Brad Schultz - The NFL, Year One: The 1970 Season and the Dawn of Modern Football

Ordinarily, when we look at the history of the National Football League (NFL), we tend to do so from either a very small or a very large perspective. The very small could include a single game or play, and certainly the memories of most NFL fans fall into this category. We are all familiar with the Ice Bowl, The Catch, The Immaculate Reception, and dozens of other singular moments. Looking at the NFL from a larger perspective usually means by decade, such as the tumultuous early period of the league in the 1920s, or the romanticized Golden Age of the 1950s.

The 1970 NFL season usually does not merit much attention. It is sandwiched between the Packers dynasty of the 1960s and the Steelers dynasty of the 1970s and is often overshadowed by the Joe Namath Super Bowl in 1968 and the Dolphins perfect season in 1972. That the 1970 season ended with an unspectacular thudthe Blunder Bowl between the Colts and Cowboys in Super Bowl Vis also why football writers tend to consign it to the scrapheap of sports history.

But the 1970 season is fascinating for so many reasonsparticularly because it was the first time that teams from the NFL and former American Football League (AFL) played together on a regular basis. The newly merged and realigned league created instant geographic rivalries. The Jets and Giants played for the championship of New York, the Bengals and Browns began an Ohio rivalry that was dominated on both sides by Paul Brown, and the Cowboys and Oilers consummated a long-standing Texas feud. These games gave the NFL a sheen of freshness.

There was a feeling of stepping into the unknown as teams were playing for the first time, said sportswriter Jerry Green, who covered the NFL for forty-one years for the Detroit News. There was a haughtiness about the NFL. It was the establishment; the superior league.

Green was there for some of the most important moments of the 1970 season, including the first Monday Night Football game and Tom Dempseys record-breaking 63-yard field goal.

Alex Karras [of the Lions] was laughing as they lined up, recalled Green of Dempseys miracle kick. I was standing next to the elevator waiting to go down to the locker room because I figured the Lions had the game won.

Saints owner John Mecom was standing with me and said, Hold on, I want to watch this. Afterwards in the Lions locker room, someone knocked a hole in the blackboard. I found out later it was [coach] Joe Schmidt.

The 1970 season is also important in that it was where the seeds of the modern NFL were planted. A short players strike before the first kickoff foreshadowed bigger labor issues, which continue to plague the league today. Artificial turf and soccer-style kickers both came to prominence in 1970, developments that would have important ramifications on the league in future years. And Super Bowl V, even for all its flaws and foul-ups, would help launch the Super Bowl into a national obsession, the roots of which could be seen in the immediate success of Monday Night Football, which became a cultural phenomenon.

I was surprised it was so successful, but this was when football was starting to overtake baseball as the most popular sport in America, said Green. Monday Night Football was part of that. [Director] Chet Forte and Roone Arledge made it go. Their contribution to professional football is immense.

The AFL-NFL war is a fascinating story, and even though the two leagues had officially merged in 1966, there was still plenty of bad blood between teams and individuals in 1970. The former AFL teams still believed they had to prove themselves, even after winning the previous two Super Bowlsa situation that made for some interesting games.

I chronicle many of these games in detail, framed against the backdrop of this rivalry, such as the Minnesota Vikings desire to get revenge on the Kansas City Chiefs for their Super Bowl IV humiliation, and the cultural importance of Monday Night Football, which began with the Cleveland Browns and New York Jets in the first week of the 1970 season. It was also a year of huge personalities. George Blanda went from reject quarterback to hero of Americas aging middle class, while Paul Brown finally had a chance to get back at the man who had ended his Cleveland Browns dynasty. There are also those who suffered. The St. Louis Cardinals and Dallas Cowboys fell victim to their own tortured histories, and football fans in Green Bay and Washington mourned the passing of legendary coach Vince Lombardi.

Lombardis Packers had dominated the 1960s, but as the 1970s began, the playing fields had been leveled. With a few exceptions, almost every team in the league believed it had a chance to win the Super Bowl. The year 1970 was one of the most competitive and unpredictable seasons in NFL history, with four of the six division races not settled until the final weekend. It was a season that fulfilled Commissioner Pete Rozelles dream of parity, an idea that is still alive and well in the NFL today, both on and off the field.

On a personal note, I have somewhat selfish reasons for writing about the 1970 NFL year. My family was living in Dallas at the time, and I was about as fanatical a Cowboys fan as one can be at nine years old. We subscribed to both the Dallas Morning News and the now-defunct Times-Herald, in part so I wouldnt miss any information about the team. We went to a few games, although not all of them, and those home games we didnt attend I listened to on the radio. (NFL blackout rules prevented showing the game within seventy-five miles of Dallas.) In an age before NFL Properties got serious about its merchandising, my room was filled with Cowboys paraphernalia, including a waste basket, posters, notebooks, and anything else I could get my hands on.