October 15, 1987: The End of "Scab Football"

October 15, 1987: The longest NFL players' strike to date ends, after 3 weeks of replacement players. Ever since, the NFL has had the weakest players' union of the big 4 North American sports.

This was also the end of "scab football": The team owners had signed players to replace the striking players, rather than cancel the games as they had in 1982, although one week's worth was still canceled.

Still, nobody wanted to see those fake teams: The Buffalo Counterfeit Bills, Chicago Spare Bears, Cincinnati Bungles, Cleveland Brownouts, Dallas Cowpies, Detroit Lyin’s, Indianapolis Dolts, Kansas City Griefs, Los Angeles Shams, New England Patsies, New Orleans Ain’ts (or Saint Elsewheres), New York Gi-ain’ts, New York Grounded Jets, Pittsburgh Stealers, San Francisco Phony Niners, Seattle Sea-scabs, Washington Scabskins.

On October 11, some of the Dallas Cowboys had broken the strike, and took the field at Texas Stadium, in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas, against a Philadelphia Eagles team pretty much staffed by "weekend warriors." The Cowboys won, 41-22: A lot of points, but not the kind of margin of victory one would have expected.

Two weeks later, on October 25, in the rematch at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, Eagles head coach Buddy Ryan called for a fake spike in the final seconds, as payback for Cowboy coach Tom Landry using the strikebreakers. Already up by 10 points, the Eagles scored a touchdown to win, 37-20.

Games like this, the later "Bounty Bowls" vs. the Cowboys, and the "Body Bag Game" against the Washington Redskins are why Eagles fans still love Buddy Ryan. Maybe they'd love him a lot more if he remembered that he had Randall Cunningham, the quarterback known as "The Ultimate Weapon." But, like his son Rex Ryan, Buddy was a defensive genius but clueless when it came to offense.

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October 15, 1987 was a Thursday. Baseball was between its League Championship Series and its World Series. The Minnesota Twins would beat the St. Louis Cardinals in 7 games.

The NBA season began 22 days later. There were 3 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers and the Pittsburgh Penguins played to a tie, 6-6 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The New York Islanders beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 6-0 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* And the Boston Bruins beat the Los Angeles Kings, 3-2 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.