Remembering the Playoff Bowl

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)