PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL

America's Game

As had the Green Bay Packers in the previous decade, the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s dominated professional football, winning four Super Bowls between 1975 and 1980. The Steelers were not the only glamour team during the decade. The Dallas Cow-boys, Miami Dolphins, Minnesota Vikings, and Oakland Raiders each inspired either intense love or hate in football fans from coast to coast. Pro football by the end of the decade had indeed become America's game. Results from a 1978 Harris sports survey showed that football enjoyed a 70 percent following among American sports fans—compared to 54 percent for baseball. More than a quarter of the fans surveyed named football as their favorite sport; 16 percent named baseball. Record numbers of American families viewed Super Bowls VI through XIV on their televisions, making the glitzy, heavily hyped championship between the American and National Football Conferences one of the most-watched sporting events of all time.

Football Everywhere

As the game and its fans moved from icy fields and rickety bleachers to ultramodern domed stadiums carpeted with artificial turf, football more than any other professionally played major sport came to reflect the high-paced, high-tech society in which it was played. Highbrow Sunday-afternoon television programming of the fifties and early sixties gradually gave way to hours of football coverage to entertain the millions of fans. At the beginning of the decade the sport became a big hit in prime-time television thanks to ABC's Monday Night Football; and as football became a mainstay in the family living room both afternoon and night, politicians, businessmen, and even housewives adopted the language of the sport to serve as a metaphor for the way Americans conducted both commerce and family life: to get along one had to be "a team player" who was "willing to take the ball and run with it." The decade saw more and more pro football stars use their newfound commercial appeal to peddle everything from sunglasses to panty hose, and in so doing to convert many more American fans into consumers. On Sunday afternoons and Monday nights during the season it seemed as if all of America was watching pro football. Even a president of the United States, Richard Nixon, admitted he was a pro football addict. And he was not above using the influence of the Oval Office to live out an armchair quarterback's fantasy; a Miami fan, Nixon told Miami coach Don Shula prior to Super Bowl VI, "I think you can hit [wide receiver Paul] Warfield on that down-and-in pattern." Warfield did catch four passes in a 24-3 Super Bowl loss to Dallas.

Merger

Enormous change in the sport took place at the beginning of the decade. The merger between the NFL and AFL was finalized for the 1970 season—four years after the two leagues had reached an agreement. In structuring and balancing two new conferences within a single league, three former NFL teams—the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns, and Pittsburgh—were joined with former AFL clubs to create the American Football Conference; the rest of the old NFL teams became the National Football Conference, and the two conferences composed the National Football League. Both the newly created AFC and NFC consisted of three divisions—Eastern, Central, and Western. The old AFL clubs brought to the NFL a new sense of style, a lot of swagger, and some innovation: three things badly lacking in the stale and stodgy senior league.

AFC

By 1970 it had become a league rule that all player jerseys must have the wearer's name appearing on the back, a fashion that had its beginnings in the AFL. The AFL also brought to the merger a fresh cast of characters that included the highly penalized, outlaw-branded Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath. "Broadway Joe," as he was called, was the prototypical modern megastar. He parlayed his golden arm, rebel reputation, and good looks into successful commercial endorsements and celebrity status. He also had the audacity to guarantee a Jets victory over the NFL's Colts and aging star Johnny Unitas in the third Super Bowl. In backing up his talk, Broadway Joe gave the AFL new legitimacy in the eyes of many once-diehard NFL fans, while simultaneously recreating himself as a living sports legend. When Hank Stramm and his innovative brand of offensive and defensive football helped win the Super Bowl for the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs in 1969, the junior league successfully served notice to rival NFL teams that they could do much more than compete on an equal footing with more established clubs. And indeed during the 1970s the AFC dominated the NFL.

Super Hype

At the beginning of the decade, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle and the team owners searched for ways to capitalize on football's growing popularity. With major league baseball attendance—and even fan interest in the World Series—on the decline, the NFL worked on glamorizing the image of the Super Bowl, hoping that it would replace the Series as America's most important sporting event. The 1966 AFL-NFL championship game had been a box-office disaster, attracting only 63,035 fans to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. In 1967 the AFL and NFL began calling the championship game the Super Bowl, and for the 1971 game between Dallas and Baltimore the league affixed a Roman numeral to Super Bowl and billed the extravaganza as something even bigger than sport. Super Bowl V—a title which sounded more appropriate for gladiatorial opera than a championship game—was watched on television by more than sixty million viewers; pregame through postgame coverage of the event lasted nearly six hours—the game itself lasting only three. A capacity crowd filled Miami's Orange Bowl and was treated to a halftime extravaganza featuring Anita Bryant. The game proved less than super, however. Although its final score was decided on a last-second field goal, the game was hardly an exhibition of either football skill or artistry. Sportswriters dubbed Super Bowl V the Blooper Bowl and took turns at pinpricking its inflated image created by glitzy self-promotion. Larry Merchant offered a wry summary of Super Bowl V: "It featured a total of XII fumbles and interceptions and XIV penalties (for CLXIV yards)."

THE WONDERS OF CHEMISTRY

Drugs had a dual meaning in professional and world-class sports. There were the drugs players took for performance, and there were the drugs they took for fun. Both were in plentiful supply and constant demand during the 1970s. For performance, the players in the muscle sports took steroids in massive doses, despite the unpleasant side effects. One observer described the steroid takers as big men with small balls. Because irritability was a side effect of heavy steroid use, domestic violence became a major problem among athletes. In 1976 testing was initiated at the Olympics to identify and disqualify athletes taking steroids, and by 1979 plans were completed to test Olympic competitors for some two hundred types of drugs at a cost of about $1 million for the winter games and $3-4 million for the summer games.

For pain athletes took various numbing agents to enable them to compete, and the press praised their courage. Analyst Robert Yeager notes that Evonne Goolagong won the Virginia Slims tennis tournament with the help of procaine injections that helped her compete despite "severe blisters, a damaged arch, and bursitis at the base of her Achilles' tendon." In the National Football League it was common for hurt players to leave the field, receive a painkilling injection on the sidelines, and return to action.

In 1973 the San Diego Chargers took a novel approach to drug use on their team: they hired a team psychiatrist to administer mood-altering chemicals to help the team perform better. Team psychiatrist Arnold Mandell explained "there was no way to discuss or manipulate the psychological aspects of pro football without grappling with the pervasive, systematic use of mood-altering drugs." So he wrote prescriptions for the players, "so that they wouldn't go to Tijuana and get the bad stuff." This development coming in the year after the NFL had endured a congressional investigation into drug abuse among players was too much for commissioner Pete Rozelle to endure. He fined the general manager of the Chargers and eight players a total of $40,000 and placed the team on probation. It was widely acknowledged that the penalty had little more than a cosmetic effect.

Three NFL players and one former star were arrested for drug trafficking before the decade was out—Shelby Jordon of the Boston Patriots in 1976, Randy Crowder and Don Reese of the Miami Dolphins in 1977, and Bob Hayes, former world-record holder in the one-hundred-yard dash and star running back for the Dallas Cowboys in 1979. He was sentenced to five years in prison in 1980.

Sources:

David Harris, The League: The Rise and Decline of the NFL (New York: Bantam, 1986);

Phyllis E. Lehmann, "Psyching out the Athletes' Medicine Chest," Sciquest, 52 (November 1979): 6-11;

Robert C. Ycager, Seasons of Shame: The New Violence in Sports (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).

The 1,000-Yard Club

During the 1972 season a record ten backs broke the 1,000-yard barrier for rushing in a single season. It was not what NFL officials had originally hoped for. In fact, the season had opened with rule changes designed to discourage rush-oriented offenses. The space between the two lines of hash marks was narrowed by three yards in an attempt to neutralize the increasingly popular zone defenses and open up the passing game. However, as defensive coordinators scrambled for new ways to defend receivers, running backs continued to ramble through the lines for big gains. This was a brand of football the average fan found boring—and one which NFL officials thought would become less common after having merged with the AFL and the young league's wide-open, go-for-broke offensive style. But a new generation of running backs had entered pro football by the beginning of the decade and as a group brought greater speed, agility, and power to the rushing game. Miami tore their way to a Super Bowl victory and a 17-0 record—the NFL's one and only perfect season—behind the slashing running attack of Eugene ("Mercury") Morris and the brute strength of Larry Csonka, a man who literally ran over defensemen and was feared by even the most fearsome of linebackers. Morris and Csonka became the first teammates to gain 1,000 yards each in a single season.

Juice

The league's leading rusher for the 1972 season, however, was O. J. Simpson with 1,251 yards. Having begun his pro career with the Buffalo Bills in 1969, the former Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Southern California underwhelmed fans in his first three seasons, gaining a total of only 1,927 yards while laboring behind the Bills' weak offensive line. But in 1972 Lou Sabin became the Bills' new head coach and immediately began assembling an offensive line that would create gaping holes in the defense for his primary running back. By the 1973 season the Bills' offensive line had become known as the Electric Company, the power source behind the brilliant running of O. J. Simpson, who was being called "the Juice." In that year, Simpson cut, stutter-stepped, and sprinted for 2,003 yards, breaking Jim Brown's single season rushing record of 1,863 yards. In 1976 Simpson set a single-game record of 273 yards rushing against the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving Day. Simpson spent the last two seasons of his career in San Francisco and retired in 1979 as the second leading rusher of all time behind Jim Brown. Although Simpson never played on a championship team during his pro career, his brilliant style of running made him football's most dominant player during the decade. For a new generation of running backs he was one of the most watched and most emulated ball carriers. For a new generation of fans Simpson was the most recognized. His good looks and charisma made him the perfect Madison Avenue pitchman for a multitude of products, including sun-glasses and rental cars.

The Building of a Dynasty

During the early 1970s, most fans and sportswriters figured that they were witnessing in the Don Shula-coached Miami Dolphins the beginning of a football dynasty that would rule over the pro ranks for a decade. The team's three straight appearances in the Super Bowl from 1972 to 1974—and back-to-back victories in 1973 and 1974—seemed evidence enough that they were unstoppable, at least in their own conference. Elsewhere in the AFC, however, a team that for nearly four decades had labored at or near the bottom of the pro standings had begun to show signs of turning its fortunes around. The Pittsburgh Steelers had in 1969 named Chuck Noll as their head coach, and in Noll's first season the team compiled a miserable 1-13 record. But Noll had the faith of Steelers owner Art Rooney—a man adored by players, staff, and fans alike—and, perhaps more important, a bag full of high draft picks. Through the draft Noll pursued such talents as Terry Bradshaw (the first player drafted in 1970), Mean Joe Green, Mel Blount, Jack Ham—and a relatively obscure Penn State running back, Franco Harris.

Franco's Army

Rooney lobbied hard for the Harris pick in the 1972 draft, despite opposition from his own front office. Rooney recognized in Harris a depth of character that would mean more to a team than talent alone. Harris's mixed African-American and Italian ancestry also served to unite fans from diverse ethnic neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. Calling themselves Franco's Italian Army, fanatic fans of Harris had much to cheer about. During these building years, Harris's number was called often in the Steelers' offensive schemes—the Steelers still several years away from having a potent passing attack—and in his rookie year he posted phenomenal numbers, rushing for 100 yards in six straight games.

Mean Joe Green

Noll's most important draft pick, however, was his first one made as Steelers head coach. Taken as the fourth overall choice in the 1969 draft, Joe Green was an unheralded defensive lineman from North Texas State. In his rookie season, despite playing for a 1-13 team, Green was named the league's Defensive Player of the Year, an honor he would capture again in 1972 and 1974. Green was the new generation's prototypical defensive lineman; he was big and strong, but, more significant, he was fast. He attacked quarterbacks with a speed and ferocity more often attributed to outside rushers rather than defensive lineman. Called "Mean Joe," he also had a reputation for being a nasty player, especially if an opposing offensive lineman made him mad. Around Mean Joe Green the Steelers built their heralded "steel curtain" defense with such players as tackle Ernie Holmes and defensive ends Dwight White and L. C. Greenwood.

The Immaculate Reception

A miraculous play in a 23 December 1972 AFC divisional play-off game between Pittsburgh and the Oakland Raiders first brought the reconstituted Steelers to the attention of fans nationwide. In the fourth quarter the Raiders appeared to have the game, which was played in Pittsburgh, wrapped up. The Raiders had played their new quarterback, Kenny Stabler, in the second half, and Stabler, who earned the nickname "the Snake," had scrambled for a touchdown to go ahead of the Steelers 7-6 with one minute and thirteen seconds remaining. When the clock showed twenty-two seconds remaining in the game, Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw and his offense had the ball on their own forty-yard line on fourth-and-ten. In the final play of the game Bradshaw passed, and the ball, Steelers running back John ("Frenchy") Fuqua, and Raiders safety Jack Tatum collided at the thirty-five-yard line. The ball ricocheted back to Harris, who in full sprint caught the ball and ran in to the end zone for what delirious Steelers fans thought was a winning touchdown. As Raiders coach John Madden and Tatum loudly complained to officials that the ball had bounced off Fuqua into Harris's hands (until 1978 an illegal play), referees conferred with NFL supervisors in the press box. But nobody, including cameramen, seemed to have had a clear view showing whether the ball had bounced off Tatum or Fuqua. Finally, the referee signaled a touchdown, and Three Rivers Stadium and the city of Pittsburgh went wild. Steelers radio announcer Myron Cope called Harris's catch the Immaculate Reception. Oakland players and coaches had other words to describe the play. "It hit Frenchy and he knows it," Tatum insisted. Fuqua has never publicly said whether or not Tatum was right.

Miraculous Playoffs

Later on the same day of the Immaculate Reception, another remarkable play-off game was played. After being pummeled by the San Francisco 49ers for three quarters, the Dallas Cowboys pulled quarterback Craig Morton and replaced him with Roger Staubach, who had been nursing a separated shoulder through most of the season. Within a span of two minutes—the time left in the game—Staubach, with the help of an onside kick recovered by Mel Renfro, rallied the Cowboys, scoring fourteen points to go ahead of the 49ers 30-28 and win the game. Of the stunning come-from-behind victory Jerry Magee of the San Diego Union wrote that it was "the most miraculous playoff finish staged in the NFL in the last three hours."

Super Bowl X

In their frequent trips to the Super Bowl, the Steelers twice met Dallas, who had a couple of victories of their own in the big game—Super Bowls VI (over Miami) and XII (over Denver). By Super Bowl X—the first meeting between the Steelers and Cowboys—the big game had the reputation for being a super bore, in which one hapless team such as four-time loser the Minnesota Vikings got trounced in an undramatic fashion. Expectations for a Pittsburgh-Dallas matchup were high, however, and both teams swaggered into Super Bowl X, played in Miami's Orange Bowl on 18 January 1976. The Steelers were the defending league champions, having crushed Minnesota the year before; and Dallas was the first wild-card team to reach a Super Bowl. Both teams had big-play offenses and star-studded defenses. The game did not disappoint fans, as the lead changed hands and Roger Staubach—whose reputation for leading comebacks had by now become legend—in the end led Dallas in a last-minute drive to overcome a four-point deficit. Steelers fans across the country let out a collective sigh of relief when Staubach's "Hail Mary" pass was intercepted in the end zone, clinching a 21—17 victory for Pittsburgh. More memorable than the close score, however, was the astounding play of Pittsburgh's wide receiver Lynn Swann, whose graceful, diving catch over Dallas cornerback Mark Washington assured him the game's MVP award.

America's Team

Super Bowl XIII served as an end-of-the-decade sequel to Super Bowl X, as once again Dallas and Pittsburgh met in the Orange Bowl and provided fans with thrills in a spectacularly played and agonizingly close contest. For Dallas fans the 35-31 Cow-boys loss seemed especially tragic, for veteran Cowboys tight end Jackie Smith dropped a perfectly thrown touch-down pass in the end zone, and in so doing all but ended Dallas's hopes for a come-from-behind win. Dallas's failed onside kick iced the victory for Pittsburgh. The 21 January 1979 game was a fitting end to a successful ten years for the NFL, which saw the finalization of the merger between two leagues—and as a consequence the end of a costly bidding war—changes in the game (such as moving the uprights to the back line of the end zone, designed to open up the field for offenses), and the beginning of another dynasty. The Steelers would go on to win the Super Bowl again in 1980, and Dallas would continue to enjoy success until 1982, when a thrilling loss to San Francisco in the NFC championship game signaled the beginning of the Cowboys' decline. By the end of the 1970s, however, Dallas had become known as America's team—fans rightly expected them to win—and football had become America's game.

FOOTBALL, PROFESSIONAL

Taking the Title

The 1940 title game between the Chicago Bears (8-3) and the Washington Redskins (9-2) was billed as a game between equally great passing teams, featuring two of the game's premier quarterbacks: Sid Luckman of the Bears and Sammy Baugh of the Redskins. The two teams had met in the final game of the season, a low-scoring affair won by the Redskins, 7—3, and fans were prepared for a close game. Few were prepared for the 73-0 blowout of Washington by the Bears. It did not happen by accident. In preparing for the championship game, Bear coaches refined the T-formation the team had been using and introduced some new concepts, including a series of counter plays to take advantage of the Redskins' propensity to shift their defensive line toward the motion of the backfield. It was a coach's win.

Franchise Players

Creating heroes was essential to the commercial success of the National Football League (NFL), and Sammy Baugh of the Washington Redskins was the preeminent pro football hero of the day. Baugh, who joined the Redskins in 1937, posed little threat as a runner, but his pinpoint passing changed the game. Working the tailback position in the single-wing formation, Baugh could throw the football from a variety of angles and for long, short, and medium gains. Professional rules permitted passing from anywhere behind the scrimmage line, and Baugh took full advantage of the opportunity. He was known for his rapid release and his willingness to throw the ball on every down. Considered the first modern passer, Baugh played until 1952, when he was forty, remaining with the Redskins the entire time. Another quarterback who captured the public's attention during the decade was Sid Luckman of the Chicago Bears. More than any other quarterback, Luckman exploited the modern T-formation, as he demonstrated in the 1940 championship-game rout of the Redskins.

The War Takes Its Toll

The 1941 championship game also featured the Chicago Bears, and once again they delivered a sound beating, this time to the New York Giants, 37-9. Even though their team did not make it to the championship game that year, two of the best players in the league were Don Hutson of the Green Bay Packers, who led the league in scoring and pass receiving, and Cecil Isbell, the Packers' quarterback, who led the league in passing. Isbell became the first quarterback to throw for more than 2,000 yards and more than 20 touchdowns in a single season. Unlike the year before, when national radio broadcast of the championship attracted national attention, the 1941 championship, which took place two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, seemed a distraction. Only 13,341 fans showed up for the contest. Two players in the game, Bears quarterback Young Bussey and Jack Lumins of the Giants, were later killed in the war. During the next four years 638 NFL players entered military service, and 21 gave their lives.

Combining to Compete

The NFL managed to limp through the war by relying on overaged or draft-deferred players and an array of merged teams. In 1943 the Cleveland Rams suspended play, and the Pittsburgh Steelers merged with the Philadelphia Eagles, creating the Phil-Pitt Eagles or Steagles; they were joined by the Cardinals in 1944, forming the Card-Pitt Team. Reduced to only eight teams, the NFL was still remarkably popular, with attendance averaging 23,644 per game in 1943, up 39 percent from the previous season. One of the greatest players of that era was Bill Dudley, the last of the great offensive and defensive players and the only football player voted most valuable in college, the armed services, and the professional ranks. A star at the University of Virginia, he signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1942 and led the league in yards gained on the ground before going into the service. When he returned in 1945, he signed with the Detroit Lions for $20,000, the highest salary ever paid at that time for a professional football player.

Postwar Prosperity

The postwar economy put large amounts of money into professional football. The 1946 championship between the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears drew 58,000, the largest football gate of that era. Under the rules of that day, the players divided the largest pot ever offered, with each member of the winning club taking home almost $2,000 extra. Television began showing interest in football, and Commissioner Bert Bell ruled that local areas should be blacked out of broadcasts to make sure fans continued to show up at the stadium.

AAFC

The biggest financial issue was the emergence of a new league. Many players back from the war found themselves wooed by both the NFL and the new All-American Football Conference (AAFC). Organized by Chicago Tribune editor Art Ward, the AAFC had attracted wealthy owners for every franchise and enthusiastically ignored the boundaries of the NFL draft to lure rookies and veterans alike to the new league. Before the war, players got an average of $150 a game; by 1949 the average minimum salary for a ten-game season was $5,000, and most players earned much more. Led by former Notre Dame star Jim Crowley, the AAFC brought football franchises to New York, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Miami, Cleveland, Chicago, and San Francisco. The NFL met the challenge by hiring Bert Bell, part owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, as its commissioner. Bell led the NFL through fourteen years of tremendous growth. In 1946 both leagues located teams in California; the NFL Rams moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles, and the AAFC placed teams in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Pro football thus became the first major league sport to come to the West Coast. But the economy would not support this ambitious two-league structure, and financial stress in 1947 forced the two leagues to merge.

The Brown Years

The closing years of the decade were shaped by Paul Brown, coach of the Cleveland Browns. He turned football into a serious study and required that all of his players be students of the game. Players were expected to learn elaborate playbooks and follow different assignments for their positions on each play. Brown called every play for the quarterback from the sidelines, introducing a type of blueprinting that reshaped the game.

LOCKER-ROOM GLORY

In a severe blow to college football, late in 1939, President Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago announced that the school was dropping its varsity football program. Hutchins explained, "there is no doubt that football has been a major handicap to education in the United States…(and has) done much to originate the popular misconceptions of what a university is." He summed up his position by stating, "I think it is a good thing for this country to have one important university discontinue football." In 1940 the University of Chicago converted the locker rooms beneath the deserted football stadium, Stagg Field, into a secret laboratory for the federally funded Manhattan Project, devoted to building the atomic bomb. On 2 December 1942 physicist Enrico Fermi achieved the first controlled release of nuclear energy in his lab underneath the stadium.

Source:

John R. Thelin, Games Colleges Play: Scandal and Reform in Intercollegiate Athletics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

Sources:

Peter King, Football: A History of the Professional Game (Birmingham, Ala.: Oxmoor House, 1993);

David M. Nelson, Anatomy of a Game: Football the Rules, and the Men who Made the Game (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994);

Robert Smith, Illustrated History of Pro Football (New York: Madison Square, 1970).