thedrifter
12-28-06, 08:00 AM
Blue-Collar Colossus
When NFL athletes really played out of love of the game--a long time ago.
BY GEOFFREY NORMAN
Thursday, December 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Before the kickoff, few people would have considered the football game scheduled for Yankee Stadium on Dec. 28, 1958, terribly significant. Football fans were more excited about the college bowl games coming up on New Year's Day than about the championship game being played by a bunch of professionals. The National Football League, after all, was still regarded as a pale imitation of the college game, and the last NFL matchup of the season was a distinctly down-menu item in the minds of most sports fans.
Still, the game was on television, and in the absence of a Rose Bowl contest, football fans tuned in to watch the New York Giants against the Baltimore Colts. What they saw came to be regarded as a seminal event in modern sports, one that began pro football's ascent to wild popularity, Super Bowls, "Monday Night Football" and billion-dollar television contracts: Everything that the NFL became was spawned by that game. Also born that day was the pro league's first superstar: Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas.
The scene is vividly recaptured by Tom Callahan in his biography of the quarterback, "Johnny U." In the last two minutes of the game, with the Colts trailing 17-14, Unitas completed four passes--three in a row to the future Hall of Fame receiver Raymond Berry, for a total of 62 yards. He had moved his team from its own 14-yard line to the Giants' 13. With seven seconds remaining, Colts kicker Steve Myhra put the ball through the uprights to tie the score, 17-17, pushing the game into sudden death.
The drive to put the Colts in field-goal range was agonizingly dramatic, but Unitas looked like the coolest man in America. No sign of nerves. No showboating. There was a kind of sublime, icy confidence in the way he managed the Colts' advance. It was utterly professional--and effective. In the overtime, Unitas led the Colts on an 80-yard drive--including a white-knuckle third-and-14 completion to Berry--before handing the ball to running back Alan Ameche for a one-yard plunge into the end zone and victory. This was decades before the celebrating star of a football game would pause onfield to make a paid announcement that his next stop was Disney World; Unitas turned down $500 to appear on "The Ed Sullivan Show" so that he could travel back to Baltimore with his teammates.
The Unitas story is pure blue-collar America, out of a vanished time, an era when athletes really did play--trite though the phrase may be--for the love of the game. Unitas was a ninth-round draft pick out of the University of Louisville, chosen by his hometown team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. But the Steelers cut him in 1955 before his first season even started. Unitas was working in construction and playing semi-pro ball on weekends for the Bloomfield Rams in Pittsburgh--for $15 a game--when, according to legend, a fan wrote a letter about him to the Colts that led to a tryout with the club. Joining the team in 1956, Unitas got his chance when Baltimore's starting quarterback, George Shaw, was injured in mid-season.
In "Johnny U," Mr. Callahan brings alive the days when professional athletes were not multimillionaire mini-conglomerates--and when, despite their relative lack of gold-plated symbols of success, they were held in higher esteem than the preening, trash-talking prima donnas we know today. Unitas, together with the Colts he played for, embodied values that are as dated as the black high-top football shoes that were his trademark. Mr. Callahan captures this quality as successfully as he does Unitas's artistry in the two-minute drill. As we learn in "Johnny U," when the quarterback's teammate Alan Ameche and his wife bought their first house for $8,000, it was former construction worker Unitas who laid the floor.
Ellie
When NFL athletes really played out of love of the game--a long time ago.
BY GEOFFREY NORMAN
Thursday, December 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Before the kickoff, few people would have considered the football game scheduled for Yankee Stadium on Dec. 28, 1958, terribly significant. Football fans were more excited about the college bowl games coming up on New Year's Day than about the championship game being played by a bunch of professionals. The National Football League, after all, was still regarded as a pale imitation of the college game, and the last NFL matchup of the season was a distinctly down-menu item in the minds of most sports fans.
Still, the game was on television, and in the absence of a Rose Bowl contest, football fans tuned in to watch the New York Giants against the Baltimore Colts. What they saw came to be regarded as a seminal event in modern sports, one that began pro football's ascent to wild popularity, Super Bowls, "Monday Night Football" and billion-dollar television contracts: Everything that the NFL became was spawned by that game. Also born that day was the pro league's first superstar: Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas.
The scene is vividly recaptured by Tom Callahan in his biography of the quarterback, "Johnny U." In the last two minutes of the game, with the Colts trailing 17-14, Unitas completed four passes--three in a row to the future Hall of Fame receiver Raymond Berry, for a total of 62 yards. He had moved his team from its own 14-yard line to the Giants' 13. With seven seconds remaining, Colts kicker Steve Myhra put the ball through the uprights to tie the score, 17-17, pushing the game into sudden death.
The drive to put the Colts in field-goal range was agonizingly dramatic, but Unitas looked like the coolest man in America. No sign of nerves. No showboating. There was a kind of sublime, icy confidence in the way he managed the Colts' advance. It was utterly professional--and effective. In the overtime, Unitas led the Colts on an 80-yard drive--including a white-knuckle third-and-14 completion to Berry--before handing the ball to running back Alan Ameche for a one-yard plunge into the end zone and victory. This was decades before the celebrating star of a football game would pause onfield to make a paid announcement that his next stop was Disney World; Unitas turned down $500 to appear on "The Ed Sullivan Show" so that he could travel back to Baltimore with his teammates.
The Unitas story is pure blue-collar America, out of a vanished time, an era when athletes really did play--trite though the phrase may be--for the love of the game. Unitas was a ninth-round draft pick out of the University of Louisville, chosen by his hometown team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. But the Steelers cut him in 1955 before his first season even started. Unitas was working in construction and playing semi-pro ball on weekends for the Bloomfield Rams in Pittsburgh--for $15 a game--when, according to legend, a fan wrote a letter about him to the Colts that led to a tryout with the club. Joining the team in 1956, Unitas got his chance when Baltimore's starting quarterback, George Shaw, was injured in mid-season.
In "Johnny U," Mr. Callahan brings alive the days when professional athletes were not multimillionaire mini-conglomerates--and when, despite their relative lack of gold-plated symbols of success, they were held in higher esteem than the preening, trash-talking prima donnas we know today. Unitas, together with the Colts he played for, embodied values that are as dated as the black high-top football shoes that were his trademark. Mr. Callahan captures this quality as successfully as he does Unitas's artistry in the two-minute drill. As we learn in "Johnny U," when the quarterback's teammate Alan Ameche and his wife bought their first house for $8,000, it was former construction worker Unitas who laid the floor.
Ellie