A look back in sorrow

Yesterday I turned on my cable system and found myself one minute into an NFL film on the life of Vince Lombardi. I sat there for the next hour re-living the exciting sports days of the 1960s. I have been a Green Bay Packer fan since my high school days and when Coach Lombardi went to Green Bay in 1959 he breathed fresh life into the NFL’s smallest franchise and I was optimistic. 

His hard-edged style turned the Packers into the most envied and successful franchise in the 1960’s, leading them to five NFL Championships, and victories in Super Bowl I and II.

Twenty-five or more years later, after I was retired, my wife and I were driving to Alaska from South Carolina and she was looking at a book of maps and my pre-planned route. She asked why we were going through Wisconsin, and I said that was how one got to Canada. She said that was ridiculous and I agreed. “I want to go to Green Bay,” and she just smiled. She knew the lure of the Packers. 

The first day in Green Bay started with a tour of the stadium, along with a dozen or so others. The docent pointed to one end of the field and asked if anyone on the tour knew what that was. I quickly replied, “That’s the South end zone where Bart Starr dove to glory in the Ice Bowl and the Packers won their third straight NFL championship.” I knew. Packers 21, Cowboys 17. 

My two oldest sons (12 and 9 years old) and I had watched that game in 1967, glued to the black and white TV, anxious all the way. In the final four and a half minutes the Packers drove 65 yards, culminating with Starr’s quarterback sneak. It was third down, no time outs left, 13 seconds on the clock and there would be no time to kick a 4th down field goal and tie the game at 17 all. Lombardi told Starr to go for broke.

The coach went on in 1969 to the Washington Redskins (where he was given a part ownership in the team) and in 1970 died from cancer. One of the saddest days in sports history. As the film showed his funeral in St. Patrick’s cathedral in New York City, I had tears in my eyes, even after all these years. 

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Cables, splitters and football

Exterior cable box with 3 splitters and multiple cables.

It was a 'no football' Thanksgiving due to cable failure, but the Hargray repair man showed up as promised on Black Friday. While elsewhere shoppers were pushing and shoving - and a few throwing punches - things turned out better at our house. (Women fought over a Barbie doll and it took police to break it up. In England, two men fought over a TV in a Tesco grocery store and the TV was dropped  - a third man picked it up and walked off with it.

On the home front, the TV cable failure was attributed to a bad splitter and, perhaps, too many unused cables and connections. Three of the latter were in play. Since we have two TVs hooked up to cable at present the other cables were tied off and voila the tubes were back to working as usual. 

Today it will be Carolina and Clemson and later Notre Dame and Southern California.

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No football

Yesterday, Thanksgiving 2014, for only the second time in 54 years, I did not see any NFL football.  The first time I was in Taian, China, where the NFL runs a slow second to the NBA. The Chinese are very big on American basketball and follow certain players and their careers like a high school freshman chasing his first puppy love. Yesterday, my cable service went kaput and 24 hours later I am waiting for the Hargray repair man to show up at my house "between 1 and 5 pm."

Back in 1960, it was the Packers and Lions who were the game of the day. This custom of many years ended when Vince Lombardi notified the league the Packers did not want to do this any longer. It was hard on any team which usually played the previous Sunday and had to suit up again on Thursday. This cut the recovery time for injuries incurred on the previous Sunday, and Lombardi felt doing this every year was unfair to his players and fans. So the league began shuffling other teams into the turkey day festivities.
Football on Thanksgiving has been a regular occurrence since the league's inception in 1920. Currently, three NFL games are played every Thanksgiving. The first two are hosted by the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys, with one team from each conference playing either team on a rotating basis; a third game, with no fixed opponents, has been played annually since 2006. With six teams now playing each Thanksgiving many more players have less time to recover from injuries suffered the previous Sunday. (The league also started a regular Thursday night game in 2006. So much for the league's professed "concerns" about player safety.)
Notwithstanding the lack of NFL action in my life yesterday, today I am the same cheerful, friendly, clear thinking, pure in body and soul heterosexual male I have always been.

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