When
It WAs Just a Game
Remembering
the First Super Bowl
By Harvey Frommer,
Foreword by Frank Gifford
(Excerpt)
This is a well-executed retelling of the
game and its surroundings from all points of view: officials, coaches,
players,
the media, and even fans. Among the narrative’s best parts are the late
Stram’s
detailed recollections from an unpublished manuscript made available to
the
author from Stram’s son. Verdict: Consistently
fascinating, this book will appeal to all football fans.—Library
Journal
One
of
Commissioner Pete Rozelle’s suggestions for the name of the new game
was
"The Big One." That name never caught on. “Pro Bowl,” was another
Rozelle idea. Had the name been adopted there would have been confusion
for
that was the name used for the NFL’s All Star game.
Another name was floated “World Series of
Football.” That died quickly. It was deemed too imitative of baseball’s
Fall
Classic.
There
was no Super Bowl Committee. That some said was part of the problem.
There was
also a game that had no location that had no name.
That, too, was part of the problem.
It
was Rozelle’s idea to call the contest,
The AFL-NFL World Championship Game. (Los
Angeles Times February 03, 2007)
That
name for the game was official; however,
it never took off.
It was too cumbersome, a mouthful, no
good for newspaper headlines.
BOYD
DOWLER: We thought
it was kind of funny they called it the Super Bowl; that was a feature
of the
media more than anybody else. But the AFL-NFL Championship Bowl Game,
yeah,
that’s a lot more words than necessary. Super Bowl is a lot more
practical.
SHARON
HUNT: The name AFL-NFL championship game was too unwieldy, hard to get
straight.
Two
days after all the hullabaloo over
the merger,
New York Times
sports columnist Arthur Daley wrote about what the future
held in store: the “new super duper football game for what amounts to
the
championship of the world."
The
Los Angeles Times reported
on September 4, 1966 that the game was being "referred to by some as
the
Super Bowl."
The New York Times sports
section’s lead story that same day
headlined: "NFL Set to Open Season That Will End in Super Bowl."
The Washington Post
a week later reported: "The brash upstarts who will tackle Goliath in
professional football's ultimate production, a highly appealing 'Super
Bowl'
that promises extra pizzazz at seasons’ end."
LAMAR
HUNT, JR: My parents got divorced, and my
dad who was
the head of the American Football League would come over and pick us
up. And I
remember showing him the Super Ball, the “whammy” super ball and
saying, “Hey
look, this will bounce over the house, this ball.”
You know my dad was not going to be
preoccupied with toys that were given to children. You know, he might
have
bounced the ball. We just remember demonstrating it.
But then what
happened going forward is my dad was in an owner’s meeting. They were
trying to
figure out what to call the last game, the championship game. I don’t know if he had the ball with him as
some reports suggest.
My dad said, “Well,
we need to come up with a name, something like the “Super Bowl.”
And
then he said, “Actually, that’s not a very good name.
We can come up with something better.”
But
“Super Bowl” stuck in the media and word of mouth.
It
kind of came out of my dad’s mouth. What do you want to
call it? Power of suggestion or just an idea or whatever, it stuck. And
the
inspiration was that Super Ball. I feel
blessed to be the son of a guy who really came up with the name.
“Super
Bowl” was probably inspired
by his contact with the Super Ball.
BILL
MCNUTT, III: I became very close
friends with the Hunt children. We would go over to Dallas and I would
play
with that ball with them. We were just amazed at this ball. It was the
most popular
toy of its day.
The
Wham-O Super Ball was introduced in
1965. Invented
by Norm Stingley, a chemical engineer at the Bettis Rubber Company in
Whittier,
California, the ball was made of Zectron. The “Super Ball” could bounce
6 times
higher than any regular rubber ball. Millions of the balls were sold
and it
remained a craze through the 1960s.
PAUL
ZIMMERMAN: The National Football League hierarchy frowned on the term
“Super
Bowl.” But the fans and the media like it and used it and Super Bowl
would become
the name to represent professional football’s championship game.
SHARON
HUNT: It was something else that a toy a child was playing with could
have
inspired the name
JERRY
IZENBERG: The afternoon of the merger the switchboard rang at the NFL
offices,
and the guy said, “I want 20 tickets for the title game.”
They said, “We don’t
even know where it’s going to be.”
And he said, “I
don’t care, I want to buy it right now!”
The
championship game was not an afterthought to the merger. They were
trying to
get games played. Even in the merger they negotiated things like, “When
will we
play exhibition games against each other?”
By October
with the 1966 pro football season at full throttle, a site for the
staging of
the AFL-NFL Championship Game scheduled for January 8, 1967 still had
not been
selected. There was agreement by all the members of the NFL site
selection
Committee that the game be played in a warm weather location.
Growing up in Southern California,
Pete Rozelle knew January weather there was what could generally be
counted on.
He also knew that comfort for the crowd and a game that could televised
well
were crucial. The native Californian also knew that a field where
players had
solid footing would better showcase the talents of all who played in
the game.
His reasoning was that a Southern California venue would be fair to all
on a
field that was not frozen, not impacted by weather.
Arthur
Daley of the New York Times
agreed: "Under no conditions should
this classic-to-be ever be entrusted to the whims of the weatherman. By
mid-January, it's possible that snow in Green Bay or Buffalo might be
piled
higher than the goalposts."
Initial
prospective sites for the game to be played at included: the Rose Bowl,
the
Coliseum, the Astrodome, Rice Stadium in Houston, the Sugar Bowl in New
Orleans. A few other sites in Texas, Miami and New Orleans also came
under
consideration.
The
Committee representing the Rose Bowl
objected to its use for a professional football game. Their argument
was that
to do that would lessen
the prestige of their long running enterprise. However, as time for the
playing
of that first world championship football game drew closer, Pasadena’s
City
Council tried to re-enter negotiations with the NFL. It was too late in
the
game. Anaheim Stadium came on
the scene - -also too late.
On
December 1, 1966, after much wrangling,
false starts, and all kinds of jockeying about -- the awarding of the
game to
the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was announced. Two weeks later news
broke
that NBC and CBS had each signed a four year deal,
a $9.5 million package to telecast the
Super Bowl.
On
November 7th, the Chiefs defeated the Chargers 24-14 giving them the
fast lane
to the AFL West crown. What made the game unique was that Pete Rozelle
attended
his first ever American Football League game.
The
clinching of a
deal to merge was not official until the NFL received a special
antitrust
exemption from Congress. Rozelle, driven and charming at the same time,
pushed
a bill through Congress making legal single-network contracts for pro
sports
leagues. There would now be a league-wide agreement replacing the
individual TV
packages of 12 NFL teams.
Some Washington, DC legislators had claimed
merger would make for an NFL monopoly. There was much lobbying,
promises made,
and promises broken. Finally, helped by a critical vote by Louisiana Senator
Russell,
the NFL was given
antitrust exemption. What clinched the deal was a promise by the NFL
that its
next expansion franchise would be located in Louisiana. That’s how
the
Saints came marching in.
All
the scrambling and shuffling resulted in
the creation of never-before-staged TV doubleheader on New Year’s Day.
The AFL
Championship Game from Buffalo was scheduled for 1 P.M, ET. The NFL
Championship was slotted in to start at 4 P.M., ET, from Dallas.
It
was not until the end of December that the
league formally announced that the AFL-NFL World Championship game
would be
played at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The date of the game was changed
from
January 8th to January 15th.
HANK
STRAM: The AFL had been lobbying for a championship game from the
beginning
since we had nothing to lose. The NFL had resisted that idea because
they had
everything to lose. But by 1966 the difference in quality of the two
leagues
had narrowed to the point where a playoff game became inevitable.
The
name “Super Bowl”
was not officially used until the third championship game. The first
game in
1967 was officially known as “The NFL-AFL Championship Game.”
However,
fans, media,
players referred to the first and second games in 1967 and 1968 as the
“Super
Bowl.” And that it became.
About the Author
Written by acclaimed sports author and oral historian Harvey Frommer, with an intro by pro football Hall of Famer Frank Gifford, When It Was Just a Game tells the fascinating story of the ground-breaking AFL-NFL World Championship Football game played on January 15, 1967: Packers vs. Chiefs. Filled with new insights, containing commentary from the unpublished memoir of Kansas City Chiefs coach Hank Stram, featuring oral history from many who were at the game-media, players, coaches, fans-the book is mainly in the words of those who lived it and saw it go on to become the Super Bowl, the greatest sports attraction the world has ever known. Archival photographs and drawings help bring the event to life.
Dr.
Harvey
Frommer is in his 39th year of writing books. A noted oral historian
and sports
journalist, the author of 42 sports books including the classics:
best-selling
“New York City Baseball, 1947-1957″ and best-selling “Shoeless Joe and
Ragtime
Baseball,” his acclaimed Remembering Yankee Stadium was published in
2008 and
best-selling Remembering Fenway Park was published to acclaim in 2011.
Frommer mint condition collectible sports books autographed and discounted are available always from the author.
FROMMER SPORTSNET (syndicated) reaches a readership in the millions and is housed on Internet search engines for extended periods of time.
