The Nostalgiaganza

Okay . . . let's try this again.

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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by DSafetyGuy »

Sabo wrote:
bapo! wrote:
Sabo wrote:When I watch old WCW matches, I'm really only interested in the cruiserweights.
The cruiserweights are the only good thing about that era of WCW. So much wasted talent.

Sabo, Ryan, DSafe: Would you have any interest in starting a thread like this for wrestling? As DSafe said, it's such a rich and fascinating industry, and there's so much to talk about. If we had a thread for storytelling and conversation, I think even some non-wrestling-fan Swampers would enjoy it.
We already have a pro wrestling thread, so you could put it there.

And FYI, if you're interested in revisiting older wrestling shows, Lance Storm and Don Callis have a good podcast called "Killing the Town", and they frequently review old ECW shows. Callis is a pretty interesting guy. After he got out of the wrestling business, he got an MBA and is now the president and CEO of the Manitoba Trade and Investment Corporation. He's also married to a porn star.
He's also over huge.

ETA: I wouldn't be able to carry much discussion about it. I don't watch much of the current stuff, just a few clips here and there. I really enjoyed Jericho with some of the stuff he did with Owens, but again, only watched a little. And my memory of the old stuff (say, when I had a friend who worked for WWF) is not so hot.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by bapo! »

Sabo wrote:We already have a pro wrestling thread, so you could put it there.
Meh. I feel like a bag posting in threads like that. Everybody else is posting short takes and reTweets, and I'm taking forfuckingever to get to the damn point. That's why I usually just stick to my own threads.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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bapo! wrote:
Sabo wrote:We already have a pro wrestling thread, so you could put it there.
Meh. I feel like a bag posting in threads like that. Everybody else is posting short takes and reTweets, and I'm taking forfuckingever to get to the damn point. That's why I usually just stick to my own threads.
Then start a new thread. Who cares?
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by bapo! »

It's late at night, so it must be time for WCCW. (I promise not to turn this into a wrestling thread, but I want to mention this.)

Like everybody else, I remember staying up late on weekends when I was a kid to watch television. I was a 'Saturday Night Live' fan during the Murphy/Piscopo years, even tho my 9-year-old mind probably didn't understand too much of what was going on.

But some Saturday nights, after the local news was over, I would turn the dial (can you imagine?!) and stumble upon wrestling. I think I understood this even less than I understood 'SNL.' But I would watch a few minutes, not sure what to make of all of these flabby guys hitting each other.

I thought that I had remembered this being WCCW, World Class Championship Wrestling. I found some old tv listings, and sure enough, WPTT Channel 22 aired WCCW at 11:00 on Saturday nights back then. I also thought that I remembered seeing Andre the Giant for the first time on these nights.

And so, I've been watching a lot of old episodes, usually late at night. Midnight is the time for nostalgia. I've been watching them on the WWE Network, but there are a bunch of random episodes on YouTube. I started in October 1982 and have been working my way forward.

There's so much to like. This is a few years before the WWF made everything bright and colorful and even more cartoonish than it already was, so everything looks a bit muted in comparison. Again, flabby guys beating each other up. The ring ropes are really loose. And the Dallas fans at the Sportatorium are really into it. And Ric Flair occasionally makes an appearance. 1982 Ric Flair is a glorious thing.

When you watch a bunch of consecutive episodes, you become attached to various mid-carders. Even this guy.

Image

I just watched the first episode of 1983, and Andre the Giant makes his return. Yeah, this is making me feel things. (You can skip to 28:00 to see his interview and 6-man match.) This only vaguely looks like what pro wrestling has turned into today. It's just so simple and quaint. It's beautiful.

Image

And I guess I need to end this with a sad history lesson. WCCW was run by a guy named Jack Adkisson. He wrestled under the name Fritz Von Erich, a 'Nazi' in the post-WWII era. Of course, even Nazis can become the good guys when they own their own companies.

He had six sons. The first died after being electrocuted at age 6. The youngest five got involved in wrestling, becoming stars to varying degrees. In 1984, David Von Erich died of a drug overdose, right as he was on the verge of superstardom. Over the next several years, three other Von Erichs killed themselves. Only one of the six sons is still alive.

Any time you watch an old wrestling show, you're going to see a lot of dead people. (There's a King Kong Bundy match on as I type this.) It's a brutal industry that eats its talent. Or it used to be. But seeing the Von Erichs is something else entirely. And they're the stars of these WCCW shows, so you can't just ignore them.

This Texas Monthly feature from 2005 has a lot more if anybody is interested.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by Sabo »

Bapo, you should listen to Stone Cold Steve Austin's podcast some time. He frequently talks about how watching WCCW got him hooked on wrestling and made him want to become one. He's had several WCCW wrestlers on his podcast, including The Fantastics, who were a great tag team back in the 80s. I don't think Austin wrestled for WCCW, but he definitely wrestled at the Sportatorium when he was with USWA. He references the Sportatorium a lot when he talks about his early wrestling days.

I should fire up the WWE Network and watch some old Tully Blanchard vs. Magnum TA matches.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by bapo! »

Thanks for the rec, Sabo. I'll look thru Austin's archives. I listen to him occasionally, like when he has somebody like Meltzer or Keller on to review a big show, but I didn't know that he did history stuff like that. The podcast era is wonderful.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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bapo! wrote:Any time you watch an old wrestling show, you're going to see a lot of dead people. (There's a King Kong Bundy match on as I type this.)
Don't bury guys before they ask for a 5 count
he’s a fixbking cyborg or some shit. The

holy fuckbAllZ, what a ducking nightmare. Holy shot. Just, fuck. The
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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Ryan wrote:
bapo! wrote:Any time you watch an old wrestling show, you're going to see a lot of dead people. (There's a King Kong Bundy match on as I type this.)
Don't bury guys before they ask for a 5 count
He's still alive! That's a nice surprise. I thought that he was a part of that wave of wrestlers from that era who had died. Sometimes there are happy endings in wrestling.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by Sabo »

bapo! wrote:Thanks for the rec, Sabo. I'll look thru Austin's archives. I listen to him occasionally, like when he has somebody like Meltzer or Keller on to review a big show, but I didn't know that he did history stuff like that. The podcast era is wonderful.
A lot of his interviews with older wrestlers occurred when his podcast was fairly new, so you might need to do some digging. But it sure seems like he's interviewed just about everyone who's important in the history of pro wrestling. Jim Ross's interviews with old timers are fascinating as well.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVrDjDyHJwY

I can't believe they decided moving the egg from the roof was a good idea (maybe it didn't fit in the truck?), and that the players apparently played along so much.

h/t Deadspin comment
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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I felt aswirl with warm secretions.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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I felt aswirl with warm secretions.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by sancarlos »

I enjoyed reading that. It was my era.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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I read/watched a lot of old gymnastics/figure skating stuff this year. I got caught up in the figure skating at the Olympics, fell in love with Evgenia Medvedeva and Alina Zagitova, then went backwards from there.

I was reading about women's body issues in sports, and somebody recommended Joan Ryan's 'Little Girls in Pretty Boxes.' Published in 1996, it deals with injuries and eating disorders and coaching abuse in the skating and gymnastics worlds. It's horrifying stuff. And it's infuriating because it was out in the open, yet the people in charge were allowed to remain in charge for years and years afterwards.

Even sadder was reading Dvora Meyers' 'The End of the Perfect 10.' Meyers' reporting for Deadspin during the Larry Nassar trial was excellent, so it was shocking to read her book, published in 2016, in which she talks about how much better the culture of gymnastics was. She even quoted Nassar thru-out the book! If you can look past that, it's very informative and entertaining.

I also read Christine Brennan's 'Inside Edge,' which was published in 1996 as skating was in a boom cycle thanks to the Nancy/Tanya stuff. Again, recommended if you have any interest in this world.

Anyway, one of the things that jumped out while reading all of this is the number of names I didn't recognize because athletes peaked during non-Olympic years. There are so many World Champions I had never heard of, because nobody cares about these sports during odd-numbered years.

Ever heard of Elena Mukhina? She was the World Champion in 1978, had surpassed Nadia Comanici. Then, two weeks before the 1980 Olympics, she fell during training and was paralyzed. (She died in 2006.) Comanici is still the biggest star in gymnastics history. Mukhina is an afterthought.

There's some footage of old competitions out there. You can find truncated broadcasts and watch those great Romanian and Soviet teams from the '70s and '80s. In a 1978 broadcast, you can hear Jim McKay say, 'That girl looks too thin to me.' Then, minutes later, he makes some problematic comments about Comanici's weight. Ah, simpler times.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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Okay, so, I have some time on my hands, and I would rather spend my afternoon writing than...doing whatever the hell else I would be doing. And this thread is kind of my playground, so I'm going to talk about whatever, even if it might stretch the definition of nostalgia to talk about something that happened in February 2018. (And hopefully somebody talks back to me so that I'm not completely wasting my time. I mean, that retro Nintendo is sitting right over there. I could be mastering Dr. Mario or something.)

I mentioned this year's Olympics earlier. Did anybody else watch the figure skating? As a sports fan, it's possible to care about any sporting event, but I was surprised at how deeply I cared about this.

It's interesting. Grace and artistry still matter, but it's becoming more and more about athleticism and power. The men's sport has completely changed since 2014. It's all about quad jumps now. And the big jumps are more important for the women now, too.

So, Medvedeva is the Internet darling. She looks about as normal as somebody in her position could look: active on social media, likes anime and K-Pop, actually smiles sometimes. People feel things when watching her.

Zagitova isn't as popular, is accused of using math to her advantage (back-loads all of her jumps into the latter half of her program to rack up bonus points) and is more of an athlete than performer.

Medvedeva was World Champion in 2016 and 2017. Then she got hurt and watched Zagitova surpass her. They shared a coach and trained together, so there was quite a bit of drama heading into the Olympics. The Internet picked its favorite, then watched as Zagitova barely edged out Medvedeva for the gold.

So, will Medvedeva be one of those women I mentioned earlier who peaked too soon, then is forgotten? She's 19 years old, will be 22 at the next Olympics. Zagitova is only 16. And there are a ton of other Russians who are nearly as good as them, including a couple of juniors who have completed quad jumps in competition. (No senior woman has ever landed a quad.)

The current season is ongoing. Medvedeva has a new coach, is trying to redo all of her jumps to keep up with the younger skaters, and is struggling. She didn't qualify for this week's Grand Prix Finals. Zagitova is still winning, and skating fans on the Internet will never love her for it. But more people will remember her because she peaked at the right time.

Anybody else watching the Grand Prix this week? Or am I alone on this?
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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I felt aswirl with warm secretions.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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rass wrote: Wed Mar 20, 2019 9:38 am
And looking like a skinny Jeff Fisher.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by Ryan »

This went on too long already. Let's call it PART ONE and see if I revisit...

It's January 1984 and the WWF still exists primarily in northeast bingo halls. The Iron Sheik is the newly-crowned Heavyweight Champion, having ended Bob Backlund's 6-year reign just a month prior. But with the federation about to take a national leap thanks to the looming presence of Hulkamania, this clip looks and feels like the calm before the storm. The Intercontinental Champion is Don Muraco, a mega-heel thanks to a long run of near escapes with the title and his legendary feud with Jimmy Snuka, while the tag champs are crowd favorites Tony Atlas and Rocky (father of Dwayne) Johnson.

On a personal note, I started watching the WWF sometime after the first WrestleMania, and right around when Saturday Night’s Main Event and the weekend syndicated shows became a weekly part of my life. Presetting that VCR to start recording at the right time was probably the first thing I knew how to do better than adults. The wrestling itself is somehow more fake and more real than I remember. I remember just enough about this era, before the sold out arenas and oversized gimmicks, that this feels really familiar and exactly as old as it should. Enough serious setup – let’s make fun of shitty television that happens to feature wrestling!



0:00 – We begin with 38-year-old Vince McMahon introing a package of WWF superstars wishing us a Happy New Year. Every clip of 80s wrestling I’ve ever gone back and watched leaves me with one singular impression – Vince McMahon was total shit as an announcer for a very long time. Here, he speaks generally like a 9th grader giving a presentation he rehearsed several times but has suddenly completed forgotten. But being the boss clearly has its privileges as he probably knows what you’re about to see will make you forget anything he just stumbled through.

0:15 – Such as leadoff hitter Iron Mike Sharpe! Sharpe, who I think was the guy who pretended to have a forearm injury for about 8 years in order to hit people with a plate hidden underneath his protective sleeve, has one very important New Year’s resolution – to stop getting upset when the crowd calls him a wimp. This probably worked.

1:28 – Don't skip everyone in between what I'm highlighting here because they're all gold, but now it’s the aforementioned Rocky Johnson’s turn. I forgot what The Rock’s mom did for a living but it must have involved charisma, stage presence, and voice modulation.

3:43 – The Masked Superstar, presumably also billed as “Mr. Half-Correct”, says that 1984 will be his best year ever. He’s only about 4 years off, as he’ll go on to become Ax in Demolition, and inspire countless parents to look at his costume circled in a WWF catalog and tell their children,“oh god, no we cannot order that”.

3:54 – Mr Fuji, still wrestling maybe, absolutely slays his promo/treatise about the cultural differences between Americans and the Japanese. I understood some of it.

4:55 – It’s finally time for the program proper and we get to start worrying that the ropes will snap in half every time a wrestler comes within 3 feet of them. The ring looks cheaper than the chyrons.

5:34 – Match 1 features Mike Dorsett, resplendent in a jobber-black two-strapper, against WWF newcomer “Dr. D” David Schultz. Schultz is led to the ring by yet another recent McMahon acquisition, Rowdy Roddy Piper. Piper is limited to managerial duties for the first couple months of his tenure due to injuries from his previous place of employment. HIPAA laws prevent me from saying whether or not that was from a dog-collar match with Greg Valentine.

Schultz naturally disposes of his opponent like his name was John Stossel but the real meat of this match is Howard Finkel’s voiceover telling us where exciting WWF action would be coming next. I used to love these because they’d always be near enough my town to have delusions of actually going one day. Fitchburg, Mass! The Lowell War Memorial Auditorium! Even the Boston Garden (holy shit, I’ve seen Larry Bird play there and now I could see midgets and Moondog Rex?!?). Anyway, this time around they’re hyping a show in Brooklyn. This was of course pre-Barclays Center but I’m sure they still found a great house in their own corporate backyard, right? They wouldn’t be slumming it at the St. Finbar Parish Church, would they?

3 years from now, they will fill the Silverdome. Next Tuesday night, this church has a Zumba class.

10:50 – Mean Gene’s here to promo a card at, oh ok Madison Square Garden. If that date looks at all familiar to you - the casual to above-casual wrestling fan - it should. He’s hyping a Backlund-Sheik rematch but when Backlund pulls out with a neck injury (caused by Vince running him over in a yellow and red car covered in torn shirts and dollar signs), the Hulkster is there to take his place and capture the title.

T.I. Sheik is still pretty confident here though, in part because he still thinks he’s about to face Backlund but also because hell, if he can memorize the names of 3 Ayatollahs, he can certainly remember how to put the camel clutch on someone when the script tells him to. Really enjoying his button-down shirt look here too. 8.5/10 Swarthy Ahmadinejads.

14:00 – After a lovely bilingual chat with Tito Santana, Gene makes a massive error in judgement by allowing Captain Lou Albano and Don Muraco to rebut. Albano strings together every Spanish word he knows and some he doesn’t but in the upset of the night so far, Muraco manages to talk for a good minute without one racist incident. He’s actually really impressive on the mic and is maybe the closest thing they had to today’s modern heel. He also retired to Hawai’i with his wife and kids and became a longshoreman and is still alive. Umm, I think I love Don Muraco.

15:48 - But not as much as I love Denny Hill. He's about to get creamed by the Iron Sheik but I think we should just stop here for now without ruining this moment.
Last edited by Ryan on Fri Apr 26, 2019 2:15 pm, edited 3 times in total.
he’s a fixbking cyborg or some shit. The

holy fuckbAllZ, what a ducking nightmare. Holy shot. Just, fuck. The
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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There has been almost as much time since the airing of this as there was between the end of World War II and when it aired.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by duff »

Ah, that was great.

Dr. D is the wrestler that assaulted a 20/20 reporter during an interview. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch it. Fuck, was Piper amazing.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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duff wrote: Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:03 am Ah, that was great.

Dr. D is the wrestler that assaulted a 20/20 reporter during an interview. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch it. Fuck, was Piper amazing.
Since it was John Stossel who got smacked, it's extra funny.

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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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Ryan wrote: Fri Apr 26, 2019 9:53 amHIPAA laws prevent me from saying whether or not that was from a dog-collar match with Greg Valentine.
I love this sentence more than I should. Like, way, way, way more.

But still not as much as sabo does.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by Johnny Carwash »

This is great, Ryan. Thanks for doing it.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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I felt aswirl with warm secretions.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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I felt aswirl with warm secretions.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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The 70s were so dumb.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by bfj »

That opening animation is Schoolhouse Rock-esque.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by MaxWebster »

you shut your whore mouth

:D
brian wrote: Thu Dec 31, 2020 9:12 am The 70s were so dumb.

man i just spent a good 25 minutes reading and digesting the first page of this thread - bapo! you are a hall of famer.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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Damn I was born too late.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by sancarlos »

Man, I was a teenager of the 70s. I remember a lot of this stuff.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

Post by bapo! »

Okay, so, we've all had a lot of free time the past year or so. Some of you may have spent it learning a new language or becoming a better guitar player or growing closer to your family. Me? I've watched thousands of hours of old fights and hockey and football games. (I've also read about 80 books. And I've watched some porn.)

A lot of days, I'll turn my laptop on and let games run all day. I start by creating a playlist, looking up teams/games/seasons to see what's available on YouTube, then watch season by season. I've watched every NFL game I could find from 1970-1982. Not much available in the early-'70s, less than a dozen games per year. But by the late-'70s, there's plenty. Enough so that I feel like I know the league pretty well in that era.

With boxing, I watch a particular weight class in a particular era: '70s lightweights, '80s welter/middleweights, '90s heavyweights, etc.

Anyhoodles, I've watched a lot of great stuff -- the games themselves, the broadcasts, the commercials, etc. I've taken a bunch of notes, so I'm going to look thru my journal to see what I can dig up. Because, damn it, this stuff is too important to stay hidden away.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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Start with something light like your "9-11 As It Happened" recap
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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ƒ The 1979 NFL season is a good place to start. (Mostly because I can simply rework an email that I sent to a few folks last spring.) There are a few dozen games online, including most of the playoffs. The Steelers were still great, and broadcasters talked about them like they were in a completely different class than the rest of the league. One of the joys of watching these games is seeing that those Steelers teams really were as good as their reputation. I'm a fan now, so I guess I'm finally a True Yinzer.

Before the Steelers/Rams Super Bowl, Art Rooney was driven onto the field in a 1933 Duesenberg to give the ceremonial coin to the referee.

ƒ Also unsurprisingly great: Walter Payton and Earl Campbell. Not that I needed confirmation, but they really were special players. Somebody uploaded most of the '70s Bears games. They're dull, early-afternoon Astroturf games between nondescript teams, called by CBS' fifth-string broadcasting team. But Payton is always worth watching.

Skip ahead to about 12:45 in this game. The Bears are on the 1-yard-line. Payton's chin strap is broken, so he runs over to the sideline, yanks off another player's helmet, puts it on, then scores a touchdown. That would violate so many rules today.

ƒ 1979 NFL kickers were about as reliable as '70s NHL goalies. There were still a few straight-ahead kickers. The Browns' Don Cockroft entered the season as the league's most accurate kicker in history. Today, he's 115th. He made 4 field goals of 50+ yards in his career, and he missed 25 PATs. (The last three straight-ahead kickers in the NFL are bunched together on the accuracy list: Rick Danmeier is 114th, Don Cockroft 115th, and Mark Moseley 116th.)

NFL kickers made 91.3% of PATs that year. (In 2014, the last year before the distance was changed, they made 99.3%.) Field-goal accuracy was 63.1%, compared to 81.6% in 2019. And back then, kickers' ranges were much shorter, and they almost never attempted anything over 50 yards.

ƒ The 49ers were a weird team. Bill Walsh was there. So was Montana. But nobody knew how great they were yet. Montana started one game late in the season. Lindsey Nelson and Paul Hornung, calling the game for CBS, were unimpressed by Walsh's horizontal-passing attack. Hornung complained that his team 'will nickel-and-dime you to death.' They were much more impressed by Hornung's full-length fur coat.

OJ Simpson and Al Cowlings were on that team. OJ was hobbled by then, didn't play much, looked occasionally great. He was always likeable and charming when he was interviewed, tho. He and Montana shared a backfield for exactly one series.

ƒ Ricky Bell was Tampa's running back. Drafted #1 in 1977, ahead of Tony Dorsett. Played a few years, then retired when he got sick. Died at age 29 of heart failure.

ƒ Half-time segment: Brent Musberger talked about the Heisman Trophy voting. Finalists were Charles White, Billy Sims, and Vagas Ferguson. 'But if pro scouts had their say,' the top players would be Perry Harrington of Jackson State, Billy Sims, Curtis Dickey of Texas A&M, Charles White, and Larue Harrington of Norfolk State. Future wrestling star Ron Simmons finished 9th in Heisman voting that year. Charles White led the NFL in rushing during the strike year of 1987, but never finished with more than 350 yards in any other year. Larue Harrington played one year for the Chargers; he had 4 carries for -7 yards.

And Billy Sims was amazing before he was injured.

CBS half-times sometimes featured long NFL Films segments, like slow-motion footage with John Facenda reading Rudyard Kipling poems. Sometimes highlight videos would be set to pop songs. Like, 4 uninterrupted minutes of Barbra Streisand. Or they featured 5 minutes of local kids participating in Punt/Pass/Kick competitions. I saw Pete Incaviglia in one of them.

ƒ Different era. Merlin Olsen casually mentioned that Charlie Joiner had been dizzy for a couple of weeks. Playing with a concussion? Whatever. Just part of the game.

Sam Nover mentioned that a hot-air balloon was flying directly over Three Rivers Stadium. In another game, the broadcaster mentioned that three planes, trailing advertising banners, were flying over Three Rivers and were dangerously close to each other.

Nover mentioned that he'd heard that a Colts receiver 'is scared to death to catch the ball in traffic.' Bob Trumpy agreed. They just completely emasculated this guy. Roger Carr played 10 seasons in the NFL, led the league in receiving in 1976. But yeah, he's not a man.

(Yesterday, I watched a fight held in Pittsburgh in 1983. Jimmy Young/Tony Tubbs. Nover called play-by-play for that, too, along with Bert Sugar (!) and Floyd Patterson (!!!). They continually made cracks about Young's cautious style, and they questioned his heart. It bugged me. I guess that was a thing with Nover.)

ƒ CBS used Giorgio Moroder's 'Chase' as bumper music. It makes me uneasy because it puts me in the mind of trying to fall asleep to the radio at 3:00 a.m. and listening to 'Coast to Coast.'
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Steve of phpBB
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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Were you able to locate Walter's 275-yard game from 1977?

Or the last regular season game, where Bob Thomas made a field goal, with 4 seconds left in OT and snow falling, to win the Wild Card? (After he had missed two or three FG attempts earlier in the game.)
And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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bapo! wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 3:47 pmFuture wrestling star Ron Simmons finished 9th in Heisman voting that year.
DAMN.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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Bapo, no more Swamp breaks for you. I need more of this content.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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Steve of phpBB wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 3:50 pm Were you able to locate Walter's 275-yard game from 1977?

Or the last regular season game, where Bob Thomas made a field goal, with 4 seconds left in OT and snow falling, to win the Wild Card? (After he had missed two or three FG attempts earlier in the game.)
There's only a WBBM-AM radio broadcast of the 275-yard game. But if you still believe in the romance of radio like I do, it's pretty great.

And yes, the Bears/Giants season finale is available in its entirety. Enjoy.
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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DSafetyGuy wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 3:55 pm Bapo, no more Swamp breaks for you. I need more of this content.
I just stayed away long enough to gather more material.

Like John Williams' face mask. Yo dawg, I hear you like face masks, so we got you a face mask to go with your face mask.

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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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bapo! wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 3:47 pm
ƒ 1979 NFL kickers were about as reliable as '70s NHL goalies. There were still a few straight-ahead kickers. The Browns' Don Cockroft entered the season as the league's most accurate kicker in history. Today, he's 115th. He made 4 field goals of 50+ yards in his career, and he missed 25 PATs. (The last three straight-ahead kickers in the NFL are bunched together on the accuracy list: Rick Danmeier is 114th, Don Cockroft 115th, and Mark Moseley 116th.)

And Billy Sims was amazing before he was injured.
As a young Browns fan, I loved Don Cockroft. For most of his career, he punted as well.

Billy Sims could have been an all time great if he didn't get hurt. Absolutely phenomenal. he and Bo Jackson are two "what ifs"
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Re: The Nostalgiaganza

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As a young Browns fan, I loved Don Cockroft. For most of his career, he punted as well.
I was a big Gary Anderson fan as a kid. I was always drawn to kickers and goalies.
Billy Sims could have been an all time great if he didn't get hurt. Absolutely phenomenal. he and Bo Jackson are two "what ifs"
There's a 1981 Lions/Chiefs Thanksgiving Day game that's sad to watch. The two stars are Sims and Joe Delaney. Both among the very best running backs in the league. Delaney would drown a couple of years later, and then Sims would ruin his knee.

Sims' first four games in the league in 1980: 153 rushing yards, 64 receiving yards, 3 TDs; 134 rushing yards, 94 receiving yards, 2 TDs; 95 rushing yards, 22 receiving yards, 1 TD; 157 rushing yards, 26 receiving yards.
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