were in town ...
Of course, a lot of the time was spent checking out what was on TV. All pretend and real versions of 1971/2017/whenever me love TV ...
I'll tell you another thing I spent a lot of this pretend 1971 doing is looking at "The World's Greatest Newspaper" (from what I've seen, the tagline gets no argument from me) ...
I really love seeing the comics and other features they don't carry in the Kentucky New Era, especially Mac Divot ...
