The 1951 Los Angeles Rams
The 1951 Los Angeles Rams

Author: George Bozeka

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2022-04-25

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 1476678421

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The 1951 Los Angeles Rams were one of the greatest teams in professional football history. Led by pioneer owner Daniel Reeves, head coach Joe Stydahar, and future Hall of Famers Bob Waterfield, Norm Van Brocklin, Elroy Hirsch, Tom Fears, and Andy Robustelli, the team won the NFL championship of that season. In doing this, they defeated the defending champion Cleveland Browns in a fantastic rematch of the 1950 title game. The Rams were the first team in a major professional sports league to relocate to the West Coast, forever changing the face of the NFL and professional sports in America. Fueled by an exciting and accomplished lineup of veteran star players and impactful rookies, the product of the Rams' innovative scouting system and their reintegration of the NFL in 1946, the Rams successfully married the NFL to the glamorous world of Hollywood. Delve into the story of the '51 Rams, the NFL's First West Coast Champions.

The Cleveland Rams
The Cleveland Rams

Author: James C. Sulecki

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2016-10-24

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1476626456

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In 2016 the Rams left St. Louis for Los Angeles—having departed L.A. for St. Louis in 1995—and caused much heartbreak among fans. NFL teams are notorious for decamping to more profitable markets and the Rams’ history of opportunistic moves goes back to 1946, when they left Cleveland, their original hometown, where fans had cheered them to a championship a month earlier. The move to L.A. from Cleveland shocked the NFL and shook up its power structure. It also jolted the all-white league into reintegration, prepared the way for the Browns, and made the Rams the only NFL champs ever to have spent the following season in a different city. This is the story of how the Rams went from a home-grown Ohio team funded by local businessmen to the first major-league franchise on the West Coast, and how their departure jumpstarted a chain of events in Cleveland that continues to this day.

The Team That Changed the NFL Forever
The Team That Changed the NFL Forever

Author: Rick Van Blair

Publisher: Independently Published

Published: 2021-06-11

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13:

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National Football League commissioner Bert Bell worked and dreamed that one day the NFL would have the same status as major league baseball. With the move of owner Daniel Reeves' Cleveland Rams to Los Angeles in 1946, that dream was set in motion. Reeves took risks and broke barriers that no other NFL owner ever did. He set up a scouting system, not just of big-time colleges, but one that would scout players from small colleges and all Black schools. By the mid-1950s other NFL teams copied the Rams' scouting system. In 1949, Reeves also hired an offensive genius, coach Clark Shaughnessy, to bring in his revamped T-Formation that passed on any down with three receivers or more on every play and made the 1949-1955 Rams the most exciting team in the NFL. Reeves was the first owner to sign a television contract to televise all home games and not lose money, which opened up television to other NFL teams leading to today's multi-million dollar TV contracts. He was the first owner to give the okay to team logos on helmets, with the Ram horns. He set up a free football for kids program. He set up a Rams product merchandise line consisting of T-shirts, drinking glasses, Rams caps, bobble-head dolls and more with the Rams logo. The Rams of Dan Reeves went to the NFL championship game in 1949, 1950, 1951, and 1955, and just missed in 1952. The stage was set for the other NFL teams to follow what the Rams did on and off the field or be left in the dust. Commissioner Bert Bell's dream came true. Thanks to Dan Reeves and his Rams, Bert Bell and others saw the National Football League pull even with baseball as America's number one and most popular sport. Before he died, Dan Reeves was voted into the NFL Hall of Fame.

Pro Football Championships Before the Super Bowl
Pro Football Championships Before the Super Bowl

Author: Joseph S. Page

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2010-12-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780786448098

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While the Super Bowl has become a worldwide cultural event, the annual league championship games had a long history even before the first Super Bowl in January, 1967. From the first American Football League's attempt to settle the league title on the gridiron in 1926 to the separate NFL and AFL championships of the 1965 season, this history offers a narrative of each game, including line-ups, box scores and team statistics.

The Forgotten First
The Forgotten First

Author: Keyshawn Johnson

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2021-09-21

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1538705478

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The unknown story of the Black pioneers who collectively changed the face of the NFL in 1946. THE FORGOTTEN FIRST chronicles the lives of four incredible men, the racism they experienced as Black players entering a segregated sport, the burden of expectation they carried, and their many achievements, which would go on to affect football for generations to come. More than a year before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, there was another seismic moment in pro sports history. On March 21,1946, former UCLA star running back Kenny Washington—a teammate of Robinson's in college—signed a contract with the Los Angeles Rams. This ended one of the most shameful periods in NFL history, when African-American players were banned from league play. Washington would not be alone in serving as a pioneer for NFL integration. Just months after he joined the Rams, thanks to a concerted effort by influential Los Angeles political and civic leaders, the team signed Woody Strode, who played with both Washington and Robinson at UCLA in one of the most celebrated backfields in college sports history. And that same year, a little-known coach named Paul Brown of the fledgling Cleveland Browns signed running back Marion Motley and defensive lineman Bill Willis, thereby integrating a startup league that would eventually merge with the NFL. THE FORGOTTEN FIRST tells the story of one of the most significant cultural shifts in pro football history, as four men opened the door to opportunity and changed the sport forever.

The All-America Football Conference
The All-America Football Conference

Author: Kenneth R. Crippen

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-01-31

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1476670951

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The All-America Football Conference and the National Football League battled for supremacy from 1946 through 1949. In the end, the players from the AAFC, as well as three teams, were brought into the NFL. Through extensive research, the Professional Football Researchers Association (PFRA) has corrected the statistics and coaching records, selected offensive and defensive All-Pro Teams for all four seasons and an All-Conference team, and provided brief biographies and scouting reports for the members of the All-Conference Team.

Ugly Girls
Ugly Girls

Author: Lindsay Hunter

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2014-11-04

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0374533865

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Traces the chaotic breakdown of a friendship that shapes and unravels the identities of two rebellious girls in the wake of a stalker's predations.

Historical Dictionary of Football
Historical Dictionary of Football

Author: John Grasso

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2013-06-13

Total Pages: 600

ISBN-13: 0810878577

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Gridiron football or American football or just plain football is the most popular sport in the United States in the 21st century. Although attempts have been made to develop the sport outside North America, it is still predominantly a North American sport with similar games (but significant rules differences) played in the United States and Canada. The Historical Dictionary of Football covers the history of American football through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on both amateur (collegiate) and professional players, coaches, teams and executives from all eras. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the sport of football.

The Steamer
The Steamer

Author: Andy Furillo

Publisher: Santa Monica Press

Published: 2016-05-31

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1595808078

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For nearly sixty years, Bud Furillo wrote and talked about sports in Southern California. For fifteen of those years, he authored a popular column for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner called The Steam Room, which gave him the nickname that lasted him for the rest of his life: “the Steamer.” As a reporter, columnist, editor, and pioneer of sports talk radio, the Steamer dished out insight and understanding to Southern California sports fans while Los Angeles grew into a sports empire. On his watch, L.A. acquired the Rams from Cleveland, the Dodgers from Brooklyn, and the Lakers from Minneapolis. He covered them all while they won championships for the city. In The Steamer: Bud Furillo and the Golden Age of L.A. Sports, Furillo’s son, Andy, himself a longtime newspaperman, uses his father’s lens to give focus to the city’s rise as a sports empire. The Steamer is a history of a great sports town at its most dynamic, told from the point of view of a legendary reporter who used his phenomenal access to reveal the inside story of the greatest athletes and teams to ever play in Los Angeles.