That’s how most of them were raised, by humble hard working folks (WWII generation) that couldn’t or WOULDN’T get on the government ARM to furnish their “lifestyle”-so to speak. No humility today…
Roone Arledge the producer of MNF was a very good friend of NBC announcer Curt Gowdy and desperately wanted Gowdy to be the announcer--however, NBC would not let Gowdy out of his contract so Arledge hired Keith Jackson (as I recall Frank Gifford was also considered then but he also was under contract with CBS so wasn't available)
Strange how when you hear names from over 40 years ago in football. They are easily recognizable. But you can not recognize the names of over half the players in todays game.
Funny how you watch a game in 1970 then one from 1980 and you see a huge difference in both level of play and show production… or compare 1980 to 1990 or compare 1960 to 1970. In ten years you can see the game progress or you can see the network production progress… then compare a game today with the game in 2013. Not much difference. It’s not just football. Everything has been stagnating
@@johnliberty3647 Well, it's the progression of technology, but the last 10 years have been focused more on streaming capabilities rather that quality and production.
In my mind Dawson and Unitas were great QB's with Unitas possibly being ranked in the top 5 of all time, they didn't have the advantages of today's QB's ( radio helmets, technology up the wazoo!! ). When Unitas played if he got knocked down or roughed up in the pocket there was no roughing the passer penalty like today, you almost had to kill the QB to get a penalty. I will always hold QB's from that era in high regard.
No one knowledgeable about football could possibly make an all time QBS without putting Unitas at or near the top and Dawson belongs in the conversation as well
Len Dawson was great in his own right. He was the definition of a Kansas City Chief, not just for what he did on the fields for the AFL and for the NFL, but for his work covering the chiefs for channel 9 news while he played and long after he played. I’m glad he got to see Patrick Mahomes. He’s gonna beat all Lenny Dawson’s records.
Brings back wonderful memories. And I loved Don Meredith's insights as well as his fun manner of explaining them: "Let's take a look at that play right quick." Thank you for the upload! There was a high adherence to professionalism in those days.
Thanks for sharing. Great players from the past came to life once again. Truly enjoyed MNF with Dandy Don, Keith, and even Howard. It is a shame all those broadcasts are not available.
Wow. Great piece of history. Current champion vs future champion. Hard to believe this classy broadcast spawned the unbearable, watered down, over-hyped, mess we have to struggle through now. So many Hall of Famers playing in this game I can't see straight.
I was the reigning world champion of Skittle Pool that year. I beat the former title holder, I.P. Daily by a stroke. I was later defeated by Buckminster Fuller after 5 consecutive titles.
I was only 3 when this game was aired so I wasn't able to see it live or maybe it was on? Again I was three. But I became a fan of Monday Night Football by 1974-75 when I hit 7-8 years old. Looking back at these classic games I see how why I LOVED it so much! I used to beg, plead, and even cry to be allowed to stay up for the Half-Time Highlights. They were so incredible in the mid to late 70's that they were a favorite part of the show for me as a kid. I loved all the helmets, I collected the $0.²⁵cent plastic helmets out of the quarter machines at the entrance to the grocery stores, or retailers. Back then we didn't get to see any games we wanted to. There was no NFL Network. We had 3 Networks....ABC, CBS, and NBC. Also PBS and a couple non-affiliated networks or "locally" run broadcasting networks, but that's it. So the Half-Time Highlights were my only way to see the Buccaneers, Seahawks, Chargers, Chiefs, Bills, etc. The Buccaneers and Seahawks had just began their journey in the NFL. But living in Milwaukee we hardly ever got to see them play. They usually played the same time as Green Bay's game. The Seahawks usually played the late game but we also rarely saw them although they were on more than the Buccaneers were. But overall looking back at Monday Night Football back then compared to now? LMFAO! There is absolutely NO COMPARISON WITH THEM! The 70's MNF gets 5⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 🌟stars🌟 while the 2020-2022 gets ⅛ ⭐, this🔸️instead of ⭐this. The new Monday Night Football is a pathetically inept attempt at broadcasting football! ESPN should have stuck to ACTUALLY reporting true sports news, not TABLOID GARBAGE! Back when Dan Patrick and his bud Keith Olbermann were the anchors of SportsCenter it was actually good. They showed Highlights of every game. Some drama but mostly focused on the Sports and not the 💩poo!💩 The ORIGINAL Monday Night Football was absolutely 💯 % pure football! Great play by play announcers, a great color man, and the stats showed were the vital players yearly stats, or previous game's stats. It seems as though there is more crap on the screen! It's tough to actually see the game. Many people "hated" Howard Cosell. I remember one game they showed, the MNF team showed a poster/picture of a baby laying on his belly on a blanket, but Howard Cosell's head was the baby's head. Gifford got a laugh. They had great banter, but it was Football first and foremost and Cosell? While you might hate him, he knew his stuff! Plus he had a great reputation with the players so he was able to get some iconic interviews! Everything about the Monday Night Football presentation from the 70's was spot on perfection! I miss the 70's as well! We had better movies, better music, and the sports were really fun to watch and experience. ⚾️🧢Baseball🧢⚾️ had some of the best players. Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Gaylord Perry, Steve Carlton, Steve Garvey, Carl Yaztremski, Fred Lynn, Robin Yount, George Brett, Carlton Fisk, Jim Rice, Dave Kingman, and at the tail end of his career, 🔨 Hammering🔨 Hank/Henry Aaron! Many of them have left us. RIP🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊RIP to all who have passed on in all of the sports. They will never be forgotten! God Bless them, their families, all of the fans, and all of us watching, playing, or just hoping this mess gets better! 🙏 Take care and again God Bless!
@@stevensicherman4101 games back then usually ended in less than 3 hours. But add in the traffic jams leaving stadium and the average person who attended gets to bed 60-90 minutes after game ends.
That’s an awesome memory. My first game was in Miami November 23, 1988. Dolphins/Jets . Mark Gastinau had just retired the week before. Marino throws for 523 yards but throws 5 INTs , Erik McMillan runs 2 INTs for TDS in a 44-30 Jets win
@@russellseilhamer4552 It was also memorable because when my dad and I got home the house was empty of all furniture and pretty much anything but our clothes. My stepmother had used the opportunity to move and take everything with her. Ironic too because the breaks went out on the car on the way to the game and we almost turned around and went back home.
Those intros to MNF were great. Monday night at 9:00 pm, (Eastern Time) must see TV. Got to stay up after bedtime to watch most of the first half back then.
Louisville has become a " football " school now that it's basketball program has tanked. But it's real football strength over the years has been it's QBs, Unitas to Jackson. Unitas started this season looking his age, but had one of his better years. 1970 was a very interesting year with the Colts moving into the AFL with the merger and the different league styles that previously were not matched up during the regular season. The ads are great too. From Marlboros, to spark plugs, and I had forgotten about skittle pool. What if it had become as big as pickle ball? Thanks for posting. Was at Georgetown University from 1970 to 1974. We used to drive up to Baltimore for Oriole baseball games, but you could not get a ticket to the Colts.
Aaron Brown had a great game and Johnny Robinson also. Watching this game at the time, I thought as a Colt fan,had a sinking feeling about this team ,but we know what happened after.
1:06:49 “The pension strike” to which Cosell referred was a lockout and work stoppage in the summer of 1970 that resulted in new minimum salaries for players as well as medical and pension improvements.
At the end of the game, Gifford mentions the retirement of Henry Heed (sp) after 43 years. He would have started at ABC in 1927, only 4 years after ABC had been founded as a radio station.
@@mm-gl7sz Every football fan already knows they're the Indianapolis Colts. Statistically, Peyton Manning has the numbers but Johnny Unitas played in a totally different era, 12 game seasons, MUCH different rules, defenses could tee-off on the QB and NOT get flagged for 15 yards if they so much as breathed on the QB in Unitas's day, Manning was fortunate to play in this era of, " Defensive players can do anything they want to do to the QB, EXCEPT touch them ". Both of them are legendary and no doubt Hall Of Famers. Manning was also very fortunate to just live in these much more modern times of advances in medicine and the treatment of injuries. Unitas played in the era of whatever your injury was, the coach would say, " Walk it off ".
Fun fact: in 1927 the NFL originally had the goal posts placed behind the end zone line then in 1933 was placed on the goal line But when they eventually realized that the goal posts was interfering with plays and players frequently running into them the NFL decided in 1974 to move the goalposts back behind the end zone line where they remained ever since
That had to do with the extra tiebreak regular season game at the end of the 1932 season between the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans(Detroit now) as both clubs had the same records percentage-wise for NFL best record when ties were not counted. There was no such animal as an NFL "playoff game" back then, but that game created the impetus to introduce a split into divisions the next year, and a championship game between reg. season divisional winners in the East and West. It also created hashmarks because the game had to be moved indoors due to snowy blizzard-like conditions outside in Chicago, moved to the old Chicago Stadium hockey arena. The smaller 80 yard field with no space between the stands and the sideline stripes, forced the hashes creation of ten yards from the boundary markings on each side for every yardline on the field. That way the snap would not come dangerously so, right next to the stands. Colleges eventually adopted that, too. Secondly, since the endzones' endlines were right up against the back walls on each end of Chicago Stadium, for players safety sake they moved the goalpost from the original 19th century college and pro spot and the APFA/NFL 1920 spot on the endline, up to the goalline, so the ball on the extra point kick in the '32 game would not hit the backwall and carom back hard toward the unsuspecting, vulnerable players who had their eyes turned elsewhere as they ran off the field. Again in '33-34 the posts moved up for every NFL game. Finally, the last bit of news concerned a controversy in the game centered around the clinching play at the end of the 9-0 Bears winning contest when a forward pass was thrown for a TD. The rule then stated forward passes had to be thrown at least five yards behind the scrimmage line, but the losers, the Spartans, I believe, claimed the pass was thrown three yards behind the line and should not have counted, forcing the rule change in 1933 to state a forward pass could be thrown anywhere behind the line. That was the game that truly changed the NFL..maybe more than any game in its history. The posts were returned after the 1973-74 season because of the uproar tied to the late attempt to rally by Washington in SUPER BOWL VII in 1973 vs. MIAMI. BILLY KILMER THE WASH. QB on third down in the redzone hit the goalpost with a pass toward a wide open receiver, I believe it was tight end Jerry Smith, and cost the Redskins a tying TD at the end of the game because on fourth down, SBOWL MVP Manny Fernandez sacked Kilmer to cement the perfect season for '72-73. They changed the posts after the '73-74 season before the 1974-75 campaign... when for the third or fourth time, they changed the hashmarks. Each time they moved the hashes, they pushed them closer to the middle of the field from 10 yards to 15 and then in '74 to over 21 yards from the sidelines, closer together than the colleges. That year in '74-75 there were more 1,000 yard NFL runners(14-game season) than had happened anytime before that campaign. Yep..
I was 15 when this rule change was made. Make no mistake. The real reason for moving the goal posts to the end line was the glut of field goals that had come to decide games. Safety was secondary to the management of the NFL, much as now.
They moved the goal posts back because 50+ yard FGs were becoming too common, mainly due to the relatively new batch of soccer style kickers like Stenerud and Yepremian. On a 57 yard FG teams didn't even have to cross the 50. Back then a missed FG was treated exactly the same as a punt, so why not take the chance? On Tom Dempsey's 63 yarder in 1970 the holder placed the ball down on their own 37 yard line. Their own 37! That was just crazy.
@@ronflatter1235 That's right. It became too easy to score "easy" points off short drives. The old timers who ran the league didn't like it. Like you said, they never did ever care about the players.
These Monday night games were each an event. Everyone (sports fans) watched them and talked about them. And ah, the romance of smoking ads by Marlboro.
1:11 it’s funny that you had back then the notion of the difference between the Super Bowl winner, and what they said was the “three time champions of the NFL. The first three Super Bowls were really champion versus champion good that the Monday night football in their broadcast acknowledged it. #AFL #NFL
Actually it was the first 4 Super Bowls that were champion vs champion. Super Bowl 5 (this season shown here) was the first under the newly merged leagues
@@JohnSmith-kz8yo They just had a big thing about that because the first MNF game this year was Jets-Browns, just about 49 years after that first ever Monday Night game.
it was--the Jets played the Browns at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The NFL essentially awarded the honor of this game to Cleveland. Browns owner at that time Art Modell had been the one pushing to create Monday Night Football which the NFL wasn't exactly enthusiastic about when it was proposed
@@jimegan6783, regular season's second..yep. Friday NITER Steelers v. Giants preseason game was the first ever post-merger ABC NATIONAL LEAGUE game before the regular season MNF opener= JETS AT BROWNS. The next season they had the CHIEFS AND JETS IN PRESEASON..
Len Dawson - 9-12 for 152 yards, 4 td's and 1 int. Johnny U - 5-15 for 58 yards 2 int's Earl Morrall - 17-36 243 yards 3 td's and 3 int's. Warren McVea was the leading rusher for KC with 56 yards on 16 carries. Mike Garrett only had 4 carries for 18 yards.
Wow! So many legendary players on both teams! That Chiefs team was really loaded with Hall of Famers and should have won more than one Super Bowl because no team was more talented at that time IMO. Baltimore ultimately won the Super Bowl that season, but I didn't think they were better than the Chiefs even though they had their share of future Hall of Famers. The Chiefs really dominated the Colts in this game and made Unitas look well past his prime.
The astute and articulate Lenny Dawson would later become one of the few NFL players to occupy the broadcast booth possessing consummate professionalism.
jeffersonianideal Yes indeed. My son became a Chiefs fan two years ago, and I bought him a Framed Lenny Dawson pic for his bedroom and told him what a great QB he was. ( Eagles fan)
They were wonderful weren't they? I was born in 67. So I was a 70's kid and I loved it! Everything was better! I even love watching the commercials that aired during that game! While I don't remember watching this, since I was only 3 at the time, I do remember the mid 70's MNF and the iconic show that it was. These are precious memories! Your comment was spot on perfection! Take care!
Wow! I haven't seen it all yet, but what a hard fought game at a classic old ballpark. All the legends are there. Who'd be a better test for the Colts than the reigning world champions - Kansas City, whose defense mainly gave Norm Bulaich no quarter - all over him. Saw Colts' center, Bill Curry, early in the game, fire out on Chiefs' tackle, Curly Culp, driving him backwards six yards. Amazing quickness he had. Gloster Richardson uses pure speed to outrun both Baltimore defensive backs, into a seam and - boom - touchdown. Colts tight end, John Mackey has a wire "birdcage" facemask. I had never known him to sport one, now increasing in popularity for running backs, DB's and receivers, by this time.
When I was a kid, I think if my dad could have married Johnny Untias, he would have. He still talks about the 1958 Championship Game. We had relatives in Baltimore, I never went to a football game, but maybe 12 Orioles games at Memorial Stadium. My brother in law remembers seeing Don Shula on the sidelines at Memorial when he was the coach of the Colts.
My dad loved Johnny U. too😅 And Brooks Robinson. ... he grew up in Baltimore. ... When the Colts beat Dallas in the last second of the Super Bowl, I remember my dad jumped so high he hit his head on ceiling😅.. sadly dad passed away last year
@@bonanzatime That's so sad about your father. My dad is in his 80's but he's still going. He had the Orioles on one channel and the Ravens on the other last night. His mother, (my grandma) was a super Orioles fan also. When they played the Pirates in the 1971 World Series, dad's brother, my uncle, kept going down to her house telling her the Pirates were going to come back and win just to "mess with" her. My uncle told me years later after she died, after the Pirates won that series, she didn't talk to him for 2 years.
@@bonanzatime I think the most disappointing thing for me was in when the Colts lost Super Bowl III to the Jets. I spent most of that game hiding under my bed, I was just a kid. It didn't help. I still see that Joe Namath on TV all the time.
@@clintonearlwalker I was too young to remember that one. Glad I didn't see it😅... Yeah, Good Ole Broadway Joe. .... years ago I worked with a guy who went to that SB, he never made it to the stadium and missed the whole game because he got too drunk😂
I attended the Pro Playoff Bowl in January 1967. The Program included an article on Johnny Unitas which quoted him “I feel I can play five more years.” ( I attended the Game the year before with both Unitas and Cuozzo injured for the season and Tom Matte at QB.)
THANK YOU VIRGIL. THAT WAS MY TEAM STILL IS THE OLD COLTS I WELLED A FEW TIMES. VIRGIL I LIVE IN N.J. STARTED OUT IN PHILA, SO I ADOPTED TH EAGLES. I REMEMBER THIS GAME LIKE IT WAS TONIGHT, VIRGIL LET'S STAY IN TOUCH, REGARDS, BOB.
Watching games from the era I have really grown to admire these Chiefs especially the smothering defense I wonder if it was a direct influence on Parcels Giants in the 90s as the style was similar, I'm also impressed with how intense the play was late in the 4th quarter of a 20 point game to the point that Baltimore was calling timeouts to get the ball with a few seconds to go, good stuff
So much better back then... the games move along, we see more commercials by the end of the 1st Q today than all game back then.... passing was not as plentiful but the running games were king... golden years of the NFL.
Unitas was so classy. You can see Unitas still had the confidence ha always had. That night the Colts showed absolutely no sign that they would hold the Lombardi Trophy at years end. The Chiefs put a serious ass whippin' on the Colts.
50 years ago tonight on September 28, 1970. Ironically, the Chiefs are playing the Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore tonight. A historical fast forward 50 years later Sept 28,2020.
One of the executives working for the 1970 Colts was George Young, the future GM of the New York Giants. In this game, at wide receiver is Ray Perkins whom Young hired as head coach for the Giants in 1979.
3:07 Cosell used to ask some doozies... like Unitas was going to declare he had no long balls left in the tank - and just before a game to boot. Next question was good though, sort of predicting mobile QB's that now dominate.
That was a HUGE game. It marked the passing of the great Johnny Vaught, after 20 yrs at Miss, and Miss' football fortunes went downhill after that. In other words, Miss wasn't good in 1970 just because of Archie. Vaught won several conference titles against Bryant and even held his own with General Bob Neyland during their brief yrs of overlap.
Archie Manning who's son Peyton played and won a Super Bowl with the Colts and then won another in Denver, and his other son Eli who won two Super Bowls over the Cheatriots
would like to see more 1970-72 games in general. with the rule change about the hashes and ball placement really changed the game from that point forward in a drastic way because defenses didn't get the sideline as a defender or awkward angles for FG attempts. love defensive football and those advantages to the defense in that way are really interesting to me.
This is a good( in color) look at what Johnny U looked like in his Colts uniform/ High tops from the 1960’s I’m assuming the Colts uniforms/ helmets didn’t Change much moving from the 60’s to early 70’s Pretty cool....
@@jackmessick2869 the colts unis haven't really changed over the years except for the names on the jerseys. Their facemasks went from grey to white to blue then back to grey though
This tape is quite a find. I'd be curious to know it's history. I'm thinking it originally got saved on 2 inch tape, and was dubbed on to a cassette. Did a local person put it on 2 inch from the network feed?
@Agent Orange + They did. Maybe it was because they ran the ball so much, and that the defenses really hit back then. Think of the great backs that had a tendency to fumble.
@@PerpetualArt i'll take opportunity here to share observation from back then that risks cries of racism...but here goes. For quite a number of yrs, it was common to see black ball carriers (mainly RBs) seemed to take some sort of stylish pride in deliberately carrying the ball in one hand - away from their body! It was almost like today idiots where their knee pads way above their knees, as if that helps speed. Walter Payton used to do that a lot. I saw SB XI replay recently and sure enough Chuck Foreman was carrying it like a lunch pail. I think O.J. did it. Too long ago to rember all of them.
Hall of fame members. Baltimore Colts: Johnny Unitas, Ted Hendricks, John Mackey. Kansas City Chiefs: Len Dawson, Emmett Thomas, Johnny Robinson, Jan Stenerud, Curly Culp, Willie Lanier, Bobby Bell, Buck Buchanan, Lamar Hunt, Hank Stram.
1:34:32 “Walt Garrett”? That is actually Walt Garrison. Howard did not make too many mistakes doing these highlights over the years, but this was an early one.
