Football
Limbo Teams: The Dallas Texans
By Stephen Turk
Naming a team can be a tough endeavor. Previous posts here have dealt with the various processes that take place in giving a team an identity. Some names, however, just don’t seem to work out, as if the name itself dooms the team to failure. It seems kind of silly, but it isn’t totally without merit, those in the sports world are a superstitious bunch. The Texans seems to be one such name.
There is a current team, the Houston Texans, who entered the NFL in a recent expansion. They have struggled in their years of existence, and I can only hope for Houston fans that these current Texans fare better than the Texans of old. › Continue reading
AFL Follow-up
by Stephen Turk
Recently, I wrote on the interesting situation surrounding the merger of the AFL and the NFL, which gave us, of course, the modern NFL as we know it. My primary source for all this was the great and extremely detailed and informative book Remember the AFL by Dave Steidel. Well, I’ve had the opportunity to communicate with Dave, and he has generously fielded a few specific questions. So here is some additional information from the expert:
Q: In watching today’s NFL, what reminds you of the AFL?
A: The names on jerseys, the two point conversion, side line reporters, the game clock being the official time were all started in the AFL. Also in the beginning the AFL offenses were very creative and wide open. Some people suggest that the West Coast offense started in the AFL with San Diego’s Sid Gillman in the early sixties. The type of game played by the NFL today is more like the old AFL then the old NFL. › Continue reading
Limbo Teams: The Baltimore Colts, Part II
By Stephen Turk
In the ring of honor at the Baltimore Ravens stadium, are the names of all hall of fame Baltimore Colts. Having never played in Indianapolis or for the Ravens franchise, they are in team limbo, and belong to no one but the fans who loved them.
After 1954, firmly rooted in Baltimore, the Colts began their ascent toward greatness. The Baltimore Colts got good the way any team does. They had some smart drafting, some good trades, and a measure of luck. The team had a couple of solid holdovers from the Dallas Texans days, including future hall of famers Art Donovan and Gino Marchetti. In 1956 Lenny Moore, another future hall of famer, was drafted in the first round. A solid team was being built, but clearly the greatest move of all was acquiring Johnny Unitas.
Unitas had been cut by his native Pittsburgh after being picked in the ninth round, and was relegated to playing semi-pro ball before going to a tryout for the Baltimore Colts in 1956. He was signed, and played in the fourth game of the season when the starter went down. He was terrible. › Continue reading
Limbo Teams: The Baltimore Colts, Part I
By Stephen Turk
What is a team in limbo? When a team goes defunct, either through moving or folding entirely, the former team is gone for all intents and purposes. But when considering the historical value of a defunct team, there is a whole story there. There are front office decisions for a team that doesn’t exist any more, there are records set and statistics recorded for a nonexistent entity, there are photos of a team that doesn’t play anymore. It’s in this way that a team becomes a limbo team; a team that exists in memories and stats, but not in the present day. › Continue reading
A Unique Pairing: Part II
By Stephen Turk
After the 1965, only five years into the AFL’s existence, the NFL realized that they had a competent competitor in the AFL. The animosity amongst the leagues centered around some fairly simple concepts, talent and money.
With nary a friendly agreement between the leagues, rosters were often raided. The AFL at this time 
was be headed up by bullish Raiders owner Al Davis (a man still making headlines today), and there really was nothing off limits.
The AFL was able to establish itself rather quickly. Player contracts weren’t at the level they are today, so owners could compete in drafting college talent, the AFL had a television deal, so people were watching, and the interest in football around the country was only growing. Dave Steidel chronicles in his Remember the AFL that it all started when the Giants signed away kicker Pete Gogolak from the Bills. Al Davis responded by promising big money to NFL players coming up on the ends of their contracts.
A Unique Pairing: Part I
By Stephen Turk
I recently picked up Remember the AFL by Dave Steidel, and I haveto say it’s pretty fascinating. The idea that an upstart league could not only survive in the same waters as the powerhouse, but take only six years to force a merger, is something that’s as impressive to me as it is foreign. I’ve seen expansions in the major sports, but I’ve never seen a merger.
But yet, what is wholly unimaginable to me happened in 1966 with the AFL and NFL merged. To put it in perspective, that would
be like if the NFL joined up with the ill-fated XFL, something which certainly did not happen. In fact, I don’t believe that a merger like the one between the NFL and AFL could ever happen again; the circumstances were just too singular. › Continue reading
Thermodynamic Spectating
I remember in elementary school the many motivational posters that hung on the wall. One inf
ormed the class that math was not a spectator sport. While the poster didn’t make me any more enthusiastic about math, it did teach me what a spectator was. However, somewhere between reading sports blogs, posting on sports blogs, jumping up and down at games, buying merchandise, and generally getting way too into something that I have no real impact on, I realised that indeed spectating was not a spectator sport.
As a result, I often wonder why. I frequently wonder, “what is that thing that makes sports so engaging?” To this end, one of my more recent interests in sports, and indeed the focus of this blog, is sports history. By nature of statistics and records, history is always relevant. So when a game has occurred, when it is all said in done, there are endless comparisons (justified or not) that can be made. After the fact, you can look back and pick out all the moments which proved pivotal in the game.
Sports Games: Electric Football
By Stephen Turk
A key factor in the creation and purpose of a sports game is simulation. Different games do this different ways, but miniaturizing the sport is an effective way to do this. As such, one would be remiss not to include one of the strangest, yet most entrancing sports games ever created. That game is electric football.
1947 saw Tudor Games release what was essentially a vibrating table on which little football men would move around.
Electric football was a very interesting game because there really is no way play a game, as there was absolutely no way to control the players. There was a dial to intesify or quell the vibration of the field, and the players had tabs on their bases which could control their speed, but that was about the extent of it. Players also broke any number of football rules, including illegal contact, illegal block in the back, excessive spinning, off-sides, and scoring in the wrong end zone amongst others. Still, in its heyday the game sold an incredible amount and is admired to this day.
A Match Made in the Airwaves Part II
By Stephen Turk
So it’s football season now, and that means all attention in the sports world goes there. I’m not complaining, I love football, but I don’t imagine that while watching the first nationally televised football game, too many people were downing hot wings, wearing replica jersey
s, or were able to see the game on a 160 inch high definition screen. But on December 28, 1958 those seeds were sown.
And that is really one of the most interesting things about that game that endures. What we can do now is look back at the timeline of professional football and pickout the moment things started to really come together.
The 1958 game has a lot going for it, especially in the whole “t.v. made the NFL what it is today” argument. There’s simply too much to talk about concerning the game itself, so we’ll skip the whole thing for now, and get to it at some point in the future. The take home point is that the game gave the country the very first NFL overtime in its first nationally televised game. The nation got to experience the excitement of sudden death together.
For decades the league had been trying to establish itself. What they needed was a medium, a grand stage to show that professional football could be just as enthralling as baseball, college football, and boxing. I mean, people wouldn’t go around painting themselves up as they do today if the product wasn’t worth it.
A Match Made in the Airwaves Part I
By Stephen Turk
As I sat on Sunday watching football, with a nacho cheese globule running down my replica jersey, a dwindling pitcher of beer, and in the midst of an important conversation with my friends as we discussed what food we would order at half time, I had the most painfully obvious epiphany. Football and television is truly the most successful marriage in sports.
So as I dug into some potato skins, I wondered, how did we get here? Clearly the NFL is top dog in the American sports world today, and while that has certainly been the trend for several years, the figures back it up in no uncertain fashion. A recent Forbes article found that the average NFL team is worth over a billion dollars. While that figure is impressive in its own right, the average MLB club is worth just 
under 500 million, less than half.
None of this is particularly provacative, saying television helped make the NFL what it is today is like saying the sky is blue or college basketball is better than the NBA. But what makes the relationship far more interesing is the context and the story around the thing.
As stated above, the prevalence of professional football and the prevalence of the television go hand in hand. What we call the NFL today had rather meager beginnings.
