Dr.Ken

HELMET HUT NEWS/REFLECTIONS February 2014:

THE 1962 NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE SUPER BOWL

By Dr. Ken

Please read the title of this month’s column again and note what the error might be. Obviously, there was no Super Bowl until the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs squared off after the 1966 season and even then it was not named, referred to as, nor called the “Super Bowl.” There was in 1962, a game to determine the champion of the National Football League and another game to decide the same outcome for the still new American Football League. Played first on December 23^rd, the AFL’s version of the game would be difficult to top. Within the rather modest venue of Houston’s Jeppesen Stadium, a limited crowd of 37,931 spectators was more than overcome by the “Kick To The Clock” drama of the double overtime 20-17 Dallas Texans victory over their rival Houston Oilers. The game was an artistic success, exciting from beginning to end, and like many of the AFL contests, chock full of offense.

Oiler’s “Human Manhole Cover” Charles Tolar in action against the Dallas Texans

With Curt Gowdy, the underrated but terrific Paul Christman, and Jack Buck announcing the game on the ABC network, the ebbing and flowing game that saw the Texans dominate the first half, and then fall to the severe weather change brought in by a Texas “Blue Northern” that charted wind speeds that immediately altered game strategy, was riveting. The persistence of the Oilers in battling back while fighting the elements was inspiring and of course, finally was determined by the Texans’ Tommy Brooker’s twenty-five yard field goal in the second overtime period. In many ways, this overtime, immediate classic was even more exciting and significant than the 1958 Colts-Giants Championship Game.

This of course would not be enough to yet push an inter-league contest into existence, that would have to wait until the completion of the 1966 season, and the NFL still had its own championship game to play. The 1962 NFL Championship Game is on my mind as we go into the annual Super Bowl frenzy because all of the talk in the New York City area is related to the weather. “What if it snows?” “What if the temperature is around zero?” We just completed a weekend of snow, sleet, wind-driven snow drifts, and machinery that just would not work due to the frigid temperatures. Only half of my snow blower proved operational as one of the auger pins sheared and I learned the folly of throwing snow with half of the machine and literally pushing it with the other. I would have been more efficient with a shovel.

Thus the potential problems related to general travel in the Northeast, commuting to the game, safety and comfort, and the level of play on the field, concerns expressed by both the corporate sector involved with the NFL and the fan base are legitimate.

I was fortunate to have tickets to the 1962 NFL Championship Game but I had two seasons worth of New York Football Giants season tickets thanks to the United States Army. I always hung out with an older crowd and through my father’s work managing nightclubs, always had exposure to “adult situations” even as a pre-teen. Because my immigrant father believed that there were certain “life skills” that every man would need to survive in the world, I had very early lessons in iron working, driving, fighting, and gambling. While I managed to avoid the last item on the list for a lifetime, the remainder of “the must learn” list has paid dividends. I learned to drive both automatic and manual transmission cars and trucks at the age of nine and was entrusted with the transport of the iron shop’s twenty-four foot flat bed truck at the age of fifteen. I was doing valet parking regularly when I was eleven and twelve and thus was friendly with my co-workers, all in their late teens and early twenties. Our boss was in retrospect, in his mid-twenties or early thirties, certainly “ancient” by my standards and a former football player at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. He was, being Bronx born and raised, a die-hard Football Giants fan, to distinguish those from the fans who cheered on the New York Baseball Giants until their departure for San Francisco prior to the 1958 season. He and his group of buddies had season tickets to Giants football games and when one member of their group was drafted into the military, I was offered his season tickets during his two year absence. The price was right, at what I recall as $35.00 for a seven game slate of bleacher seat viewing the first year, and a bearable increase to $42.00 for the 1962 season. This was too good to pass up. Bleacher seating was considered low class; no protection from the elements, wooden slats with a white number and lines painted upon the wood between which one would place their buttocks, so-called riff-raff all around, and a lot of alcohol consumption was the summary of “sitting in the bleachers.” The absolute advantage however, in addition to sitting in what were literally “the cheap seats,” was an unobstructed view of the field from the middle of the lower level, at the thirty-five yard line behind the Giants’ bench. Wow, this was heaven.