November 27, 1978: "The White Shadow" Premieres

November 27, 1978: The White Shadow premieres on CBS. Series creator Bruce Paltrow was the husband of actress Blythe Danner, and the father of actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Mike Post wrote the theme song. It remains the best sports-related TV show ever, and, aside from ABC’s later Coach, the longest-running: 3 seasons.

It was also the 1st television ensemble drama to feature a mostly nonwhite cast, with African-American actors playing the high school principal and vice-principal, the majority of the teenage basketball players, and other supporting roles.

Ken Howard actually was a basketball player at Amherst College, and "The White Shadow" was his real nickname. He got hurt, and turned to acting, playing Thomas Jefferson in the 1972 film version of the musical 1776.

In 1978, he was cast as Ken Reeves, who played for Boston College and the Chicago Bulls until a knee injury ended his career. He moved to Los Angeles, and was hired as the head basketball coach at George Washington Carver High School, where his former BC teammate Jim Willis (played by Ed Bernard) was now the principal. Reeves' own background in multiracial, multiethnic basketball helped him relate to his players, who came to hold him in very high regard.

He frequently stepped in to help his players out with the many personal problems that developed in inner cities. He helped budding superstar Warren Coolidge (Byron Stewart) avoid the temptation of agents, Curtis Jackson (Erik Kilpatrick) quit drinking, Milton Reese (Nathan Cook) through a relationship with a lying girlfriend and a transfer issue, Ricardo "Go-Go" Gomez (Ira Ingustain) with bad grades and his father's physical abuse, Gomez and James "Hollywood" Hayward (Thomas Carter) with avoiding gang violence, Morris Thorpe (Kevin Hooks) in dealing with an STD, and Mario "Salami" Pettrino (Timothy Van Patten, son of Eight Is Enough star Dick) with the results of an on-court fight.

At one point, during the 1979-80 season, the players got cocky during a winning streak, thinking no one could beat them. So Reeves used his connections to get some old friends to scrimmage against them. In the 1st half, in spite of being noticeably older, those players totally schooled the Carver players, who promised Reeves in the halftime team talk that they would take the opposition more seriously. In the 2nd half, the opposition wore their regular uniforms: They were the Harlem Globetrotters. The Globies still won, but the Carver players had learned their lesson.

Carver advanced to the City Championship in 1980, to be played at The Forum in Inglewood. But Jackson was shot and killed the night before, the victim of a store robbery gone bad. The game went on as scheduled: His teammates dedicated the game to his memory, and became City Champions for the 1st time.

Joan Pringle played Sybil Buchanan, a vice principal who succeeded Willis as principal. But, like every other show set in a high school, the writers and producers had to face the fact that, eventually, students graduate -- or drop out, or flunk out -- and move on. Thus, castmembers have to be replaced, and, as is so often the case, the new castmembers don't really catch on, and the ratings go down. The show was canceled after 3 seasons.

Nathan Cook died in 1988, the result of a penicillin allergy. He was only 38. Howard died in 2016. Larry "Flash" Jenkins, who played player Wardell Stone in Season 3, died in 2019. As of November 27, 2022, every other series star, including the players mentioned in the opening credits, is still alive.

UPDATE: John Mengatti, who played Nick "New York" Vitaglia in Seasons 2 and 3, died in 2023.

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November 27, 1978 was a Monday. This was also the day of the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall in San Francisco. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was out of season, although there was a notable event in the sport that day: Jimmy Rollins, Captain of the Philadelphia Phillies' 2007-11 quasi-dynasty, including the 2008 World Series win, was born, in Oakland, California, and grew up in neighboring Alameda.

There were no games scheduled that day for the NBA, the NHL, or the World Hockey Association. But Monday Night Football aired on ABC. And in the "You can't make this stuff up" department, the game that night happened to be set for Candlestick Park, between the San Francisco 49ers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Pete Rozelle, Commissioner of the NFL, and a former publicity director for the University of San Francisco, had been through this before. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated about 48 hours before NFL games were to kick off. Knowing that some teams scheduled to play on the road were already at their respective airports, and may even have been in the air, he decided to let the games go ahead as scheduled. He later called that his biggest mistake of his career.

This time, with only a few hours to make a decision, he decided to let the game be played, but ordered a moment of silence in memory of Moscone and Milk, to be held right before the National Anthem. But right between them, a truck backed into a wooden flagpole near the south end zone. The sound the pole made when it hit the ground unnerved many people who had been on edge, some for a few hours, some for a few days. At any rate, the Steelers, on their way to winning Super Bowl XIII, won the game, 24-7.