Posted on 08/24/2022 5:59:06 PM PDT by OneVike
Before I get into the reason for my commentary, I want to state for the record that Len Dawson was a decent God fearing man, a good QB, and a great American. Nothing I write is meant to discredit him nor his teammates. They played as professionals in a game that was manipulated by others behind the scenes to get the result they wanted regardless of how the men who played the game did their job.
Whether it be Justice, politics, or sports, it seem there are always those behind the scenes who try their best to get the result they want regardless of what is right or wrong. I often find myself praying that one day before I day I will see true justice, which should bring true results in elections, and fair outcomes in sports competitions. So many times after the last whistle is blown, the last point is scored, or the last second on the clock is struck, we then learn of something that was done to ensure an ending that just wasn't fair, and yet justice is never truly rendered.
Well, one day before I die I would like to see another Super Bowl were one team gets only water, while the other gets Gatorade. A game played outdoors where the humidity is a staggering 80% or higher. Imagine such a contest where one team is using plain water, while the other is downing electrolyte loaded energy drinks brought in by water boys between plays. Drinking down that important proven energy drink that replenishes a dehydrated system that is used to working at peak capacity?
Too bad such a drink didn't exist for the Minnesota Vikings on that fatal day back on January 11, 1970. Key phrase being, "for the Minnesota Vikings", because it did exist. It just that the magic elixir did not exist for the Vikings that day. It did exist for their opponent however, and they drank it like it was water.
in 1965 a team of scientists at the University of Florida College of Medicine, created a drink to specifically help athletes replace their body fluids lost during physical exertion. Their tests on College Athletes were positive, and soon their football team, the Florida Gators were wining games like never before. The football team even credited their new energy drink they dubbed, "Gatorade" as having contributed to their first ever Orange Bowl win over the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in 1967. After the game, even the apposing Georgia Tech coach, Bobby Dodd, when asked why his team lost to what many considered an inferior Florida team, he responded, "We didn't have Gatorade. That made the difference."
Two years later around the time of the AFL playoffs, Lamar Hunt was approached by a close friend who was involved with the promotiomn of the Universicty of Florida's promotion of their energy drink. He convinced Lamar Hunt to use the Gatorade they created to help them promote it, and when his Chiefs faced the Vikings in the Super Bowl, a new drink was on the sideline for the Chiefs, but not on the sideline for the Vikings.
Just a week earlier the Vikings had defeated the Cleveland Browns for the last pure NFL Championship, in typical Minnesota freezing weather fashion. It was a game the Vikings had won by halftime. By doing so, they culminated a nine year struggle where they climbed out of the shadows of Lombardi's Packers to become the undisputed champions of the NFL. A struggle that was even more sweet for defensive tackle Alan Page, who as a young boy was hired as a laborer in his hometown of Canton to help build the future home of the NFL's Hall of Fame. A place where, today, his bust is on display as a member of the best of the best to ever play the game.
They finally won the title, but they could not bask in the glory too long, because in a week they had to take on the champion of the upstart AFL league, the Kansas City Chiefs. The next day they packed their equipment onto the bus and headed to New Orleans where they would play the last game of the long season. A game to decide which league is the best, before they merge as one. Mind you, the Super Dome was not yet built, so the game was played outdoors where there humidity was 87% on that day. Luckily for the √kings it never got above 65 degree's but if you ever lived down South when the humidity is high, it doesn't matter what the temperature is, it can be miserable.
Just so you understand, I personally understand what the Vikings faced when they got to New Orleans. I grew up in Duluth Minnesota, where Winters can come with wind chills that get down to minus 60 degrees. I remember going home for leave after I received a transfer order to Ft Benning GA. I spent Christmas with my family, and the average tempt during my visit was hovering around o degrees. My reporting date was January 13, 1975, which is just about the exact same time of the year the Vikings would have been in New Orleans to play Kansas a few years earlier. When I boarded the plane at 11:00 am to fly to Columbus GA, it was 14 degrees below in Duluth.
After an hour layover in Minneapolis, I was able to fly straight to Atlanta, where I had a two hour wait to fly to Columbus, where Ft Benning GA is located. I arrived in Columbus some time late afternoon, and the temperature wasn't bad, it was like about 70 degrees. However, the one thing I noticed the moment I walked down that ramp was the himidity. It felt like the humidity was 100%, but I would learn it was about 80%. I thought I could handle some humidity, but this stuff was like pea soup. It was so muggy my clothes seemed to be soaked.
In the first Month I was stationed there, I kept ending up in sick bay from passing out. I had no energy, I could not lift my M-16, let alone carry a 50 lb back pack on a 20 mile force March. I kept passing out, and was almost told I may end up with a medical discharge. I was in the best physical shape of my life, and I tried to tell them I wasn't used to such a mixture of heat and high humidity. Yet they were convinced there was something else wrong with me. Well, eventually my body acclimated, but it took a good Month to do so.
I share this so you can understand what the Viking players would have had to deal with. I can only imagine how the Vikings on that January day felt in that game. Now I don't know how many reading this ever played Football, but with all the equipment on, and in the middle of a football field, it seems a lot hotter, and now add in 87% humidity, and that will make you feel muggy, and sluggish.
OH I know the Chiefs also had to deal with it, but remember, then they had an new fairly untested energy drink, which would have been banned in today's NFL, as an enhancing drug. Even at that, they would have demanded both teams have the chance to use it. Hell, the players Union would have complained even. Gatorade which replaces the electrolytes the body desperately needs in physical competition is now understood so well that every sporting event in the World uses it. Something you cannot get from plain water. So here were the Vikings dragging it, trying to keep up, while the Chiefs were flying around like they were on steroids and speed. Yet all the Vikings had was plain old water, which equales no contest.
Like Joe Namath did against the Colts two years earlier, the Chiefs made history by handing the Vikings and their vaunted Purple People Eaters a devastating defeat. To the shock of the World, the Chiefs would make the Vikings look like a semi-pro team. This drink was still unknown in the professional World of sports, while at the college level it was making news. It would not be until after the Super Bowl, that professional athletes would become interested.
Well, the rest is history. Is it any wonder the Chiefs ran circles around the vaunted Purple People Eaters. Not with Gatorade. Everyone knew the Chiefs were using The fix was in. The Chiefs had to win, because the next year the two leagues merged.
OK, OK, I am still a bit upset 52 some years later. Yet I dare any sport league to try getting away with that today. Today they will fine a team millions and take away future draft picks for cheating. All the Vikings got was ridicule, followed by years and years of incorrect reporting about how much more superior the Chiefs were than them.
Rules in sports has always been, whatever one teams has as an advantage the other gets unless it is a drug, then it is outright banned. Well Gatorade may not have been designated a drug, but when you consider the effects it has on professional athletes, it should have been at the time. Or at least until the league fully understood its benefit to the body. After all, there are power drinks that are banned today in sports, but they are not drugs, they are strong energy drinks. No one ever considers the cheating involved in that game that day, yet to this day there is not a sporting event in the World where Gatorade is not on the sidelines. Go ahead and watch the game if you can find it, listen to the comments off the men in the booth of how energetic the Chiefs are and how tired the Vikings look.
History proves I'm right, and my personal beliefs is Lamar and his Chiefs were needed to win because of the big money involved in the merger. Some claim the papers were signed and the merger would have taken place anyway, well Lamar Hunt, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs was also head of the merge committee, and knowing how deals are always made, someone must be sacrificed for the good of the bottom line. On that day, at that time, it was the Vikings who had to be sacrificed. For Lamar and his Chiefs, the trophy was the icing on the cake for helping all the owners to get richer with the merger, even if all the owners were not privy to the drug used to help his team win.
Like it or not, the fact remains, the game was rigged rom the outset, because there was enough evidence at the time from College games to know what Gatorade offered a team wanting a huge edge in a big game. Today, the Chiefs should have, at minimum, an asterisk next to their title in the record books. Fifty two years later I wish there was at least one honest sports reporter who would step up and write about the facts behind the day of the Big Steal for the last Big Game played out before the merger took place?
As an added note, I used to be a huge fan of the HBO show, “Inside the NFL”, with Len Dawson and Nick Buoniconti. I'll readily admit that I disliked both men, when they played football. Once they retired I liked them, but as players they were the enmy of my team. However, it was more difficult for me to like Len, but not Nick. See, Nick's team the Dolphins beat my Vikings in the "72" Super Bowl, but his team did it fair and square. By the time the Vikings played the Dolphins most teams, including the Vikings and the Dolphins had Gatorade on the sidelines. Today every NFL, NBA, NHL, NBA, MSL, WNBA, NASCAR, and even professional golf players have Gatorade available to them.
Mind you, a similar theft of the Super Bowl took place again in 2009. During the playoffs the fix was in for the Saints to go all the way to make the fans of New Orleans feel batter about the devastation Hurricane Katrina visited on New Orleans. Instead of locking up the mayor who was to blame for most the misery, the NFL, and the sports media conspired to help the Saints go all the way. In their run to their Super Bowl the Saints pretty much ended the careers of Kurt Warner and Bret Favre, while Payton Manning had to go overseas to get a new procedure done on his neck before he could play again.
We know what the Saints did was allowed, because in the 2009 playoffs the referees were ignoring the illegal hits on the QBs. The next year an investigation proved what every fan at home, other than Saint fans, complained about. The defensive coordinator had contracts on the QBs. He was paying defensive players extra money for QB sacks and or knock downs. If they were able to take out one of the three future Hall of Fame QB's the player was promised an even bigger check. The mock trial ended with the Saints head coach and the defensive coordinator both being suspend for a year and fined for the contract scandal. Yet the NFL let them keep the trophy and their still is no asterisk next to the Saints, nor the Chiefs for the Super Bowls they won by cheating.
On that thought, could someone tell me why Armstrong had to surrender his seven trophies for winning the Tour de France Bicycle races? After all, if professional leagues learn a team cheated, but then do not take the tile away, why did Armstrong have to relinquish his when he was finally busted for cheating?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I don’t think that’s cheating. Often times the team that gloms onto new technology first wins. Nobody has declared Gatorade against the rules, maybe if it had been outlawed you’d have a point, but it isn’t. It’s just like those gloves that enable all these insane one handed catches. Early on the teams that used them generally beat on the teams that hadn’t found out about them yet. That’s not cheating, that’s thinking.
I can accept that, but I use cheating, because I am a fan, and somebody should at least recognize the difference it made.
Yet it has been able to go down in history as the Chiefs were so much better because of the game, when in fact the Vikings were the victims of a trick that was not considered illegal.
I am reminded of the game that had the first forward pass. It was considered cheating, but the team that lost did not get ridiculed in the media and destroyed by the critics.
Viking players had their futures put in question about how good they were.
Add three more loses and it cemented them as losers, when it all started with a game that could have been different if the Vikings has Gatorade instead of the Chiefs.
Interestingly, the next year Kansas City failed to make it to the Super Bowl by losing by a field goal I overtime to Miami. Interesting because Miami also had Gatorade on their sideline in that game.
One can just wonder what would have been, yet History holds Chiefs in high regard for that game, and there Vikings are considered the joke.
You know that sports writers who decide what players will be in the Hall of fame actually held back their votes for most of the Vikings except for a few, based upon their shopping in that game. Today, Jim Marshal is still not in the Hall.
A lot more of the Chiefs players from the game are in the hall than the Vikings, and yet the Chiefs had only one more good year, while the Vikings were in the playoffs for the next 10 years, and even made it back to the Super Bowl 3 times.
Sometimes a gimmick can be the difference between a great team and one that just missed the mark in the minds of millions.
It’s not cheating. And calling it cheating isn’t being a fan, it’s whining.
The Chiefs whomped the Vikes from beginning to end. Maybe being better hydrated helped, but I don’t think if the Chiefs had just water they’d have lost.
The rules got changed to allow the forward pass. It wasn’t considered cheating by the time it started happening a lot because it wasn’t anymore.
There’s a whole lot that cemented the Viking as losers. Not the least of which being that except for a couple of seasons where they bubbled up they’ve sucked since going into a dome.
I doubt anything changes drastically if they had the same liquids. The Chiefs were better. And the future of the Vikes really wasn’t about that game, but decades of bad management. That they’re still suffering from today.
Technology is always being pushed. Whether its sports drinks, gloves, lighter bikes with better force transfer, clubs and rackets with better sweet spots, shoes with better grips, swimsuits with less resistance, bent hockey sticks. There’s early adopters and late adopters. Early adopters tend to be better across the board, because they’re putting in that extra effort. Frankly it’s just more proof that the Chiefs were better than the Vikes. They were willing to try to be better. As others on this thread electrolyte replacement was by no means a new concept. The Chiefs were willing to try it out, the Vikes weren’t. Chiefs won.
That doesn't look like a Gatorade, but seeing as they were cheating they probably disguised it in Fresca bottles. 
One of the Chiefs centers from the Hank Stram era (I think it was Rudney) told me over drinks in Holihan’s that often playing tennis with Hank he would push the rules so much that Jack would often just give up and let him win so he would quit acting childish.
God, I hate football.
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