1978: What's on TV Friday Nights?

I was disappointed to learn that Donny & Marie have ditched the ice dancers for Season 4.  

But the truth is that 1978 me was probably moving away from that perky show for my TV79 Friday nights, anyway. NBC has my 7/7:30 Central eye wandering with new sitcoms showcasing Broadway Joe and Chachi!

As GoHeath noted, TV79 is not going down as a proud-as-an-anything moment in NBC history.

But there's a pretty good chance I'll give Channel 6 the benefit of the doubt with its new entries bookending old-standby Rockford Files Season 5.

And if I lose the Channel 6 steam by Eddie Capra at 9, I will happily flip to Flying High on Channel 12. I caught the preview pilot the other night, and that thing feels like it is poised to deliver the absolute best kind of made-for-TV movie (no guns/killing, more laughs than drama, familiar faces, lots of love) every freaking Friday night.

But, just to be clear, none of us is watching any of that stuff on this particular Friday night in 1978.

Well, I guess 27 percent of us were watching something else at 7 Central Sept. 15, 1978. Per the Associated Press, "The biggest audience ever for a televised sporting event watched ABC’s broadcast of the heavyweight championship rematch between Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks live from New Orleans. ABC estimated the audience for the 15-round fight at 90 million and said that meant 73 percent of the sets in use at the time were tuned to the fight."

XXXIII Olympic Summer Games, Paris 2024 (Day 11)

Paris 2024 medals leaders:

1. United States 21 gold, 30 silver, 28 bronze (79 total)

2. China 21, 18, 14 (53)

3. France 13, 16, 19 (48)

4. Australia 13, 12, 8 (33)

5. Great Britain 12, 13, 17 (42)

6. South Korea 11, 8, 7 (26)

7. Japan 10, 5, 11 (26)

8. Italy 9, 10, 6 (25)

9. Netherlands 7, 5, 5 (17)

10. Germany 7, 5, 4 (16)

Previous reports:

-- I Olympic Summer Games, Athens 1896

-- XXX Olympic Summer Games, London 2012 

-- XXXI Olympic Summer Games, Rio 2016 

-- XXXII Olympic Summer Games, Tokyo 2020

-- XXXIII Olympic Summer Games, Paris 2024 (Day -2-Day 8)

-- XXXIII Olympic Summer Games, Paris 2024 (Day 9)

-- XXXIII Olympic Summer Games, Paris 2024 (Day 10)

The Freakin' Weekend (1974)

I am stunned at how scarce of information a simple Google search yields for "Tex Maule."

Here's the complete text of his May 18, 1981, Section D, Page 13, obituary in The New York Times:

Tex Maule, a noted sports writer for the last 25 years, died of a heart attack Saturday, Sports Illustrated announced last night.

He was 66 years old.

Mr. Maule covered professional football for Sports Illustrated from 1956 though 1975. He also covered boxing, horse racing and baseball. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy, and three children. The funeral will take place today at 2 P.M. at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home in Manhattan.

Here's the first paragraph of his Wikipedia entry: "Hamilton Prieleaux Bee Maule, commonly known as Tex Maule (May 19, 1915 in Ojus, Florida — May 16, 1981) was the lead American football writer for Sports Illustrated in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s."

And while it goes on to list some interesting facts about his life, even those ask at least as many questions as they answer:

-- Tex Maule played college football. (Hmmm ... was he any good?)

-- Tex Maule served in World War II. (Hmmm ... what was his experience?)

-- Tex Maule's coworkers in the Los Angeles Rams front office included Pete Rozelle and Tex Schramm. (Hmmm ... did they lunch together?)

-- Tex Maule wrote a book in 1972, Running Scarred, about his taking up running after a heart attack. (Hmmm ... was he on the job at some NFL game or practice when he suffered the heart attack?)

-- After leaving Sports Illustrated, Tex Maule went to work for three years with The Dallas Morning News. (Hmmm ... what was the impetus for that change?)

My ghost of Christmases past is happy to report that good, ol' Hamilton Prieleaux Bee hasn't left SI as of this date in 1974. No, on this Thursday, April 4, non-quarantined 1974 me is relishing the notion of a hopefully quiet weekend at home, flipping through the most recent Sports Illustrated (it's the baseball-preview issue!) and absolutely devouring Tex Maule's dispatch from Venezuela on a George Foreman-Ken Norton bout. There's next to zero possibility that thing is anything less than fantastic.

The Louisville Lip

In the summer of 1963, the boxing world was buzzing over Sonny Liston's recent knockout of Floyd Patterson, by which Liston retained the heavyweight championship of the world.  Louisville's own Cassius Clay, now the number 1 heavyweight contender, insisted that he could beat Liston.  In its episode for August 5, 1963, Sports Illustrated strongly disagreed:

Clay's style is made to order for another massacre.  He carries his hands too low, he leans away from a punch and he cannot fight a lick inside.  He will face in Liston an opponent with endurance, highly developed skills, deceptive speed and strength enough to stun an elephant with either hand.  Yet Cassius loudly insists that he is going to whup "that big ugly bear" when they meet, most likely in Philadelphia this September.

The oddsmakers do not think much of Clay's chances.  James (Jimmie the Greek) Snyder, handicapper emeritus, figures that Liston should be an overwhelming 8-to-1 favorite.  The only way a Liston backer can get any kind of odds is to pick one of the first six rounds for the knockout.  "It's impossible," says Jimmie the Greek, "for Clay to last six rounds."

On February 25, 1964, Clay beat Liston, and became the world heavyweight champion, when Liston refused to answer the bell for the seventh round.

The Eleven Men Behind Cassius Clay

The March 11, 1963 issue of Sports Illustrated includes a fascinating article about 11 businessmen in Louisville who were, at that time, managing the career of the young Cassius Clay (later to be Muhammad Ali.)  Here is how SI explained the arrangement:

They have provided Clay an ideal, all-expenses-paid training program, they offer him the benefit of all their experience and business acumen, and they surround him with a substantial moral and ethical environment, a rare commodity in professional boxing.  And since they are independently wealthy Clay is assured that he will never end up exploited and broke through any fault of theirs.

That last sentence is a priceless example of how the mainstream press trusted the U.S. establishment in the early 1960's.  But the whole arrangement -- all of Clay's winnings were split 50-50 between Clay and the syndicate -- shines a fascinating light on how Louisville worked in the early 1960's.  Here are the 11 members of the syndicate, as described by SI:

1.  William Faversham, Jr., 57 at the time of the article, came up with the idea for the syndicate, and was Clay's manager of record.  He was a Vice-President of Brown-Forman Distillers Corporation, which made Old Forester, Early Times, and Jack Daniel's.  Faversham is the only non-millionaire in the syndicate.

2.  William Lee Lyons Brown, 56, was Chairman of the Board of Brown-Forman, which he had inherited.  As a young man, he flunked out of the U.S. Naval Academy and the University of Virginia.

3.  James Ross Todd, 26, was the only child of Jouett Ross Todd, a prominent attorney.  He was a partner in W. L. Lyons's stock-and-bond firm in Louisville.  He went to Yale.

4.  Vertner De Garmo Smith, Sr, 69, was Todd's godfather and a close friend of Lyons Brown.  He was in the liquor wholesaling business, and was thus closely connected to Brown-Forman.

5.  Robert Worth Bingham, 30, was the son of the man who owned the Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times.  (The Binghams also owned WHAS-TV).  Worth Bingham went to Harvard, and bought The Ring magazine each month "at the Readmore Card Shop in downtown Louisville."

6.  George Washington ("Possum") Norton IV, 29, was the son of the man who owned WAVE-TV.  He went to Yale.

7.  Patrick Calhoun, Jr., 71, was the retired chairman of the American Commercial Barge Line, the largest inland boat company in the world.

8.  Elbert Gary Sutcliffe, 68, was the grandson of Elbert Gary, the first Chairman of U. S. Steel.  (Gary, Indiana was named after Elbert, Gary.)  Mr. Sutcliffe went to Centre College.

9.  J.D. Stetson Coleman, 59, was a very successful businessmen (he had a number of different companies, none of which are identified by name), originally from Macon, Ga.  He went to Yale, and also owned parts of the Los Angeles Angels and the Los Angeles Rams.

10.  William Sol Cutchins, 62, was the President of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation.  He was also president of WLKY-TV, which went on the air in 1961.  He went to Princeton.

11.  Archibald McGhee Foster, 47, was a Senior Vice President of the Ted Bates advertising agency in Manhattan, where he was group leader for the agency's Brown & Williamson account.  The syndicate came to him because of his relationship with Cutchins and because he had some contacts in boxing.  In fact, Foster was the one who brought the syndicate to Angelo Dundee, who acted as the trainer of Clay/Ali for decades.

All in all, this is a fascinating snapshot of the type of people who ran Louisville in the early 1960's.

The Sad Decline of Olympic Boxing

This article from Slate is the best I've seen at describing what a mess Olympic boxing has become.

The Louisville Lip

The beginning of an article written by Huston Horn that was published in Sports Illustrated on September 25, 1961:

The clapboard house at 3302 Grand Avenue, Louisville is a commonplace dwelling one story high and four rooms deep. The ornamental frame of the front screen door was curlicued by hand with a scroll saw, and the concrete steps to the gray front porch are painted in stripes, red, white and blue.

"Don't bother your head about that house," says Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., 19 going on 20, the lyrical young man, lyrically named, who grew up there. "One of these days they're liable to make it a national shrine. Only by that time I'll be long gone, man, living it up on the top of a hill in a house that cost me $100,000. You'll find me out by the swimming pool, and I'll be talking to a bunch of little boys sitting in a circle around my feet. 'Boys,' I'll say to them, 'I was just a poor boxer once, as I reckon you already know. Only I was a very fine boxer, one of the finest that ever lived. And right there's how come I could move out of that little house down there on Grand Avenue and build this big one up here on the hill.'"

Here's one more quote from the same article:

"Like last Sunday," said Cassius, the unashamed, unequivocating materialist, not long ago. "Some cats I know said, 'Cassius, Cassius, come on now and let's go to church; otherwise you won't get to Heaven.' 'Hold on a minute,' I said to them, 'and let me tell you something else. When I've got me a $100,000 house, another quarter million stuck in the bank and the world title latched onto my name, then I'll be in Heaven. Walking around making $25 a week, with four children crying at home 'cause they're hungry, that's my idea of Hell. I ain't studying about either one of them catching up with me in the graveyard."