July 18

Here is what happened on July 19 in Football History:
-Broadway Joe was forced to give up a business investment under League pressure.
-Raiders Legend Tim Brown hung it up.
-The Jets signed a soccer star.

We will provide you these with a little bit of football nostalgia. 

This daily football history segment features the great events, franchise formation anniversaries, and the 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.

• July 18, 1969 - NY Jets quarterback Joe Namath agrees to sell his share of Bachelors III, to stay in the NFL thus recinding his threat of retirement that was made earlier in the off season.  Namath and the AFL's Jets had recently won Super Bowl III by knocking off the NFL's Baltimore Colts. The two leagues had merged on June 8, 1966 but they still played seperate regular seasons until the 1970 season. There was still plenty tensions evident between the forces from each league in 1969. To NFL Commisioner Pete Rozelle's credit though the night club Bachelors III was apparently attracting some shady characters from the underworld, and Rozelle and the NFL wanted to distance themselves from the like as much as possible. They finally got Broadway Joe to see their wisdom and h begrudingly sold his stake in the club.
• July 18, 1994 - The New York Jets sign USA soccer goal keeper, Tony Meola to be their place kicker. The former Team USA goalie had just competed in the FIFA World Cup and he wanted to catch on in the US as a football player while many of his former USA teammates signed lucrative soccer contracts abroad. Unfortunately for Meola, the Jets had just recently signed a guy by the name of Nick Lowery. Lowery was at the time one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history but at 38 year old and the fact that a rules revision had moved the free kick line from the 35 yard line to the 30 it was thought that a strong legged soccer player like Meola may be able to play a part in the kicking game. Meola though had technique issues with kicking the unfamiliar more oval shaped football as opposed to the sphere shaped soccer ball he was trained to kick and the Jets and Meola parted ways after a short stint.
• July 18, 2005 - The great wide receiver Tim Brown retired from playing pro football. According to NFL.com Brown was a nine time Pro Bowl selection as well as a member of 1990's Hall of Fame All-Decade Team. He holds a few Raiders franchise records including 1070 receptions, receiving yards claiming 14,734 in his career there & 99 receiving touchdowns. These are all tops in Raiders history. The Notre Dame product and 1987 Heisman Trophy winner spent 16 seasons with the Raiders franchise as a player and one one final year with the Tampa Bay Bucs in 2004.
   

July 18, 1905 - George "Mike" Wilson was a halfback from LaFayette College during the 1926 thriugh the 1928 seasons who was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame in 1988 according to the National Football Foundation website. As a sophomore in the 1926 season, he began the year with a 69-yard run against Muhlenberg, scoring the first touchdown in Lafayette's new stadium. The story of Wilson's 1926 story openned with a bang and it also closed big when he finished with runs of 60 and 46 yards against Lehigh in the finale. Oh and what about the games in between, well he had a five-touchdown game in a 68-0 rout of Susquehanna and three-score contests against opponents Rutgers and Dickinson.  Wilson a powerful hallfback only had two years of football experience under his belt but ended up leading the nation in scoring that season, aided by 20 touchdowns,  as he and his Leopard teammates went unbeaten with a 9-0 recordand was named to the NEA (Newspaper Enterprise Association) All-America team.

Special thanks to the Pro Football Reference.