January 10, 1953 - Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum - The third NFL Pro Bowl was played. What a top notch group of players were on the field for this one! The list of quarterbacks alone per the Pro-Football-Reference website will give you goosebumps! Y.A. Tittle, Norm Van Brocklin, Bobby Layne and Otto Graham. In the backfield were names like Frank Gifford and Doak Walker on defense greats like Ernie Stautner, Chuck Bednarik and so many more! The National Conference defeated the American Conference by the score of 27-7. The game’s Most Valuable Player was Don Doll, the defensive back from the Detroit Lions.
January 10, 1965 - Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum - The 1964 NFL Pro Bowl game was played. The Eastern Conference was coached by Don Shula then of the Baltimore Colts and he matched wits with the head coach from the Cleveland Browns, Brant Collier who would mastermind the strategies of the Western Conference. According to the website sportshistorycollectibles.com, The West more than double the offensive production of the East 411 yards to 187. It was no wonder then that the Western Conference defeated their Eastern counterparts 34-14. The MVPs of the game were Quarterback Fran Tarkenton of the Minnesota Vikings and Defensive back Terry Barr, of the Detroit Lions.
January 10, 1982 - Candlestick Park, San Francisco - The NFC Championship Game where with :58 second remaining Joe Montana threw a miraculous pass to the back of the end zone and Dwight Clark lept to grab it, cementing "the Catch" as one of the top plays in NFL history.
January 10, 1982 - Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati - The San Diego Chargers had to put on their parkas and travel to chilly Cincinnati to play the Bengals in the AFC Championship Game. We found a great story on this game on FullPressCoverage.com where they tell that game time temperatures were 9 degrees below 0 on the fahrenheit thermometers! With a constant 27 MPH wind the wind chills were recorded at -59°F! If you remember back to our December 31 post we said that the 1967 NFC Championship game fondly remembered as the Ice Bowl had a temperature of -13°F and that was the coldest NFL game ever played, that game did not have the windchill factor that the Freezer Bowl did though. So windchill-wise the Freezer Bowl in the coldest NFL game on record. The Chargers coming from Southern California were not used to the cold and it froze their “Air Coryell” offense. The Bengals had a secret weapon, their head coach, Forrest Gregg was a hall of Fame tackle that played on that Green Bay squad that had won the Ice Bowl some decade and a half earlier. The Cincinnati Bengals had a true homefield advantage in this one as they cruised past the San Diego Chargers, 27-7.
January 10, 1990 - NCAA approves random drug testing for college football players
January 10, 1996 - The Miami Dolphins franchise announced that they hired a new head coach, former Dallas Cowboys Jimmy Johnson would be their next on field leader. Johnson who had big shoes in Big D by winning two Super Bowls with the “Boys” was filling some even bigger shoes of the now retired Don Shula, who spent 26 seasons as the Miami field boss. We discussed Shula’s legacy and his retirement in the January 5 post.
January 10, 2011 - University of Phoenix Stadium - The 13th BCS National Championship pitted the nation’s top division 1 College teams of Auburn and Oregon against each other for all the marbles. ESPN.com has the story of how Michael Dyer of Alabama had a run a a few yards where he then was spun down by a would be tackler. Everyone on the field stopped, including Dyer for a moment but then after hearing his sideline yelling to keep going he completed a 37 yard run to drive the ball deep into Oregon territory with about two minutes left to play. Michael had landed on top of the tackler for a moment but his body never hit the ground and he sprung back up so quickly that his progress was not judged to be stopped. The Tiger methodically inched the ball closer and milked the clock. Finally Dyer took off on another run burst to get the ball to the Duck one yardline. That is when kicker Wes Byrum nailed the nineteen yard field goal to break the tie and give Auburn the national title. #1 Auburn outlasted #2 Oregon, 22-19.
January 10, 2022 - The 2022 College Football Playoff National Championship was a college football bowl game played on January 10, 2022, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. In the contest the number 3 ranked Georgia Bulldogs faced their longtime rival the Crimson Tide of Alabama who were the top team in the land. The Bulldogs scored 20 4th quarter points, including a 79 pick six to cap the triumph 33-18. and become the 2021's season National Champs.
