Note: It’s Wednesday, p.m., and I’m in Watch Hill, Rhode Island for a few days of R&R, plus work (that other column I do). I wasn’t going to do a Bar Chat but with the death of George Blanda after I posted the last one, just wanted to pay tribute to him before too many days elapsed. Plus I’ll clean up some other tidbits while I’m at it.
George Blanda
The football legend died the other day at the age of 83 after a brief, undisclosed illness. For some of us of a certain age, his stretch in 1970 was as magical as they come.
Blanda was born in the western Pennsylvania town of Youngwood, 1927, the area being a hotbed for football quarterbacks as you all know. Blanda went to Kentucky, where he played under Bear Bryant (before Bryant moved on to Alabama and coached future Blanda teammate, Kenny Stabler).
Blanda was a 12th-round draft pick by the Chicago Bears, where he actually played linebacker at times because he was the third quarterback behind Johnny Lujack and future Hall of Famer Sid Luckman.
But outside of a stretch in 1953 when he started at QB, his playing time dwindled after that and he retired in 1959, when it became clear the Bears only wanted him to kick.
The following season, though, he joined the Houston Oilers of the new American Football League, earning player-of-the-year honors in 1961 after setting a pro football record with 36 touchdown passes, a record that stood until 1986, when it was broken by Dan Marino. Also in ’61, Blanda threw seven TD passes in a game, a mark he still shares with four others.
Blanda would join Oakland in 1967, as kicker and back-up to Daryle Lamonica, but it was in 1970, at age 43, that the Blanda legend was cemented with one five-game run, as described by the L.A. Times’ Sam Farmer.
“That remarkable stretch began Oct. 25, 1970, when Blanda replaced an injured Lamonica and threw three touchdown passes in a 31-14 victory over Pittsburgh.
“Kicked a 48-yard field goal in the final seconds to forge a 17-17 tie at Kansas City.
“Threw a tying touchdown pass with one minute, 34 seconds remaining, then kicked the game-winning 52-yard field goal in the final seconds of a 23-20 victory over Cleveland.
“Threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to Fred Biletnikoff in a 24-19 victory over Denver.
“Kicked a 16-yard field goal in the final seconds for a 20-17 victory over San Diego.”
All of these games were on national television, except perhaps the first, which helped the legend grow at a time when few contests were on the air. Fans across America spent their Mondays talking about one old guy seemingly defying time.
Blanda’s coach, John Madden, said this week, “If you put him in a group of most-competitive, biggest-clutch players, I think he’d have to be the guy who would win it all. He was the most competitive guy I ever knew.”
Over his record 26-year pro career, George Blanda scored a then-record 2,002 points; tossing 236 touchdown passes, running for nine, kicking 335 field goals and 943 extra points. He was a month shy of 49 when he finally hung it up in 1976.
—Saturday’s big games in college football both take place at 8:00 p.m., ET. No. 7 Florida at No. 1 Alabama, and No. 9 Stanford at No. 4 Oregon. Then again, from here on, every week is going to contain at least one big contest among Pac-10 foes.
And regarding non-BCS power conference Boise State and TCU, Oregon State coach Mike Riley, who played both, losing 37-24 to the former and 30-21 to the latter, said they were worthy of their top five status, a significant statement in that coaches from the six power conferences are loath to compliment the likes of these two, or a Utah.
John Feinstein / Washington Post, on the shape of college football this year.
“For all the propaganda about how wonderful the Bowl Championship Series is because it gives college football’s regular season so much meaning, here’s what the 2010 season may boil down to: style points.
“Sort of like in figure skating. The judges may have to decide whether Boise State’s triple lutz – Virginia Tech, Oregon State and Nevada – was more impressive than Ohio State landing a triple salchow – Miami, Wisconsin and Penn State – even though it might have missed a double axel somewhere along the line….
“Let’s pause here for a moment to review this past Saturday’s schedule in the all-powerful Big Ten.
“The league had an 8-2 record. Pretty impressive stuff. Here were the eight teams that its teams beat: Ball State, Central Michigan, Bowling Green, Temple, Eastern Michigan, Akron, Northern Colorado and Austin Peay – which at last glance was best known for playing pretty good basketball and for producing the greatest student cheer in college sports history back in the glory days of high-flying forward James (Fly) Williams: ‘Fly is open – Let’s go Peay!’
“That aside, while the Big Ten rolled up six wins over teams from the Mid-America Conference, it also lost twice to teams from the MAC: Purdue to Toledo and Minnesota to Northern Illinois. So while those who work for the four-letter network cluck on about Boise State facing New Mexico State, San Jose State and Utah State later in the season, are we supposed to be impressed by a Murderer’s Row that includes Purdue, Minnesota and Indiana? For that matter, does anyone think Penn State is really any good or that Northwestern would seriously challenge any sort of serious team?”
–I didn’t see any of Ken Burns’ latest Baseball installment and from the comments of some friends, I haven’t been missing anything.
But in an op-ed for USA TODAY, producer Burns remarks that with all of baseball’s problems, including the steroids era, the resilience of the game stands tall. For example, Burns notes, the strike of 1994 “ushered in years of labor peace, as the players and MLB, shocked at the visceral reaction of the fans to the work stoppage, realized they had to work together and could never again test the faith of the millions of citizens who love this game. But in the wake of the strike, as baseball slowly reclaimed the interest of those fans, the steroids issue festered as neither the fans nor the media, the players nor the owners, seemed prepared to stop the artificial inflation of offense from the use of performance enhancement drugs….
“The Cassandras who predicted that steroids would destroy the game and render meaningless its statistics were wrong – just as they were wrong after free agency ended baseball’s decades-long ‘plantation system,’ liberating the players to make their own decisions about where to play….
“The play on field today is better than it has ever been. The steroids scandal seems to be over. Baseball, which once had the worst testing of any professional sport, now has the best. The only records that seem to have been affected were home runs. There were no more .300 hitters than before, no one hit .406 (as Ted Williams did in 1941), no one had a 56-game hit streak (as Joe DiMaggio did, also in ’41), and no pitcher had 40, 35, or even 30 wins.
“And there is no need for asterisks. Though baseball is the sport where statistics do matter over time, there is no asterisk about the winners of the 1919 World Series. It just says the Cincinnati Red Stockings were champions, not that some Chicago White Sox, now forever known as the Black Sox, took money from gamblers and threw the series. No, we just have to tell complicated stories about that and everything that followed.”
–Darren Everson of the Wall Street Journal points out that Toronto’s Jose Bautista, with 52 home runs as I go to post, has a 37% point margin between he and the AL’s next-best homer-hitters, Miguel Cabrera and Paul Konerko, each with 38. Since 1936, that’s the second-highest margin to 1956, when Mickey Mantle hit 52 and next-best was Vic Wertz with 32.
Of course neither Bautista nor Mantle could come close to Babe Ruth, who in 1920, nearly tripled the total of runner-up George Sisler, when Ruth hit 54 and Sisler had 19.
–Indianapolis Colts president Bill Polian, a member of the NFL competition committee, said he believes it’s a done deal as to an 18-game schedule, and reducing the exhibition season to two. But neither the owners or the players have formally approved it.
—The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame came up with its latest nominees for induction and the list is highlighted by Alice Cooper, Dr. John, J. Geils Band and Donna Summer; plus, the Beastie Boys, Bon Jovi, Chic, Neil Diamond, Donovan, LL Cool J, Darlene Love, Laura Nyro, Joe Tex, Tom Waits and Chuck Willis. Bu no Tommy James and The Shondells. It’s a travesty.
