I posted this picture on another thread here today, and thought it might be good to post it here too.
RIP.
Posted on 10/05/2023 3:32:39 PM PDT by Luke21
They were truly hard men. Bednerik, one of the last 60 minute men. When offense came on the field he was waiting for them.
Dallas lost that Super Bowl to the then Baltimore Colts.
When it was about the game and not the money.
RIP to a Monster of the Midway...
Boomers’ heroes are passing the goal line
Chris Farley
The character he did was motivational speaker Matt Foley.
Yeah
Brain fart
I can see you are a fan of the old style football, as am I.
The first football game of any kind I ever watched was a Redskins vs. Bears game on November 17th, 1971.
My family had been overseas for much of the mid-late sixties, as my dad was stationed overseas in Japan and the Philippines. When he got orders stateside, it was to a small Naval Communications Station right near Andrews AFB, NAVCOMMSTA Washingon in Cheltenham, MD. When he got orders, and we returned, I was 13 years old, and kissed the tarmac at JFK when we landed.
The whole area was a hotbed of Redskins football at that time, it was on the radio, television, and in the papers. I was delivering the Washington Post, which had a huge amount of Redskins material in it, especially on Sundays when the damn paper, fully assembled, was 3-4 inches thick, and I had to assemble them all before delivering them.
The people there were football crazy. Just the year before, Vince Lombardi had been hired by the Redskins, so people had very high expectations.
But until that game against the Bears, I had never watched a football game of any kind. Didn’t even know the rules or how it was played.
But I remember watching that game on a little black and white television on the enclosed porch or our quarters on base. When the game ended, the sun was low enough to have had to turn on the lights as I recall.
It was fascinating to me. Even though I didn’t follow football, I knew who Dick Butkus was, the same way I knew who Bobby Hull was even though I didn’t follow hockey. And that was the only time I ever saw Butkus play. But boy, did he have a game that day.
Blocked a punt on special teams. Put Charley Harraway out of the game when he tackled him, leaving the Redskins without any of their starting back field that day (Larry Brown was already out)
He cut his face
The Bears had just scored in the fourth quarter of the game on a thirty yard run from scrimmage, which tied them with the Redskins. Bobby Douglas, the running quarterback for the Bears, was the holder for the point after, which would have put the Bears ahead by one.
Butkus, after having his bleeding stopped, was again playing special teams, and when the ball was snapped, the holder (Douglas) bobbled the snap. Butkus, seeing he had nothing to do since he was in no position to block anyone, ran to the end zone and waved.
Douglas, scrambling around, heaved it to the end zone where Butkus did an over-the-shoulder catch and fell to the ground on his back, holding the ball straight up in the air. The referee had thrown a flag, and Butkus jumped up to protest that he had actually declared himself as an eligible receiver, when the referee picked up the flag with no penalty.
That was the first football game I had ever watched, and I was hooked. I became a fanatical pro football fan, and I stayed that way up until the whole kneeling thing in the NFL. (I stopped watching for about five years in the mid-late eighties because I was taking it too seriously)
But I sure did enjoy football.
RIP. Mr. Butkus...I enjoyed watching you play that night, and you always brought a smile to my face with the silly beer commercials...:) I appreciated that you didn’t take yourself too seriously once you left the game. That impressed me.
IMHO, your stories ought to be published at American Thinker.
That is a high compliment to me, as I enjoy reading content from that site. Pretty much the two areas that are “news go-to” or aggregators for me are Free Republic and American Thinker.
Funny...I used to have Townhall for a while, but...just stopped going there. It turned out to be less Conservative with a capital “C” than I orginally thought it was!
But I write all these things down and save them. I worry that, as I age, I will forget them, and I do treasure them. I always hope Freepers will indulge me and not criticize me for my lengthy posts, and most don’t...I have never been able to do Twitter for just that reason, can’t limit the length...:)
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