The Legendary Eagles: A Retrospective on the 1949 Championship Season

They called him wham bam, Van Buren for a reason.

A human battering ram carving through defenses.

And then there was the graceful Pete Pajos, a receiver so electric he could turn a broken play into a moment of magic.

It was a showcase of the legendary talent, a clash of titans.

And at the heart of it all was the Philadelphia Eagles, powered by the legends with coached by Greasy Neil.

We have a guest that's returning, Brian Michael joining us to tell us about the 49 season and those high flying Eagles in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of.

American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darrin Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends, Darren Hayes, the Pigskin dispatcher here.

Welcome back to the Pig Pen and our conversation that we had recently with Brian Michael of Scheibe Vintage Sports, author of Eagles book, a Philadelphia Eagles book, and a historian of the team that he loves to watch.

Now, this is a conversation that we talked about two different championships.

We broke it into two episodes.

So here's our conversation about the next season of the Eagles.

We're not done with the Eagles though, because the Eagles were still flying high, you know, after this big seven nothing victory over the Cardinals in 48.

What can you tell us about that?

Well, like I said already, the, the owner sold the team.

Lex Thompson sold the team after this championship win.

And interestingly enough, he sold it to 100 men, not just one guy.

He sold it to what was known as the Happy Hundred, which was kind of a consortium of investors that own the team, one of which later on the team again, but I think it.

Was had to be one hell of a big boardroom.

When they had meetings, I'll tell you.

It was not the best idea.

It was dysfunctional is a word that comes up a lot when I read about them.

They were owned by James Clark or managed by James Clark.

So he was kind of in charge.

He was the one who eventually ended up firing Greasy Neil after they kind of butted heads after, you know, after the championships seasons.

But so they, they sold the team in the off season.

So you know, he's a whole podcast in and of himself.

One of the last kind of two way players.

Concrete Charlie, just a huge, huge guy, super nice, but also one of the fiercest competitors really you'll ever see.

So he was a rookie on that 49 team.

Other players included, heading into the season, Bucko Kilroy, who we hadn't mentioned before.

Frank Bucko Kilroy, who was a local guy, went to North Catholic High School and Temple, of course, known as the dirtiest player, nastiest player in all of football history, even by his own teammates.

So he was on the team, you know, one of those guys you're happy to have on your team team and not the other team that was a big deal.

Al Wizard, I mentioned Vic Sears.

So those were, you know, solid pieces.

Along with Greasy Neil as coach, Thompson behind center.

And then of course you had PPOs as your flanker and Steve Van Buren as the halfback.

So the offense was pretty formidable for a coach that was mostly focused on defense.

So it really became, you know, in a lot of ways Eagles defense and Steve Van Buren running the ball.

I think he had something like 25 touchdowns maybe in those years.

So you know, he was a big part of the offense.

So I think a lot of credit has to go to him.

PPOs, you know, again, Tommy Thompson was serviceable, but he's not a hall of Famer, like some of these other guys or all pros are all decade players like I mentioned.

Yeah, I mean the interesting thing about Greasy Neil, you know, knowing me, knowing a lot of research on his earlier years in college before 22 season, you know, he was one of those guys if you had something that worked, you just run it until the other team can stop it.

So that's probably a lot of that, that theory goes into.

He took it, you know, 20 some years later into VM Buren.

You know, you can't stop this guy.

I'll keep trucking them through your holes and run you guys over, you know.

Yeah, like I said, he was a real players coach.

So I, I think he was quoted as saying he, he has 32 coaches on the team.

You know, everyone's playing two ways.

We didn't have a 64 man roster but you know, he was not afraid to listen to other players.

He.

They were all friends together, they joked around, and he really built this kind of camaraderie.

Of course, there wasn't free agency, although there were rival leagues trying to poach some of their players, one of which gave Steve Van Buren a blank check, essentially.

But he wanted to stay with the Eagles, so, you know, for probably a lot less money, he stayed with the team, was their superstar, won two championships with them, and, you know, that was a really big part of why we're talking about the team today.

Yeah, I mean, going back to the greasy Neil, I mean, I think it's just interesting, the character of the man, because, you know, on a football field, he seemed.

He had many instances where he was, you know, argumentative, wanted, you know, very strong against the officiating if something didn't go his way, you know, gave other opposing players, you know, a little bit of lip service when he had the opportunity, you know, both during games and, you know, pre and post games, we know.

But then he's a guy that.

The players, all of them from W and J, you know, some of the other colleges he coached at and the Eagles, they all loved him.

They all love playing for him.

And you would almost think, you know, he would.

You would almost think, you know, sort of like a disciplinarian type of guy, but still, because of his other characteristics, but really interesting guy and, you know, great that he had so much success.

Yeah, obviously he played, too.

So I think players respected that as well.

Yeah, definitely.

Most definitely.

Very, very good athlete.

Like you said, you're playing when you're playing in World Series and you're a golfing champion of West Virginia and a football player and a great coach, you know, you got everything going for you.

Yeah, on that.

So.

So what can you tell us about.

Is there anything in particular about the 49 season before they get into championship that you can tell us about?

Well, they were even better than they were in the 48 season.

They finished 11 and 1, their only loss coming to the Chicago Bears in Chicago, which, again, kind of proved to be a bugaboo for the Eagles, but also the Yellow Jackets back in their day, too, that was always trying to beat the Bears that season.

So they were still good, even though they did not end up playing in the championship game.

The Bears, but the Eagles were.

Were crushing opponents, regularly scoring over 30 points, 40 points in several games, and they had several shutouts that year, along with holding team to three points three times, one touchdown one time.

So, you know, half their games, the opponents scored less than 10 points, right so right there, defensive heavy team, they were able to score plenty.

Like I said, they had the offensive firepower.

But Greasy schemes on defense really proved something that the other teams couldn't compete with.

You know, just reminiscent, I bet you, with Greasy's philosophy of the strong defense and running the ball.

He would love to have the current Eagles roster to do that and imagine what he would do with that too.

So probably a lot.

He would love the offensive line for sure.

And defensive line.

Yeah, yeah, definitely a cool little parallel that we see, you know, so many years later on that.

So who do they play in this championship game in?

49.

So again from the 48 season, one of their only losses came to the Los Angeles Rams.

Now this year's championship game was in Los Angeles at the LA Coliseum, right?

Famous, big place for any sports.

But as we talked about, it was a real team atmosphere.

And the coach, Greasy Neil, was afraid to fly, right?

He was famously afraid to fly.

And the team ended up taking a train, all of them together because of that cross country.

So it was a three day excursion.

Not the most comfortable ride, not the most comfortable way to prepare for a championship game.

But they would stop every couple hours, get out, practice for a little bit, run around, do some exercise, get back on the train.

But of course Greasy Neal had his team ready to play as soon as they stepped off that train.

So they came to play in la.

Rainy day, right?

The weather was a factor again and the Eagles ended up winning 14 nothing.

It was the only, it still is the only back to back NFL championships that were by a shutout.

So 48 it was seven nothing and 49 it was 14 nothing.

It was the, the scoring came from Tommy Thompson pass to Pete Pios in the second quarter to make it seven nothing.

And then in the third quarter there was a block punt to kind of seal the game on the two yard line.

So it was Leo Clandy.

I'll let you pronounce it, Leo Squid.

Annie, you can edit that one.

But he blocked the kick and ran it back for the two yard touchdown to seal the the championship.

And again with the Eagles defense, just like in many games in the past few seasons and in the 48 championship, didn't let the Rams, you know, score, let alone, you know, move the ball up and down the field.

So the defense wins championships.

This is kind of where that saying comes from.

And yeah, again the Eagles were the only team to win two in a row, both by shutouts so far.

And you know, it really catapulted the Eagles again into popularity in the city, whereas before they were maybe the third or fourth most popular team in town.

I mean it's so fascinating because just your description of the train ride and getting off the stops and having a team prepared by the time they get there, I'm sure.

He probably just played that same thing and ended up, you know, the other team was scoreless, a high powered offense scoreless.

And the Cal under teams and they didn't score either that game, but you know, similar results and great defensive play and probably had the chalkboard on the train showing the guys just like he didn't, you know, 26 years or 27 years earlier in his career as a younger coach.

So very fascinating.

And I guess, you know, like we said about him earlier, if something's not broke, you know, don't try to fix it.

You know, his schemes definitely are winning and so is his process of taking a team out west.

Yep.

I mean, hall of Fame career, no doubt.

So, you know, no surprise.

And the longevity for greasy Neil.

So he's again, probably a whole podcast we could dedicate to him as well.

Or a book for that matter.

Yeah, yeah, most definitely.

I know, I know that process too.

So yeah, yeah, so great, great job on that.

You know, the history of this team and helping us to understand, you know, these back to back championships that with scoreless opponents in both of them, that's really a tremendous testament to these teams and definitely ones that we should be remembering here.

But you have your book that's going to be coming out.

We alluded to it earlier in the podcast about Frankfurt, a subject that you and I talked about a few years ago.

I want you to tell us a little bit about what you can.

I understand it's not out yet and, and we don't want to spoil too many things, but please promise me that you'll be on again once your book is out, getting a little bit more detail.

We want to wet the whistles a little bit of our listeners.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And yeah, be happy to come back.

But again, when we were doing the research for the Eagles book about five years ago, we just uncovered so much great information at the Frankfurt Historical Society that it kind of pulled us in the direction of putting this together in a book because there really wasn't one available.

Right.

You know, as, you know, with Greasy Neil or the Maroons, there's no one source to find that information.

Believe me, I looked to see if there was one on my research on Pottsville, and your name came up.

So there you go.

Yeah.

And I mean, they definitely cross over a lot.

And it's funny how the teams and history kind of come together with Pennsylvania and the blue laws and how teams would play both the Yellow Jackets and the Maroons on the weekend.

And, you know, their histories are really intertwined.

So we talk about that in the book, but, you know, we found so much great stuff that we were just kind of compelled to put it together in a book.

And, well, one, it was a lot more difficult than the Eagles book because as I mentioned before, Ray Dittinger, who's written an Eagles encyclopedia, kind of wrote the book on it.

Right.

There's so much information about the Eagles out there.

It was a lot of local papers in Frankfurt, a lot of conflicting information.

You know, games played one day, but then another place said the games were played another day.

Players played for multiple teams all the time, as you know, so just kind of piecing that together.

But so much so that we found so much information that we wanted to include all the rosters of all the Yellowjackets teams, all the schedules and results, players, coaches.

We had a lot of information and the book actually became a little bit too big to publish.

So what we had to decide to do is we're going to put a lot of that information online.

So we've been working with the folks at Pro Football Reference, We've shared some of our pre NFL stats with them, and they're putting some of them up online.

But we'll also have our website with kind of all the Yellow Jackets information where people can finally come and find, you know, one source for these player stories and stats.

And, you know, and we'll build upon it, too.

It's an evolving thing because we're always finding more bits and pieces of information or double checking, triple checking games and stats.

So that part's interesting.

You know, I never really thought that it would come to this, but it has, and it's great.

And we're excited to put it out there and excited for the Frankfurt Historical Society to kind of showcase some of these items and collections they have.

Because a lot of these photos that we're going to include in the book, you know, have never been seen or published before.

You know, we had to get them digitized for use.

So that was a great effort by the Historical Society.

And we're excited.

Part of the proceeds from the book are going to go to the Historical Society to kind of keep their collection going and the beautiful building they have up in Frankfurt.

So we're excited for when it comes out this fall, kind of to coincide for the football season.

Obviously, come back on the podcast, we'll do some events with the Historical Society.

You know, you had Frankfurt and New York Giants and Providence and Pottsville.

All these teams that are, you know, not too far away from each other geographically are dominating this professional league right out of the gate.

That's kind of a cool thing.

And how they all came in together and.

Or within a couple years of each other kind of.

Yeah, neat story there too.

No, it.

And.

And all the.

One of the most interesting things I found with our Eagles books were the stories of all the own owners.

The owners had just kind of crazy personalities and, you know, a lot of that led to them having to sell the team, which we have Jeff Lurie as the owner now the Eagles, and it's incredibly boring and also very successful.

So it's.

It's great to have him and that professionalism that.

That he brought to the team.

But the Yellow Jackets are interesting because they were community owned too, kind of like the Packers.

So in those early days when you had all these big city teams with their domineering owners and Hallis and Marshall.

Right.

And the Mares, you had these community teams that were really successful.

And the Frankfort Yellow Jackets, you know, were kind of as big as the packers were back in the day.

The packers are still around, of course, but the Yellow Jackets were right there with them all those years.

And in fact, the two teams played often on Thanksgiving, which was a football tradition here in Philly with high schools.

And Frankfurt wanted to kind of relive that and scheduled a game on Thursday in addition to their Saturday and Sunday games, which they played a lot of football in those few years.

That they were around.

That must have been an interesting game to watch when the packers and the Yellow Jackets played, because they weren't.

Their uniform colors were pretty similar and it's not like they had a lot of home and away jerseys back then.

They were wearing the same uniform.

So that had to be kind of an interesting thing for, especially for a quarterback if you're trying to throw a pass downfield.

There was all.

And they were all covered in mud, too, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Great.

Well, Brian, we really appreciate.

Great job on the recaps of these seasons.

Great job on preserving the history, not only with your earlier Eagles book, the Frankfurt book, and telling us about the Eagles in 48 and 49.

We really appreciate it and everything you're doing in the store too, with preserving these, your teams that we currently can watch, you know, baseball, football, basketball, but also these teams from their loss to memory for most of us.

And you're rekindling them by having them on a T shirt.

So that's great job.

Well, thank you, Darren.

It's always great to talk to you.

It's, you know, we don't get a lot of really big football history fans and, you know, you're one of the biggest ones out there, so it's always a great conversation.

Thank you.

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