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What's in the latest issue of Coffin Corner (Vol 30, No.
5): |
Meeting of Researchers by Ken Crippen
Book Review: '63: The Story of the 1963 World Champion Chicago Bears
reviewed by Gino Malattia
Hall of Very Good by Hall of Very Good Committee
Steel City Ironman: Mike Webster by Ed Gruver
He Was a Contender: Hank Washington by John Maxymuk
Book Review: Strong Arm Tactics reviewed by John Vorperion
A Gleam of Dawn by Jacqueline Brannon Giles
1927: Here's Your Hat... by Bob Carroll
John Morrow by Roger Gordon
PFRA Committees by Ken Crippen
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The AFL: A League Too Often Misremembered
By Greg Thomas
1960 was a time
of expansion in every phase of American life. People were expanding their
houses to include bomb shelters that often became forts for pre-adolescent
boys. We were expanding our known universe with flights circling our seemingly
smaller planet. We were expanding our nation with a northern star, Alaska and a
southern haven, Hawaii. We were expanding the danger of being a fighting man
with a little booboo called Vietnam, and we were expanding our country's still
youthful vision with the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Beyond our
growth in these noted areas was the growth of pro football. For it was during
this decade, the seventh decade of the twentieth century (1960-1970), that pro
football would supplant major league baseball as the favorite of the fan. New
names like Unitas and Starr and the great Jim Brown would begin to overshadow
even legends like Mantle and Mays. America was a contact country and football
was a contact sport. The good ole USA was a place where people could not just
stand around and wait; passivity had no place in American life in these times.
For one to succeed, he must go full-throttle for sixteen hours and then huddle
in sleep for eight hours, repeating the pattern for as many days as possible
until hard work reaped its expected reward.
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Forward Into Invincibility
By PFRA Research
Any football season has its share of thrilling,
strange, and memorable events. Certainly we'd expect the National Football
League to have long ago cast its first season -- 1920 -- in bronze and enshrined
it whole at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Maybe they would have, if they could
have remembered it. Until recently, the games and happenings of the autumn of
that first NFL year were nearly a blank. Among other tidbits the league wasn't
certain about was who won.
A few legends survived. On inspection, most of them have turned
out to be false. Conversely, many of the things historians have long believed
didn't happen did!
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The All-America Football Conference
By Stan Grosshandler
Two days prior to D-Day, 1944 a group
described by the A.P. as "men of millionaire incomes" met in St. Louis to
organize a new professional football league. They had been called together by
Arch Ward, the innovative sports editor of the Chicago Tribune and
organizer of the college and baseball All-Star games. Ward reasoned that the end
of World War II would provide the professional gridirons with a brand new crop
of players. In addition to experienced pros, there would be high school and
college players who had competed with the pros while in the service, plus the
players who had remained in college during the war.
The initial meeting, attended by representatives of Buffalo, Los
Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Cleveland (for whom Ward carried a
proxy) led to a second organizational meeting on September 3, 1944 in Chicago.
John Keeshin, a trucking executive, represented Chicago; oilmen James Breuil and
Ray Ryan were from Buffalo and New York respectively; boxer Gene Tunney sought a
team for Baltimore; actor Don Ameche wanted one for L.A.; Tony Morabito, a
lumber executive, was from San Francisco; and Arthur McBride, a Cleveland taxi
man, came from that city. Also present was Mrs. Eleanor Gehrig, widow of the
baseball Hall of Famer, who later became a league executive. It was reported
that Detroit, Philadelphia and Boston were also interested in the new league.
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The Steam Roller
By John Hogrogian
The state of Rhode Island sits squarely in
the shadow of Boston as far as major-league professional sports is concerned.
Ocean State residents generally take a rooting interest in the Red Sox,
Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins. But more than half a century ago, in 1928, Rhode
Island had its own National Football League champions, the Providence Steam
Roller. The story of that team is the story of an era of professional football
much different from that of today.
In the Roaring Twenties, the American public
found a host of popular heroes in its sporting greats. Standing with Charles
Lindbergh on the pedestal of unalloyed admiration were such men as baseball
player Babe Ruth, boxer Jack Dempsey, and tennis player Bill Tilden. College
football players also shared in this adulation, with Red Grange of Illinois,
Ernie Nevers of Stanford, and the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame national figures
because of their gridiron exploits. College football was an immensely popular
spectator sport, with teams such as Notre Dame, Stanford, Yale, and Dartmouth
drawing huge followings both in person and through the newspapers and newsreels.
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NFL Competitors: 1926-1975
By Stephen Hensley
"There is a great public demand to see the
game." Those are the words of W.H. "Big Bill" Edwards, the commissioner of the
new American Football League in 1926. This was the first attempt to set up a
rival league opposite the National Football League. It would not be the last. In
all there have been six major attempts to wrestle parts of the market from the
NFL. A couple were successful but for the most part the attempts have been
failures. Yet all of them started out with the same premise that Big Bill
Edwards expounded over a half century ago, "There is a great public demand to
see the game."
The first of these leagues was the American
Football League (a name to be used several more times) which was founded in 1926
because Harold "Red" Grange was denied a franchise with the NFL in New York
City. After turning pro with the Chicago Bears late in the 1925 season, Grange
had led the Bruins through a 19-game, coast-to-coast tour which had been a
financial lifesaver for all of pro football. Grange's manager, promoter Charles
C. "Cash and Carry" Pyle, believed that Grange had enough fan appeal to start
his own team. But the move was blocked by Tim Mara, owner of the year-old New
York Giants. Although most of the NFL teams were willing to approve the move,
Mara would not sanction another team in the Giants' area.
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Paul Brown
By Jack Clary
Paul Brown.
The name conjures up many things in many minds ... a Hall of
Fame coach ... the only person ever to start two NFL franchises ... pro
football's master innovator and organizer ... a driving force on the NFL's
football direction ... one of the NFL's most powerful inside players.
But as one who knew him well for some 15 years, having helped
him write his autobiography, PB: The Paul Brown Story, in 1979, and who has
studied the effects other great NFL giants such as George Halas, George Preston
Marshall, Art Rooney, Bert Bell, Pete Rozelle, Tex Schramm, even Al Davis, have
had on the game, I believe that PB had the most profound influence on the game
itself and how it is played.
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