Category: History and More

How fun would it have been if – last weekend – the Buffalo Bills and Washington Commanders had squared off in the NFL’s third place game?

For the players and coaches, I doubt it would’ve been fun at all.

The teams would be just a week removed from their gut-wrenching conference championship game losses, and forced to serve as a warm-up act for the Super Bowl. Moreover, they’d be reminded they fell short of their ultimate goal.

I’m not sure even fans would have much of an appetite for a “bronze medal” game these days.

However, for 10 consecutive years the NFL did, in fact, host such a game. Known as the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl (and unofficially as the Runner-Up Bowl and, more popularly, the Playoff Bowl), it was contested at the Orange Bowl in Miami each year following the 1960-1969 seasons. Named after the league’s late commissioner, the matchup raised money for the players’ pension fund.

In 1960, the NFL consisted of six teams in the Eastern Conference and seven teams in the Western Conference. The division winners (10-2 Philadelphia in the East and 8-4 Green Bay in the West) earned spots in the NFL Championship Game, but league officials decided another game – played two weeks after the title tilt – would be a good showcase for pro football’s senior circuit.

So, it was decided that the competing teams would be the runners-up from each conference. In 1960, that meant the Cleveland Browns from the East and Detroit Lions repping the West.

Players on the winning teams would pocket $600 while those on the losing side got $400 each.

As a fundraiser for player pensions, the game served a noble purpose. The question, though, was how much incentive players would have to go full throttle in what was basically a glorified exhibition game.

Detroit coach George Wilson thought it was insulting to suggest his guys would give anything short of maximum effort.

“What a foolish approach to such an interview,” Wilson told The Daily Times of Salisbury, Maryland, for a January 5, 1960, story. “Sure, my guys will be putting all out as will the Browns. No, there isn’t much money involved for the players. However, remember every one of them is striving for better contracts next year.

“Other sports writers have asked me such questions. I’m getting tired of hearing such talk.”

Cleveland coach Paul Brown was all- business, even putting his team through full-pads scrimmages to prepare.

“We’re here to get ready for a ballgame,” Brown said.

The game was quite competitive, with Detroit winning, 17-16, in front of 34,891 fans.

Detroit was back in the Playoff Bowl the next season, defeating Philadelphia, 38-10, a week after Green Bay’s 37-0 rout of the New York Giants in the NFL Championship. This time only 25,621 patrons showed up for the third-place game.

Detroit earned the Playoff Bowl “threepeat” to close out the 1962 campaign, edging the Pittsburgh Steelers, 17-10, seven days after the Packers defended their crown with a 16-7 victory over the Giants.

Before the third-place game NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle said a crowd of 35,000 was necessary to keep the game in Miami, and 36,284 paid the price of admission to seal the deal.

At some point, however, a coach or player was bound to deviate from the party line when it came to the battle of also-rans, and that coach was none other than Vince Lombardi.

His Packers played in the consolation game at the close of the 1963 and 1964 seasons.

As you can imagine, the legend-in-the-making who had led his club to two consecutive NFL crowns wasn’t a fan.

Green Bay beat Cleveland 40-23 in the fourth Playoff Bowl, but lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 24-17, in the fifth installment.

Following Lombardi’s death in 1970, it was revealed what he really thought about the game.

“There is no room for second place here,” he said. “There’s only one place here and that’s first place. I’ve finished second twice in my time here and I don’t ever want to finish second again.

“There’s a second-place bowl game and it’s a hinky-dink football game, held in a hinky-dink town, played by hinky-dink football players. That’s all second place is – hinky dink.”

Cowboys coach Tim Landry – after his team earned a spot opposite Green Bay in the 1967 championship game – allegedly said to a friend, “Lord, I don’t know what makes me happier, playing Green Bay for the championship or not having to go to Miami for the Playoff Bowl.”

The “hinky-dink” game last 10 consecutive years, often with impressive attendance. Four of the five games had crowds in excess of 50,000, with the largest coming in the January 9, 1966, contest when the Baltimore Colts dismantled the Dallas Cowboys, 35-3. There were 65,569 in the stands that day.

And TV ratings were always excellent. Super Bowl III and the 1969 Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl were the only games to draw more TV viewers than that season’s Playoff Bowl (Dallas beat Minnesota, 17-13).

Still, the third-place game had outlived its usefulness.

“It was sort of a fluff game,” Cleveland quarterback Frank Ryan told the New York Times in 2011. “That ridiculous game shows how ridiculous the league was in those days.”

Once the NFL went to four divisions of four teams each in 1967, an extra round of playoffs was added. More importantly, a year earlier the NFL announced a merger with the American Football League that would go into effect in 1970.

That would create a 26-team league with eight of them making the playoffs.

With so many meaningful postseason games, it was time to do away with the Bert Bell Benefit Bowl.

The final clash saw the Los Angeles Rams blank the Cowboys, 31-0, and this is how Associated Press led its game story:

“Pro football’s most famous stepchild is dead. Roman Gabriel gave the 10-year-old NFL Playoff Bowl a four-bomb salute and the Cowboys stood around as pallbearers.

“If there was any reason for the National Football League’s backdoor classic it was the $1.25 million funneled into the players’ pension fund during the 1960s. But, after a decade as a haven for championship playoff losers, the misnamed event is no more.”

PLAYOFF BOWL RESULTS

Detroit Lions 17, Cleveland Browns 16 (1-7-61)
Detroit Lions 38, Philadelphia 10 (1-6-62)
Detroit Lions 17, Pittsburgh Steelers 10 (1-6-63)
Green Bay Packers 40, Cleveland Browns 23 (1-5-64)
St. Louis Cardinals 24, Green Bay Packers 17 (1-3-65)
Baltimore Colts 35, Dallas Cowboys 3 (1-9-66)
Baltimore Colts 20, Philadelphia Eagles 14 (1-8-67)
Los Angeles Rams 30, Cleveland Browns 6 (1-7-68)
Dallas Cowboys 17, Minnesota Vikings 13 (1-5-69)
Los Angeles Rams 31, Dallas Cowboys 0 (1-3-70)

When discussing integration of the National Football League, much is made of pro football’s “reintegration,” when the NFL –in 1946 – opted to end a ban on black players it instituted in 1933.

But years before the circuit decided to incorporate segregation into its business model, Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard was already breaking down barriers.

And he never stopped.

Pollard – along with Bobby Marshall – was one of the first two African-American players to earn roster spots in the American Professional Football Association, the forerunner of the NFL.

Pollard was also the first black coach in NFL history, and after his playing/coaching days were done, he became a successful business leader and entertainment manager.

Pollard was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005.

Charles Follis is believed to be the first African-American professional football player, starring for the Shelby (Ohio) Blues from 1904 to 1911.

And before Pollard, there was also Doc Baker (Akron Indians, 1906-08 and 1911); Henry McDonald (1911-17, Rochester Jeffersons); and Gideon Smith, who suited up one game for the Canton Bulldogs in 1915.

In fact, Marshall played pro ball in Minnesota from 1913-17 and again in 1919, and technically was the first African-American athlete to participate in an APFA game when he suited up for Rock Island on September 26, 1920. Although the contest came against a non-league opponent – the independent St. Paul Ideals – it ultimately counted in the final APFA standings and thus considered an “NFL game.”

Pollard, however, built on the accomplishments of those who came before him and carved out his own legacy.

A 5-9, 165-pound halfback who played for Brown University and helped the team to a 1916 Rose Bowl appearance, he was the first black player to earn Walter Camp All-America Team honors.

After coaching college ball and serving in World War I, he was signed to a pro contract on November 5, 1919. (The Akron Indians were in the process of upgrading from semi-pro to APFA membership, and would change their nickname to the Akron Pros in 1920).

The headline on the front page of the Akron Evening Times on November 6, 1919, read, “Fritz Pollard, Greatest Of Present Day Grid Stars, To Play With Indians Sunday.”

A day later in a preview of the game with the Massillon Tigers, the paper described Pollard this way: “Weighing only 145 pounds, Pollard is the fastest man in moleskins today. He is not only fast, but is a wonder on picking his holes in the line and the greatest open field runner the game has ever known.”

Akron fell to Massillon, 13-6, with Pollard getting the losing team’s lone touchdown. Still, he was considered the star of the game.

“Fritz Pollard, playing for the first time with the Indians, did remarkable work,” according to a piece in The Akron Beacon on November 10. “His efforts were the bright features of the afternoon’s entertainment. In running back punts, he was sensational. While from the backfield position he carried the ball many times for long gains.

“ … Pollard made his gains without any protection whatever. He was either too fast for interference or the formations were loosely ran. Had Pollard been given a cleared way to his end runs he would have likely turned the tide of victory.”

As you might imagine, Pollard had issues to deal with off the field.

“When I got to Akron, the town was filled with thousands of Southerners who had come up to work in the factories during World War I,” Pollard told the Staten Island Advance for an April 11, 1978 story. “They told me I couldn’t even change in the locker room. The guy who owned the club also owned a cigar store. That’s where I changed my clothes. I couldn’t even stay in a decent hotel.”

But thanks to his exploits on the field, Pollard was hard to ignore.

“I went out and beat Canton for them,” Pollard said. “Canton was the big rival – they had Jim Thorpe. By the end of the year, I was in that locker room. The next season, I was coaching the team.”

In 1920 the Pros won the league title with an 8-0-3 record, and Pollard led the charge with 24 points – second in the league. In 1921 he was named co-coach and also managed to score seven touchdowns and amass an APFA-best 42 points.

“Elgie Tobin was listed as the coach, but when I came, they were still using some old plays,” Pollard said in an interview with The New York Times in 1978. “So, I said why don’t we try some of the stuff we had been doing at Brown. The owner, Frank Neid, told everybody if they didn’t want to listen to me, they could leave right then.”

Mixing in playing and coaching, Pollard worked with the Pros as well as the Milwaukee Badgers, Hammond Pros and Providence Steam Roller.

After exiting the NFL in 1926, Pollard formed the Chicago Black Hawks, an all-African American team that played exhibition games against Midwest teams and, during the winter, West Coast clubs.

When he finally hung up his whistle and pads, he did everything from tax consulting to film and music production. He also published the New York Independent News from 1935-42; it was the first black-owned tabloid in the city’s history.

So, while Pollard ultimately left his footprints everywhere, his cleat marks also made an indelible mark.

“When the Pros offered me a contract to play in Akron, there were only a few other blacks in the league. But they paid me $500, because that was my price.

“I know people had no right to judge me by anything but my character, and that’s the way I judged them. Look, the people who made it toughest when I got to Akron were the ones who were sorriest when I finally decided to leave.”

I admit, sometimes I get a bit nostalgic for the way college football was – or at least the way I thought it was when I was a kid.

I grew during the era when there usually was just one televised game per Saturday, so that was the game you watched. If it happened to be a matchup that featured the team you cheered for, well, that made a big deal that much bigger.

It was a time when there were only a handful of bowl games and national champions were determined by a vote of coaches and sports writers.

By today’s standards, it was downright primitive. But when it was all you knew, it all seemed pretty good.

Now here we are in 2025, with Notre Dame and Ohio State the last teams standing in major college football following a 12-team tournament. They’ll meet on January 20 in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game, an event that culminates the first year of a “real” playoff.

(I realize something called the CFP Playoff has been around since 2014, but up until the 2024 season it included only four schools. As I’ve said many times, when a national championship is settled among four out of 134 teams, that’s not a playoff, merely an invitational).

Yet – speaking as a fan – the game gives off a completely different vibe now. The teams represent colleges, but what they’re playing doesn’t seem like NCAA football anymore.

Big-time college football has become so … transient. Players are looking to make the most of their opportunities, and nowadays that means jumping from one team to another thanks to the transfer portal and the possibility of a financial windfall.

Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia suited up for New Mexico Military Institute and New Mexico before making his way to Nashville and the SEC.

Alan Bowman calls signals for Oklahoma State. Previously, he was on the rosters of both Texas Tech and Michigan.

And before moving on to the coaching ranks in 2024, J.T. Daniels played QB for Southern Cal, Georgia, West Virginia and Rice. The list goes on and on.

The Athletic reports that by the time the winter transfer portal had closed last month, more than 3,000 Football Bowl Subdivision players had entered it. That’s a whole lot of shuffling.

Playing time is the primary reason, of course, with the subtext being that more snaps increase NIL opportunities. Now that athletes can make money off their name, image and likeness, it’s even more important to join a program where you can elevate the profile of your name, image and likeness.

At this point you probably expect me to play the old man card and start pining for the “good ol’ days.”

I’m not gonna do that.

If a player can ink a big money sponsorship deal with Aunt Gertrude’s Old-Fashioned Carbuncle Salve, more power to him. And I’m glad revenue sharing will come into play starting with the 2025-26 season.

With head coaches making as much as $10 million per season, it’s criminal for athletes not to benefit financially. They’re the ones putting their bodies on the line and bringing fans to the stadium (and eyes to the TV).

That said, the evolution of college football has taken away much of its charm. While my decades-long fandom came with a heavy dose of naivety, I liked the fact that Saturdays were reserved for “amateur” kids playing for school pride. Sundays, meanwhile, were all about grown men playing for a paycheck.

The lines between college football and the NFL were clearly drawn, and I appreciated the distinction.

And while there’s still a huge gulf between the Power Four and the 32 franchises that play with the ball bearing Roger Goodell’s autograph, the relationship is increasingly symbiotic.

Today’s elite college players are often ready to move to the NFL and make an impact by the end of their junior years. And choosing a school is less about growing up cheering for that school and more about which institution provides the clearest path to the NFL – and the biggest payday.

Again, all of this makes perfect sense and I’m completely in the players’ corner. College football is big business, even if we like to pretend otherwise, and these guys have every right to make the best business decisions for themselves.

However, these major changes mean the game has morphed into more of a pro-type league – one with unlimited free agency and major financial disparity, depending on the team and conference. Many institutions have “collectives,” which raise money from donors to provide NIL compensation. The playing field is tilted, and the have-nots are falling even further behind the haves.

In cbssports.com’s report on the Buckeyes’ 28-14 victory over Texas in Friday’s Cotton Bowl semi-final, one line read, “Ohio State’s $20 million roster, one of the most expensive in college football, was on display throughout a gutsy win over the Longhorns.” 

With that kind of cash floating around, I imagine there’ll come a time – likely soon – when the top 40 or 50 programs break away and form their own “Super League.”

It’ll be at the top of the collegiate pyramid, moving far ahead of the FBS, Football Championship Subdivision and Division II. Calling it “NFL Lite” won’t be too far off the mark.

What college football “was” to me is now merely a fond memory. The days when a scholarship was the dangling carrot to lure a student-athlete are long gone.

What college football “is,” well, it’s a natural progression, and that progression comes with a hefty price tag.

We might not like it from our outside-looking-in vantage point, but we have no choice but to acknowledge it.