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 1966 Green Bay Packers were one of the greatest teams in professional football history. Led by legendary head coach Vince Lombardi and 10 future Hall of Famers--including Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Forrest Gregg, Willie Davis and Ray Nitschke--they were the decisive winners of Super Bowl I, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs and upholding the superiority of the National Football League over the upstart American Football League. This book tells the story of the hard-working '66 Packers on the gridiron and their legacy in Titletown, USA.
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.
In the mid-1960s, when pro football eclipsed baseball as America's leading spectator sport, the NFL had the most exciting season in its history. The Eastern Conference Cleveland Browns were the champions in 1965 yet most of the action was in the Western Conference, where the reigning Baltimore Colts contended with the formidable Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears. All three teams played two games apiece against the Detroit Lions, a power earlier in the decade, and the Minnesota Vikings and Los Angeles Rams, who were becoming dominant in the league. In those days the NFL played a wide-open game--long touchdown passes, fumbles and interceptions kept fans on the edges of their seats through seven games each weekend. The league's deep bench included such players as Jim Brown, Johnny Unitas, Tom Matte, Bart Starr, Paul Hornung and Dave Robinson, rookies Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus, and key coaches Don Shula, Vince Lombardi and George Halas. A fantastic final weekend led to a one-game playoff for the right to face the Browns for the championship. Drawing on interviews with surviving players and executives, this book recounts the thrilling drama of the '65 season and places it in the broader context of NFL history.
"Nothing of the former world holds true anymore," Zofia Nalkowska wrote in her Wartime Diaries on 7 May 1943. "Nothing has remained." The burning of the Warsaw ghetto had broken Nalkowska's privileged life in two; in the years to come, the need to bear witness to the horrors she had seen firsthand would lead this gifted member of the Polish avant-garde to write the stories in Medallions.
From his earliest memories, Joe Jackson dreamed of playing in the National Football League and being somebody great—a champion. But growing up in a family of seven in a Cincinnati suburb during the turbulent times of the 1960s didn’t look promising. It took hard work, discipline, and good coaching to become a champion in the world’s eyes in the NFL. But the most significant change didn’t take place on a football field, but in his heart when he gave his life to Jesus Christ. Only then did his dream of playing in the NFL and the Super Bowl become a reality. In the pages of this fascinating biographical account, Joe Jackson recounts how he tackled challenge after challenge in life, and reveals how football opened the door to a place where the giants of fear and a low sense of self-esteem roamed freely. In Championship Sunday, Joe shares an uncut version of his life story and reveals that true champions are never satisfied with titles won on a particular day, but it’s the battles we win as a believer that matter the most as we walk out our own salvation with fear and trembling. His story encourages everyone to push past their fear and insecurity to become the champion that is hidden inside.
The 1960s were a tumultuous period in U.S. history and the sporting world was not immune to the decade's upturn of tradition. As war in Southeast Asia, civil unrest at home and political assassinations rocked the nation, professional football struggled to attract fans. While some players fought for civil rights and others fought overseas, the ideological divides behind the protests and riots in the streets spilled into the locker rooms, and athletes increasingly brought their political beliefs into the sports world. This history describes how a decade of social upheaval affected life on the gridiron, and the personalities and events that shaped the game. The debut of the Super Bowl, soon to become a fixture of American culture, marked a professional sport on the rise. Increasingly lucrative television contracts and innovations in the filming and broadcasting of games expanded pro football's audiences. An authoritarian old guard, best represented by the revered Vince Lombardi, began to give way as star players like Joe Namath commanded new levels of pay and power. And at last, all teams fielded African American players, belatedly beginning the correction of the sport's greatest wrong.
