June 23

Here is is what happened in football on June 23: Bronko Nagurski wins the Heavy Weight Wrestling Title; Amos Alonzo Stagg stood tall on the mound: and the West Coast "L.T." has a birthday to celebrate. We will provide you with a little bit of football nostalgia. This daily football history segment features the Great events, Franchise formation anniversaries as well as the birthdays of notable Hall of Fame players, coaches or anyone else in our great game and many more  Legendary stories of the Gridiron.

The picture in the banner above is from the US Library of Congress' collection and was contributed by photographer Stanley Kubrick circa 1949 and is titled " Wrestling in Chicago."

June 23, 1888 - Yale faced Harvard for a share of the league baseball championship with future legendary gridiron coach Amos Alonzo Stagg on the mound according to an excerpt in Jennifer Taylor Hall's; Amos Alonzo Stagg: College Football's Man in Motion. The athletic Stagg was quite the covetted pitcher in college even attracting attention from multiple professional organizations of the era. The Yale squad won the game 8-0 behind the arm of Football's Grand Old Man!

Our Newspapers.com Football History Headline of the Day comes from the June 24, 1939 edition of the Santa Rosa Republican in Santa Rosa, California when they printed the headline of:

Bronko Nagurski former Grid Star wins from Thesz

The article underneath it tells of the June 23, 1939 bout where future Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinee, Bronko Nagurski defeated Lou Thesz in Houston, Texas to become The National Wrestling Association's World Heavy Weight Champion. The piece tells how Nagurski scored the first fall via an airplane spin and subsequent drop kick in the wrestling ring, a move he took from his football training. Later Bronko is reported to have used a reverse slam and a series of "flying mares" to over come Thesz and pin him to take the title. Nagurski was later during World War II coerced to come out of retirement and rejoin the Chicago Bears when there was player shortages on the pro gridiron. He even helped lead the Bears to an NFL title in a triuphant return. Bronko Nagurski is not only in the College and Pro Football Hall of Fames but is in the Wrestling Hall of Fame as well.

If you want to be able to be able to read through some old articles like The Santa Rosa Republican, you need to check out Newspapers.com. At Newspapers.com, you can get access to over 640 million pages’ worth of news from the US, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland and more dating back from 1798 to yesterday.  Get a free one week subscription to Newspapers.com by visiting SportsHistoryNetwork.com/newspapers. And with a paid subscription, you’ll also be helping to support the production of this and other Sports History Network shows. 

WLAF  World Bowl 4

June 23, 1996 - The World League of American Football's World Bowl 4 was played at Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, Scotland. The outcome of the game found the Scottish Claymores garnering the title by defeating the Frankfurt Galaxy, 32-27 in a thriller. According to the WorldLeagueofAmericanFootball.com, the Scottish team was a worst to first champion going 7-3 in their championship season after have a dismal 2-8 record at the end of the 1995 season. In the 1996 World Bowl, the Claymores wide receiver Yo Murphy was voted MVP for his 163 receiving yards and 3 touchdowns. 38,982 fans were in attendance that day, the highest in Claymores history and the largest crowd ever assembled for an American football game in Scotland.

• June 23, 1883 - Louisa County, Virginia - Virginia Tech and North Carolina halfback that played college football from 1900 to 1905, Hunter Carpenter was born. The FootballFoundation.org says that Hunter played for a different coach in each of his six seasons, as he played for Virginia Tech from 1900 through 1903, started at North Carolina in 1904, and came back to Tech in 1905. In that final year he played, Carpenter was named team captain. VT had one of their top seasons ever as they knocked off Army, North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina, and lost only to Navy 12-6. That 1905 season Tech outscored its opponents 305-24, and Carpenter scored 82 points. In five seasons at Virginia Tech he scored 233 points. The National Football Foundation selected for entrance into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1957.  
• June 23, 1950 - Lafayette, Alabama - Dave Butz who was a Purdue Boilermaker defensive tackle from 1970 to 1972 arrived into the world. According to the NFF Butz won acclaim as a Consensus First-Team All-American as a senior in 1972, he took home the Zipp Award as college football’s most outstanding player, and Dave was also named a finalist for the Lombardi Award. The senior team captain participated in the East-West Shrine Game and the Senior Bowl, where he was named Defensive MVP. Dave Butz received the great honor of being selected for inclusion into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2014. After school ended he was drafted fifth overall in the 1973 NFL Draft by the St. Louis Cardinals, Butz played 14 of his 16 seasons with the Washington Redskins, leading them to victories in Super Bowls XVII and XXII. The NFL’s “ironman,” he missed only four games his entire career. He retired in 1989 having played in more games than any other Redskin in team history.  
• June 23, 1979 - Rosebud, Texas - LaDainian Tomlinson the premier Texas Christian University running back from 1997 through the 2000 season was born. The College Football Hall of Fame proudly placed a display in honor of LaDainian Tomlinson into their legendary museum in 2014. This five-time Pro Bowl selection and four-time All-Pro selection, was also named the Walter Payton Man of the Year in 2006.