Norm Van Brocklin (11) hands off to Billy Ray Barnes (33)
December 26, 1960: The NFL Championship Game is played at Franklin Field, on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school nestled into the hardscrabble city of Philadelphia. Since this was an odd-numbered year, it was the Eastern Division winner's turn to host the game, and that was the Philadelphia Eagles. They would play the Green Bay Packers.
The Packers, winners of 6 NFL Championships between 1929 and 1944, fell into a down period, going just 1-10-1 in 1958. Vince Lombardi was hired as head coach, and in just 2 seasons, he got them to 8-4 and the Western Division title.
The Eagles were coached by Buck Shaw, and their quarterback was Norm Van Brocklin, who had led the Los Angeles Rams to the 1951 NFL Championship. After losing their season opener at home to the Cleveland Browns, they won 9 straight, before losing away to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and finished 10-2. It was their 1st Eastern Division title since their 1949 NFL Championship.
Since the Sunday after the last week of the regular season was Christmas Day, the game was moved back to the following day. And, since Franklin Field didn't have lights -- a permanent system wasn't added until 1972, and it still isn't considered NFL-quality -- and the NFL Championship Game had gone to overtime just 2 years earlier, it was decided to move the starting time up to 12:00 Noon.
Temporary seats were added, bring the Ivy League facility to a sellout crowd of 67,325. It had snowed a few days before, and the field was dry in some places, muddy in others, and surrounded by a snowbank. It was 48 degrees at kickoff.
On the 1st play from scrimmage, a lateral from Van Brocklin deflected off the hands of receiver Billy Ray Barnes, and was intercepted by Bill Quinlan. The Packers had possession at the Eagles' 14-yard line, but the Eagle defense held, and forced the Packers to turn it over on downs at the 6. But Barnes shot his team in the foot again with a fumble, and Bill Forester recovered at the 22. Still, the Eagle defense held, and all the Packers could get was a 20-yard field goal from Paul Hornung, and a 3-0 lead.
Early in the 2nd quarter, the Eagles again held the Packers, and Hornung kicked a 23-yard field goal. Later in the quarter, Van Brocklin threw a 35-yard touchdown pass to Tommy McDonald, whose momentum led him to tumble through the end zone and into the snowbank. Bobby Walston kicked the extra point, and the Eagles led, 7-6. The perfectionist Lombardi was surely very displeased. Before the half ended, another Eagle drive led to a 15-yard field goal for Walston.
As time ran out, Hornung tried a field goal from just 13 yards out -- the goalposts were on the goal line until 1974, when they were moved back to the end line -- but it went wide left. The Packers should have been up by no less than 17-10, but were losing, 10-6. The perfectionist Lombardi was surely displeased.
In the 3rd quarter, the Packers got to the Eagles' 34, but turned the ball over on downs. To make matters worse, Hornung, also a great running back, had to leave the game due to a shoulder injury. Van Brocklin led the Eagles downfield, but was intercepted in the end zone by John Symank.
The Packers got the lead back with 13:07 left in regulation, with Bart Starr passing to Max McGee for a 7-yard touchdown. But Ted Dean, a local man from nearby Radnor, Pennsylvania, ran the ensuing kickoff back 58 yards. Van Brocklin got the Eagles close, and handed off to Dean for a 5-yard touchdown run. With 5:21 left, the Eagles led, 17-13.
The Packers got a last chance, starting at their 35 with 1:05 left. Starr got them to the Eagle 22 with 25 seconds to go. He threw a pass to Jim Taylor, who caught it at the 17-yard-line. There, he was faced by Chuck Bednarik, the Eagles' center and linebacker, the last man to play regularly on both offense and defense, and the last link to their 1949 title. Though from the steel town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and a waist gunner on a B-24 bomber in World War II, Bednarik had played on that field for the University of Pennsylvania, before starting a 14-year Hall of Fame career with the Eagles.
Known as "Concrete Charlie," not for his hitting but for his off-season job as a concrete salesman, Bednarik hit Taylor at the 17, and shoved him down to the grass. He held Taylor down, and watched the clock tick down to zero. Today, he probably would have been penalized for delay of game, but that didn't happen.
Taylor knew there would be time for at least one more play, if Bednarik would just let him up, and yelled, "Get off me, you son of a bitch!" Bednarik stayed on him, and saw the clock reach 0:00. Only then did he jump up, pump his fists, and yell, "You can get up now, you son of a bitch, this fucking game is over!"
you can smoke a cigarette and a victory cigar,
and nobody is going to say anything.
The Packers had outgained the Eagles, 401-296; and had gotten more 1st downs, 22-13. But they made a lot of mistakes. Lombardi knew he had made more than anyone, going for it on 4th down 3 times rather than attempt field goals. He told the media, "When you get down there, come out with something. I lost the game, not my players."
It was his 1st Playoff game as a head coach. He would never lose another: He guided the Eagles into the NFL Championship Game again in 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967, winning them all. Winning the last 2 of those got the Packers into the 1st 2 Super Bowls, and they won those, too.
In contrast, the 1960 title would be a watershed moment for the Eagles. Shaw retired as head coach, and Van Brocklin retired as a player, feeling that backup Sonny Jurgensen was ready to lead the team. Van Brocklin hoped that he would be named the new head coach.
Instead, team owner James P. Clark -- the leader of a group known as "The Happy Hundred" -- promoted assistant coach Nick Skorich. He led them to a 10-4 record in 1961. Before the next season, Clark died of a stroke, and the team's ownership situation was a mess, leading to seasons of 3-10-1 and 2-10-2.
Van Brocklin was hired as the head coach of the expansion Minnesota Vikings, and later coached the Atlanta Falcons, but never did well as head coach. Maybe he would have done better with the Eagles, the team he knew. Or maybe he would have been frustrated by the front-office mess.
For a while, the Kennedy family, looking for something for President John F. Kennedy to do once he was no longer President, was considering buying the team. His younger brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, a former football star at Harvard, was set to meet with representatives of the Happy Hundred in October 1962, but had to cancel the meeting, due to the Cuban Missile Crisis. By the time the Kennedys were ready to resume negotiations, the Happy Hundred had started them with trucking magnate Jerry Wolman. He completed his purchase of the team on December 4, 1963. By that point, JFK had been assassinated.
Wolman did the right thing in firing Skorich, but made a mistake in hiring failed Notre Dame coach Joe Kuharich, a moralist who traded the hard-partying Jurgensen for the strait-laced Norm Snead. Kuharich got the Eagles to a 2nd-place finish at 9-5 in 1966, but in just 2 more years, had crashed to 2-12.
Another trucking company boss, Leonard Tose, a former member of the Happy Hundred, bought the Eagles from the bankrupt Wolman in 1969, and rebuilt the team. It took time, but in 1978, they made the Playoffs again. In 1980, they won the NFC Championship, but lost the Super Bowl.
Tose, an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler, also went bankrupt, and had to sell the team to Norman Braman in 1985. Under Braman, the team was good enough to make the Playoffs, but not to reach the Super Bowl. Despised by Eagle fans for his cheapness and his absentee ownership, he sold the team to Jeffrey Lurie in 1995. They made 4 straight NFC Championship Games, but only got to the Super Bowl the last time, the 2004 season, losing.
After a rebuild, they finally won Super Bowl LII in 2018, ending a 57-season title drought. Along with the Cleveland Browns (last title in 1964), the Detroit Lions (1957) and the Arizona Cardinals (1947, then the Chicago Cardinals), the Eagles were 1 of the last 4 teams to have won an NFL Championship, but not a Super Bowl. Some people ascribed the drought to "The Curse of the Dutchman," but Van Brocklin never made a public statement against the Eagles for not hiring him as head coach.
The Eagles left Franklin Field for Veterans Stadium in 1971. The shift from Ivy League stadium built just for football to a concrete oval built for both baseball and football in the middle of a parking lot could not have been more stark. In 2003, they moved a new football-only stadium built in the same sports complex, Lincoln Financial Field. The Vet lasted 33 years before it was demolished. Amazingly, Franklin Field still stands, having opened in 1922, with the University of Pennsylvania having played football on the site since 1895.
UPDATE: Through the 2025 season, the Eagles have elected the following players from the 1960 NFL Champions to their team Hall of Fame: Chuck Bednarik, Norm Van Brocklin, Sonny Jurgensen, Tommy McDonald, Tom Brookshier, Pete Retzlaff, Timmy Brown, Maxie Baughan and Bobby Walston; plus team executive Jim Gallagher. They have not, however, elected head coach Buck Shaw.
Bednarik McDonald, Brooshier, Retzlaff, Brown, Baughan, Walston and broadcaster Bill Campbell have also been elected to the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame -- but not Shaw, or, even more oddly, Van Brocklin.
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December 26, 1960 was, a Monday. Baseball was out of season. No NHL games were scheduled. There were 4 games in the NBA:
* The New York Knicks beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 119-112 at the old Madison Square Garden. Elgin Baylor scored 44 points in defeat.
* The Boston Celtics beat their arch-rivals, the Philadelphia Warriors, 119-115 at the Boston Garden. Wilt Chamberlain scored 30 points and had 36 rebounds, but, as was so often the case against Wilt, the Celtics had the better team.
* The Detroit Pistons beat the Cincinnati Royals, 137-132 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. Oscar Robertson scored 43 points for the Royals.
* And the St. Louis Hawks beat the Syracuse Nationals, 133-112 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.
And in English soccer, Arsenal and Yorkshire team Sheffield Wednesday play to a 1-1 draw at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London.
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