Flashback Friday: Just how old is your granddaddy, anyway?

All together now, for the thousandth time: Words Mean Things.  Case in  point is this article, posted on si.com yesterday.  In fairness to its author, Ryan McGee, writers don't generally do their own headlines, so he can't be to blame for the following:

We've all heard that old saying - "this ain't your father's..." or "this ain't your grandfather's..." and we know what it's supposed to mean - this isn't the way it was back in the old days. The point of this article is to suggest that the times are a changin', that things aren't the way they used to be.  Well, seeing this headline, I knew right away there was something wrong; I just had to do the math to make sure.

Now, let's say you're 25 years old, a good age to be a football fan.  Le'ts further say your father was 25 when you were born, and his father was 25 when he was born.  That would make your grandfather 75.  Assuming he was a football fan when he was 25, that would make it 1965, 50 years ago.  So, just for the hell of it, let's take a look at college football's top ten for the end of the 1965 football season:

Well, Michigan State certainly was in the top 5.  And in case you're thinking I'm nitpicking about this, let's go a little deeper: Michigan State was #2 the following year, 1966 (the year they lost the title by tying Notre Dame in the Game of the Century).  Just a fluke, you're thinking?  Very well; let's suppose your grandfather's top 5 started in 1960, when he was 20.  Sorry - Michigan State was ranked that year as well.  In fact, they were ranked #11, in 1960, #9 in 1961, #10 in 1963, and #20 in 1964.  In other words, although they were in the top 5 only twice (1965, 1966), they were ranked in the top 20 six times in the seven years that your grandfather might have been looking at.  And in case you think granddad's top 5 might have come when he was older, say in his mid-30s, that doesn't really hold up either: the Spartans were ranked #9 in 1950, #2 in 1951, #1 in 1952, #3 in 1953, #2 in 1955, #10 in 1956, #3 in 1957 and #16 in 1959.

In other words, Michigan State was pretty much a college football power throughout the '50s and into the mid-'60s; it wasn't until Southern schools started integrating, destroying the pipline that Northern schools such as State had built up in the South, that Michigan State dropped from the power rankings. Let's call that the '70s and '80s, which wouldn't be your grandfather's time as much as it was your father's.

Do you think I'm nitpicking too much?  All right, let's look at Mississippi then.  You'll note that in that 1965 poll, Mississippi ranked #17, the eighth year in the decade of the '60s in which Mississippi was ranked in the top 20.  Matter of fact, Ole Miss was pretty good in the early part of the decade, when your hypothetical granddaddy was in his early 20s, finishing #3 in 1960, #5 in 1961, #4 in 1962 and #7 in 1963.  Playing the devil's advocate and going back to the 1950s (as we did with Michigan State), we see that Mississippi was #7 in 1952, #6 in 1954, #9 in 1955, #8 in 1957, #12 in 1958 and #2 in 1959.  As was the case with Michigan State (though for different reasons), Mississippi's decline came much later on, in the '70s, '80s and '90s.

Which brings me back to the beginning question: just how the hell old is grandfather supposed to be?  I know there's always a tendency to look back in the past and think it's father back than it actually is; 50 years sounds like a long time ago, but it was actually 1965.  Taken in the most generous sense, a grandfather usually isn't going to be much younger than 40 when the first grandchild is born, and unless you're about seven years old (and if you are, you shouldn't be reading SI.com, especially when the swimsuit issue is out), you're going to have a hard time proving your grandfather didn't know a time when Michigan State and Ole Miss were in the top 5.

You could have avoided so much of this confusion simply by saying that this year's rankings "aren't your father's top 5."  Is this a case when the headline writer gets so caught up in the story (one-legendary programs making a big comeback, which itself is problematic considering Michigan State finished last year ranked #5 and the year before #3, meaning they aren't all that unfamiliar with the top 5 lately) that they write the headline to fit a preconceived notion?  Is it that the headline writer doesn't know much about football history or is so young that they can't remember the last time these teams were ranked so high?  Or is it that the writer was too lazy to spend five minutes Googling College Football Polls (as I did) to write an accurate headline?

Take your pick, but I wish these headline writers would do their homework.  I'm old enough to remember when Michigan State and Mississippi were highly-ranked programs, and I don't have any grandchildren (yet).  Please, I don't need to feel any older than I already do.

Originally published September 22, 2015

Just how old is your granddaddy, anyway?

All together now, for the thousandth time: Words Mean Things.  Case in  point is this article, posted on si.com yesterday.  In fairness to its author, Ryan McGee, writers don't generally do their own headlines, so he can't be to blame for the following:

We've all heard that old saying - "this ain't your father's..." or "this ain't your grandfather's..." and we know what it's supposed to mean - this isn't the way it was back in the old days. The point of this article is to suggest that the times are a changin', that things aren't the way they used to be.  Well, seeing this headline, I knew right away there was something wrong; I just had to do the math to make sure.

Now, let's say you're 25 years old, a good age to be a football fan.  Le'ts further say your father was 25 when you were born, and his father was 25 when he was born.  That would make your grandfather 75.  Assuming he was a football fan when he was 25, that would make it 1965, 50 years ago.  So, just for the hell of it, let's take a look at college football's top ten for the end of the 1965 football season:

Well, Michigan State certainly was in the top 5.  And in case you're thinking I'm nitpicking about this, let's go a little deeper: Michigan State was #2 the following year, 1966 (the year they lost the title by tying Notre Dame in the Game of the Century).  Just a fluke, you're thinking?  Very well; let's suppose your grandfather's top 5 started in 1960, when he was 20.  Sorry - Michigan State was ranked that year as well.  In fact, they were ranked #11, in 1960, #9 in 1961, #10 in 1963, and #20 in 1964.  In other words, although they were in the top 5 only twice (1965, 1966), they were ranked in the top 20 six times in the seven years that your grandfather might have been looking at.  And in case you think granddad's top 5 might have come when he was older, say in his mid-30s, that doesn't really hold up either: the Spartans were ranked #9 in 1950, #2 in 1951, #1 in 1952, #3 in 1953, #2 in 1955, #10 in 1956, #3 in 1957 and #16 in 1959.

In other words, Michigan State was pretty much a college football power throughout the '50s and into the mid-'60s; it wasn't until Southern schools started integrating, destroying the pipline that Northern schools such as State had built up in the South, that Michigan State dropped from the power rankings. Let's call that the '70s and '80s, which wouldn't be your grandfather's time as much as it was your father's.

Do you think I'm nitpicking too much?  All right, let's look at Mississippi then.  You'll note that in that 1965 poll, Mississippi ranked #17, the eighth year in the decade of the '60s in which Mississippi was ranked in the top 20.  Matter of fact, Ole Miss was pretty good in the early part of the decade, when your hypothetical granddaddy was in his early 20s, finishing #3 in 1960, #5 in 1961, #4 in 1962 and #7 in 1963.  Playing the devil's advocate and going back to the 1950s (as we did with Michigan State), we see that Mississippi was #7 in 1952, #6 in 1954, #9 in 1955, #8 in 1957, #12 in 1958 and #2 in 1959.  As was the case with Michigan State (though for different reasons), Mississippi's decline came much later on, in the '70s, '80s and '90s.

Which brings me back to the beginning question: just how the hell old is grandfather supposed to be?  I know there's always a tendency to look back in the past and think it's father back than it actually is; 50 years sounds like a long time ago, but it was actually 1965.  Taken in the most generous sense, a grandfather usually isn't going to be much younger than 40 when the first grandchild is born, and unless you're about seven years old (and if you are, you shouldn't be reading SI.com, especially when the swimsuit issue is out), you're going to have a hard time proving your grandfather didn't know a time when Michigan State and Ole Miss were in the top 5.

You could have avoided so much of this confusion simply by saying that this year's rankings "aren't your father's top 5."  Is this a case when the headline writer gets so caught up in the story (one-legendary programs making a big comeback, which itself is problematic considering Michigan State finished last year ranked #5 and the year before #3, meaning they aren't all that unfamiliar with the top 5 lately) that they write the headline to fit a preconceived notion?  Is it that the headline writer doesn't know much about football history or is so young that they can't remember the last time these teams were ranked so high?  Or is it that the writer was too lazy to spend five minutes Googling College Football Polls (as I did) to write an accurate headline?

Take your pick, but I wish these headline writers would do their homework.  I'm old enough to remember when Michigan State and Mississippi were highly-ranked programs, and I don't have any grandchildren (yet).  Please, I don't need to feel any older than I already do.

Classic Sports Thursday

I was five years old at the time of the 1965 Bluebonnet Bowl, played between Tennessee and Tulsa in Houston. I had no great rooting interest in the game - at that age, I probably didn't root for anyone - and yet it must have made an impression on me.  For one thing, I found a TV Guide clipping on it in one of my old scrapbooks.  More significantly, I had a clear recollection not only of the game being played in a driving rain, but of one of the teams actually changing their jerseys at halftime so that it might be easier for people to tell the two muddy teams apart.

Well, you know how the mind can play tricks, especially when you're talking about something that happened almost 50 years ago with very little notice, so it was with a sense of vindication that I ran across this clip the other day - the game footage of the 1965 Bluebonnet Bowl, which indeed confirmed my memories.  Not a particularly notable game, but great fun to watch nonetheless.  See how much more interesting football can be when you don't remove the elements from the equation? ◙

The Airplane Conference

“Once word of the proposed conference leaked, other schools, witnessing the Darwinian changes in college football during the period, began nosing around for invitations as well.”

Written yesterday? Not quite. With the news that that the basketball-only members of the Big East Conference are considering either pulling out of the conference or disbanding it altogether, we’re being subjected to yet another round of headlines on conference realignment.

Realignment over the past few years has dealt more or less exclusively with the football side of things, and it usually boils down to two considerations: television and money. Or perhaps more accurately, television’s money – since the revenue generated by television, either through appearances in BCS bowl games or the conference’s television contract, is the prime consideration in almost (?) all of these moves.

It’s caused a lot of us to look back to the relatively stable days of yore, when the Big Ten actually had 10 teams, when all the schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference actually were on the Atlantic Coast, when the Southwestern Conference and the Big 8 existed side by side, and so on. Most of all, we remember when conferences were geographical collections of schools that shared particular commonalities. But when we consider a Big “East” that includes schools from Hawaii, Nevada and Idaho, we just shake our heads.

And yet, it may come as a surprise to learn that the idea of a conference in which the members were connected by planes rather than buses goes back over 60 years.  It certainly did to me, until I ran across it in a couple of books I've been reading for articles on the TV blog: The Fifty-Year Seduction by Keith Dunnavant and College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era by Kurt Kemper.  And thus we come to the origin of the quotation at the beginning of this article.

The idea of a so-called “Airplane” Conference first arose in 1951, promoted, ironically, by Notre Dame President John Cavanaugh.* And, as we might have assumed, “the ability to attract revenue lay at the center of the proposal.” Cavanaugh’s plan included Indiana, Iowa State, Navy, Michigan State, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Army, Penn, Pittsburgh, SMU, Texas, USC, UCLA and Yale – an interesting mix of schools from around the country, including the presence of several which we might scoff at in any discussion of major college football today.

*I say “ironically” because Notre Dame has long been known as a holdout against joining any conference, at least for football.

Although Cavanaugh’s plan never really got off the ground, it laid the groundwork for Thomas Hamilton’s later plan for a National Conference. Hamilton, the AD at Pittsburgh, left in 1957 to head up efforts to form the conference, consisting of 12 members in two divisions, the winners of each division meeting for a de facto national championship game on New Year’s Day in the Rose Bowl. The Eastern Division of Cavanaugh’s National Conference would have included Army, Navy, Pittsburgh, Penn State, Syracuse and Notre Dame, while the Western Division would have included the five members of the AAWU (the conference providing the Western representative in the Rose Bowl) – USC, UCLA, Stanford, California and Washington, plus Air Force.

Hamilton’s plan was an intriguing one, because it didn’t poach on any existing conferences – the AAWU would have been the fulcrum of the conference, and the rest of the members were all independents at the time. And the idea gained great support – one newspaper columnist said “it will mean the beginning of a new era in college football. Harry Stuhldreher, member of Notre Dame’s legendary Four Horsemen, called it “a must.” Another supporter called it the “most outstanding sports idea” of his lifetime. As word leaked out, other schools – Houston, Miami, Penn, Duke and Georgia Tech – tried to position themselves for inclusion.

And yet it never happened. Why?

There are various theories – some thought that the military academies scuttled the idea, but that seemed unlikely; President Eisenhower was a great supporter of the football program at West Point, and it’s likely that membership in such a prominent conference would only help the service academies during the Cold War.* More likely, it was due to the administrators from the West Coast schools, worried about the increasing prominence of big-time sports. (They have fewer scruples today.)

*One called service academy football “travelling advertisements” for the schools.

Whatever the reason, the National Conference never did get off the ground. But isn’t this what we’re seeing today? Speculation is that college football will eventually wind up with four major superconferences, each with 16 members, and when that does happen there will be those who look back and wonder about the good old days. Who knew that progress was always on the agenda, and the good old days were merely an interruption? As I’ve written more than once, the more things change, the more they stay the same. ◙

End of The Streak

One of the biggest college football games of this weekend, if not the biggest, is the matchup between Notre Dame and Oklahoma on Saturday night in Norman. Notre Dame, in its annual ritual of trying to recapture its past glory, comes into the game unbeaten and ranked #5, while the Sooners, losers only to Kansas State, are #8. This ought to be a terrific game, which means it will probably fall victim to ESPN’s hype machine and won’t come anywhere near the buildup.

These two teams have a history against each other, and this might be the most important meeting between the two since 1957. That game, however, made history, and this year’s edition will be hard-pressed to match it.

It was November 16, 1957, and the Fighting Irish brought a record of 4-2 into Norman against the 7-0 Sooners. But Oklahoma was more than undefeated in 1957 – they had not lost a game since 1953. They had been beaten 28-21 by Notre Dame early in 1953, then tied Pitt 7-7, before reeling off a string of 47 consecutive victories (including the tie against Pitt, a run of 48 without a loss).

Today, it’s staggering to think about: three consecutive undefeated seasons (1954, 1955 and 1956) and two national championships (1955 and 1956). Even considering that college football was much more regional in the 1950s, and that Oklahoma had dominated the Big 7 Conference for years, still – 47 straight victories. To put this in context, since World War I only four major college teams have had winning streaks of 30 games or more: Toledo (35 from 1969-1971), Miami (34 from 2000-2002), and – Oklahoma again (31 from 1948-50). For the 11 seasons from 1948 to 1958, Oklahoma posted a record of 107-8-2. Not bad.

Eh, maybe not so much?  The start of the
SI jinx - note the date of the issue

The 1957 game against Notre Dame became legendary, of course, because the Irish ended the streak, beating the Sooners 7-0. The game had everything you could ask for: tradition (two of the most storied teams in college football), mystique (the Golden Dome vs. the Unbeaten), and hatred (the South’s anti-Catholicism vs. the North’s scorn for redneck Okies). Sooner football was everything for a state whose biggest claim to fame was the musical Oklahoma, and the thought of Oklahoma losing was, well, unthinkable.

The Sooners started out strongly but were unable to convert. Notre Dame broke the scoreless tie in the 4th quarter on a short touchdown pass to Dick Lynch, and it began to sink in that Oklahoma might actually lose. In the waning minutes the Sooners started one last drive, knowing that although the winning streak might end, they could still salvage the undefeated run with a tie (in these days before the two-point conversion), but a late interception snuffed out even that hope. The Streak was over and the crowd shocked into silence, followed for many by tears.

Oklahoma would win out the rest of the way, defeating Duke in the Orange Bowl and finishing #4 in the country, but the seniors would carry the burden of being the class that failed to finish their college careers unbeaten. Notre Dame would lose the next week to Iowa and finish the year 7-3, ranked #12.

There’s quite a good book about that undefeated Oklahoma team, appropriately entitled The Undefeated, by Jim Dent, and you can read here for more about the game itself.

Will Saturday’s game have this level of drama? Doubtful – but Oklahoma and Notre Dame should still put on quite a show, in the very stadium in which, 55 years ago, a piece of college football history came to an end.

And here are the highlights of that historic game, narrated by Chris Schenkel. ◙
 

Retro TV Friday

It seems odd with the AT&T Cotton Bowl tonight that it's the only New Year's postseason game left that's on broadcast network television (Fox) when it stayed on network television when the major games all switched to pay television. But that leads to the bigger story of today's column.

To think about it, if it's an SEC matchup, then you'd expect to hear the Super Bowl XXI theme for a major game -- that's right, twenty-five years ago, at the Rose Bowl. CBS decided it would not be used for NFL coverage, but for college football (College Football Association) games at the time, and by 1995 it would be used for the network's Southeastern Conference coverage, a gamble considering CBS was by that time a minor network and wasn't available in suburban areas of some major markets (Detroit and Milwaukee most notably) because of their low-powered affiliates, and two SEC markets were in trouble, as in Georgia, CBS lost its affiliate to Fox and the former Fox affiliate chose to join the WB, so CBS came close to the weakest station in the market (channel 69) before independent channel 46 agreed to join CBS (ratings are still worse than the Spanish language station and independent stations in the area), and in South Carolina, the local CBS affiliate took a partial United Paramount affiliation, and was contemplating joining Paramount full-time if the NFL had not returned to CBS in 1998, leaving cable companies in their metropolitan area ready for backup from the Augusta, Florence (similar to NBC, which had no Florence/Myrtle Beach affiliate until 2008), Charlotte, or Charleston affiliates had WLTX bolted to Paramount full-time in order to boost the Star Trek franchise (which was the main reason they took a partial Paramount affilation). The CBS/SEC gamble worked, as by 2001 the CBS/SEC deal became one where the CBS game would become the only guaranteed national Game of the Week, which has the ESPN-affiliated conferences crying foul, since their games are regional while the SEC's game was national.

I do think the first Louisiana State-Alabama game, however, will have drawn more viewers than the rematch for the BCS title, because of the CBS/SEC tie-in instead of ESPN. ◙