Posted on 09/27/2021 9:24:56 AM PDT by fugazi
Pictured on the front page is George Washington University back Walt Fedora, who was also pictured in yesterday's sports section. The Brooklyn (football) Dodgers draft Fedora in 1942 and he plays eight games before joining the U.S. Navy.
The first "Liberty" ship, Patrick Henry, has been launched (see page two). 18 different American shipyards produce 2,710 of these vessels over the course of the war (averaging three ships every two days). 80 years later just two remain operational and three are museum ships.
Ohio State won it's opener against the University of Missouri today, led by a coach who was running Masillion (Ohio) High School's squad last year. Paul Brown will lead the Buckeyes to a national title in 1942, and despite being limited to play with 17-year-olds who hadn't yet enlisted in the Armed Forces, Ohio State still won three games that year, defeating Illinois, Pittsburgh, and 18th-ranked Missouri. The Navy commissioned Brown in 1944 and named him head coach of the Great Lakes Bluejackets.
Brown's predecessor at Great Lakes Paul D. "Tony" Hinkle was deployed to the Pacific Theater after coaching Great Lakes to an 8-2 record during the 1943 season, ranking sixth in the country by the AP. Before and after his Naval career, Hinkle coached Butler University's baseball, basketball, and football teams. In 1929 he led Butler's basketball team to a national championship. You may not have heard of Butler (I hadn't until I saw a team bus parked outside of the Southeast Missouri State University football stadium yesterday), but back when Hinkle was coaching, his teams were juggernauts.
After the war, Brown co-founded the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) Cleveland Browns, and won the championship all four years of the AAFC's existence. His club became the NFL's Cleveland Browns franchise. If you ever wondered what a "Brown" is -- and I just pondered this with a friend the other day -- the club was named after coach Paul Brown. He was not a fan of the team being named after him and seems to be behind the myth that the team voted to be the Brown Bombers (shortened to the Browns), after heavyweight champion Joe Louis.
Fun facts: Brown quarterbacked for Massillion when he was a high school student. His predecessor was Harry Stuhldreher, one of Notre Dame's legendary "Four Horsemen."
Speaking of Notre Dame, legendary coach Ara Parseghian played for the Bluejackets under Brown, and also on the AAFC Browns, and would later say that watching Brown coach was a "priceless" experience.
After failing to make the Ohio State football team, Brown transferred to Miami (Ohio), where he succeeded Weeb Ewbank at quarterback. Ewbank would be one of Brown's assistants at Great Lakes before coaching the Baltimore Colts to two NFL titles (1958 and 59 seasons) and the Super Bowl III champion New York Jets. Miami coach Don Shula played for both Brown and Ewbank before leading the Miami Dolphins to the first undefeated season since Brown's 1948 Browns. Incidentally, Shula served in the Ohio National Guard during the Korean War. Shula replaced Ewbank as Baltimore's head coach in 1963.
Unrelated: Bo Jackson ran the fastest 40-yard dash in NFL combine history (that I'm aware of at least), 4.13, while on the way to track practice.
Paul Brown was a founder and the first coach of the AFL Cincinnati Bengals. He had left the Browns after a split with owner Art Modell.
Paul Brown chose the exact same color orange as used by the Browns as a dig at Modell, pairing it with black.
In the first years of the franchise Brown played conservative ball to keep the team out of blow out losses.
I lost interest in the now-woke NFL, but I remember the Bengals uniforms and helmets back in the 80s were the coolest.
Plus it looks like the Jets brought back the 80s-era dark green helmets, which I figured would come back in style eventually... I remember how cool it was when they switched back to the 60s-style uniforms. Interesting how eventually everything comes back around.
If you go BACK 2 years and 10 days, the international headlines would be about Joe Stalin's troops and secret police moving into the Eastern Poland as part of the Nazi-Soviet plan that came from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact! We forget / we are taught to forget, that two of the most vile and bloody regimes of modern times set the stage of total war over the divided and bloody corpse of Poland.
The global LEFT wants to CONVINCE that there is a real difference between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia but when the only proof is that one stabbed the other in the night a mere 22 months after dining on Poland shows that they were the same wolf under different sheepskins.
I also have no interest in the modern Wokie Woke,SJW, thug infested NFL. I do still have some reverence for the old league. Back when real American men played the game and had to get off season jobs to support their families.
THAT league ROCKED!
Somewhere in the early to mid sixties I saw an AFL play-off game on tv. It was the Raiders and Chiefs. I became a die-hard Raider fan that day even though they lost. They just looked badass in their silver and black uniforms.
Thankfully their winning percentage would improve. Sadly, I have stopped following the team since the NFL lost it’s mind
The Throw Back uniforms were great and generated tons of sales for the league. Everyone wanted old jerseys with the old color schemes.
Everything old is new again.
Hey, even bell bottoms made a thankfully short resurgence. The old hip hugger women’s jeans were rebranded as low riders and were HUGE.
As long as leisure suits, parachute pants and select other items remain obscure and fading memories we will be okay.
I often wondered if Hitler was far-right and Stalin was far-left, how that could make sense since I figured I was pretty far-right myself and had nothing in common with Hitler. And it seems that Hitler and Stalin had a lot in common, which was odd, given that they were supposedly on the extreme ends of the spectrum.
But from a freedom standpoint, the left-right dynamic makes more sense as a circle than a line. The more extreme you get, left or right, they both converge at hard tyranny.
It would be interesting to see what the world would have looked like if we had teamed up with Germany after their surrender to defeat the Soviets. But thankfully, we accomplished that during the Cold War and didn’t have to (directly) kill untold millions of Soviets to get there.
Yeah, Concrete Charlie Bednarik — a World War II combat veteran — got his nickname because even though he was a star, he worked a concrete job in the offseason.
And as far as bad asses go, you can’t get too much more hardcore than than Bo Jackson, Howie Long, and a little later, Ronnie Lott. And when I think of the black and silver, I always remember Ben Davidson and his sweet handlebar mustache.
I knew a guy who worked in the St. Louis football Cardinals organization. He said those guys were absolutely great and you’d hardly know they were professional athletes. Very relatable. Maybe when professional sports start having to tighten their belts from fans leaving in droves, empty stadiums, and politically induced economic catastrophe, the era of huge contracts will be over. Maybe when things finally break, better leagues will come out of the rubble.
Maybe not.
Art Donovan, B’more Colts, served in the Pacific in WW2. Lots of those guys did.
Hey, even John Unitas had an off season job!
Bo, Howie and Lott were Badasses but I still see Lott in a 49’ers uniform. Ben Davidson wasn’t just big and tough, he was a character as well. While filming a Miller Lite commercial they had John Madden crash through a paper “fence”. The former players in the commercial loved it and took turns crashing through paper fences. Finally Ben’s turn came. He was told they were out of props so Ben crashed through a REAL section of fence, laughing like a kid.
The ultimate badass had to be the Assassin, Jack Tatum. Kenny Stabler said he didn’t think George Atkinson would survive Tatums rookie season. Tatum would fly to the ball and do what he did best, knock the taste out of someone’s mouth. If Atkinson was covering or tackling that receiver he caught some of the blast when Tatum hit. Tatum eventually calmed down and learned not to knock out his teammates.
Maybe the All Time Badass award should go to George Blanda. Blanda played from 1949 to 1975 with only one year off the 58-59 season. During his career he played QB, linebacker and kicker. And that was when full contact was FULL contact.
Today’s cream puffs never would have made it back then. The game has gone soft.
One of the things said about the old Brooklyn Dodgers were that they were regular guys who just happened to be good at baseball. I bet most of the old timers were like that.
I met Brooks Robinson once and he was as down to earth as anyone. He owned several auto dealerships, Ford I think, and would go around glad handing the customers and signing autographs.
Some day when the tv money is gone and the leagues have to rely on the gate receipts to pay the players and the players need off season jobs...maybe.
Baseball went through one bad slump and recovered. The NFL and NBA are so far past their inglorious days they’ve forgotten how far they have to fall. Their crash might be fatal.
Yeah, I remember Lott as a 49er too, but that dude was devastating. Again, I haven’t watched sports in ages (feels pretty emasculating for a red-blooded American to admit that), but I came across an interview with Bo Jackson and he talked about how specialized today’s athletes are when asked if anyone else would become a two-sport athlete.
He confirmed what I’ve suspected for a few years, that the days of superstars everywhere are disappearing because the average player is so highly tuned, well fed, faster, stronger, more intense, and scientifically supplemented that today’s average player could run rings around the average guy from a few decades ago.
I think if you had a time machine and a 16-game season between 2020 players and 1960 players, I think the older guys would suffer pretty badly at first, considering that during the off-season they were probably doing something besides working out like maniacs. I think modern guys would have a big advantage if they were playing under modern rules, and their athleticism was showcased without having to worry about Night Train Lane taking your head off. But if you alternated and did half of the games under modern rules and half of the games under the 60s rules, I think you’d have a bunch of hurt guys on both sides, but it would come down to grit. The old guys sure were talented too, but they were tough on a level that modern players may not have had to deal with. Not disparaging modern football players; I’ve coached alongside guys that played. But the game has changed, and while players look like they’ve been carved straight out of a mountain and you’ve got guys over 300 lbs. probably running 40s well under 5 seconds, the old guys were maniacs.
I agree with the level of athleticism, training, nutrition, etc between now vs the old timers. The new crop of players are the end result of decades of medical, nutritional, training and coaching advancements.
At one point coaches thought a player, especially linemen and linebackers had to “bulk up” to a certain weight to be effective. Modern coaches know that is is muscle mass not bulk mass that counts.
Back in the early 90’s I had the opportunity to ask NFL coach Buddy Ryan (it was an internet Q&A) one question. I asked if ANY stars from the 40’s through the 70’s would be able to play on any team in the 90’s.
He said emphatically NO. He explained that High School athletes did more physical conditioning at that time than the pro athletes of old did. He explained that by the time the modern athlete got finished in college they had more training and conditioning than the old timers got in an entire career. He actually broke it down pretty good.
If you took that 16 game Time Machine season and let each team play by the rules of their day it would even things out a bit.
Let the old timers knock a receiver down at the line of scrimmage and maintain physical contact throughout the play. Let them hold a RB or QB up so someone else could lower the boom. Let them use crack back blocks and what not. The modern players would be bruised silly by halftime.
Of course the old timers would have to keep from getting killed by their better conditioned and trained modern counterparts.
But that is where the fabled toughness of old comes into play.
I remember watching a game between the Chargers and someone. Wide receiver Charlie Joiner came into the game nursing a bad leg. He played a little in the first half but was not a factor. In the second half the Chargers were trailing when Joiner made one of those “how did he do that” catches for a first down and was promptly flattened like a skeeter on a windshield. He had to be helped off the field. Three plays later, needing a first down, the Chargers sent Joiner back in. He made the first down catch and got flattened. Helped off the field again. By the end of the game Joiner was peg-legging onto the field on third downs and was being practically carried off the field when he made the first down catch and got flattened. The Chargers ended up winning because Joiner refused to quit. That took physical, mental and emotional toughness the modern players lack.
I remember reading about a Green Bay Packer who had been in a bad accident and came out of the hospital with 40+ stitches running down each side from hip to around the chest area.
He talked the doctors into letting him suit up as it was the last game of the season. Then he talked the doctors and coaches into letting him take part of the opening kick off so he wouldn’t miss starting a game. He promised not to run downfield or make contact with any opposing player.
The crazy SOB not only ran downfield but made the tackle on the returner!
Crazy toughness.
Like Art Donovan said, “there were only so many spots on so many rosters. We didn’t come out of the game unless we were carried off on stretchers.”
Yeah, I love those old maniacs.
I think a few guys like Bo Jackson or Walter Payton would be dominant in any generation. Especially Jackson. That guy was a freak of nature. Speaking of multi-sport athletes, Dave Winfield was drafted by the NBA, MLB, and NFL (even though he didn’t play football in college.
Going back a little further, Jack Lummus was an end for the Giants, but when he joined the Marines he also played baseball for Camp Pendleton (I believe) before he became an officer in the Marine Raiders. Baseball, special operations, football, Lummus could do it all. He also earned a Medal of Honor, posthumously, on Iwo Jima. Baseball got hit hard by the war, but football was decimated with some teams folding and others had to combine rosters to stay afloat like the Phil-Pitt Steagles.
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