August 3

This edition discusses a big day in NFL exhibition history as the Bears, Packers, and Steelers provided their fan bases with some pre-season excitement. Some more recent news is from the XFL with a famous new owner. We will give you a little bit of football nostalgia. This daily football history segment features the significant events, franchise formation anniversaries, and birthdays of notable Hall of Fame players, coaches, or anyone else in our great game, as well as many more legendary stories of the Gridiron.

Steelers Use "Air-Laynes" for 43-16 Win

• That is our Newspapers.com Football History Headline of the day from the Pittsburgh Press from August 4, 1960 about an exhibition game played the day prior.  August 3, 1960 - The Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Toronto Argonauts of the CFL 43-16 in an exhibition game between the NFL and CFL at CNE Stadium in Toronto, Ontario. The Steelers used the wider Canadian field to showcase their big armed quarterback Bobby Layne and his quartet of talented wide outs in Buddy Dial, Preston Carpenter, Jimmy Orr and Jack McClairen to put on an ariel attack. In just one half of play Layne was 10 of 13 for 177 yards and two touchdowns. The Steel City team raced out to a 36-3 halftime lead playing under the Canadian rules and never looked back. The article goes on to say that Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney stated that he was particulary delighted with the CFL rule on punt coverage where defenders had to give the returner a 5 yard cushion to make a play on the ball thus eliminating a need for the fair catch in Canadian football. Rooney stated that this might be something the NFL may want to explore.

Champs and the All-Stars

• August 3, 1962- The 29th Annual Chicago Charities College All Stars game sees the Green Bay Packers routing the All Stars 42-20 before 65,000 at Soldier Field in Chicago. The MVP award, always given to the college player team, happened to be John Hadl the Kansas quarterback.
• August 3, 1970 - The NFL work stoppage ends as the Players Association and the NFL agree on a $19.1 Million deal.
• August 3, 1986 - The first ever NFL's American Bowl exhibition game takes place at London's Wembley Stadium as the Chicago Bears defeated the Dallas Cowboys 17-6.
• August 3, 2020- Duane "The Rock" Johnson with partners Dany Garcia and private investment firm RedBird Capital purchased the bankrupt XFL for the sum of $15 million from Alpha Entertainment LLC. The Johnson and Garcia entertainment multi-platform company Seven Bucks Companies plan on working hard to make the XFL entertaining for the fans. The creator of the restart XFL happened to be The Rock's former boss, Vince McMahon nad prior to that Duane J. played college football on the 1991 National Champion Miami Hurricanes. The ironic Hollywood twist to this tale is thatJohnson portrayed the acting role on the HBO show "Ballers" where his character was a retired NFL player that bought the KC Chiefs. Life truly does imitate art!

Exhibition games, work stoppages ended and remembering a few guys from the College Football Hall of Fame all in today's video!

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