How It All Began: Super Bowl I
January.
15, 1967
One hundred yards
long and 53 yards, two-thirds inches wide, the field’s grass the
night before the game was given a $3,000 green spray job. It was well worth the price.
For this most novel of
football games, celebrities in the privileged seats included: famed movie and
TV stars Henry Fonda, Kirk Douglas, June Allyson, Janet Leigh, Chuck Connors,
Danny Thomas, CBS TV anchor Walter Cronkite, comedian and serious sports fan
Bob Hope, late night TV host
Johnny Carson.
Ten
astronauts were among the VIP guests invited to the game. Five were given
seating behind the Green Bay bench. The other five had seats in back of the Kansas
City bench.
All tickets and programs for the
event read:
World
Championship Game AFL vs. NFL
Sunday
January 15, 1967
Los
Angeles Memorial Coliseum
Kickoff
One O’Clock PM
Game programs sold
for a dollar and contained an article titled:
“A Day That Can
Never Happen Again."
On this
bright and clear day, a carnival like atmosphere was on parade outside the
venerable edifice. Lots of hawkers sold to a crowd that in the main was pretty
well dressed for the occasion. Many men wore suits with ties or came in sport
jackets and slacks. Lots of women were bedecked in their Sunday best. All
manner of hats were worn. There were even Kansas City zealots who sported caps
and hats with feathers stuck in them – an acknowledgment of the team nickname
-Chiefs.
TV
Guide that week carried just a listing of the
game to be played. There was no cover coverage. There was no big article. Television
pre-game festivities were simple. CBS showcased the Harlem Globetrotters
playing basketball on an aircraft carrier. NBC carried a football
year-in-review show that was broadcast over Armed Forces TV in Vietnam at one
in the morning. Beer, snacks and rifles were at the ready as troops settled in
to enjoy the game.
SHARON HUNT: There was a sense that
we were part of something new and history-making. We were seated just about
halfway up probably on about the 30 or 40 yard, not real high or low in the
stadium. It was a simpler time.
The name Super Bowl was freely used. It was
something that a toy a child was playing with could have inspired the name. But
the “AFL-NFL Championship Game” was just too cumbersome.
The multi-syllabled official title was a mouthful. It was too
long for newspaper headlines. “Super Bowl” was catchy, clever concise.
Those first two years, everything that was
printed -- the tickets, the programs – featured the words AFL-NFL World Championship
Game. By the third year “Super Bowl” would be the final and official name.
Less than a month before at the
Coliseum a regular-season game between the Green Bay Packers and Los Angeles
Rams attracted 72,418 fans. Initially,
the omnipresent and enthusiastic Pete Rozelle was convinced that for this
championship game of championship games there would be a 93,000-seat sellout. Later his office downsized the estimate to
70,000.
The day of the game the
official attendance was announced as 61,946, lots of empty seats.
It was reported that the
NFL commissioner was taken aback when a stadium that drew 102,368 for a Ram-San
Francisco 49er regular-season game in 1957 and in excess of 92,000 for three
1959 World Series games was only two-thirds full in a stadium that seated
around 93,000 for football.
MICKEY HERSKOWITZ: The game drew
over 60,000 but was considered a real box office bust. But even in today's new
stadiums 63,000 is considered respectable. We had only about a month of
marketing to attract that.
LEN
DAWSON: They thought all they had to do was open up the Coliseum and people
would come rushing in.
“The people in Los Angeles didn’t attend because they
didn’t see it as a big game,” explained cameraman Steve Sabol, who would go on
to head NFL Films. “Super Bowl I was considered a sideshow, an afterthought. I
had ten tickets and I couldn’t give them away.”
CHUCK LANE: That day to start there was almost like a
maritime level atmosphere that was almost kind of misty. And then the sun came
out and it turned out to be a beautiful day.
The Coliseum is a large, cavernous, historical building and there was a
considerable contingent from Green Bay present. We traveled well; that’s kind
of been a historical fact for the Packers.
FORREST GREGG: The Coliseum, never
gave it a thought. We could have played the game on the moon. It would have not
made any difference.
FRANK GIFFORD: I had played my college
football in the Coliseum so I was not awed by it. It was then and still is a
pretty awesome place.
DALE
STRAM: I recall my first sight of the Coliseum because I could compare it to
the Cotton Bowl in Dallas which I thought was big. My reaction to the Coliseum
was like, “Whoa, it’s really big.”
BOYD DOWLER: We played in the
Coliseum every year because we played the Rams out there every year, so it
wasn’t like our first visit to the Coliseum.
Oh yeah, it was a special game. And we’d never seen those guys, we’d
never lined up against those guys. The only thing was we had won the
championship the year before, so we played against some of their young guys in
the College All-Star Game. But that was different.
BILL CURRY: We arrive at the
Coliseum. We get to the locker room, again, business as usual. Somebody had to
get tape, another guy had to go meet with the trainer “for special reasons,”
meaning there was going to be an injection.
I had my ankle injected, because that’s what
you did in the NFL. I had injured it in the game against Dallas two weeks
prior.
CHRIS BURFORD: Compared to most of
the places we’d played in like the old War Memorial in Buffalo, the Coliseum
was okay. I remember playing back in the day in Buffalo when we used to have to
go to this little tiny locker room up these metal stairs that was right off the
concourse, if you could call it that, where the hot dog stands were. And you’d
have to dress in a little locker with a little tiny cage about one feet by
three feet, put your stuff in it, walk down the stairs, go through the crowd by
the hot dog stands, walk down through the stadium on, I guess, the third base
side of the old baseball park there, and then go out on the field.
But we could have played in a school yard. It
did not matter to me. The Coliseum was a nice place to play because they had
nice locker rooms. The Coliseum was quite a bit different then. The Coliseum
wasn’t that old then. It wasn’t any bigger as far as seating capacity than
Stanford’s stadium when I played there, about 90,000 also.
CURTIS
MCCLINTOCK: For the American Football
League, for our team and for all who supported us, that game was the first
flight to the moon, momentous. That Coliseum stadium and any stadium for a
player, it was how good is the grass and how good is the field. It was all about
a bench that was not too close to the stands but close enough to the field so
that we could observe it and not be close to fans and all the loud noise. That
was the Coliseum to us.
The
Green Bay Packers received the press box side, the shady side of the field. The
Kansas City Chiefs, not too happy with it, were assigned the sunny side, the
non-press box side.
JERRY
KRAMER: Stepping onto the field at the Coliseum, the place seemed half empty.
The game was of less importance. I don`t think the public was ready for it. Our
feeling was we`d beaten Dallas in the NFL championship on a last-second
touchdown and that was our season. There were many more in attendance for the
Dallas game. That was the big one. The Super Bowl was just another game.
BOYD DOWLER: There had been no
preseason games between the leagues. This was the first exposure. We went down
for pregame warm-ups, and were looking at the Kansas City Chiefs.
“Good Lord,” Max McGee said. “Big impressive
looking bunch of guys!”
And I said,
“Tell me about it!”
What he
proceeded to tell me was about the events of the night before, and the fact
that he hadn’t gotten too much sleep. He said he had missed curfew and had
gotten in early in the morning. He said Bart saw him come in because Bart was
always down real early in the morning. I never had a thought of what was to
happen later.
“Are you okay?” I asked Max.
And
he just said to me, “Don’t go down today.”
DALE STRAM: Each player had a
stall in the Coliseum locker room. I went over to some of the stalls and spoke
to players. I will never forget how wide
receiver Frank Pitts was so concerned about playing against the Packers. He
kept saying:
"This is going to be a tough game."
"This is going to be a tough game."
"This is going to be a tough game."
In the tunnel, Kansas City receiver
Chris Burford told Jerry Mays to get a look at Buck Buchanan, all six foot
seven and 290 pounds of him. The Kansas City defensive tackle’s face was
streaked with tears.
CHRIS
BURFORD: I told Jerry: "I'd hate to play across from him at the start of
this game. He is charged."
“Waiting in the
tunnel to be introduced, guys were throwing up and wetting their pants,” said
Kansas City linebacker, E.J. Holub.
CURT
MERZ: We went in as a huge underdog.
Pregame, I thought I was going to go over and see some guys I knew on the
Packers and say, “Nice to see you again.”
To
me that was the gentlemanly thing to do.
They
were so tight they wouldn’t even talk! I
didn’t know what was going on until I found out later all this stuff about the
owners and everybody being just petrified that we just might have a chance to
beat them.
BART STARR: There were a lot of loud Packer fans there. I
know they were very proud to be fans and be there for that team, and so we were
extremely proud to see and hear that too.
You’d be surprised at how many fans from an area back up in the Upper
Midwest in a small community were at that ballgame. And then I’m sure there
were a lot of Packer fans from other parts of the country.
All things considered there were two things about the crowd
that were surprising. Its smallness was a surprise compared to the high hopes
held for it in the NFL office and especially by Commissioner Pete Rozelle. The
other surprise was the large number of fans at the Coliseum who contrary to
what was expected seemed to be geared up to root for the underdog Chiefs.
DAVE
ROBINSON: Vince Lombardi and I happened
to walk out on the field at the same time before the game, and Vince told me,
“My, my, my look how far football has come.”
The field was all decorated with
green, green grass. The big crown in the middle, the vivid colors in the end
zones. Vince was really moved. He said jokingly: “I remember when football was
played in cow pastures!”
BART STARR: There was very deep,
embedded excitement coming out with my teammates onto the field. We were very,
very anxious to begin. It wasn’t just
another game. More importantly, nothing like it had ever been done before. There was a sense for some of us that we were
part of a historical event.
LEN
DAWSON: I felt special incentive to perform in that first Super Bowl. A
cast-off from the NFL, I had almost become a Packer because they needed a
quarterback while I was with the Browns. Paul Brown was thinking about sending
me there, but he turned around and sent another quarterback who would do some
punting as well.
But for me to go against the Packers and all
the top players who were there, that were my vintage, out of my time, a lot of
the players I played against in college.
That was something to get up for.
The groundbreaking nature of the game would
feature several unique public address announcements:
“AFTER A TOUCHDOWN THE TEAMS WILL
KICK, RUN OR PASS FOR ONE EXTRA POINT. THE AFL TWO POINT OPTION IS NOT IN
EFFECT.”
“REMEMBER THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
BALL WILL BE IN USE WHEN THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE IS ON OFFENSE. THE
AMERICAN LEAGUE WHEN THE AFL TEAM IS ON OFFENSE.”
“4,000
PIGEONS HAVE BEEN RELEASED HERE IN THE LOS ANGELES COLISEUM”
All kinds of unique features attracted themselves to the culture of that
first game.
The pitting of
representatives from two leagues for the first time who had never played
against each other for the world championship was ground-breaking.
The disappointment in the empty seats at the
Coliseum, the smallest crowd to ever attend a Super Bowl, the only Super Bowl
that failed to sell out, was of note.
The “newness,” of it all made for a lack of
tradition for the event.
The
playing of a championship on a neutral site lacked a history. A neutral site
made many fans neutral to the game.
DOUG KELLY: Two Midwestern teams,
and LA is very into itself in terms of what they deem to be cool. The first
time around, it wasn’t cool! It was two relatively unknown teams playing in a
huge facility, the Coliseum, and I think people looked at it somewhat askance.
The American Football League wanted
its officials to wear the uniforms they wore in their league games. Very
colorful with red-orange stripes, black collars on shirts and black cuffs, the
logo of the AFL prominent on the front of their shirts, caps, sleeves, the
whole package was pretty easy to see. However, the sometimes surly and always
assertive Mark Duncan, head of NFL officials, was downright dismissive. His
opinion was that AFL uniforms made the wearers resemble candy stripers in a
hospital.
A
compromise was reached. Wilson Sporting Goods designed “neutral” uniforms for
the game. They had the familiar NFL look of black and white stripes, sleeves
all black with the official’s uniform number. Hats were white with a black
bill. That uniform would last until
Super Bowl III when uniforms sported by officials were NFL standard fare.
Another minor controversy was centered on which league’s
football would be used in the game. A compromise settled that. Green Bay would use the NFL Wilson
"Duke" ball. Kansas City would stay with its AFL sanctioned Spalding
J5-V. Little difference in the footballs
existed aside from the AFL ball being a little more pointed than the NFL ball.
A quarter of an inch longer and thinner than the Wilson
model, some said the AFL ball was a bit easier to throw.
On offense the football would be changed by
the game referee Norm Schachter, the NFL’s top official. Sometimes the wrong ball would wind up in the hands
of an irritated center or player who complained and insisted on having the
“correct” football.
A Curt Gowdy malapropism underscored the excitement in
the TV booth:” And here come the captains, out fornb the toin coss.”
HANK STRAM: Our defensive captains
Jerry Mays and John Gilliam met the Green Bay captains Bob Skoronski and Willie
Davis in the center of the field to reenact the coin toss which had been made
earlier in the dressing room.
Three officials from the NFL and three from the AFL would
see duty that January Day. There were six alternates as backups. That 1967 crew
of a dozen officials - six officials and six alternates is still a Super Bowl
record.
When asked why there were so many alternates for
the game, the quick-witted Schachter replied: “Who knows? Maybe they thought we
would all get struck by lightning or something. I just didn't want them all to
walk on the field at the same time. It might have scared somebody."
The Brooklyn-born Schacter
began refereeing local football games in 1941 in California. He was a Marine
Captain in WWII. In 1954, he began working for the NFL as an official. He was
paid a hundred dollars a game. Seven games were guaranteed.
Norm Schachter tossed the coin. Willie Davis, captain of the
Packers, called “Heads!” Green Bay always made its call “Heads.” Coach Vince Lombardi believed that the eagle
side of the silver dollar weighed more.
Heads it was.
The captain of
the Chiefs, Jerry Mays, asked Schachter to
give him the coin as a souvenir. No way, Schachter shook his head. “No way. You lost the toss.”
Tex Schramm, general manager of the Dallas
Cowboys, came up with the idea of utilizing a remote control system for the
L.A. Coliseum scoreboard clock for the first Super Bowl. That system had been successfully tested out
by his Cowboys during the just concluded football season.
A primitive remote was attached to the huge
wrought-iron hands of the Coliseum clock. During the week before the game, test
after test was conducted. The remote and the clock worked to perfection. The
time for the opening kickoff arrived. An official on the field of play
activated the system. Then incredibly, one of the giant hands on the clock
disengaged. Like a scene out of a horror movie, it fell more than fifty feet
like a gigantic dagger into the stands below. It could have been a tragedy.
Miraculously, however, that section of the Coliseum was empty. No one was hurt.
“The goddamn clock’s” ancient hand given such
a testing and re-testing workout, had just worn out and fallen off.
The
actual kickoff time was 1:16 P.M. Pacific time, a little later than scheduled
because of the “clock” issue. An NFL films member gave a sound cue:
“Super
Bowl, reel one.” It was a name that was catchy, seemed official and historical.
Much of the piece is excerpted
from Harvey Frommer’s acclaimed When It Wass Just a Game. If you enjoyed this piece, the book is
available on Amazon and from the author.
About Harvey Frommer
One of the most prolific and respected sports journalists
and oral historians in the United States, author of the autobiographies of
legends Nolan Ryan, Tony Dorsett, and Red Holzman, Dr. Harvey Frommer
is an expert on all major sports. Cited by the Congressional Record and by the
New York State Legislatiure as a sports journalist and historian,
a professor now for more than two decades in the MALS program at Dartmouth
College, Frommer was dubbed “Dartmouth’s Mr. Baseball” by their alumni
magazine. He’s the founder of www.HarveyFrommerSports.com.
Mint,
signed, discounted Frommer books are available from his site.
