January 9, 1977: The Oakland Raiders Win the Big One

Fred Biletnikoff (left) and Ken Stabler

January 9, 1977: This remains the earliest day in the calendar year on which a Super Bowl has been held, and the earliest definitive pro football "world championship" since 1959, when the NFL Championship Game was still held in December, and alone, without an AFL Championship Game to leave the world championship disputed.

Perhaps being played so early explains why "The Autumn Wind" finally made its presence felt in Winter.

The Oakland Raiders were founded with the American Football League in 1960. By 1963, with Al Davis beginning to run things as head coach and "managing general partner," they were a 10-4 team. In 1966, Davis stuck to the management side of things, and hired John Rauch as head coach.

In 1967, he hired John Madden to be linebackers coach. They won the AFL Championship, losing to the Green Bay Packers of Vince Lombardi in Super Bowl II. A year later, the Raiders lost the AFL Championship Game to the New York Jets. Rauch resigned, and Madden was named his successor as head coach.

Davis built a team in his own image. Nasty. Sometimes weird. Someone once compared them to "the Island of Misfit Toys" in the 1964 Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But with Davis running the organization, and Madden running the team, they built a record that made them one of professional football's iconic franchises. They inspired NFL Films head Steve Sabol, in 1974, to write a poem:

The Autumn Wind is a pirate
blustering in from sea.

With a rollicking song,

he sweeps along,
swaggering boisterously.

His face is weather-beaten.
He wears a hooded sash,
with a silver hat

about his head,
and a bristling black mustache.

He growls as he storms the country,
a villain big and bold,

and the trees all shake

and quiver and quake,
as he robs them of their gold.

The Autumn Wind is a Raider

pillaging just for fun.

He'll knock you 'round

and upside-down

and laugh when he's conquered and won.

Sabol showed the poem to Davis, and he loved it, saying, "This is what the Oakland Raiders are all about." So Sabol had NFL Films' regular voiceover performer, John Facenda, record it, and then played it over highlights of the team. And that's how the Oakland Raiders, the toughest football team of its era, became the only NFL team with an official team poem, something you'd expect from a more literary city like New York or Boston.

The mustache was a reference to old perceptions of pirates. In fact, most of the Raiders didn't have mustaches, and even the pirate logo on their helmet doesn't have one. "Bucco Bruce," the original helmet logo of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, did.

But the team did enjoy its "villain" image. Defensive end Ben Davidson, who did grow a horseshoe mustache, was regarded as the dirtiest player in the AFL. Linebacker Ted Hendricks, already known as "The Mad Stork" when starring for the Baltimore Colts, burnished his Hall of Fame credentials with the Raiders, being nicknamed "Kick 'em in the Head Ted."

Safety Jack Tatum was the hardest hitter in the game, so mean he leveled an unnecessary hit on New England Patriot receiver Darryl Stingley in 1978. In a preseason exhibition. Stingley was paralyzed. Tatum titled his memoir They Call Me Assassin.

And the quarterback was no exception. Ken Stabler, prior to the arrival of Steve Young, was the best lefthanded quarterback football had ever seen. He could have been mistaken for a member of the Hell's Angels, the drug-dealing motorcycle gang founded in Oakland years before the Raiders arrived. He had the long hair, the mustache, and the bushy beard. And he had the attitude: He would do whatever it takes to beat you from the long bomb to "those 14-yard and 16-yard darts," as one writer described him at the time.

Off the field, though, he wasn't mean. He was a country boy from Alabama who enjoyed a good time. He once said, "There's nothing wrong with reading a playbook by the light of a jukebox." Someone once read him a quote by novelist Jack London: "I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry rot," and asked Stabler what he thought it meant. He thought for a few seconds, and said, "Throw deep."

To later fans, who knew him as a broadcaster, or as the creator of the video game series that bears his name, John Madden seemed to be too nice a guy to coach the Raiders. Nothing could be further from the truth: That personality made him exactly the kind of guy who should have been their coach. Most coaches in those days acted like domineering fathers. He was more like the cool older brother, who would teach you things that Dad wouldn't teach you. The players related to him: White and black, urban and rural, the straight-laced and the party animal, the merely mischievous and the truly dirty.

He gave his players one rule, and only one: "Be on time." That gave them a freedom that most coaches wouldn't give. He coached them for 10 seasons, and went 103-32-7. He was the Light Side of the Raider Force, Al Davis was the Dark Side, and, together, they built something that wasn't always good, but was must-see TV, long after John left for the broadcast booth.

But the Raiders had difficulty winning big games. In 1968, his last year as an assistant, they beat the New York Jets in a regular-season game remembered as "The Heidi Bowl," but lost the AFL Championship Game to the Jets. In 1969, they lost the AFL Championship Game to the Kansas City Chiefs. In 1970, the 1st post-merger season, they lost the AFC Championship Game to the Baltimore Colts.

They missed the Playoffs in 1971. In 1972, they thought they had the Pittsburgh Steelers beaten in a Divisional Playoff, before a play known as "The Immaculate Reception." Various Raiders insisted that the play was illegal for various reasons: The pass hit Frenchy Fuqua, not Jack Tatum, therefore all Steeler players were ineligible receivers; Franco Harris caught the ball when it was on the ground, therefore it was an incomplete pass; and Phil Villapiano was illegally blocked by John McMakin, therefore the ball should have been placed at the spot of the foul, and then 5 yards marked off, negating the touchdown.

It's been nearly half a century. Every piece of footage of the play that has ever been found has proven that the ball hit Tatum, and never hit Fuqua. Every footage found shows McMakin's block was legal. And no footage found has yet shown the ball hitting the ground as Harris caught it. Still, Madden said he would never get over the play: "No matter how many times I watch the films of the Immaculate Reception play, I never know for sure what happened."

The Raiders lost the 1973 AFC Championship Game to the Miami Dolphins. In 1974, they dethroned the 3-time defending AFC Champion Dolphins in a wild game at the Oakland Coliseum that became known as "The Sea of Hands," but lost to the Steelers again in the AFC Championship Game. They lost to the Steelers again in the 1975 AFC Championship Game.

Finally, in 1976, after a 13-1 regular season, and a controversial Playoff win over the New England Patriots, they beat the Steelers, and advanced to Super Bowl XI. On January 9, 1977, they walked onto the field at the Rose Bowl, in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena, California.

Their opponents were the Minnesota Vikings. In contrast to the Raiders' rather plain combination of silver, black and white -- they wore their white jerseys on this day -- the Vikings wore purple and white, with gold trim. They had a strong defense, with a nickname that made them seem as fearsome as the Raiders, taken from a rock and roll novelty song from 1958: The Purple People Eaters. Tackle Alan Page, ends Carl Eller and Jim Marshall, and safety Paul Krause, the NFL's all-time leader in interceptions, are all in the Hall of Fame.

Their offense was nearly unpredictable, largely due to their quarterback. Fran Tarkenton was known as the Scrambler, because chasing him out of the pocket was often a bad idea, as he ran and searched for open receivers, such as Sammy White and Ahmad Rashad, or perhaps running back Chuck Foreman. And if he couldn't find one, he kept running. He finished his career with more passes, more completions, more touchdown passes, more passing yards, and more rushing yards than any quarterback before him. He, center Mick Tinglehoff and offensive tackle Ron Yary are also in the Hall of Fame, as is head coach Bud Grant.

But the Vikings were also a team that "couldn't win the big one." Despite having won 8 of the last 9 titles in their Division, they had lost Super Bowls IV, VIII and IX. Now, 2 teams known for falling apart when it mattered most were playing for the biggest prize of all. Something had to give.

It remains the only Super Bowl to not have the National Anthem played or sung before it. Instead, singer Vikki Carr sang "America the Beautiful." Kickoff was at 12:30 PM Pacific Time -- 3:30 Eastern. It remains the last Super Bowl to have been played entirely in daylight.

The Raiders' opening drive ended when kicker Errol Mann hit the left upright on a 29-yard field goal attempt. Later, Fred McNeill of the Vikings blocked a punt by the Raiders' Ray Guy, who had never had one blocked before. But the Vikings' Brent McClanahan fumbled the ball away on the Raider 3-yard line.

That began a Raider drive to end the quarter, but they could only get a 24-yard field goal from Mann. They could easily have been up 14-0. Instead, it was just 3-0.

But after holding the Vikings and forcing them to punt, Stabler went to work, tossing to Fred Biletnikoff, Dave Casper and Cliff Branch, finally finding Casper in the end zone to put the Raiders up 10-0. They held the Vikings again, and Pete Banaszak ran the ball in for a touchdown to make it 16-0. But, again, Mann missed a close kick, this time the extra point. The Raiders should have been up by 28. Instead, they were up by 16.

Still, they had held the Vikings to just 1 1st down. They got 3 more, but were still well short of the Raider end zone when the half expired. To this day, the Vikings have been in 4 Super Bowls, scoring a grand total of zero points in those games' 1st halves.

Midway through the 3rd quarter, Stabler drove the Raiders again, and, from 40 yards out, Mann did not miss. His field goal made it 19-0. In their 3 1/2 Super Bowls to that point, the Vikings had scored only 20. A roughing-the-passer penalty on Hendricks gave the Vikings a chance, and Tarkenton threw a touchdown pass to Sammy White, making it 19-7.

The Raiders had to punt on their next drive, and Tarkenton got the Vikings to the Raider 37. It looked like the momentum had shifted. But Willie Hall intercepted a pass, and Stabler nearly got into the end zone with a 48-yard pass to Biletnikoff. Banaszak ran it in 2 players later, and the game was effectively over at 26-7.

On the Vikings' next drive, veteran cornerback Willie Brown intercepted a Tarkenton pass, and ran it 75 yards for a touchdown. Mann missed the extra point again, but at 32-7, nobody cared. The Vikings added a touchdown with 25 seconds left, but few people cared about that, either. It ended Raiders 32, Vikings 14.

Biletnikoff was named the game's Most Valuable Player. For the Raiders: Stabler, Biletnikoff, Casper, Hendricks, Brown, Guy, guard Gene Upshaw and offensive tackle Art Shell were elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. So were coach Madden and owner-GM Davis.

The Raiders would win a 2nd title in the 1980 season, under head coach Tom Flores, beating the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XV. They moved to Los Angeles in 1982, and Flores guided them to a 3rd title in the 1983 season, beating the team then known as the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XVIII.

It is noteworthy that, from the Giants' Pennant of October 3, 1962 to the 49ers' NFC Championship of January 10, 1982, the City of San Francisco had no league champions in any sport, while the City of Oakland had 8: The 1967 AFL Champion Raiders; the 1969 ABA Champion Oaks; the 1972, 1973 and 1974 World Series Champion Athletics; the 1975 NBA Champion Warriors; and the 1976 and 1980 NFL Champion Raiders.

The Raiders went into a down period, but reached the AFC Championship Game in 1990. They moved back to Oakland, and won another AFC Championship in 2002, losing Super Bowl XXXVII to the other pirate-themed team in the NFL, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In 2020, they left Oakland again, moving to Las Vegas.

The Vikings haven't been to a Super Bowl since, losing the NFC Championship Game for the seasons of 1987 (losing to the Redskins), 1998 (despite finishing the regular season 15-1, losing in overtime to the Atlanta Falcons), 2000 (getting slaughtered 41-0 by the New York Giants at the Meadowlands), 2009 (losing in overtime to the New Orleans Saints) and 2017 (getting clobbered by the Philadelphia Eagles, denying them a chance to play Super Bowl LII in their home stadium in Minneapolis).

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January 9, 1977 was a Sunday. Obviously, no other football games were played on the day. Baseball was out of season. There were 3 games played in the NBA:

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons, 124-118 at Cobo Hall in Detroit.

* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the San Antonio Spurs, 150-113 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum. Despite the high score, no player on either side scored more than 22 points.

* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the New Orleans Jazz, 92-76 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.

There were 3 games played in the NHL that day:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Los Angeles Kings, 5-4 at Madison Square Garden.

* The Buffalo Sabres beat the Cleveland Barons, 7-4 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. After the 1978 season, the Barons and the Minnesota North Stars, both going broke, were merged, with all of the Barons' assets, including players, transferred to the Stars. The Barons remain the last team in North America's "Big Four" sports leagues to go out of business.

* And in an "Original Six" matchup, the Boston Bruins beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-2 at the Chicago Stadium.

And there were 3 games played in the World Hockey Association:

* The Quebec Nordiques beat the San Diego Mariners, 5-2 at the Colisée de Québec. San Diego to Quebec City is about as far as you can go on a North American sports roadtrip.

* The Winnipeg Jets beat the Birmingham Bulls, 4-1 at the Winnipeg Arena.

* And the Edmonton Oilers beat the Indianapolis Racers, 5-3 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton.