Category: History and More

In the classic film Inherit the Wind, there’s a scene when lawyer Henry Drummond – with dogmatic rival Matthew Harrison Brady on the stand – expounds on the advancement of society:

“Madam, you may vote, but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powderpuff or your petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline.” 

So … what does this have to do with college football?

On the surface, absolutely nothing.

However, for people like me – folks who have spent more than a half century following the game – those words resonate.

Why, yes, I’ll be glad to explain …

The latest installment of college football is now 31 games old with a full slate of action set for today. Of those 31 games already played, most were televised by some outlet.

And if you so choose, at 11 a.m. today you can start your gridiron viewing fest by tuning into the Big Ten Network to watch the Buffalo-Maryland clash, or catch Michigan-Colorado State on ABC, or Delaware-Navy on CBS Sports Network, or North Carolina State-East Carolina on ESPN, or Rutgers-Boston College on the ACC Network, or Sam Houston State-Texas A&M on the SEC Network, or … well you get the idea.

Point being, there is all the college football your eyes can handle, available throughout this day and night, as well as once on Sunday (Florida State vs. LSU, ABC) and again on Labor Day (Clemson vs. Georgia Tech, ESPN).

And with that, I now shift to the “remember when” portion of this column, where I (clumsily) tie-in Drummond’s fiery courtroom elucidation with the old days of college football.

Go back 50 years to the start of the 1972 season, and you’ll see that except for a West Coast tilt on September 8 (San Diego State vs. Oregon State), September 9 was Opening Day.

For a young boy growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, then (spoiler alert: I was that young boy), the two biggest games of note were Duke vs. Alabama at Legion Field and Auburn at Mississippi State, both set for 7:30 p.m. kickoffs.

Nationally, the UCLA-Nebraska and Southern Cal-Arkansas clashes were billed as great lid-lifters for a new campaign.

Kids today (I’ve been wanting to use that expression for the longest time) would be shocked to learn that none of those games were on TV in the Birmingham area. If you wanted to follow the Tide or Tigers without actually being in the stands, you had to do it via the radio.

As for the showdowns between the Bruins and Cornhuskers and Trojans and Razorbacks, you’d need to watch the late news in hopes you got a score because you couldn’t even listen to those intersectional battles.

Nope, if you lived anywhere near my hometown on September 9, 1972, and wanted to watch a college football game you had one shot and one shot only. That came at 4 p.m. when ABC broadcast the Tennessee at Georgia Tech game from Atlanta.

And it was magnificent.

Why wouldn’t it be? It was all I knew. Back in the day, ABC carried all the regular season college football games, and you got what you got and liked it. (Every now and then they’d have a day game and a night game and man, that was glorious).

Sure, it was even better if Alabama or Auburn were on TV, but the fact that any contest was being televised was a huge deal.

It allowed me to hear legends like Chris Schenkel and Bud Wilkinson call games from such exotic (to me) locales like Ann Arbor, South Bend, Los Angeles and Austin. Teams I might never see in person from states I’d never been were right there in the living room, and they demanded my attention.

When Southern Cal and UCLA would meet, it was like spending the day in Hollywood – or at least how I imagined it. With the Bruins donning baby blue and gold and the Trojans rocking cardinal and a yellowy gold, the sartorial splendor on display was wonderful.

And I’d always get excited when I knew Ohio State would be one half of the game of the day, because I could cheer against Woody Hayes.

In a word, these events were special, and college football games on TV are no longer that. To paraphrase Mr. Drummond, they’ve “conquered the air but lost their wonder,” so to speak.

But before you fear I’ll start complaining about the fact that athletes don’t wear leather helmets anymore or play games while it’s lightning, rest easy. I’m not an older guy who pines for the way college football was, I simply appreciate how it made me feel when I was young.

Nowadays I love being able to watch one game on my TV, another on my laptop and a third on my iPhone. And if I want to find a tilt involving one of the 131 Football Bowl Subdivision teams on any given Saturday (or whatever day they play), I can do it.

But I can also plant my patootie on the futon today and take a few moments to reminisce … thinking back fondly on a time when one TV game on a College Football Saturday was a genuine thrill.

And I plan to work those moments in – probably sometime between the Georgia-Oregon and Florida-Utah games.

I love researching sports history, often in the interest of finding column fodder but sometimes just to travel back in time.

Today, it allowed me to remember an old friend.

While looking for some game accounts of the New York Cosmos’ North American Soccer League championship victory on August 26, 1972, I found myself eying a newspaper dated August 27 of that year.

A completely unrelated headline that popped out at me read: “Astros fire Walker, lure back Leo.”

Houston’s National League club had parted ways with skipper Harry Walker and replaced him with Leo Durocher, who had been axed by the Chicago Cubs during the All-Star break. It would mark the end of Walker’s professional managerial career, one that also saw him guide the fortunes of the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates and finish with a 630-604 record.

That got me reminiscing about Walker, who was the UAB baseball coach during my college days (he was 211-171 while leading the Blazers during their first eight seasons) and who I got to know better when I became a frequent guest at his home in Leeds, Alabama.

It was always time well spent. The first visit was to do a piece for a newspaper I was working for at the time, and later it was just to sit and listen to him tell stories of the days when baseball was unquestionably the National Pastime.

And keep in mind, Walker was not someone who just passed through the game. He was a big league center fielder from 1940 through 1955 (eight years with the Cards plus stretches with the Cubs, Philadelphia Phillies and Cincinnati Reds), winning two world championships and a National League batting title in 1947.

That year he batted .363 while playing 130 games for Philadelphia and 10 with St. Louis. He and his brother, Dixie, are the only siblings to win Major League batting crowns.

Oh, and the two-time All-Star also served in the 65^th Infantry Division in 1945 and 1946, earning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

Nicknamed “The Hat” due to his habit of adjusting his cap between pitches, he also cussed like a sailor. Or, maybe the better description would be sailors cussed like Harry Walker. Man, oh, man, every other word was a profanity.

The funny thing, though, is there was never any maliciousness behind his colorful language; that’s just the way he talked. And when it came to baseball, well, he could talk all day

“If we aren’t careful, we’re going to see baseball deteriorate,” Walker told me back when I first interviewed him in 1990. “I think everybody needs to make sure that baseball — American Legion and that sort of thing — is available to the youngsters.

“Now it seems like after Little League, people forget about baseball. That’s why baseball was so great back in the 1940s and 1950s. It brought people together. Cotton mills had teams and it didn’t matter where you went, you could find a baseball game. Wouldn’t it be great if little towns all had teams like they did in the old days?”

Walker saw professional baseball’s star fading; he understood that football had become king to a large number of American sports fans, but the game he loved was hurting itself with too many “mediocre hitters.”

“In those days if you wanted to stay in the big leagues, you had better be able to hit the ball,” Walker said. “I see guys now making millions of dollars and hitting .225, and if you hit 225 back when I played you wouldn’t be in the majors, you’d be down on the farm somewhere.”

In his later years Walker was in high demand as a hitting instructor, willing to assist everyone from local high school players to professionals in developing a better swing. It was his way of continuing to grow the game.

He died on August 8, 1999, at 80, leaving behind a legacy as one of the country’s foremost “Baseball Men.”

I wish I’d had a chance to ask him about interleague play and the universal designated hitter, topics I’m sure he’d have strong opinions that he’d be willing to share. And the steroid era and contraction of minor league teams would’ve likely set him off, too.

But when I was around Walker, I preferred letting him drive the conversation. And the fact that those conversations revolved around “the old days” was fine by me.

As a fan of sports history, what’s better than talking with someone who lived it?

The Miami Dolphins are marking the golden anniversary of their perfect season this year, and barring a team going 20-0 in 2022-23 (spoiler alert: it won’t happen) they’ll remain the lone National Football League franchise to accomplish the feat.

Don Shula’s 1972 club was impressive across the board; the Dolphins’ “No-Name Defense” registered three shutouts in a 14-game regular season, and only three opponents managed to score 20 or more points.

Offensively, running backs Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris each eclipsed the 1,000-yard rushing mark – a league first – while Paul Warfield shined when Bob Griese or Earl Morrall decided to work the skies.

Still, even the best teams need a bit of good fortune to go along with their great play. And if you take a look at Miami’s 17-game slate, you’ll find a handful of games that were a break or two away from going the other way.

During the regular season, three games were decided by four points or less. The Fins defeated the Minnesota Vikings, 16-14, (October 1); edged the Buffalo Bills, 24-23, (October 22); and beat the New York Jets, 28-24, (November 19).

Their entire playoff run featured tight scores: 20-14 (Cleveland Browns in the AFC Divisional Playoff); 21-17 (Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship Game); and 14-7 (Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII).

So, how close did the perfect team come to being imperfect?

In the win over Minnesota, Miami was held scoreless over the first two quarters and then managed three Garo Yepremian field goals in the second half to cut the Vikings’ lead to 14-9. With just 1:28 remaining in the game, Griese hit Jim Mandich on a three-yard scoring toss to save the day. Although just the third week of the season, the victory was a harbinger of things to come as it left Miami as the only unbeaten team in the league.

“I’d like to get the reputation that we are a come-from-behind team,” Shula told to Associated Press following the “W” in Bloomington, Minnesota. “Of course, everybody likes to get way ahead and not get caught, but a team that can come from behind has a great advantage.”

In the one-point conquest of the Bills in Miami, the Dolphins trailed 13-7 at the half. However, a Csonka TD in the third quarter made it 14-13 and the eventual winners never trailed the rest of the way.

The score was 24-16 before Buffalo added a late TD (there was no two-point conversion option at the time, so Shula’s squad effectively had a two-score lead at that point).

The last regular season scare came against the division rival Jets. That game I remember well because I watched it with my dad on Channel 13 in Birmingham, hoping Joe Namath and company could engineer an upset. New York led 24-21 early in the fourth quarter to give me some hope, but Morris scored a 14-yard touchdown later in the frame, wrapping up the AFC East title at home for his 10-0 team.

“We’ve won 10 in a row,” Shula told AP. “We’re happy … everything’s positive. We’ve got to get this football team ready to start the playoffs.”

The Dolphins outscored their final four regular season foes 107-44, capped off by 16-0 blanking of the Baltimore Colts.

The postseason, however, would test their championship mettle.

After racing out to a 10-0 halftime lead over Cleveland in the first round of the playoffs, Miami found itself trailing, 14-13, with 8:11 left in the fourth quarter of the Christmas Eve clash in the Orange Bowl.

But the Dolphins took the ensuing kickoff and marched 80 yards in eight plays, highlighted by Jim Kiick’s eight-yard scoring run to extend the winning streak and season.

“That last drive was for all the believers in the Dolphins,” Morris told the Miami Herald.

Due to a weird (and, thankfully, now defunct) rotating playoff format, the 15-0 Fins had to travel to the 12-3 Steelers for the AFC Championship Game.

Pittsburgh used the home field to its advantage early on in the New Year’s Eve battle, taking a 7-0 lead and playing the unbeatens even at halftime, 7-7 (a fake punt by the Dolphins’ Larry Seiple set up the tying score for the visitors).

Miami took charge over the final two quarters, holding a 21-10 lead in the fourth frame before the Steelers made things interesting with a touchdown 5:11 from the finish.

Griese came off the bench to throw two touchdown passes in the conference clincher; he played in only nine games due to injury while Morrall parlayed his opportunity into an All-Pro season. Morrall was pleased with the outcome, but hardly happy about being pulled.

“We were trying to think about the Steelers,” he told reporters. “You don’t try to think about yourself, just the other team and winning. But, no, I wasn’t overjoyed about it.”

The coronation came in Los Angeles on January 14, 1973, with a 14-7 victory over Washington in the Super Bowl.

The defensive struggle is probably best remembered by a blocked field goal attempt and comical “pass-punch” by Yepremian that resulted in a 49-yard TD for the Redskins.

Miami had dominated all day and the fluke play spoiled a shutout. It also made a game that was never really in doubt look much closer than it was.

Afterwards, Shula said he didn’t want to compare his team with any other, but knew the Aqua and Orange had earned a special place in history.

“This is the greatest team I’ve ever been associated with,” he said. “It’s hard to compare it with other teams in the past. This team has gone into areas that no one has ever gone before. It went undefeated and won it at the end, and they have to be given credit for their achievement.”

In just their seventh season, the Miami Dolphins did what no other NFL club has done before or since. And while all great teams usually find a way to victory, this bunch found a way every single game.

Fifty years later, that’s a magnificent achievement still worthy of celebrating.