Football History

Donnie Shell wasn't your average safety. He wasn't just a ballhawk lurking in the secondary; he was a force to be reckoned with, a dominant tackler who redefined the strong safety position. This essay explores Shell's remarkable career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, highlighting his defensive prowess, championship runs, and the legacy he leaves behind.

From Special Teams to Starting Safety

Shell's journey began as a seventh-round draft pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1979. Initially contributing primarily on special teams, he patiently honed his skills. His dedication and talent were recognized in 1977 when he replaced Pro Bowler Glen Edwards as the starting strong safety. This transition marked the beginning of a legendary career.

A Pillar of the Steel Curtain Defense

Shell's arrival coincided with the peak years of the Steelers' famed "Steel Curtain" defense. He became a vital cog in this dominant unit, known for its intimidating physicality and ability to shut down opposing offenses. Shell thrived within this system, showcasing his exceptional range, tackling ability, and knack for interceptions. His presence in the secondary allowed linebackers like Jack Lambert and Jack Ham to roam freely, disrupting plays and shutting down running lanes.

Interception Machine and Tackling Force

Shell's impact went beyond shutting down passing lanes. He established himself as a ball-hawking safety, leading or co-leading the Steelers in interceptions five out of seven years. His career-best of seven interceptions came in 1984, a testament to his ability to read quarterbacks and create turnovers. But Shell wasn't just about takeaways. He was a punishing tackler, leading the team in tackles in both 1982 and 1984 and serving as a physical presence against the run.

Bio and Legacy

Born August 26, 1952 in Whitmire, SC was Safety Donnie Shell. The undrafted free Agent from South Carolina State was a strong safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League (NFL) between 1974 and 1987. Shell was a member of the Steelers famed Steel Curtain defense in the 1970s.

Shell retired as the NFL strong safety career leader in interceptions with 51. He started 11 consecutive seasons for the Steelers and was selected to the Steelers All-Time Team, the College Football Hall of Fame, the Pro Football Hall of Fame (Class of 2020), and to the NFL Silver Anniversary Super Bowl Team.

Born December 25, 1946, in Stow, Ohio, Larry Csonka, the tough running back from Syracuse, was born. According to the NFF website, Csonka claimed he never lifted traditional gym weights to get in shape but garnered his physical fitness by working on the family farm.

Zonk was in the top twenty of the nation’s leading rushers in three straight years from 1965 through 1967, and in ‘67, he earned a unanimous All-America status. In fact, Csonka broke many Orange records by great rushers like Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Floyd Little, and Jim Nance.

Larry pulverized defensive lines, registering 14 collegiate 100-yard games in his career with a 4.9-yard average carry. The College Football Hall of Fame welcomed hard-nosed runner Larry Csonka into their membership in 1989.

In eleven NFL seasons had over 8000 yards rushing and a 4.3-yard average per carry. Larry Csonka ran his way into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987. After school, Larry was the first pick in the 1968 NFL Draft by the Miami Dolphins. He played in 5 Pro Bowls and was the MVP of Super Bowl VIII. He played 12 seasons of professional football with the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants in the NFL and the 1975 season in the WFL.

Larry Csonka has a website where he shares some awesome things from his past, present, and future.

Born July 26, 1920, in Elmira, New York, Bob Waterfield, Pro Football Hall of Fame, enshrined QB of the Rams franchise both in Cleveland and Los Angeles. He was important enough to the Rams franchise that his number 7 jersey was retired by the organization.

The former UCLA Bruin's signal caller briefly interrupted his college career when the U.S. Army called him into service during WWII. His football prowess was legendary, and so was his off-field life as he married actress Jane Russell just before serving in the Army and playing for Fort Bennings 176th Infantry football team.

After this service in the war, Mr. Waterfield returned to the Bruins in an honorable discharge due to a knee injury and played in the 1944 season for UCLA. He was drafted as the 42nd pick in the 1945 NFL draft by the Cleveland Rams, and as a rookie, won the starting job, led the team to a 9-1 record and the NFL Championship in an exciting 15-14 victory over the Washington Redskins!

Jay Berwanger carved a unique path in football history, becoming the first recipient of the Heisman Trophy and a symbol of the sport's early rise in popularity. Here's a look at his career:

-College Domination: Berwanger starred as a halfback for the University of Chicago's "Maroons" in the 1930s. He earned All-America honors twice and was known as a "one-man team" due to his versatility, excelling in passing, running, punting, and even calling plays.

-The Birth of the Heisman: In 1935, Berwanger received the first Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, later renamed the Heisman Trophy. This award, initially given to the "most valuable player east of the Mississippi," recognized his exceptional college performance.

-NFL Draft Pioneer: In 1936, the fledgling National Football League held its first-ever draft, and Berwanger became the very first player selected. However, a salary dispute led him to decline the offer and pursue a career in the Olympics (though he didn't make the track team).

-Legacy: Despite not playing professionally, Berwanger's Heisman win and status as the first draft pick solidified his place in football history. He later became a successful businessman and a referee.

Dr. Tony Collins Is one of the most revered experts and historians in the disciplines of football globally, especially in the different types of Rugby Football. We had the honor of having a discussion with Tony along with one of America's foremost experts on the early origins of our brand of football in North America, Timoty P. Brown of Football Archaeology. Tony sheds light on so many items in the relationship and shared history of these football games and what each has given to the other.

Transcript of the Discussion between Tony Collins, Timothy Brown, and Darin Hayes

Darin Hayes
Welcome to a special edition of The Pigpen, where we will discuss the great history of football, not just American football. We'll go back much further than that. To help me along the way, we've got a couple of guests. I think possibly this first one—we can't even give them the title of guests anymore—Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Timothy Brown
Thanks, Darin. Glad to be back here and especially looking forward to this conversation.

Darin Hayes
Tim, you approached me a few weeks ago and said you had contact with someone very special, an expert in football history who is slightly different from what we normally talk about. Maybe you could give us a brief synopsis of that.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, so, you know, as if, you know, those who read my blog regularly know that I've been doing a series on the original rules of football. So, from 1876, the original rules of gridiron football. And in doing that, you know, football was Rugby at that point. And so, I am trying to get a better understanding of Rugby. I had been doing additional research and came across Tony Collins, now Professor emeritus, in the UK at a university. He's, you know, Tony, you'll be able to tell us otherwise, but I think you're kind of the foremost authority globally on the origins of these various games we call football. And so anyways, because I'd come across some of this information, we eventually, you know, I eventually, or we kind of reached out to each other connected and had a conversation and just thought it'd be great to have Tony on here with you and let your guests kind of get a different flavor of the games that we love across the world.

Darin Hayes
The listeners, we are in for a real treat today because, as Tim said, Tony is an expert, but just listen to his bio line. Now, he is from the UK. He's a social historian specializing in the history of sports. Professor Collins is well-accredited as a Meritus Professor of History at De Montfort University, a research fellow at the Institute of Sports Humanities, and, in 2018, a visiting professor at Beijing Sports University. In 2020, Dr. Collins had his works come out and do some great things. In 1999, he had his first book, Rugby's Great Split, which won the Aberdare Prize for Sports History Book of the Year. He followed that up with some other prestigious books that won that same prestigious award: A Rugby League in the 20th Century Britain in 2007, A Social History of English Rugby Union in 2010, The Oval World, A Global History of Rugby in 2016, and A Social History of English Rugby Union was also the winner of the 2015 World in Union Award for the Best Academic Book on Rugby Union. To his credit, his other works are Sport and Capitalist Society in 2013 and How Football Began, How the World's Football Codes Were Born 2018. Tony Collins, welcome to the Big Ben.

Dr. Tony Collins
Well, thanks for having me on. It's an honor to be here. I only hope I can live up to your billing, which is fantastic. So, thanks very much. I am also listening to the podcast and an avid reader of Tim's blog, so it's great to be here.

Darin Hayes
Well, I think we both speak for Tim. We both thank you for that. It's quite an honor to have you on here and to have you look at some of our work, too. So Tony, maybe you could just give us a real brief. You know, we saw all your accreditations in your books. How did you get to this point where you were such an expert on Rugby?

Dr. Tony Collins
Well, I guess, like most people, this has two aspects. So I was born, bred, and raised in a northern England port city called Hull, one of the few cities in the north of England where the major sport is rugby league football, which was the breakaway from rugby union. So, I kind of grew up involved in the culture and the heritage of rugby league from a very early age. I think possibly you guys as well. My father took me to matches; his father took him. So there's a long tradition there. So I was very interested in why this was so important to us. But also, when I went to university, one of the things that interested me very much was the social history of Britain and the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And that's precisely when all the different football codes started and became popular. So, I've been very lucky that I've been able to combine my interest in sports alongside a kind of scholarly academic interest in social history. I've kind of been lucky to be able to combine those two things.

Darin Hayes
Did you play the game when you were younger?

Dr. Tony Collins
well, very badly, which is why I became a historian. Yeah, but I'd say sports on the field was never. I discovered it very quickly, and it was not my strong point, so I guess sports off the field became a substitute for that. But no, I mean, I'm also involved in the heritage of Ruby Lakes. I've worked a lot with the Ruby League authorities and clubs on the heritage of game-organizing exhibitions and things like that. So I'm still involved in the sport's everyday life.

Darin Hayes
Okay. Now, I think I'm going to represent in this conversation. I'm unsure if Tim and I can be an equal representation, but we are the common American lovers of football and football history. And to tell you the truth, I know very little about the rugby game. I've seen a few games played. I don't know that I understand it. Uh, I'm not sure I, you know, I know a brief history of it. And so, as a representative of my fellow, common or here in America, not knowing the sport, maybe you could just give us a brief history of Rugby.

Dr. Tony Collins
Well, like all the different games that became modern football games, its roots are in this kind of pre-industrial society before people lived in towns and working factories and lived on the land. Many football-style games were played where the ball was kicked past and thrown to reach a goal, which is the basis of all the football games we know today. Rugby itself emerged, as the name implies, from an elite private school in the English Midlands, Rugby School in the town of Rugby. And it's... Rugby schools in the 1820s, 30s, and 40s became a kind of flagship of the British elite private school system. And one of the things that made it that was the importance that it placed on sport, both football in the winter and cricket in... It was another sport we won't get time to get into, which we won't get into now. In, you know, cricket was the summer game, Rugby was that Rugby and football was the winter game. One of the interesting things that happened was that it gave Rugby a massive advantage over the other football games played at other elite schools. So, all the elite English schools had their version of football. Some listeners may have heard of places and elite institutions like Eaton and Harrow. They also had their versions of football. But Rugby became popular beyond its school because of the popularity of a book called Tom Brown School Days, which you may have heard of. It came out in 1857 and was a massive, massive bestseller. A kind of the equivalent of Harry Potter, but without the magic. A football match played under rugby rules was at the core of Tom Brown School Days. And the popularity of the book meant that you know, people, not just in Britain, but people in the English-speaking world, decided that, you know, rugby football was an important part of a young man's education. So the game had a kind of moral importance, not just a... It wasn't just a recreation or an entertainment. So I had this moral, educative importance. And that meant that other schools took it up and also that, you know, people in the general public read the book and wanted to play the game. And, you know, that's also the case in the States. I mean, Tom Brown's School Days sold something like a quarter of a million copies in the States, and perhaps most famously, Teddy Roosevelt said that this is one of two books that every red-blooded American boy should read. So the game became popular on the back of Tom Brown School Days. And that led to the basis for its spread around the English-speaking world.

Darin Hayes
Okay, that clears it up, and that's probably, like you say, how it came across the pond here and over to the States. Now, Tim, I know you have a series of questions that you'd like to talk to and ask Tony about, you know, taking it up from that point where Rugby is in the States and, you know, sort of the transformation into what we know is the game of American football.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, and I guess I'd like to back it up just a bit because that is one thing I think about. So I've read, you know, Tony's book, how football began. And for me, the fascinating thing about it is that there was a stew of different folk games that, over time, some of them became more formalized, like Rugby, you know, developed established rules in the association game. So, just wondering if, you know, Tony, if you could talk a little bit about kind of what that looked like in England, this, you know, mishmash or stew of games, and then how it starts diverting or diverging into some of the different football codes that we know today.

Dr. Tony Collins
Sure, yeah. Well, there are two aspects to it. First, as I've just mentioned, the elite private schools in England each had their code of football rules, but there were also regional variations. So there were games of football played with widely varying rules, most of which resemble Rugby in the handling as well, and kicking of the ball was allowed. But it wasn't until the early 1860s when groups of young, well-to-do professional men who had left private school decided to continue playing football as adults and started to form their clothes. Still, one of their problems was that they'd all been to different schools, and they couldn't play; they didn't have a common set of rules by which to play the game. So they'd have this very unacceptable situation where the home team always played under its rules whenever a match was played, which meant that the home team won every time. So it's not very interesting for the players. So, in 1863, a meeting was called in London to try and form an organization that would come up with one set of rules that would unite all the different football clubs and schools to play the game under one set of rules, which led to the formation of the Football Association. However, it wasn't successful, and there was lots of infighting, politicking, and rivalry. The Football Association was founded in 1863, but several clubs were involved in the discussions which preferred a more handling code of football and left the Football Association eventually, in 1871, they formed the Rugby Football Union, which was the game that organized the clubs who based their rules on the rules of rugby school. So, those two organizations really set the agenda for the consolidation and codification of the two different sets of rules. One of the big things that helped soccer under the Football Association was the fact that the Football Association started a national knockout cup competition in 1871, the FA Cup, which soon became very popular and had great prestige. That meant that if you wanted to enter the cup and stand a chance of winning, you had to understand their rules and play them to a high standard. So, that started a differentiation between the two codes, meaning that clubs had to pick one side. You couldn't play both codes and expect to be successful in them. So, the consolidation of both codes was based on the need for competition with other clubs on a serious and well-regulated basis.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, interesting. So while that was going on in the UK, over here on the western side of the water, both in Canada and the US, the same kind of situation, elite young men were playing local codes. But then they started adopting both soccer rules and rugby rules. My understanding is that I probably get most listeners to know that we picked up Rugby through McGill University. And I think the first rugby game in Canada was British soldiers stationed there, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, that's right. I think in the 1860s, perhaps, but clubs were certainly being formed in Canada in the 1860s. Canada had a much closer link at that point. It's still part of the British Empire with the British. So, more football information flowed between the two countries than might have been between the States and Britain.

Timothy Brown
Yeah. And then, so then we end up with a, you know, kind of a mirror situation where we've got local, you know, basically to play one another, you know, you had to come up with a common set of rules because we face the same situation, whoever made up the rules won the game, you know, you know, so for us, it ends up that, you know, football emerges, you know, at the time. So, you know, this is kind of similar or taking off of what Darren said, where, you know, most Americans think of, of Rugby, the way it's played today, you know, not the way it was played in the 1870s. And so, can you describe how, maybe, association, football or soccer, and Rugby, those two games were played compared to your understanding of American football in the 18th, as American football started breaking away? What were those games like?

Dr. Tony Collins
Well, by the time we get to do it with soccer first, I think it's the easiest. By the time we get to the mid-1870s, soccer is not too different from today's. The rules have been consolidated. In the early years of soccer, incidentally, outfield players could catch the ball and knock it down with their hands. At one point in the mid-1860s, there was a provision in the rules to allow the scoring of rouges and touchdowns, allowing people to attempt to score a goal. So, the idea is that soccer has always been a game that's being played with the feet. It's not it's not quite right. But certainly, by the time you get to the 1870s, it's 11 11 players; no outfield player could touch the ball with their hands. Only the goalie could touch the ball with their hands. So it didn't change much of the well between then and now. However, Rugby was very different from what you see today in rugby union or rugby league. Firstly, the teams were 20 aside. This differs from today's 15, aside from rugby union, and 13, aside from rugby league. Of those 20 players, 15 were forwards, and the game was essentially a succession of scrums. And a couple of interesting things, I think, from the point of view of the links with football. Firstly, how the game was organized differed from how it was organized when a play was tackled. So before 1878, when a play was tackled, and his forward motion was stopped, he wrapped to his feet and waited for the other forwards in the scrum to gather around him. Then, he would place the ball on the ground and shout down, and each side would attempt to kick the ball through the other side. And I think the fact the player had to shout down when the ball was in play is the origin of football's system of downs. So that's quite interesting. The other very different thing is when you see a rugby game today, and the ball is put into the scrum, the ball always emerges at the back of the out of the back of the scrum. The idea is for the falls to heal the ball backward so it comes out and then be put in play by being passed to the backs. That wasn't the case in Rugby in the 1870s when it first reached America. The idea then was that the ball was in the scrum, and the forwards kicked the ball forward, tried to break through the opposing forward pack, and then dribbled the ball downfield. Eventually, it would come to hand. And there may be some passing, and the game's object was to score a goal. Tries, which were very important now to the game, again, were the same as touchdowns; tries were precisely what the name implied. Touching the ball down over the goal line allowed you to try to kick a goal, and only goals counted in the score. So again, there was no point system. As in soccer today, it was simply a question of which team scored the most goals. So the game was, in a sense, unrecognizable from what it is today. Mass scrummage in very long scrummage in not much lateral passing, not much kicking out of hand other than to try and gain territory to set up another scrum. But it was a scrum that was the core of the game. And that, I think, proved to be the, if you like, the pivot around which the other football games developed; it was by rejecting the importance of the scrum and the dominance of the forward pack and the reliance on the kicking of goals, which led to, in a sense, Rugby fracturing into the four different games that we have today.

Darin Hayes
Now, if I could ask a follow-up question on that, Tony, now you said that, you know, back in that era, there were attempts at scoring, but there was no scoring. So what was the purpose of the try if it was just the scored goals?

Dr. Tony Collins
Well, if you touched the ball down over the goal line and scored a try, you were allowed a kick at goal, a relatively unhindered kick at goal. In rugby rules, the rule was that you touched the ball down over the line, and then you had to throw the ball back out from the goal line to your kicker, who would then attempt to kick a goal. The rugby union abandoned that rule because it was too complex and also became quite dangerous. It allowed the kicker simply to take a kick at goal from the point at which the try scorer crossed the goal line. But it wasn't until 1886 that tries had any value in the scoring system, and even then, tries were worth one point, and a goal was worth three points. And the drop goal, which I think Doug Flutey was the last person to try in the NFL. I might be wrong, but a drop goal in those days was worth four points. So, that was the most valuable way of scoring up until the 1940s in rugby union.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, just for the listeners, a drop goal is, an American would call it, a drop kick. Yeah, but yeah, it's a goal from a kick. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And so yeah, it's really what you've described as fascinating because, from a scoring standpoint, that was football early on because football was Rugby, right? And so, and I think the one thing that surprised me intrigued me in, you know, reading some of your, your, you know, your website, your book is just the whole, you know, I always had the impression of Rugby being much more free-flowing game. So when I thought of football and adopted rugby rules, it still looked like the Rugby we know today, rather than the scrumming mauling kind of game you describe. And so I, we had an earlier conversation, but you know, when, about this, but when, when Americans change football to use 15, and then 11 players, that dramatically impacted the nature of play. And could you talk about that a bit?

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, and I think this is one of, again, one of the pivotal moments in the history of Rugby and football. So there was, as you might imagine, a lot of dissatisfaction with how Rugby was played because it's not much of a spectacle just to see 30 guys pushing and shoving a ball, which you rarely see anyway in that type of game. So there was pressure to reduce the size of teams and make the game more interesting and free-floating, partly in response to soccer, which doesn't have scrims as much more open game. So in 1875, the Rugby Football Union, the governing body, reduced the number of players in the team to 15 in response to that. Then, it changed the actual tackle law in 1878, which stated that if a player was tackled, he had to release the ball immediately. So, the old style scrimmage in which players would just line up, the ball would be declared down, and then the pushing would change rapidly. And that meant that the ball could come into play much more quickly.
Nevertheless, there was still debate about how Rugby developed over the next ten years and the constant centrality of the scrum. And we can say this in America and Canada: football in those countries moved away quite quickly from the scrum. And incidentally, one of the things that will be interesting in your thoughts is that the Canadians were the first footballers to seriously discuss getting rid of the scrum in 1875. They held a football conference in Toronto where they criticized the importance of the scrum and said it was a blight on the game, eventually leading to them adopting a more open formation. But that was also true within Rugby in Britain and Australia because there were lots of complaints about the importance of scrummaging, the fact that the game wasn't more open, the fact that goals were regarded as more important than tries, which certainly people in the north of England, south Wales, and Australia in Rugby felt that tries are much more important and much more interesting for spectators and also much more scientific in the way they use the term scientific in those days. So, this general dissatisfaction with the dominance of scrum in Rugby could also be found in Rugby itself. And so many of the reasons for the changes brought into American football, obviously most notably by Walter Camp, were responses to problems that were similarly being grappled with, obviously in Canada, but also within Rugby itself. This was one of the breakaways that led to the formation of the Rugby League in 1895, which again moved away from having so many scrums and reduced the number of players on the pitch to make the game more open and attractive. So's that late 1870s period when football started to become football as we know it, which is also a crucial period for the subsequent development of Rugby and the way Rugby itself split into two sports.

Timothy Brown
Yeah. And, you know, in an earlier conversation, we had talked about how when football, you know, in a game of 20 or 15 on a side, it was easier, in a sense, to keep the ball in the scrum. Once you have only 11 players, you start dropping some of them back off, off the line. So you have fewer forwards. Now, all of a sudden, it's easier for that ball to get out of there, right? And to heal it back. And so then that leads to the passing and openness. So, if I understood correctly, in many respects, American football, or possibly Canadian Rugby at the time, generated that openness or was the first to generate that kind of open game, as opposed to the scrummy, mauling game of the past.

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, I think that's true. As we've discussed before, I think adopting 11 aside teams meant that even if you wanted to have scrummage similar to what you had in Rugby, it's very difficult because you haven't got enough players. As soon as you start to kick the ball forward, the ball will come out with the scrum, and if you kick it forward, your opponents will get possession. If you're trying to hold it in the scrum, as was a common tactic within Rugby, you don't have the numbers to keep the ball in the scrum for long. It will come out, so I think that immediately raises the question of what you do and how you control the ball, which, you know, football is solved by the snapback. Canadian football had a similar thing with what they call a scrum. Eventually, in rugby league, they also introduced what was called the play of the ball, which is a similar type of thing and still is a similar type of thing to the original snap in football, where the ball was rolled back with the foot by the center to the quarterback. If you watch Game of Rugby League today, you'll see that when a player is tackled, he stands up, puts the ball, and then uses his foot to roll it back to what rugby league calls the dummy half, but it's equivalent to a quarterback.

Timothy Brown
So, can you distinguish between the Rugby Union and the Rugby League for the typical American?

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, it's a big question that takes two minutes. All right. That's the toughest challenge to that one. There are essentially two aspects to it. It essentially revolved around the question of payment for players. The leaders of Rugby, the Rugby Football Union, were committed to the amateur ideal in the north of England, where the game of Rugby was very popular amongst industrial workers and became a mass spectator sport. And at one point, it was more popular than soccer. Players had to take time off work to play the game and train, so they lost wages. And so clubs in the north started a campaign to allow players to be paid broken time payments, compensation for having to take time off work. The leaders of the Ruby Union said, no, this is equivalent to professionalism; we're not having it. Eventually, they started to ban players and suspend clubs. That led to the strongest clubs in the north of England deciding enough was enough and that we wanted to have a game where players were allowed to be paid. It's a spectator sport, and we think the players should be paid the same way as other entities. In 1895, they broke away to form what was initially called the Northern Union but later became known as the Rugby League. The other aspect of that split I just hinted at earlier is that there was also a different conception of how the game should be played. The clubs in the north didn't like the emphasis on scrimmaging and wanted to emphasize the scoring of tries, which they felt were more spectacular, scientific, and modern. They also wanted to make the game more open because of the threat from soccer. I mean, soccer was becoming, you know, essentially a juggernaut that was taking over everything. And so they wanted to be able to respond by making Rugby as attractive as possible. And so it's those two elements, the desire to pay players and the desire to have a more open, spectacular game that moved away from the traditional rugby scrimmaging that led to the creation of rugby league. A similar process occurred in Australia, where the game is now dominant in eastern Australia. The National Rugby League is probably the biggest club rugby competition of any rugby code worldwide. It's played in New Zealand, France, and many other countries. Rugby Union is still the biggest form and the most popular. The World Cup starts in France in a couple of months. And it's still a game of all the professional classes, more middle-class elements of society. Rugby League, wherever it's played, is very much a blue-collar sport. It's it's very easily distinguishable. The two constituencies of rugby union and rugby league are very different. So it's a combination of differences on and social differences off the pitch. And I think, in a sense, the rugby league probably has more in common with football than the rugby union. A famous Australian rugby league coach once said football and Rugby are the same sport but with different rules. We don't have the ball, and you've got to tackle hard. When you have the ball, you must run hard and score tries or touchdowns.

Timothy Brown
that is interesting. And I love the, you know, the, you know, it's the US had an analogous situation, you know, you talked before about, you know, the kind of the moral aspect of, of playing Rugby and, you know, kind of the rough and tough sport, the muscular Christianity issue. And so that's kind of the elite approach. And then you've got the spectator-oriented, professional, industrial focus. And so, you know, those same tensions played out in America between the elite universities playing football and the guys in Pennsylvania and Ohio and the leagues that they played, you know, in an industrial game of football.

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, very similar. I remember years ago, in the 1980s, when British TV started broadcasting football and the NFL had an exhibition match with the Buffalo Bills at Wembley in the mid-1980s. Frank Gifford came over to England and, for English viewers, described the Bills as being very similar to one of the Northern Rugby League teams because they come from a similar industrial town that isn't doing too well. And that's the same, you know, that pretty much sums up where Rugby League's played in the UK.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, interesting. Another thing that intrigues me is, in American football, you know, because we had some rural changes, mostly the nature of tackling. Then, we've allowed blocking since very early on. And so our game ended up becoming this mass and momentum, very rough physical game, lots and lots of injuries, and ultimately deaths as well. And so, did other football codes go through similar kinds of experiences? And, you know, if so, how do they resolve it? How do they adjust their rules to try to remedy the situation?

Dr. Tony Collins
That's a really interesting question because this debate took place from the 1880s until the beginning of the First World War in 1914 across British sports. It was about the dangers of playing football, whether soccer or Rugby. Interestingly enough, the medical profession seemed to agree that soccer was more dangerous than Rugby because of the danger of broken legs. But there was nothing like the great crisis in the middle of the 1900s that confronted football. However, the only similar thing took place in 1870. There was a bit of a human cry, if you like, public consternation about deaths playing Rugby at schools. One of the reasons why the Rugby Football Union was formed in 1871 was to organize the game and make its rules safer. There was the Times, you know, the famous London Times newspaper, the main newspaper in Britain. Well, it still is today. The Times had a kind of campaign against the point of Rugby because it carried lists of young men who had broken legs, broken collarbones, and who had even died playing the game. One of the motivating factors for forming the Rugby Union was to make the game safer and the rules a bit safer. So you can see very strange things in the first set of the Rugby Union rules, such as you can't use iron plates or steel toe caps on football boats, which was quite common in schools because hacking, kicking opponent shins, was an accepted part of the game in schools and was seen as a way of demonstrating your hardness. Not only being able to kick but also taking hacks symbolized how hard you are, your masculinity, and your fitness. But obviously, that led to great dangers, particularly when people fell over and could get kicked in the head with iron boots and things like that. So one of the things that the Rugby Union did when the Rugby Football Union was formed in 1871 was to make the game much safer, ban hacking, and outlaw the use of fortified boots. So that's the nearest thing that occurred, but there isn't the same number of deaths as what started to happen in football with the mass plays. And there's never the same type of outcry that you got in 1905, 1906, when the president called the heads of colleges to try and figure out what to do about stopping football from becoming so violent.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, well, one of the things that's interesting, you know, is that I've always said I'm going to write an article about it; it just takes so much work. But, you know, a number of the deaths in the, let's just call it 1895 to 1905, and even the next ten years, a lot of those deaths are, were not things that somebody would die from today. You know, it was, you know, literally scratches on the football field that got infected. Or, you know, you mentioned broken legs, you know, broken legs at one time could be a death sentence, you know, that's not the case anymore. You know, and so that's part of it, they were the crushed skulls and those kinds of things that were directly the result of the nature of the play, which is why they changed some of those things. But yeah, it's, you know, that whole, a lot of the safety issues wouldn't be safety issues anymore. You know, just because of the advances of modern medicine.

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think the other thing is that there's, as occasionally occurred in England, a bit of a moral panic about football for various reasons. So the numbers of deaths without wishing to downplay the personal tragedy, it's easy for the number of deaths to be exaggerated. I mean, for example, in the early 1890s, there was a London newspaper, the Paramount Gazette, that campaigned against football and compiled this list of 70-odd players who we claimed had been killed playing Rugby in the north of England in just three years, which, you know, if that was true, that would be a national scandal. Almost one player is being killed every week of the season. But, when you look back at the figures, they're not particularly robust. Some happen after matches, and some of them are things that, as you say, could have happened in any walk of life. People get sepsis from scratch, often broken fingers and things like that, which are not peculiar to football or peculiar to Rugby in this case. So, I think it's worth treating figures of deaths with something of a pinch of salt. That's not to downplay or decry them or say there's anything fake about them. But it's not quite as straightforward as I think the history books tell us at the moment.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I think this is quite incredible and eye-opening to me, again, wearing that cap of the average American football fan. We consider Rugby a more brutal sport because of our perception today. In our football, we wear helmets, shoulder pads, and all kinds of protection. You look at these rugby players, who are pretty much just going out there with a shirt and shorts from our perspective and making a lot of contacts like you would in the game of football. So, I think it's incredible that the deaths and injuries weren't as prevalent in early Rugby as in American football.

Dr. Tony Collins
I think the other thing is that sometimes when football and rugby fans get together, you get this debate, which is the toughest. And the fact is, they're both different. I mean, one of the things I think that makes football is a game of short bursts. And so much emphasis is placed on yardage, which means there's much more force and impact in tackles than what you normally get within Rugby. But you've got to tackle and run with the ball, usually for a full 80 minutes, which, you know, footballs don't do. So that is the difference, as I say, with all football cards when people try to say, my game's better than yours, my game's tougher than yours, or anything. Each one has its challenges, and each one has its strengths. So it's, they're not, it's not worth comparing it in any way, I don't think.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, the other thing is Rugby doesn't allow interfering or blocking. Yeah, right. And so, while, you know, that just dramatically changes the nature of the game, the amount of contact, even if it's not, is the high-impact contact that you always see in, you know, from a tackle. Yeah. But you know, I know Rugby has its concussion issues, similar to one football face.

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.

Darin Hayes
Go ahead, Jim.

Timothy Brown
Well, okay, I'll jump in. So, just wondering, did any other games that, at different points, allow the armoring of players, you know, the padding and, you know, football from early on had, you know, no hard surface or no hard materials? Hence, no iron, no, I believe it's called Gouda perch, or Gouda perch, you know, it's synthetic from Indonesian trees, right? Like a tar plastic sort of substance. That rule existed for a long time, so helmets were fairly soft until the 20s. But then obviously, football went away from that, you know, with the plastic helmets and harder leather. But did any other games have a period where they started allowing more padding? Or is it? Has it pretty much been? You're on your own, baby.

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, kind of. I mean, for a long time, players in both games of Rugby, and one or two still lose it, wear what are called scrum caps, which are kind of like the old-fashioned leather helmets but made of much thinner material partly because it was believed that, for a long time, that would stop the dangers of concussion and head clashes. However, there's no evidence that they do. Scientists have claimed that giving players extra confidence makes them less aware of safety issues and head concerts. In the 1980s and 1990s, rugby league players wore thin shoulder pads underneath their shirts. There is nothing on the scale of football players' shoulder pads. But by and large, the rugby courts have stayed clear of that type of protective or offensive body wear. I think primarily because, in an 80-minute game, players are effectively playing both ways in football. So, carrying extra weight would not be a good thing.

Darin Hayes
No, go ahead, Tim.

Timothy Brown
I just have a quick comment: Just say, like, you know, in the 1910s, especially, there was a big movement to shed pads, and the game was going to be a speed game. So get rid of all paying it. And, you know, you're kind of looked down upon if you protect yourself with padding, and things went back the other direction. But so similar, a similar thing happened.

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, I mean, just one quick note on that: what's interesting is that in the very early years of Rugby, the 1860s and 1870s, when hacking was still used, was still part of the game, to where shingards were seen as a sign of weakness. And there are a lot of stories where players would go on to the pitch wearing shin guards, and they'd be told either you take them off or we're going to kick them off, and often they end up worse for wear.

Darin Hayes
Interesting. Now, if I could, gentlemen, I just want to catapult us more to the modern times here and look at some of the differences between Rugby, football, both in the Union and the rugby league, and what we know, you know, in America. And I guess one of the things that, you know, football, our modern football, we are a society that just loves statistics. Baseball started over a century ago, and football looks for ways to get statistics to get fans more involved. Today, it's evolved into, you know, fantasy football and various things. Are there statistics important to the game of Rugby that folks keep track of today?

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, but not in the same way. I think one of the things that's very striking about football, and really, I think American sport, is the emphasis that there has been on statistics for a very long time. There's a little bit of it now, but for most of its history, the only statistics that mattered in terms of players were who scored the most tries in the season, who scored the most tries in the career, who scored the most goals. And individual accomplishments like that. So, in terms of measuring yardage, tackles made, kickoff returns, you name it, anything that any football fan knows off the top of their head, those things don't exist to any great extent in any of the other games. The rise of data analytics has meant that there's more of that now, even in soccer, which is much harder to keep any detailed stats. And certainly, in the two Ruby games, you can now find, if you want to go and find details of the yardage players have made, tackles they've made, tackle busts they've made, then you can find them. And they're certainly used by the coaching staff.

Darin Hayes
Okay. And I guess the other more modern question I have for you is from the UK, you know, from an American perspective, when we talk about the game of football, there's only one thing. It's, you know, the gridiron, it's American football, and we know that you folks in England are, when you talk about football, well, it could be a variety of things. So how would, if somebody's sitting there reading the London Times or any of the other periodicals over there and somebody mentions the game of football, how do they differentiate between all these different games that are considered football?

Dr. Tony Collins
Well, that's a really interesting question because it is a real problem when you look at reports of the various types of football in the 19th century in the newspapers. After all, it's assumed by and large that you will know which type of football is being referred to. So I think the basic rule of thumb in this is that whichever sport got to a place first, whichever, you know, whichever football code got to a place first, that is the one that is normally called football. So yeah, as I mentioned at the top of the show, I come from a town called Hull, and rugby league was the most important spot there. So my grandfather, who was born in 1907, always called it football. Whereas you go to other places and football, football means soccer. By and large now in England, then if you talk about football, people assume you're referring to soccer, and you get this, which, you know, I guess you may have had as well that soccer fans will say, how can it be football if it's not played with the feet? However, the other football codes are played with the feet, not to the same extent as soccer. Also, the nickname soccer is a very English invention anywhere because it comes from the word association, the SOC in association. When these games were played in the elite private schools, association football would be referred to as soccer and rugby football would be referred to as Rugby. So that's the origin of the two names. So it's, I'll tell you, the worst place to go there if you go to Australia, where there are four major football codes. Australian rules football, another oval ball code derived from rugby school. You have rugby football, rugby league football, and association football. Figuring out which code a person is referring to when they talk about football can sometimes be quite difficult. So yeah, I think the key thing here is, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and whatever their locals refer to as football, that's football.

Darin Hayes
Interesting, go ahead.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, your question raised an interesting question for me. You know, it's one of the things that we get into, especially in football. I think, you know because the game has changed so dramatically. I mean, to some extent, baseball is still baseball, right? But football has changed so dramatically from how it was back in the day. And so the goats are the greatest of all time; all kinds of arguments become very difficult because comparing a player from one time to another is tough, and you've got recency bias, etc. Does the same thing occur in Rugby? I mean, do people feel like they can go back and say somebody who played who was a star of 1910? You know, how does he compare to a player from the 1980s versus, you know, the 2020s?

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, it's a really difficult issue. I've been involved in panels where you decide who's the greatest player ever. It's pretty impossible because, obviously, as a historian, I've got a much greater knowledge of plays in the past than a regular fan. Naturally, your bias is towards players you've seen play and have had an impact that is still felt today. It's an incredibly difficult thing. As you said, when I first started watching football and British TV in the 1980s, it's a very different game today when I watch it than what it was when I was watching Mike Dick as Chicago Bears when Super Bowl in 1985. That's true of the other games, as well. I mean, Ruby Union has changed a tremendous amount. Not least, in the past 40 years, it's gone from being a purely amateur sport to being a fully professional one. It's changed its rules to become, in a sense, a little bit closer to Ruby League. There's more emphasis on the scoring of tries and less emphasis on scrums, but its principles are still the same.
Again, Ruby League has changed very much. I think one of the interesting things is football's impact on the other football codes. American football has impacted the other football codes, particularly the Ruby codes. I think Canada is an obvious example of what originally Canadian Rugby was. It slowly transformed itself, partly under the influence of what was going on south of the border, to become a 12-a-side three-game gridiron. But I think when you look at the Ruby League, it has also been influenced heavily by football over the years. For example, unlike Ruby Union, you only have a limited number of tackles to score.
Originally, in 1966, there was an unlimited number of tackles, similar to the problem that faced football in the 1880s before three downs were brought in. Seems to just hang on to the ball as long as they could, particularly if they got into the lead. That was changed in 1966 when the Ruby League authorities brought in the system of what you would call four downs; we call four tackles. Then, that was changed to open the game up a bit more to six tackles in the early 1970s. I was struck by something you wrote, Tim, at the weekend about Eddie Kokums at Wisconsin, who proposed five or six downs without any outage requirement, which is essentially the system that Ruby League plays today. You have the ball six times, and if you don't do anything if you don't score, you turn it over to the other side. Even though we're in the 21st century, the games have never been further apart; there's still a little influence going backward and forwards. Pete Carroll at the Seahawks is a big fan of Ruby tackling. There are links between the sports and the different types of football in the 1870s and 1880s, but there's still a little residue today.

Darin Hayes
Now, I guess, I mean, it's fascinating, um, our modern times, now I know we've seen it in the NFL, even, even, uh, recently where some former, uh, legends of the game of Rugby have come across in the United States and tried their hand at American football, trying out for, uh, you know, an NFL team. I know for a while there, we, in the NFL, had some players from Europe put on a practice squad to develop them. Still, I haven't heard other than maybe a kicker, uh, making it into American football from one of the other, um, items of football rugby or whatever is, has it, anything ever gone the other way where an American football player has become something substantial in the game of Rugby.

Dr. Tony Collins
There's a couple of footballs. One was Al Kirkland, who I think played semi-pro football. I don't think he's ever drafted in the NFL, but he came over and had quite a long career in the British Rugby League. There was a more short-lived guy called Manfred Moore who went to play Rugby League in Australia in the 1970s. I think they played for the Saints; I'm not sure. I'd have to check that one out. Interestingly enough, the most influential football player who came to play Rugby, to play rugby union was Pete Dawkins, who came to Cambridge University in the late 1950s. I think he was a Heisman Trophy winner.

Timothy Brown
from our army.

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, and yeah, and Pete Dawkins was the man who introduced the spiral throw in Ruby Union when the ball goes out of bounds or into touch, as we call it. It comes back into play through the lineup when the two sets of forwards line up alongside each other, and balls are thrown back in, and they lift and try and get the ball and put it out to the pass. For a long time, the ball was thrown in like soccer over the head and sometimes under the arm upwards and over. Still, when he came to Cambridge, it was Pete Dawkins who introduced the torpedo pass, the spiral pass to the line out, and that's the system used throughout Ruby Union now for bringing the ball back into play in a line out. So yeah, Pete Dawkins has probably been the most influential American footballer ever to play Rugby. It's because what he introduced into the game in the 1950s is still prevalent today.

Darin Hayes
Tim, do you have any further follow-up questions to ask Tony?

Timothy Brown
Uh, no, I, you know, I mean, partly interested. I mean, I, we could stand here all afternoon. But, uh, I just wanted to say this is like, you know, I don't know, Darren, from your perspective, but certainly from my perspective, this is the greatest of all time session for the podcast. I mean, I just, like, this has been fascinating. It's so much fun to hear your perspective on these things, Tony. It's, it's fun. Very much appreciate it.

Dr. Tony Collins
Yeah, me too. It's really enjoyable because I think one of the problems that we have as football historians is that it's very easy to get tunnel vision. And so, you know, you just look at your football. And I think these types of discussions when you step back and then think, well, there's a lot in common here. And certainly, you know, certainly in the history and the origins that, you know, we're of the same parentage. But even today, how problems are dealt with, the way innovations are brought into the game, I think there's a lot that, well, I think there's a lot of the games can learn each other on the pitch, but also as historians, I think there's a lot of value from discussions like this and long may they continue.

Darin Hayes
I agree. Now, Tony, before we let you go, let's let the listeners know who may be interested in picking up one of your books, any of your other projects, your podcast, or your websites. Maybe you could just give us some idea how to get in touch with some of your work.

Dr. Tony Collins
Sure, yeah, thanks. My website is www.tonycollins.org, and you can get an extensive preview of how football began from the website by clicking on the cover. I also have a podcast, which has been a bit quiet this year because I'm working on another project, but that's been running for four or five years now, which covers a lot of the stuff we've talked about today. It looks at the history of Rugby, a little bit of football history, and certainly a lot about how they relate and are intertwined. So that's where you can find links to that at tonycollins .org, but also, you know, if you go to www .rubbyreloaded .com, that'll take you straight to episodes of the podcast. So yeah, that's where you can find me, and hopefully, the podcast will. I plan to get the podcast back up and running in the next couple of months, and we'll be doing many more of these very interesting discussions. Hopefully, I can reciprocate and have you guys on the show.

Darin Hayes
That would be very, very intriguing. I can't speak for Tim, but I'd be delighted to do that.

Timothy Brown
I also just wanted to say, you know, I've got a copy of it, and part of the reason we initially connected was because I've read how football began. And just so readers or listeners know, it kind of, it goes back to some of the beginnings that Tony described here, but then also, you know, kind of on a country by country or code by code basis, it goes through, you know, Canadian football kind of, what's the story there? How did it evolve and break away from this, uh, you know, stew of games that occurred? And so anyways, if you're, if you're in Australia, if you're in Canada, wherever, you know, there's portions of this book that are directly applicable to your world and then others that are very much global and just fascinating.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. Uh, most definitely now, you know, I can't tell you enough how thankful we are and honored to have you on here, Tony, and have this great discussion with us. I feel almost like, uh, it's sort of a family reunion of sorts of, you know, meeting some of the second and third cousins and different genres of football together and uniting them. And, uh, this is, uh, triumphant. I feel pretty, pretty honored to have this happen here. So, we thank you for that, and we thank you for your time and for sharing your knowledge. Yeah.

Dr. Tony Collins
Thanks, guys; it's been a blast; I've enjoyed it.

Timothy Brown
It's been great talking because, yeah, yeah, right back at you.

Raymond Berry, born in 1933, carved a unique path in American football. While his professional playing career wasn't as decorated as some, he left a lasting impact through his contributions as a player, coach, and mentor. This essay explores his college career, professional pursuits, and enduring football legacy.

High School and College Career

Berry's journey began at Paris High School in Texas, where his talent wasn't initially recognized due to a leg length discrepancy. He eventually earned a starting position and honed his skills at Shreiner Junior College before transferring to Southern Methodist University (SMU). At SMU, Berry flourished, becoming team captain and earning All-Southwest Conference honors in 1954. His impressive college career caught the attention of NFL scouts.

Road to the Pro Game

Despite his college success, Berry was drafted in the 20th round by the Baltimore Colts in 1954. Playing under Coach Weeb Ewbank, Berry began as a third-string option. However, his dedication, work ethic, and precise route-running gradually earned him a starting spot. In 1958, Berry's career took a significant turn. The arrival of Johnny Unitas at quarterback fostered a partnership that would redefine the game. Berry's ability to exploit gaps in the defense, combined with Unitas's pinpoint passing, revolutionized the offensive scheme and earned the duo the nickname "The Baltimore Colts' Unitas-to-Berry Show."

From 1958 to 1967, the Unitas-Berry connection dominated the NFL. Berry became the league's leading receiver three times, played in six Pro Bowls, and was a crucial contributor to the Colts' victories in the 1958 and 1959 NFL championships. He retired in 1967 as the NFL's all-time leader in receptions (631) and receiving yards (9,275).

While Berry's playing career spanned only 13 seasons, his impact transcended the statistics. He became synonymous with precise route running, demonstrating the power of dedication and tireless practice. His success alongside Unitas redefined offensive strategies, showcasing the potential of the passing game and influencing generations of quarterbacks and receivers.

Football Legacy

Following his playing career, Berry embarked on a successful coaching journey. He served as an assistant coach for several teams before becoming head coach of the New England Patriots in 1984. Despite limited initial success, Berry's leadership and focus on creating a winning culture eventually paid off. He led the Patriots to their first Super Bowl appearance in 1986, laying the foundation for the team's future success.
Raymond Berry's legacy goes beyond statistics and championships. He embodies the spirit of perseverance, demonstrating that hard work and dedication can lead to success, even when faced with challenges. His contributions as a player, coach, and mentor continue to inspire current and future generations of football players and coaches. While Berry's playing career might not stand out as brightly as some, his impact on the game endures, firmly etching his name in the annals of football history.

---

Born August 21, 1954, in Columbus, Ohio, was the two time Heisman Trophy Winner from Ohio State University, Archie Griffin. Griffin is considered one of the greatest college football players of all time. Griffin won four Big Ten Conference titles with the Buckeyes and was the first player ever to start in four Rose Bowls. Selected by the Cincinnati Bengals in the first round of the 1976 NFL Draft.

Archie played seven seasons in the NFL, rushing for over 4,100 yards and scoring 32 touchdowns. He also played professionally for the Jacksonville Bulls of the United States Football League (USFL).He is forever enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame since 2000.

Archie Griffin is synonymous with Ohio State football. A native of Columbus, he became a Buckeye legend during his collegiate career. Renowned for his exceptional running ability, durability, and leadership, Griffin was the heart and soul of the Ohio State offense.

His most remarkable feat is being the only player in history to win the Heisman Trophy twice, in 1974 and 1975. This achievement solidified his status as one of the greatest college football players of all time. Beyond the individual accolades, Griffin was a pivotal part of Ohio State's success, leading the Buckeyes to four Big Ten championships and four Rose Bowl appearances.

With a combination of power, speed, and elusiveness, Griffin was a nightmare for opposing defenses. His consistent performance and durability made him a cornerstone of the Ohio State program. His legacy extends far beyond his statistical accomplishments, as he embodies the spirit and tradition of Buckeye football

---

Angelo Bertelli, nicknamed the "Springfield Rifle," carved out a successful yet somewhat short-lived football career.

Born June 18, 1921, in West Springfield, Massachusetts, was the starting quarterback of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish from 1941 to 1943, Angelo Bertelli. Bertelli, the "Springfield Rifle," played in only six games during the 1943 season, yet won the Heisman Trophy per the National Football Foundation.

Just prior to the seventh game of the season Bertelli was called into service with the Marine Corps where he served as an officer at Iwo Jima and Guam. They were calling him the greatest passer in Notre Dame history as Bertelli completed 69 percent of his passes for 10 touchdowns. During that 1943 campaign The Irish averaged 43 points a game in the season's first six contests. Notre Dame finished 9-1 losing only to the Great Lakes Naval Station 19-14 in the final 30 seconds of play, yet they retained their number one ranking and the national championship.

Angelo was an instant sensation at Notre Dame as he was second in the Heisman voting as a sophomore tailback. When the Irish switched to the T formation in his junior season, Bertelli became the team's quarterback and won the first of his two All-American awards. In a game against Stanford he completed 10 consecutive passes and threw for four touchdowns. Angelo Bertelli was honored with induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1972 after the National Football Foundation tabulated their votes.

Following military service he played with the Los Angeles Dons and Chicago Rockets in the All-American Football Conference in 1946-1948.

Here's a breakdown of his accomplishments:

College Stardom (Notre Dame):

Played for the Fighting Irish from 1940-1943 (missed 1942 due to military service).
Led Notre Dame to a dominant stretch, losing only 3 games in his three seasons.
Won multiple awards:
All-American (1942, 1943)
Heisman Trophy Winner (1943) - Despite playing only 6 games due to military service, he impressed with a 69% completion rate and 10 touchdowns.
Known for his accuracy and leadership, Bertelli was considered one of the best passers in Notre Dame history at the time.
Professional Career (Limited by Injury):

Drafted 1st overall by the Boston Yanks (later renamed the New York Bulldogs) in the 1944 NFL Draft while still on active duty.
Played for the Los Angeles Dons (AAFC) and Chicago Rockets (AAFC) from 1946-1948.
Injuries, particularly to his knee, hampered his professional career and forced him to retire after just three seasons.
Legacy:

Inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1972.
Remembered for his college dominance and leadership at Notre Dame despite a shortened professional career.

---

Few teams in college football history have captured the imagination and garnered the respect of the 1963 Navy Midshipmen. Led by the legendary Roger Staubach and coached by the stoic Wayne Hardin, this squad carved its name into the annals of gridiron glory, etching a legacy of precision, power, and unwavering determination.

At the helm of this formidable ship stood a young Texan named Roger Staubach. A natural leader with an infectious enthusiasm, Staubach possessed a rare combination of athleticism and intellect. He grasped the intricacies of the option offense.

Staubach thrived under this system, his pinpoint passing and elusive running carving up defenses with surgical precision.

Staubach's Heisman Trophy-winning season was a masterclass in offensive execution. He threw for 1,829 yards and 16 touchdowns while adding 415 rushing yards and 6 more scores on the ground. His leadership extended beyond the field, inspiring his teammates with his unwavering work ethic and unwavering dedication to the Navy ideal.

But Staubach was far from a lone star. The 1963 Navy team was a symphony of talent, each player a vital cog in the well-oiled machine. Running back Eddie Hart's punishing carries kept defenses honest, while the receiving corps, led by the sure-handed Joe Bellino, provided Staubach with a reliable set of targets. The offensive line, a wall of blue and gold, provided the bedrock upon which the team's success was built.

The 1963 season was a rollercoaster ride of emotions for the Navy faithful. The Midshipmen opened with a dominant victory over West Virginia, followed by a hard-fought win over a talented William & Mary squad. Then came the defining moments: a thrilling upset of Notre Dame, a dominant victory over Army in the annual grudge match, and a nail-biting win over Pittsburgh.

But amidst the triumphs, there was heartbreak. A late-season loss to Syracuse, coupled with a controversial victory by Texas over Alabama, denied Navy a shot at the national championship. However, the Midshipmen received an invitation to the Cotton Bowl Classic, where they faced the mighty Longhorns.

The Cotton Bowl was a classic battle of wills. Staubach threw for two touchdowns, but Texas ultimately prevailed, 28-6. Despite the defeat, the 1963 Navy team left an indelible mark on college football. They finished the season ranked No. 2 in the nation, earning the respect of their peers and solidifying their place as one of the greatest teams in Navy history.


-Transcript of Roger Staubach and the 1963 NAVY Team with Len Ferman and Giffer

Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to another trip back in time. And what do you need to go back in time? You need to have a friend on your Rolodex that's a time traveler, and we have that. Our good friend, Len Ferman, the sports time traveler, joins us once again to talk about a really special team from the Gridiron history. Len, welcome back to the Pigpen.

Len Ferman
Thank you so much, Darin, for having me back again. I really enjoyed each other the first time.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. And Len, you got some help today. You brought your muscle with you to talk about this team and, you know, an expert to have two experts on here telling me about this great story. And I'll let you introduce our special guest. Thank you.

Len Ferman
Well, first let me describe what I do. So I call myself the sports time traveler. It's kind of tongue in cheek. I go back in time virtually through newspaper archives and videos and experience great sporting events from the past as if they're happening now. I typically go back exactly 50 or 60 years. And Greg is one of my oldest friends and one of my biggest readers. And he told me early in the fall, Lynn, you got to go back to 1963. It's exactly, it'll be exactly 60 years ago and follow the Navy football team from 1963. It's going to be a really special year. So I was really excited to do that. And especially because it was Greg's, my friend's suggestion. And Greg's got a big tie into the Navy. Greg, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us about your experience?

Greg McGifney
Yeah. Hello, everybody. I'm Greg McGifney. I graduated from the Naval Academy in 1985. And I grew up, basically, with Navy football, that was my favorite football team for a lot of reasons. One, just, you got to pick a team back there. And there's only one college game on any given Saturday. So Navy was on a lot. And, you know, I just kind of fell in love with the Navy team. And, you know, there was a tie in too, because during the 1970s, you might remember a guy named Roger Staubach, who played football for the Dallas Cowboys. And but he was a Naval Academy graduate Heisman Trophy winner. And he was kind of a legendary Navy football player. And so with with all that said, I, I just follow Navy football, love Navy football as a kid. And then that kind of made me I said, you know, I want to go to Naval Academy, because that's, that's a great football tradition, great team. You know, I, I want to be part of this, you know, I want to be part of the Navy tradition, I had no idea what I was getting into, but I just said, you know, I want to do that. And eventually I applied and got in after, you know, really thinking about how you what you have to do. But time it was like, oh, Navy football, they play Notre Dame, they play Army, they're on TV. You know, this is great. And it's, and everybody's, you know, yelling and screaming and having a great time at these games. So it's, it's just one of those things you want to be part of, I guess, growing up picks a team. And I think a lot of maybe young kids pick colleges because of who they like in football in college, I don't know. But at the time, that's what I did. So that's my story. And I'm sticking to it.

Darin Hayes
But, well, Greg, we certainly welcome you to the Pigpen and thank you very much for your service and for all those out there listening that have served our country and protected our freedom. We really thank you for that. And this really puts an interesting twist on it. I love that we have a Navy guy talking about a Navy team here with a sports time traveler and here in Pixie and Dispatch. So I'm gonna hand the reins over to Len to sort of narrate us through the story of this 1963 Navy team. And of course, we'll get the expert analysis by Greg here to share it. And I'll have some questions along the way. So let's start this journey back to 1963.

Len Ferman
So I started following the 1963 Navy team. I didn't know much about them. I was really interested and surprised when I found out they had Roger Staubach and it was his junior year. Everybody knows Staubach from the Cowboys, but as Greg pointed out, he played for Navy and I didn't realize that. And the year before in 1962, Staubach's sophomore year, they were just a so -so team. They were only five and five, so there wasn't really high expectations. But they started out the season with two big victories over marginal teams, but then their third game of the season, they go into Michigan and they beat Michigan pretty badly. And so that was an indication there might be something special going on. And Staubach was brilliant. The Navy coach, the Michigan coach, Bump Elliott, who had been an all -American player himself, said after that game, he thought Staubach was the best football player he'd ever seen. So Staubach is starting to get some real national attention. Their fourth game, very interesting for later in our story, they go to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas to play SMU. And they lose that game 32 to 28, but they lose the game when on the last play of the game, Staubach, Staubach had driven them something like seven or 80 yards in the last couple of minutes. And on the last play of the game, he throws into the end zone. And the wide receiver in the newspaper archives, I've read several accounts, either dropped the ball or juggled the ball and it dropped, but whatever it is, he dropped the ball in the end zone. If he catches the ball as time's running out, they will win the game. They would have been 4 -0. But then the next week, they beat VMI, they go to 4 -1 and then they play Pitt. And this is a big game, it's at Navy and they have the largest crowd in the history of the stadium there. Pitt is ranked number three in the country at that time. Navy after their 4 -1 start is now ranked 10th and they destroy Pitt. And that really puts them on the map. Suddenly now they're recognized by Sports Illustrated as the top team in the East and they get up to fourth in the rankings. And then they go into Notre Dame. And even though Notre Dame's not the greatest team, it's still pretty daunting to go into Notre Dame. And Notre Dame had already beaten USC and UCLA at home and Navy is able to manhandle Notre Dame. So they're really onto a very special season and Staubach is getting incredible press. In fact, I wanna read something that I found in the New York Times about Staubach. So Alison Danzig, you may have heard that name. He was a great sports writer for the New York Times for over 40 years. He was covering football in the 1920s. And so he writes about Staubach after the Notre Dame game. His unruffled toys before the rush of the enemy lineman, the cleverness with which he casually evades their fierce embrace and the discernment with which he had long last finds his receivers or picks up blockers have baffled opponents and amazed onlookers game after game. He has a law unto himself and he has been given a latitude in doing the unorthodox that has seldom permitted a player. I mean, this is really, it's really incredible stuff and if you ever get a chance to watch videos of Staubach playing in 1963, it's true to what Danzig says. He clearly is doing things you don't expect to see quarterbacks do. The way he evades rushers and is able to hit his wide receivers and he's also a big threat in rushing as well. And so he's having this incredibly special season. But if I could interject here real quick. Go ahead.

Darin Hayes
Yeah on your sports time traveler your blog post and we'll put the links to that in the show notes of this podcast Len has an embed of one of the games I believe it's the the Texas game you have video of on YouTube that you can watch the game so you can see some Stawback and his teammates, you know, just how special these guys were. So I'm sorry, but please continue

Len Ferman
Yeah, you can see actually the entire Army -Navy game, which we're going to get to in a minute. And you can see extended clips of the when they played Texas. But so along the way, they keep winning. They keep rising in the rankings. They make it to number two. And by mid -November, it becomes very apparent that there's nothing in the way of Navy not making it to a showdown in the Cotton Bowl with number one Texas, which is Texas is undefeated. The only thing that could possibly be in their way would be Army. And so this brings us to around the third week in November. And I want to give Greg a chance to talk. So Greg, do you want to tell us what happens in the third week in November 1963?

Greg McGifney
Well, if you remember history at all, and you remember the times we were in in the early 1960s, president was JFK, and he went to Dallas, as you call it, the third week of November, excuse me, in 1963, and he was very much involved in, let's say, local Texas politics, as well as having a lot of Texans around him, so to speak, John Connolly and LBJ, of course. So, as you remember, he went down to Texas at that time, and unfortunately, we know what happened with his assassination. It was a terrible time for the country, and whether or not you were a fan of Kennedy or his politics or anything else, the country was stunned. He was an innovative leader. He got us through the missile crisis, and he was basically looking at the 1964 election and for reelection, and he's collecting receipts, so to speak, and trying to build his popularity and everything else. So, that shock hit the world, and of course, right after that was supposed to be, what, the Army -Navy game, and it usually was played at the end of November. And so, most of the world in football leagues and everybody else except for one league, I will not name that league necessarily, but one league played their games that weekend, but colleges mostly and another professional league did not play games. They took the week off to mourn because there was a special day of mourning that the next day after the weekend, and it goes on from there. So, the Army -Navy game was postponed. Navy had a break, Army had a break, and so Army being still a good team and a legacy from the 50s, you remember the Pete Dawkins team and everything else, they were a big -time team in the 50s, and there off they go to play Army -Navy, a very big game. Army could have set Navy. Army's ranking was, I think, top 10 at the time. If not, they were close to it, and they were a very, very good team. And as you might not know, or people might not know, JFK, although he went to Harvard, remember, and growing up, I remember, PT -109. JFK was a naval hero. PT -109, he went through that, and that was people's mind, people knew that. Oh yeah, Kennedy was a World War II hero, a legitimate hero, a Navy guy. And I guess JFK probably adopted Navy as his football team because he went to a lot of important Navy games, including what the Orange Bowl, Joe Bellino played that game, and then he went to Army -Navy games as president. He was always there. He made it a point to be there. And he was probably Navy's biggest presidential football fan. I mean, remember Ike Eisenhower? He was an Army guy. He was a West Point guy. So in the 50s, there was Ike and West Point. Now in the 60s, you had Navy and Kennedy. It's kind of a neat, neat thing, but Kennedy really was a big Navy football fan, and not many people know that. This year, they played the game, actually, the 60th anniversary in Massachusetts, and not a worry about Kennedy, which boggled my mind, but still, it was a big deal, and a big deal to me, because I knew how much Kennedy was a football fan for Navy, and it was very meaningful. And so it goes, but the game ended up being played on December 7th, later that year in Philadelphia at the Old Memorial Stadium. And so that game was played on Pearl Harbor Day, and Pearl Harbor was still, it was a big thing back then, and so on. And it was, I guess, the only game going at that time, and it was, I guess it was Nashville, I guess it was a big deal, and everybody's watching it, and there's 100 ,000 people there, and there's JFK, or would've been JFK, except his memory, and the whole country was still mourning. So anyway, that game happened, and then, Len, you can tell them, why don't you tell the world about what happened in that game, because that was one of the best games and best stories of Navy football in probably that day.

Len Ferman
Yeah, I'll talk about the game itself in a minute, but I just want to reinforce some of the things Greg was saying about JFK being a huge Navy fan. This is one of the things, this is kind of the key part of the story that I wanted to make sure we get through, we describe here because it was something I didn't know. And the tie -in between JFK and the Navy team here is really something special. He was a really diehard Navy football fan. As Greg mentioned, when he was president -elect in 1961, he made it a point to go to the Orange Bowl game to root for Navy. And he was there in Philadelphia at the Army Navy game in 61 and 62, and he made it known he was very much looking forward to go into this Army Navy game that was supposed to be played on November 30th. He even had a plan that he was going to sit on the, he recognized as commander in chief, he has to look at least a little impartial. So his plan was he was going to sit on the Army side in the first half and the Navy side in the second half, and he wanted it, and he planned it out that way because he wanted to be on the Navy side when they won the game. And he knew as being a big football fan in general, his whole family was always a football fans. Being a big football fan in general, he obviously knew that if Navy won the game, they were going to get invited to the Cotton Bowl. Texas was the top team in the country. They had already finished an undefeated season, and Texas was going to the Cotton Bowl as number one. And if Navy won, they were gonna get the invite and be there as the number two team. Now the interesting thing is that up to this point in college football history, only one other time has a number one and number two team met in a postseason ball game. So this was gonna be a really special game. And some evidence that JFK was planning on, kind of knew this and was planning around it is I just uncovered, as I was writing my article about the Cotton Bowl game last week, that when Kennedy was in Dallas on November 22nd, the plan, the open air motor, Katie was in, they were going to the Dallas trademark. He was gonna be delivering a speech. As soon as that speech was over, he was going back to the airport. Air Force One was gonna fly him to Austin. And in Austin, he was planning to go see the University of Texas football practice. He was gonna be at their practice. That practice never took place. It was canceled, obviously. And he even had a joke prepared in his speech there where he says something to the extent we all would like to see a Navy Texas game. And if I can do something about it, I will, but I know you guys don't like a lot of federal intervention. So that was his little joke he was going to make in Austin that day. So that's kind of proof to me that he was really following this. He was definitely going to the Army Navy game. And he was looking forward to that win so he could go to the Cotton Bowl game. So this really got to me that JFK had this such passion for football and wanted to go see these games. Now the Army and Navy game, it turned out to be a great game. It was a classic case of powerhouse offense versus great defense. Army had a great defense. And Army took the lead, seven to nothing. Then Stawback did his magic. And with 10 minutes to go in the game, Navy's up 21 -7. And then something strange happened. Navy never got the ball back. Army comes down and scores. And they make a two -point conversion. And now it's 21 -15 with six minutes to go. Now Army's quarterback was a guy named Stickwa. And they also, as a lot of players did back in those days, as you know, Darren, they played on more than just one team. So Stickwa also played special teams. And so Army kicks off. Stickwa was there on special teams. Stickwa recovers the onside kick. So Army gets the ball back. And then with six minutes to go, he drives them down. He drives them downfield with a minute 37 to go. They've got first and goal on the Navy seven. So they had driven for a touchdown already. They're driving down again. It looks like nothing's gonna be able to stop them. And then Navy, they get about a couple of yards on second down. They get, I mean, they get a couple of yards on first down, they get a couple of yards on second down. Now it's third and three. And an army has no timeouts left. But the crowd, and I can't really imagine this, it's an open -air stadium. The old, what I heard, what was called JFK Stadium when I was growing up, it's not JFK Stadium yet at that point, it's just Philadelphia Stadium or Memorial Stadium. There's 102 ,000 people there. It's so loud that Stikwa, the army players can't hear Stikwa's call. So this is something kind of incredible -sounding to me. But at that time, and I don't know if it's still in place, there was a rule that if the crowd was so loud that the quarterback signals couldn't be heard by his own players that he could call an official time. He could turn to the official and call time. And he does this a couple of times. He does it on second down. And then he tries to do it again on third down. But what he doesn't realize, what Stikwa doesn't realize apparently, is yes, they're gonna give him this official time to momentarily stop the game. But then they're gonna start the clock again. And so unbeknownst to Stikwa, the clock starts again and time runs out. Time runs out on third and goal. And army didn't get another play. So Navy barely escaped, but they won the game. They retained their number two ranking and they were invited to the Cotton Bowl.

Darin Hayes
Wow. And they're probably wiping their brows, uh, all the sweat off their brows, all the fans, cause that's gotta be an edge of your seat moment. Those, uh, last six minutes. I mean, it's amazing. I mean, so they recover the onside kick and there's six minutes left and they tick off four and a half minutes and go what, 40 yards. That's incredible there. There must've been some, a bunch of two yard gains or something the whole way down there. Thank you.

Len Ferman
Well, they were mostly a running team. So, yeah, so they were just grinding out yardage and Navy wasn't able to stop them.

Greg McGifney
That's the old four minute offense. You're trying to run the clock out. You see a lot of all of a sudden NFL teams right on Sunday. They're they're winning and all of a sudden. Hey, we're we're going to run the clock out, right? We're going to try to get first downs and matriculate the ball down. Feel kind of very slowly and succinctly and not throw a lot of passes. So that's that was the strategy and it probably would have worked or should have worked if you had. You had some crowd stuff and the you know the 12th man showed up and definitely helped maybe team this time around.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. And, uh, Linda answer your question. I think that rule is still in place. And if you think back like 15, 20 years ago, there were NFL teams that were trying to do that, but the quarterbacks were finding, yeah, they got the pause and the officials would stop the game. Uh, not only with the clock restart, but the crowd would say, Hey, this is bugging that QB let's get louder and let's really get in his face. So I think they just sort of ignore it and they go to the silent counts, uh, to get by that, but, uh, yeah, great, great story though, uh, guys. That's a really puts me back into the moment there. And I really appreciate that. Yeah, go ahead and continue with our 1963 story of Navy.

Len Ferman
Yeah, so then they they've got three weeks to get ready for the Cotton Bowl game, which is on New Year's Day. And, and the irony of this is that the Cotton Bowl obviously is in Dallas. So, so here JFK, it's pretty certain he would have gone to Dallas six weeks after his first visit to Dallas, he would have gone back there to watch the Cotton Bowl game. It's pretty much a certainty. In fact, the reason I'm so certain is I had this hypothesis. And then I came across a book that's all about the 1963 Navy Army Navy game, and JFK. So a guy named Michael Connolly, who writes a lot of sports, great sports books, he wrote a book just about that game, and the time with JFK, the Army Navy game. So I contact I was able to contact him. And I said, Do you think JFK I think JFK would have gone to the Cotton Bowl? What do you think he said he definitely would have gone to the Cotton Bowl game. And, and he pointed out that the whole rivalry with LBJ LBJ, Lynn Baines Johnson was, was from Texas. So he was his Kennedy's vice president. So you know, that was another contributing factor that he certainly would have gone there to the Cotton Bowl game. And in fact, LBJ didn't end up going to the Cotton Bowl game himself, but he actually sent his daughter to the game. So so it's it's really, it's what really got to me is, you know, a lot of people focus on the Kennedy assassination, you know, here we are 60 years later, and the actor and director Rob Reiner is producing a major podcast now, where he's, he's saying, I've solved the Kennedy assassination. I, you know, it's a conspiracy, it was a conspiracy. And, and here's all the evidence I haven't listened to the podcast, but this is a big thing right now. And it, you know, it's occurred to me, as I was doing as I was researching this, and kind of experiencing this, that we've kind of dehumanized Kennedy over the last 60 years, just just focusing on the conspiracy theories around the assassination, we forget that this was a person who had, you know, dreams and aspirations. And one of his big dreams was to go to this Cotton Bowl game and see number two Navy and you know, the whole time he's been following Navy, they have never reached number two, they had not been this high in the rankings, since, since the war, since the war. And, as you probably know, in 1944 and 45, Army and Navy were the top two teams in the country. And the Army Navy game decided the national champion basically in 44 and 45 with Army winning both of those games and going undefeated. So this was Navy's chance to win a national title. They had not been in contention for a national title since they had lost to Army in 1945. I mean, this would have been one of the high points of Kennedy's life going as president to the Cotton Bowl, to watch them possibly win a national championship. And I have to believe that, and Greg, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, I'd have to believe that, you know, the motivation of knowing that you've got the president pulling for you would have been a big deal.

Greg McGifney
I absolutely believe it would have happened that that's, you know, everything I, I knew about Kennedy and, and the Navy football team, you know, being a graduate, of course, and having gone there and, you know, just just know the whole story behind it and what Kennedy was all about. I have no doubt he would have gave the guys a pep talk either in Annapolis, which is not far from Washington, obviously, or, you know, at the game, I have no doubt in my mind, Kennedy would have give them a pep talk and they would have probably responded very well to that. Just, just because I know he was he was pretty beloved and it's just like I said, it's a shame we don't realize that now, nowadays, but in that era, Kennedy and Navy were kind of a thing and like I said, he was a naval hero. He was, he wanted to be associated with the Navy very much so. And I think, you know, he, he was probably our best fan in term, definitely the best fan, as far as commander chief we ever have even probably better than Jimmy Carter I'm gonna guarantee because he really loved the team. He wanted to be part of the team. He wanted to be part of Navy football and he went to every army, he made it a point, I'm gonna be there. I love, I like Navy. You know, Harvard guy like in Navy who knew but hey that's, that's the way it went and was just such a great time in Navy football history that that team was just incredible and, you know, to think they could have beat a very good Texas team that was probably one of the history's best teams ever they were really good it just it just makes me, you know, think, gosh, that was a great season for for Navy and the Naval Academy so I just, I just wish I could have, you know, seen it myself I was, you know, too young probably to do that of course but that would have been an incredible time to be there.

Darin Hayes
I'm sure was now is it too presumptuous for me to say maybe either one of you can answer this now 60 years ago now we think of today, you know air force one is flying probably every day probably flying almost like a commercial jet going all over place but back in 1963 air travel is probably not as as prevalent as today and so for a president to be going you know basically thanksgiving being texas going back to washington going to philadelphia going back to texas within a month time that's probably quite a bit of travel even for the president of the united states in that time isn't it

Len Ferman
I think Air Force One was flying, you know, the average person was not flying all over the place like they are now, you know, the volume of passenger air traffic was a fraction of what it is today. But jet travel, we were in the jet travel age by the late 50s, and Air Force One was flying all over the place. In fact, the morning of the assassination, Kennedy woke up in Fort Worth, and they flew Air Force One from Fort Worth to Dallas, 10 minutes. So they didn't think anything of just flying, you know, flying Air Force One all over the place back then. But one of the things I want to bring up also is how the assassination affected the Navy team. And maybe this is something, Greg, that you can talk to how it would have impacted people in the armed forces more than the average person.

Greg McGifney
Well, I think Kennedy was a beloved figure. I mean, I still think of him in high regard as far as a lot of things related to that in that era. And there was a lot of turbulence, I guess, underlying turbulence politically in the world at that time. And you got to remember, Kennedy went to Dallas in November of 63 because he was starting, effectively starting his campaign for re -election. And there is no doubt about that. That's documented. That's why he was going there, it was to campaign. And so, he would have probably been going a lot of places throughout the country, but Texas to him was a big deal. And I think he thought he had to win Texas to win re -election. I think it was that he thought it was probably close again, just like it was against Nixon in 60. And it didn't end up being that way in 64, but he thought it was going to be. And he was definitely putting down markers to appeal to and to be part of and to be visible in these locations. So I got to think that's, he was looking at football maybe as a way that he could relate to people, which was pretty cool. And again, Kennedy was a naval hero. Kennedy was someone that I think Midshipman and the Naval Academy looked up to, had in high regard. I think when I was there, I think he was in high regard. I think people still remember, Kennedy was a fan. And we heard all the stories from the past and Roger Staubach related to that too, because he was NFL superstar. So I think there's still a lot of that going on and people will remember that and it kind of got further and further away now, but at the time, it was a very big deal. And I think it really, I think it really must've really affected the team because I think they thought him as one of them. I really did, even though he didn't go there per se, he was a Navy guy who went to war just like they were going to go eventually. And he was probably the closest thing they had to a president that they could relate to.

Len Ferman
Interesting. And the point the point I was wanted to make is that I think not only did they lose this potential motivation by not having Kennedy there, by losing Kennedy, the way they did, it really deflated the team. And, and the the Cotton Bowl game on New Year's Day 1964 does not go very well for Navy. What what happens is, and I wanted to get to the game itself, Texas, like Army was very much a defensive oriented, rushing team on offense, they hardly threw the ball, Duke Carlisle, their quarterback had only thrown for 400 yards passing the entire season in 1963. And so they catch the kind of catch Navy a little blindsided because they come in with a whole new strategy where they're going to throw, and they throw two touchdown passes early in the game, it's 14 nothing early on. And another thing they did very smart on their part, they apparently knew that the one of the Texas defensive backs, Pat Donnelly, who also doubled as a halfback. So another another two way player, Pat Donnelly had a hamstring injury. And so they threw at they threw in Donnelly's direction on two long bombs that they converted for touchdowns. And if you look at the you can see this in my sub stack article, you can see the videos where where Donnelly is just not able to keep up with the Texas wide receiver. And Texas scores these two early touchdowns. And that really, that really was an early nail in the coffin. And Texas ends up going up 28 nothing in the second half. And Stawback finally runs one in and, and it's 28 to six was the final score. Another interesting kind of side note is so Duke Carlisle who threw for just over 400 yards all season, he breaks the Cotton Bowl record by the third quarter, he breaks the Cotton Bowl record for passing yards in a game with something like 213. And then Stawback breaks the record in the fourth quarter. So Stawback ended up passing for 228 yards in that game. And that became the Cotton Bowl record. So the records broken by both quarterbacks in the same game. Wow. So so it doesn't end well for Navy losing 28 to six in the Cotton Bowl. But I have to believe that if Kennedy had lived and was able to go to Dallas, six weeks after that initial trip, that things could have been very different.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. Wow. That's a definitely a good point. And, uh, you know, something we'll never know. But, uh, you know, very interesting that they both quarterbacks broke the record of the cotton ball just tells you how badly each team wanted to win. Or at least the, the quarterbacks play, uh, was indicative of that. So, uh, very interesting indeed. Now, do we have any final notes on that? Where did Navy ended up? Did they end up ranked number two for the final balls?

Len Ferman
So here's the interesting thing. So back in those days, the final polls came out before the bowl games. Bowl games were really viewed as more like exhibition games. So officially, Texas won the national championship like three weeks earlier when the final poll came out around a little after the Army -Navy game. So around December 10 or 12, the final poll came out and Texas was one, Navy was two. And that's why I call it a de facto. The game was like a de facto national championship. It wasn't really the true national championship, but if Navy would have beaten Texas, it'd be hard to say, well, Navy wasn't really the national champion, but the official national champion had already been decided. And by the way, it's very interesting to note, it was the first ever national title for Texas. And Navy has never won a national title.

Darin Hayes
Interesting. And how about you, Greg? Do you have any final things to wrap up on our 1963 Navy team?

Greg McGifney
Well, you know, like, like Lynn said, it was, it was a disappointing thing all around, but bowl games were a really big deal until, you know, very recently, I think there's so many of them. But back then, there weren't that many. So it was a pretty big deal to have maybe go to the Cotton Bowl or maybe with the Orange Bowl. I mean, there weren't that many bowls. And if you go to bowl game, you got to be a pretty good team. And so I think there was a lot of maybe, I won't say height, but definitely interest in bowl games. And people took them seriously, as far as who, who beat who and what happened in a bowl game. And like today, you have opt outs and embarrassments and things like that. Now, the playoff is different. Now, it gets, it's more interesting. But still, I think college football was a little bit different than there were fewer games. And, you know, these, these one off games, you know, were that you hadn't actually televised or were televised or, you know, even radio broadcasts were a very big deal. And, you know, I just had one additional postscript about Roger Staubach, you know, where he ended up playing in his professional career from the at first, it was the Cotton Bowl. He played for Dallas Cowboys, he started, he played in the Cotton Bowl, then they moved to Texas Stadium later on, but he ended up playing home games at the Cotton Bowl and he ended up and Roger Staubach, you know, recovered from this defeat, obviously, because he became the first Dallas Cowboys quarterback to win the Super Bowl in Super Bowl six. So he actually was Dallas's first, you know, Super Bowl champion quarterback and they came close many times to winning NFL championships and the ice bowl and then the Super Bowl five was kind of a debacle. It was kind of a, they call it the Blunder Bowl and the Cowboys lost but Super Bowl six. Roger Staubach became the starting quarterback just before that in that season and he became the Super Bowl winning quarterback, the first one for Dallas and of course a Hall of Famer down down the road with many accolades and he ended up living in Dallas after that. So it kind of went full circle for him, but certainly, you know, Dallas was a certain place and at the time of the Cotton Bowl. You know, you realize that, you know, Roger Staubach was going to be in the Navy. He wasn't going to play professional football right away for a number of years and Logan B. Holley came back to play for Dallas. So I just thought that was kind of a karmic thing in a lot of ways that here comes Staubach and look where he is in his Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer, so

Darin Hayes
Anyway, good point on the irony now. He lost two games in a cotton ball that you're right. He lost correct you not a good Yeah, Texas. He did not have

Greg McGifney
good luck in the cotton bowl. But as a professional, he he had a lot better luck.

Darin Hayes
a great point. Well guys that is an excellent story and I thank you for sharing and bringing light into memories to this 1963 team and the greatness that was in some you know some really important moments in American history too of the country losing our leader very tragically and you know and how the the country responded and how football responded and a lot of people looked to things like football the entertainment to sort of take their minds off of it and I think it probably put a lot of people at ease knowing that the army navy game and the bowl games were being played and life could go on even though we lost such an important figure in world history at the time and gentlemen I really want to thank you again for for joining us and you know writing about this Len and you know commenting and sharing it with us here today on pixkin dispatch

Greg McGifney
Thank you for writing this line. It was one of the best things I've ever read. So thank you for following Navy football was tremendous.

Len Ferman
Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Darin. It was great being here.

---

The Air Force Academy Falcons football program has a rich history that dates back to its humble beginnings in 1955. With the establishment of the United States Air Force Academy just three years prior, the need for an athletic program to instill leadership, discipline, and teamwork became evident.

The academy's first athletic director, Colonel James C. Devereux, recognized the potential of football to achieve these goals. He envisioned a program that would not only compete athletically but also serve as a character-building experience for its players. Devereux recruited Ben Martin, a former coach at the University of Colorado, to lead the fledgling team.

Martin's arrival marked the start of a new chapter for Air Force athletics. He implemented a rigorous training program that emphasized discipline and physical conditioning. The team's distinctive triple-option offense, which focused on deception and ball control, was also introduced during this time.

Despite initial challenges, the Falcons quickly gained attention for their unique style of play and strong work ethic. They achieved their first winning season in 1958 and went on to win the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy (awarded to the top service academy team) for the first time in 1965.

Cheer for a team where excellence extends beyond the scoreboard. The Air Force Falcons fly high with a winning tradition, academic prowess, and a commitment to developing strong leaders both on and off the field. Witness the power of teamwork and dedication as these Falcons take to the sky (or rather, the gridiron) for a thrilling season!

It is a high flying brand of football!