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.'