June 5

In this episode we discuss the creation of a new officiating position, a star of the gridiron loses his title in the ring and the advent of sports TV with a little bit of an issue.  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 the Bain News Service circa 1915 and is titled " Otis Love Guernsey, football player and "squash tennis" player at Yale University ."

June 5, 1887- Walter Camp suggested a rule change at a Rules Convetion meeting that the 2nd Referee on the field (who was charged with the ball) should be called the Umpire. Camp also put in place a method for rules revisions to be requested and revised using a graduate committee that had representation from each member school as well as the team captains.

The Newspaper.com Football History headline is from the St. Louis Star and Times on June 6, 1941 where they had the headline of,

Bronko Nagurski Disqualified in Ring Bout

June 5, 1941- Sandor Szabo becomes the Wrestling Champion after defeating former champ and Pro Football Hall of Fame player Bronko Nagurski. Nagurski is also recognized as a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and held the wrestling title multiple times in his second sport. The article says that the referee in the match had warned Nagurski multiple times of illegal tactics of grasping a hold of the ropes and then butting Szabo. The disqualification ended the fight and handed the title to Szabo. Bronko is of course a very colorful player in gridiron history, starring for the Chicago Bears.

June 5, 1952- The first national televised sporting event in the U.S. occurred when the Jersey Joe Walcott versus Ezzard Charles title boxing match aired. It wouldn't be long until football was broadcast nationally as well. Local broadcasts had first taken place in 1939. Sept 30, 1939 was college's first locally televised game between Fordham and Waynesburg and the NFL local debut to TV was in the NYC area on October 22, 1939 in a game that saw the Brooklyn Dodgers face the Philadelphia Eagles. The broadcast of the title fight though did not go off without a hitch. The Morning News of Wilmington, Delaware ran an article on their June 6, 1952 edition that said, Walcott Charles Bout TV Fails at Decision Time. Apparently the broadcast was darn near perfect through the 15 rounds of the fight but then just as the decision was to be announced veiwers were cut off from what NBC later described as the television mobile unit losing power. Can you say Heidi Game! 

If you want to be able to be able to read through some old articles like The St. Louis Star and Times, 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. 

June 5, 1920 - Marion Motley is a Pro Football Hall of Fame fullback and linebacker that played professionally for the Cleveland Browns.  Motley was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968.

June 5, 1925 - Art Donovan Jr. is a Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive tackle that played professionally for the Baltimore Colts, New York Yanks and the Dallas Texans during his great career was born. 

June 5, 1976 - Gibonsville, North Carolina - Torry Holt is well remembered as the great St. Louis Rams WR that caught passes from Kurt Warner as part of the Greatest Show on Turf. Mr Holt also excelled as a receiver in college at North Carolina State University. His collegiate accolades are well remembered in the College Hall of Fame after he was induced in 2019. The website Holt Brothers.com shares with us that during his senior year at NC State, Torry was a first-team All-American and was named ACC Offensive Player of the Year. He had 88 receptions for 1,604 yards, and a record number of touchdowns for NC State with 16. During his junior year, he set Wolfpack season records with 62 receptions for 1,099 yards, becoming the first player in team history to gain more than 1,000 yards in a season. Torry was the sixth overall pick in the 1999 NFL Draft by the Rams and was an integral piece of thier prolific offense. And what did Holt do in the NFL well for starters he is the only receiver in NFL history to record 1,300 or more yards in six consecutive seasons. The NFL.com tells us that Torry had 13382 yards receiving and 74 touchdowns during his time in the NFL with both the Rams and the Jacksonville Jaguars.