Unveiling the 1944 NFL Championship Showdown

People didn't know what was going to be happening the next day.

They needed distractions that came from Hollywood and from sports.

And the National Football League had an excellent championship game.

Bob's up in just a moment to tell us all about it.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren 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.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And welcome to another edition of our championship series where we're covering the pre Super Bowl NFL championship games and boy, are we having a blast doing it.

Bob Swick of Gridiron Greats magazine is here to talk about tonight's championship and I'll let him introduce what's going on here.

Bob, welcome back to the Pig Pen, Darren.

Thanks for having me back.

Yeah, Bob, we had such a great time talking about the packers championship a few weeks ago and and we are excited to hear about this.

It's another packers championship and I'll let you tell us a little bit about it.

Basically the League has been pretty much upended.

We see two teams merged to try to maintain a single team and that is the Cardinals team and the Pittsburgh Steelers team which became card pit one of the teams of the of the league that that year and the town there was some talent in the NFL, but a lot of the guys were out because of the war.

They were drafted, so on and so forth.

So it's a very interesting time in sports history that a President Roosevelt allowed the league, major league baseball and NFL football and some college football to take place.

And especially with the NFL again, a short season, limited travel, he was in favor of it.

It was good for the morale of the country.

And the packers that year were an interesting team because there were a lot of guys that you really didn't know a lot about.

But there Were many returning veterans and stars that still continued to play.

In particular Don Hudson, who was at that time, I believe, 31 years old, going, winding down the end of his career.

They were still coached under Curly Lambeau and they also had Tony Cannandeo as their quarterback.

But that got all changed because after the third game of the season he was forced to join the military.

So he was replaced by a gentleman named Irv Comp C O M P and Irv basically was thrown into the lion's den and actually performed well for the team that season.

And he was under the guise of being trained and taught by Curly Lambo, which really helped his.

His playing and, and learning and about the position, so on and so forth.

The packers ended up eight and two and the two games they lost were shutouts.

One against the team they ended up playing in the championship game and that's the New York Football Giants.

And basically the rest is history because they lost to the giants, I believe, 24 to nothing, several weeks before the championship game.

And they came out and they ended up beating the Giants 14 to 7 in the championship game.

And it was a very, very close game, a very tight game.

And as such it was, you know, one of their.

What, what I've read about it and what I, what I, you know, can surmise that was their sixth championship at the time and it was one of the weakest teams that ever won a championship for them in that time frame.

Yeah, that is definitely, I mean, it's definitely a milestone, you know, no matter what the era is, because you had teams that were dominating in just the years past.

We've been studying this pretty close and the Chicago Bears are in like every championship game.

The previous four or five had some dominating seasons, even in the seasons that they lost, such as the 42 season, which we just talked about the last week, but you know, just to be able to compete and, and the packers were in it each year.

It's just the Bears were just, you know, annihilating people with this, you know, the T formation.

And they were the only ones running it for some time and had it perfected.

So everybody's starting to catch up to them.

You know, the, the Bears through attrition just like everybody else lost some players.

And so I think the more level playing grounds coming about.

But it's no small feat that the packers ended up going to the championship game and beating a team like you said, that just blank them a few weeks earlier in a game.

So usually that doesn't happen.

It's most People were probably thinking, oh, it's going to be more of the same in this championship game.

Right.

Like we talked a little bit about before we got started.

I would love to be a fly.

I would have loved to been a fly on the wall during that time frame, especially for football.

Because I'm wondering in a way, were the Giants overconfident going into that game knowing they had shut out the Packers a few weeks ago, and were they overconfident to say, okay, maybe, maybe this was going to work a lot better than if they were meeting, let's say, another team, if they were meeting the Bears again or whatever the case, whatever the team may have been.

So I thought it was interesting to see and reading some of the write ups about the game, how the packers came out and playing in New York at the time, really they had nothing to lose and they won.

That's the way I look at it.

I'm oversimplifying the game, but that to me, really, I think is how it played out.

Yeah, I, I think there's some interesting small little side stories going on going into this championship game.

If it would have been build up back then, like we build up the super bowl, the, the week, the two weeks leading up to this big game would have been definitely one of the big stories would be the Giants quarter starting quarterback.

And maybe you could tell us a little bit about that story.

Right?

I mean, Arnie Heberter was a phenomenal quarterback at the time.

He really, you know, was one of the best quarterbacks in the league at the time.

And I think that also played into the fact that the Giants were confident behind him at quarterback that they could end up winning the game.

And I, and I again, again going against the nerve comp who was, was not really a tested player but yet did win through the season.

It really added a lot of the, I think the belief that the Giants were going to win more, more than anything else.

Now it had to also play a role for strategy too, because, you know, Erber is very familiar with what Curly Lambeau wants to do with his offenses and how, how the packers are operating.

Most of the personnel Arnie played with, you know, for the last decade, you know, previous to this season.

So he knows the idiosyncrasies of the team and what's going to go on.

So that had to be an advantage for the Giants, one would think too.

Oh, most definitely.

And again, that is that whole, that whole area there that he actually understood a lot of their defenses that they were throwing at them and Basically, it's a question of you can't make any mental mistakes like that because even though, you know, the defense, there could be that slight change, that slight, you know, movement, whatever the case may be, and the defense reads what you're going to do and that's it.

And more so then because again, it's more of a running game, it's a minimal passing game.

And especially given, given that time frame as far as who was playing the, you know, the Giants, again, I thought were a much stronger team than the, than the packers and they should have won the game.

That's the way I look at them.

Yeah, especially, I mean, the Giants, not only they have Erber, but they still have Ward cup and Ken Strong and you know, they have some.

It's basically the Eastern all star team almost on the Giants squad that year.

And that's very true.

And again, the East Division to me was, was less strong than the Western Division.

The Western Division to me was stronger that year.

Again with the Bears, again with the Lions, you saw some strong teams and the packers out of, you know, basically out of the blue come out and can take the division that way.

So it's interesting to see that.

And again, it did add.

And again, I think Don Hudson was pretty much a key to that entire team.

He was the veteran.

He could, you know, bring the team together.

He, you know, they all played to win, but he was definitely, you know, wanting that, wanting to win again to prove that he could win again.

And this is also interesting because this was the last championship that Curly Lambeau won with the Green Bay Packers.

So that, that is, that is his last championship season that he had.

Packers pretty much went into almost an oblivion through the 50s, late 40s, early 50s, late 50s, until Lombardi took over.

So it was.

You had that whole.

Not in the 44 season, but as the years went on after the 44 season, that whole scenario started playing out where he wanted to change.

You know, he went on with the Cardinals, so on and so forth.

So I mean, you know, things were changing there at the same time.

And again, you're playing in the background of World War II, so there's a lot of stress in my opinion, with them, with guys, you know, not knowing, hey, I could be drafted tomorrow, this could be my last game I'm playing.

This could Be, you know, whatever type of thing.

Yeah.

And I mean, it's.

They don't know the outcome of the war either.

They don't know if they're gonna.

Exactly having to learn German, you know, a year from, from then or whatever, you know.

Right, right.

So it's really, you know, added a lot of stress to the entire, the entire game and the season.

It's interesting, the second loss they had, the first loss they had that year was against the Bears and they got shut out by the Bears, 21 to nothing.

So it was kind of interesting to see two teams that I thought would be in the championship, the Bears and the Giants, ends up being the packers and the Giants, teams that both shut out the Packers.

You know, there's, if there's irony, there's irony there.

I mean, that's the way, that's, that's the way you can look at it.

So.

Yeah, that's most definitely.

And you know, we've been talking a lot about, you know, the same four teams in the championship game for basically these last six or seven seasons that we've been covering this series.

You know, it's the packers and the Giants, or I'm sorry, the packers and the, the Bears over in the west, it's the Giants and the Redskins over in the east.

And maybe you get a Detroit pop up, maybe you get the, the Rams pop up.

And really nobody else has really given them much competition.

It's usually those four teams are representing in the championship game.

So kind of that's how powerful those teams were.

And again, for Green Bay to be that powerful as such a small team in a small town type of thing, they still represented small town football in the 40s, even though they were playing a few games in Milwaukee.

They were a small town team and small town football was pretty much starting to, you know, as you well know, started to collapse.

And we have more of the bigger city type football where they could draw, you know, in my opinion, better players, more players would be more apt.

Hey, I'll go to Chicago and play that.

You know, I can have a life there.

I'll go to New York City and play, you know, that type of thing.

Or I'll go to Boston or Detroit, so on and so forth.

So that plays into it at the same time.

So it's interesting to.

The season is very interesting.

And during the, during the season too, I'd like to add.

And the eagles pounded them 38 to 13 in the exhibition game.

But the interesting point, it was the first professional game ever played in Nashville, Tennessee.

No kidding?

Yeah, it was the first time ever.

I, I Were they.

They play it like Vanderbilt Stadium or.

I don't.

I.

It was actually.

I.

I don't know if I.

I don't remember off the top of my head, but it was in Nashville, and I believe it was like.

Like a regular park type of.

You know, regular park type of situation.

I don't think it was at one of the colleges, but it was.

It was a pretty big deal at the time for.

And they drew a lot of people.

And I think I'm wondering if they were testing the waters to see if they could go down south somewhat as far as plane, which would be a little better weather for them.

But again, then you had the problems with, you know, again, during war years, traveling, so on and so forth.

So the more limited they were, where they were traveling, the better off they would have been with regards to where the teams were and where they ended up.

Type of.

Type of situation.

You.

That may have.

Hold some water your theory on that.

Because I think they were also trying to figure out, okay, let's, you know, everything's up sort of in the north and the east coast, and there's nothing in the south, nothing out West.

And a lot of it's the travel restrictions.

You know, you wouldn't have passenger airplanes going.

You know, like we see today.

Stuff's just starting to come along, and it really got vamped up because of the war.

The technology that we got developed during the war, they took in the peacetime and brought into, you know, the modern civilians to have some luxuries in life.

Right.

So we see, you know, we see the moving out west a couple years from.

From this season and some things like that.

So that's got some interesting merit to it.

And again and again, the NFL did not want to expand to California because there was a big push for the Los Angeles Dons and the San Francisco team, which ultimately were the 49ers, and they were, you know, willing to, you know, fly.

Fly the teams out there, play two games there and then.

Then fly them back.

And they were pretty adamant against it.

All American football Conference, you know, which was a classic example of competition because they saw.

Archie Walt saw that there was a need, and he saw an expansion in football to the whole country, you know, just.

Just like what you just said, and more east coast, upper Midwest type of league rather than a True American League, where they covered the bulk of the country.

So that kind of tied into that at that time also.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about the details of the game.

You know, we know what the final score was, but how was the scoring in this game?

Well, it was pretty much a, you know, a dog fight more than anything else.

And as far as I could tell, and from what I read, and I just want to pull it up here if I can, the packers and the Giants looked very, very.

Oh, boy.

Trying to find it here.

But while you're looking that up, let me just bring up some things I've been watching sort of the attendance of these games.

So now we're.

Okay, this is the.

This is the 11th game, I believe, or I'm sorry, the 12th game in this championship series.

And it was bouncing around the mid-30s, down to the teens for, for much of the time.

So that's not too bad in the middle of December in New York City.

No, it wasn't.

And okay, I apologize because I had lost my place here.

Ted Fritch scored both of the team's touchdowns and basically they just ran the ball and the Giants was going to stop them more than anything else.

An interesting note, and I had this in my notes, the take for the game, the winners, the packers won fifteen hundred dollars apiece for the game, while the Giants picked up nine hundred dollars for the game.

But basically it was a ground game more than anything else.

It was.

It was just a grind out ground game Fridge.

The fallback for the packers, well suited for both good weather and poor weather running.

He was a very, very good fullback for the packers and he did end up scoring both.

Both touchdowns.

And again, I apologize here.

The.

I can.

You're looking for the.

The packers scored both touchdowns in the second quarter and then the Giants scored basically a meaningless touchdown in the fourth quarter when it was too late and they never came back.

So it was a 147 packers victory.

Not a lot of action in the game.

Like I said, it was a ground game more than anything else.

Just, you know, grind out, grinding out ground game.

One interesting tidbit of that.

Lambeau did not want his quarterback to throw much in that game because it was too big of a game for him as far as pressure was concerned.

And because of it, he stuck with the running game.

He knew Fritz could, you know, just bang it out and again bangs out three, four yards every run.

That's all you need.

You get a first down and then you start it all over again type of situation.

So it's, it's, that's smart coaching though.

When you have a young quarter, inexperienced quarterback and a big game, that's not, not a bad strategy at all.

And, and the one thing I didn't understand because the Giants were so powerful in the game, they beat the packers earlier in the season, 24 to nothing.

It's all, it's almost like the packers defense out of the blue became powerful and you know, really stopped everything that the Giants were going to do that game.

And again, they could have had a shutout in that game if the Giants.

Adam scored their, their simple touchdown in the fourth quarter there.

And that's it.

Yeah, sometimes maybe, you know, those, those playing that earlier games, you learn a little bit about your opponent and oh, most definitely, you know, they've learned what they wanted to run or how they were blocking and the players themselves or the coaching, you know, got a different strategy or techniques to, to oppose that and figured it out.

Exactly.

And, and I think in a small league like the NFL was at that time, you really know what everybody was doing there.

There really was not that much that you didn't see in a previous game.

And even by reading newspaper reports of the games, you know, don't, don't tell.

But I think they, they kind of knew each team knew what the other team was going to do.

So it was basically down to that 60 minutes on the gridiron whether or not they were going to, you know, be able to make their game plan work better than the other team's game plan.

I've always said that in early football, you know, that's what it really comes down to.

Yeah, there are breaks that happen in any game, but you did not have the micromanaged, micro coached game that you have today.

Back then, you know, there was playing going on, you improvised a little and so on.

And, and the game, the game had a flow to it, in other words, you know.

Right.

So today, which is, you know, just a hopscotch of, you know, a few plays here and there and that's it.

Like, like the old saying goes Though sometimes it's not the X's and the O's that wins the games, it's the Jimmy's and the Joes, so.

Exactly.

So maybe that's what happened in that.

You know, that's a great coverage of that game in the season.

We appreciate you doing that.

But you guys, you and Joe Squires, who's going to be our guest on the next episode of this championship series, we'll be talking about that game.

Um, you guys have a great podcast with Gridiron Greats magazine.

What do you guys have coming up that some listeners might be interested in hearing?

Well, we're working on a couple of what we call super collectors in our magazine.

We feature from time to time individuals that we call our super collector.

They have a collection that is just incredible to view, incredible to look at.

And we're going to have a guest on pretty soon, just trying to coordinate the time.

So he's going to be an upcoming guest on our program.

We're also working on a few other guests at this time.

Again, collector related more than anything else.

We.

On our podcast, we interview authors like yourself.

We interview.

We've actually had a former football player on, and we also look at more people who collect and, and who enjoy showing their collections to the public and talk about it.

We'd like to learn about the history and the memorability of the game.

And we do it through the collecting aspect of them.

So it's something that we, we enjoy.

And we've had the.

We've had the podcast for many years now.

I didn't realize we've.

We had been doing it for over, I believe now, almost 15 years.

Wow.

It's.

We went through a couple networks.

We're on the Sports History Network now also.

And that, that, that's really helped us a lot.

We got a lot more people listening and viewing it, and we went to a format like this, so we were on a video.

So it's nice to actually see the collections, the memorabilia in person, let's say.

And that really adds to the story.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I can't wait to hear the.

The gentleman's coming on the super collector with the Sunoco stamps.

I, I can remember those Sunoco Stamps.

Because in the town I lived in, where I grew up, we had two gas stations right across the street from each other, okay.

We had an Arco and a Sunoco.

Okay?

So.

But they, they had these gas stations.

They gave away things all the time.

And the kids sort of influenced, at least in my family, you know, my brother and I, we influenced my dad where he would get his gas with them.

And.

But Arco was giving away, like, Noah's ark, little plastic animals, and Sunoco is giving away those stamps.

And when you're, you know, I'm like five or six at the time, I'm thinking, okay, what am I going to do with a damn stamp?

You know, I want the.

The animal.

I can go home and play with the animal.

You know, what a fool I am.

Now I look back at that.

But.

Well, it was an interesting promotion because you got a little packet of nine stamps and you could send away for an album, and you get.

Get the album and put your stickers on the album.

And over the years, I've.

I've owned several of the albums with stamps, without stamps, so on and so forth.

But it's actually the largest collection of football players stamps, cards at that time.

624 different players.

Wow.

And stamps were found in that.

In that album.

So it was an amazing.

So, God, I'm trying to do the math.

That had to be, like, almost every player.

Indiana.

It basically was.

I mean, it really was.

And they.

And they came out with an updated series toward the end of the season, which is where it was much more rare than the regular stamps that were issued.

And those updated stamps basically brought.

If there were signings during the season or whatever, they brought in new players.

So it was.

It was very interesting.

Very, very interesting set of stamps.

I call them stamp cards, but they are actual, you know, paper stamps that you would put in the album.

And the album was very educational, too.

It explained about, you know, the teams, the league, so on and so forth.

So it was a great promotion at that time.

You know, it's so sad that there's just so few promotions, giveaways, cards and cereal boxes or whatever.

They're just all gone now, you know what I mean?

You know, you won't go to a gas station today, I'm sure, and, you know, be handed a card or picture of a player or anything like that, you know.

Well, now you don't even see people.

Most go to gas station, look at a screen.

Everything's digital now, so.

Yeah, yeah, but.

Well, you can't even go to a ball game and get a paper ticket anymore.

It's all digital.

That's.

That's crazy.

Even my local high school games, you can't do that anymore.

Covid sort of really turned the tide on that.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's, it's sad to see because that, that's a big part of our history of the sport.

Just look at the history of that.

That.

That survived the war.

It survived all the paper drives at that time during the war.

And you know, can you imagine that being that person sitting in that stand in that ticket, you know, what was going on in their mind, what their.

Their situation was, so on and so forth.

Was it a military person on leave who got.

Got to see a game, so on and so forth.

I know my father, the few times he was on leave, he went to and came back to Connecticut, he went to the yellow bowl, and he was, he was granted a seat based on his uniform.

They let all military active duty military men go see the games.

So he went in.

I know he went into a couple of games and saw, you know, football, you know, very interesting.

You know, how many other teams throughout the country and stadiums, both baseball and football, did that?

It's fascinating to me.

Yeah, it definitely is.

It's a, It's a great era.

It's a great era of, you know, saving all these collectibles like you, yourself and a lot of our friends are doing and preserving the game through that way because it was such an interesting part of it.

It really tells the story of these players behind the scenes.

Not so much.

We can't.

We can't watch them all on film.

You know, there are some games on film.

It's not like today where you can turn on NFL Network and see every single play and when they blew their nose on the sideline, too.

But, but it's a great way for us to appreciate what these men did.

Back in that era and another big part of that time frame.

There were a lot of military service teams that actually printed programs of the games between the different military service teams.

And there are some star players that played on those teams, baseball players playing football, so on and so forth, Football players playing.

So it was a pretty fascinating time in our football history, to say the least with that.

And again, that's Another source of collecting the military programs between the service teams.

And a lot of those programs are very difficult to find because, you know, they probably didn't print a lot and a lot of them were never saved one way or the other.

So.

Yeah, good point, Good point.

Well, it sounds like some.

Some great episodes coming up and some.

Some great articles in the magazine to.

To read.

I can't wait to get my copy.

And why don't you tell folks, you know, first of all, where they can get a subscription to Gridiron Grace magazine and what days they can find you on your podcast.

Sure.

Magazine.

Just go to our website, gridirongreatsmagazine.com we have all the information for back issues and for subscribing.

And you'll see the link right on that for our podcast.

Or just go on to Sports History Network and you'll see our logo there.

And click that on.

You'll see all the podcasts that we've had up to this point.

And again, we, we.

We don't have a set schedule as far as our podcast, but we try to do at least two a month and, and interview people and publish it.

All right, very good, Bob.

We appreciate you coming on here and sharing this history.

One more, one thing.

Oh, yeah, please do.

Memorabilia, which I have none.

Oh, yeah, this was from Champion Cards.

It was a series that they made of Packer cards.

Looks almost like a Christmas card.

They got the.

I can't tell if that's snow on the ground, but the tree leaves off and pine trees in the background.

It was apparently a camp photo because I don't think they were able to play at their.

Have a.

Like a preseason at their normal location.

So I got a feeling that they were on a.

On a lake somewhere and right outside of Green Bay there or door Lake county there.

And they probably played at a cabin over there and got.

Got ready there and then came into town and started to play.

Have a few beers and then wouldn't play the football game it was back then.

All right, Bob, we appreciate you coming on, sharing about this great history of the packers in a 44 NFL season and sharing what you got going on in life and love to have you on again sometime and appreciate you.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for having me.

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