December 31, 1962: The Failure of the American Basketball League

December 31, 1962: The American Basketball League folds, early in its 2nd season.

Since the Basketball Association of America took on some teams of the National Basketball League in 1949, and took on the name of the National Basketball Association, the NBA had been the only major league in the sport. But when Abe Saperstein, founder and owner of the all-black Harlem Globetrotters, was denied a Los Angeles-based expansion team, and Minneapolis Lakers owner Bob Short was allowed to move his team to Los Angeles for the 1960-61 season, Saperstein acted.

Saperstein contacted George Steinbrenner, the Cleveland shipbuilding executive who owned the Cleveland Pipers, champions of the Amateur Athletic Union, and Paul Cohen, who owned the Tuck Tapers of the National Alliance of Basketball Leagues, and they formed the ABL.

Saperstein hired Bill Sharman, a former star for USC and the Boston Celtics, to coach the Los Angeles Jets. Their star player would be Los Angeles native George Yardley, who had starred with the Fort Wayne and Detroit Pistons.

Steinbrenner, only 31 years old when the league began play for the 1961-62 season, was already a man of big ideas and big ambition. He hired John McLendon, formerly the coach at historically-black Tennessee State University, as his head coach. If the ABL was to be considered a "major league," then this made him the 1st black head coach or manager in major league sports. (Unless one wanted to count the NFL in its very 1st season, which was a little premature, and Fritz Pollard coached the 1920 Akron Pros.)

Just as he would later be the 1st team owner in Major League Baseball to embrace free agency, Steinbrenner made a big splash with his 1st big signing for the Pipers: Jerry Lucas, who had led Ohio State to 3 straight NCAA Finals, including the 1960 National Championship. Because he was still in college, Lucas couldn't play for the Pipers in 1961-62. For legal reasons, he wouldn't be able to play in 1962-63, either. But Steinbrenner figured, with Lucas on his team from 1963-64 onward, he could rule the ABL.

The original 8 teams were the Jets, the Pipers, the Washington Tapers, the Pittsburgh Rens (short for "Renaissance"), the Chicago Majors, the Kansas City Steers, the San Francisco Saints, and the Hawaii Chiefs.

Among the players who had already been NBA stars were Yardley in Los Angeles, Connie Dierking in Cleveland, Gene Conley in Washington, and Ken Sears in San Francisco. Bill Spivey had starred at the University of Kentucky, but was caught up in the 1951 college basketball point-shaving scandal. Although acquitted, he was still banned from the NBA, and had played on semipro teams ever since, finishing his career with the Jets.

Among the players who would eventually become NBA stars were Lucas, Dick Barnett and Larry Siegfried in Cleveland; and Connie Hawkins in Pittsburgh. Hawkins had been a star on the playgrounds of New York City and at the University of Iowa, but had been banned from the NBA for his connection to a gambler. He would star in the American Basketball Association, before his NBA ban was finally lifted.

The Pipers won the 1962 ABL title, beating the Steers, 3 games to 2. George Steinbrenner had his 1st sports championship. Cleveland would not win another title in pro basketball for 54 years.

Various moves, in both leagues, doomed the ABL. Saperstein's founding franchise, the Los Angeles Jets, folded before the 1st season even ended. The Philadelphia Warriors moved to San Francisco, so the Saints moved across the Bay, taking on the name of a defunct minor-league baseball team, the Oakland Oaks. The Tapers moved to Philadelphia, to fill this void. Traveling to Hawaii was cost-prohibitive for most teams, so the Chiefs took the Jets' place in the L.A. market, becoming the Long Beach Chiefs.

But even as a 6-team league, the ABL couldn't compete. The Chiefs still had to compete for attention with the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Lakers won. The Oaks still had to compete for attention with the San Francisco Warriors, and the Warriors won.

And the Majors had to compete for attention with the NBA's Chicago Zephyrs, and both ended losing: The Majors folded, and the Zephyrs moved for the 1963-64 season, becoming the Baltimore Bullets. They became the Washington Bullets in 1973, and the Washington Wizards in 1997.

Finally, a rumor spread that the NBA's Syracuse Nationals were going to move to Philadelphia for the 1963-64 season. The rumor was true: They became the Philadelphia 76ers. So the Tapers were doomed.

And so, with no team in the New York market, and their teams in the other big markets failing, the ABL folded on New Year's Eve 1962. The Kansas City Steers were in 1st place at the time, and were declared league Champions. Kansas City has never won another pro basketball title.

After the folding, it came out that Steinbrenner had a secret deal with NBA Commissioner Maurice Podoloff: The Cleveland Pipers would merge with the Kansas City Steers and join the NBA, with Lucas staying in Ohio, in Cleveland, and boosting the NBA's attendance. A schedule was printed for the 1963–64 NBA season with the Pipers playing the New York Knicks in the 1rst game.

The gambit worked, but the ABL sued to block the move, and as a result, Steinbrenner had a team, but no league to put it in. Instead of returning to the ABL, Steinbrenner folded the team. This was the 1st move of his as a sports team owner that backfired. It wouldn't be the last.

The ABL did have a legacy, though. It was the 1st basketball league to have a three-point field goal. The ABA would use it for its entire existence, 1967 to 1976, and the NBA adopted it in 1979. It also had a 30-second shot clock, compared to the NBA's 24-second clock; and a free throw lane of 18 feet, compared to the 12 feet then used in the NBA.

Jerry Lucas would stay in Ohio, but with the Cincinnati Royals, where he would play alongside fellow future Hall-of-Famers Oscar Robertson and Jack Twyman. Dick Barnett would help the New York Knicks win the 1970 and 1973 NBA Championships. In 1973, those Knicks would also have Lucas, and beat a Lakers team coached by Bill Sharman, which won the title the year before. Connie Hawkins would lead the Pittsburgh Pipers to the 1st ABA title in 1968, then star in the NBA with the Phoenix Suns and the Lakers.

Saperstein, Sharman, Lucas and Hawkins would all be elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame -- albeit, in each case, for reasons other than what they did in the ABL.

*

December 31, 1962 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. No NBA games were scheduled. The NFL Championship Game was played the day before, and the Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants, 16-7 at Yankee Stadium. There was 1 NHL game played: The New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 1-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

There was also a college football bowl game played: West Texas State beat Ohio University, 15-14 in the Sun Bowl, in the stadium of the same name in El Paso, Texas.

December 31, 1961: Those Who Stayed Were Champions

December 31, 1961: The NFL Championship Game is played at the 2nd City Stadium in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1965, it will be renamed Lambeau Field.

In spite of the previous success of the Green Bay Packers, this is the 1st time the game is played in Green Bay. The previous City Stadium had never hosted it. The Packers had finished 1st in the NFL in 1929, 1930 and 1931; and 2nd behind a team that would have been in the Eastern Division in 1927. But there was no NFL Championship Game for them to host, or for which to be the visiting team, until 1933.

Once that was established, the way the old system worked out, the Championship Game was hosted by the Eastern Division winners in even-numbered years, and the Western Division winners in odd-numbered years. The Packers won the West in 1936, 1938, 1944 and 1960, and played the Championship Game on the road. Their only previous time hosting was in 1939, and with a seating capacity of just 25,000, City Stadium was considered too small, so they moved it to Wisconsin State Fair Park in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis. They won, beating the New York Giants, 27-0.

In 1956, the NFL gave the Packers an ultimatum: Build a bigger stadium, or move. They built what became Lambeau Field in 1957, and seating capacity was 32,500. By 1961, it was 38,669. (By the time of the 1967 title game, the Ice Bowl, it was 50,861. It reached 56,263 in 1970, 60,890 in 1990, 72,515 in 2003, and 81,441 by 2013.) Now, all they had to do was qualify for the title game, by winning the Western Division.

The 1961 season was also the one in which the teams involved adopted their familiar helmet logos: The Packers, football-shaped "G" monogram, for Green Bay (they've never used a "GB," although Lombardi had practice caps made with such a logo); the Giants, the lower-case "ny," for "New York."

The Giants won the NFL Championship in 1956, with head coach Jim Lee Howell. What we would now call his offensive coordinator was Vince Lombardi, and his defensive coordinator was Tom Landry. Lombardi left to become the head coach of the Packers in 1959. Landry left to become the head coach of the expansion Dallas Cowboys in 1960. It would take them a few years to get their act together.

Meanwhile, the Giants again reached the Championship Game in 1958 and 1959, losing to the Baltimore Colts both times. In 1961, Allie Sherman replaced Howell as Giants head coach, and Y.A. Tittle replaced Charley Conerly as quarterback. But running back Frank Gifford came out of retirement, and Sam Huff still led the best defense in the NFL.

The Giants lost their opener, home to the St. Louis Cardinals, then won 5 straight -- the 1st 4 on the road, as the New York Yankees kept using Yankee Stadium all the way to the World Series -- then lost at home to the Dallas Cowboys, won 4 straight, lost to the Packers in Green Bay, beat the defending Champion Philadelphia Eagles away, and finished with a home tie with the Cleveland Browns. At 10-3-1, they won the Eastern Division.

Back to Lombardi: When he arrived, the Packers were coming off a 1-10-1 season. He told his players, "We may not win, but we won't be losing with the same people." With that in mind, he cut the man then regarded as the team's best player, end Billy Howton, because he didn't think Howton was serious enough.

But he kept the actual best player, Paul Hornung: While Hornung was the life of the party off the field, he was completely dedicated on it. And that summed up what Lombardi meant when he gave the Packers their slogan: "Those who stay will be champions."

Sure enough, in just 1 season, having gotten rid of the unserious, and having promoted the dedicated, he took the Packers to to 7-5. In 1960, they went 8-4, and won the Western Division, but lost the NFL Championship Game to the Philadelphia Eagles. It would be the only postseason game Lombardi ever lost.

In 1961, they lost their opener to the Detroit Lions in Milwaukee, then won 6 straight, lost to away to the Baltimore Colts, won their next 4, lost away to the San Francisco 49ers, and closed with a win away to the Los Angeles Rams, finishing 11-3.

With Bart Starr quarterbacking an offense with Hornung and Jim Taylor running, Boyd Dowler receiving, and one of the great offensive lines of all time, including Hall-of-Famers Jim Ringo at center, Jerry Kramer at guard and Forrest Gregg at tackle -- Lombardi called Gregg "the finest player I ever coached," and he later coached the Cincinnati Bengals into their 1st Super Bowl -- the Pack dropped 49 points on the Browns, 45 on the Colts, and 35 on the Rams.

The defense was fearsome, with end Willie Davis, tackle Henry Jordan, linebacker Ray Nitschke, cornerback Herb Adderley, and safeties Willie Wood, and former Giant Emlen Tunnell all going to the Hall of Fame. They shut out the Chicago Bears, held the Colts and the Minnesota Vikings to just 7 points each, held the Lions to 9 in their rematch, and held the 49ers in their earlier win and the Vikings in their other game to 10.

This was the 1st title game played in Green Bay, which would become famous for its cold weather, especially after the 1967 NFL Championship Game, which became known as the Ice Bowl. Green Bay wasn't the furthest-north city in the NFL anymore -- the expansion Vikings now were -- but they were further north than 2 of the Canadian Football League's 9 teams, the Toronto Argonauts and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

For the 3rd time, the Giants faced a frozen field for an NFL Championship Game. For the 3rd time, they decided to try sneakers rather than cleats, to get better traction. (This would eventually be outlawed.) In 1934 and 1956, both times against the Bears, it worked. This time, it didn't.

The game kicked off at 1:00 PM Central Time (2:00 Eastern). The 1st quarter ended with the game scoreless, and that would be the highlight of the day for the Giants. It was all Packers: Hornung scored on a 6-yard run, Starr threw a 13-yard pass to Dowler, Starr threw a 14-yard pass to Ron Kramer, and Hornung kicked a 17-yard field goal -- all in the 2nd quarter. Green Bay led, 24-0.

In the 3rd quarter, Hornung kicked a 22-yard field goal, and Starr threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Kramer. Hornung added a 19-yard field goal. Meanwhile, the Packer defense completely shut Big Blue down. Packers 37, Giants 0. It was only the 5th shutout in an NFL Championship Game -- and, after 4 more NFL Championship Games and 56 Super Bowls, it remains the last. (The 1939 game was also a Packer shutout of the Giants, 27-0.

The Packers beat the Giants again in the 1962 NFL Championship Game, 16-7 at Yankee Stadium. The Giants made one more Championship Game in 1963, losing to the Chicago Bears, then collapsed, not reaching the Playoffs again until 1981.

The Packers fell short in 1963 and 1964, then became the only team ever to win 3 straight NFL Championship Games: 1965, 1966 and 1967. This included the 1st 2 Super Bowls, before Lombardi retired. After coaching the Washington Redskins to a big improvement in 1969, Lombardi developed colon cancer, and died the next year.

Nevertheless, he was right about his Packers: In 7 seasons, 5 times, those who stayed were champions.

UPDATE: The Packers have the largest team Hall of Fame in North American sports. Through the 2025 NFL season, the inductees from the Lombardi Era, 1959 to 1968, are:

* Offense: Quarterbacks Bart Starr and Zeke Bratkowski; running backs Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor, Elijah Pitts, Donny Anderson and Travis Williams; wide receivers Gary Knafelc, Ron Kramer, Max McGee and Boyd Dowler; tight ends Marv Fleming and Carroll Dale; centeres Jim Ringo and Ken Bowman; guards Jerry Kramer, Fred "Fuzzy" Thurston and Gale Gillingham; tackles Forrest Gregg, and Bob Skoronski; and kicker-punter Don Chandler.

* Defense: Ends Willie Davis, Dave Hanner and Lionel Aldridge; tackles Henry Jordan and Ron Kostelnik; linebackers Ray Nitschke, Bill Forester, Dan Currie, Dave Robinson and Lee Roy Caffey; cornerbacks Herb Adderley and Jesse Whittenton; and safeties Willie Wood and Bob Jeter.

* Management: Head coach and general manager Vince Lombardi, assistant coaches Red Cochran and Phil Bengtson; scout Jack Vainisi; longtime executives Fred Leicht, Frederick Trowbridge, Jerry Atkinson, Dominic Olejniczak and Tom Miller; trainer Bud Jorgensen and team physician E.S. Brusky; team historian Lee Remmel; team photographer Vernon Biever; band director Wilner Burke; video director Al Treml; broadcaster Ray Scott; journalist Art Daley; the Hall of Fame's founder, William Brault; and longtime Packer fan Al Schneider.

Lombardi, Starr, Hornung, Taylor, Kramer, Thurston, Davis and Nitschke have also been inducted into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame.

After Lombardi left, it would be a long time before there was another title. Elected to the Packers Hall of Fame from the 1970s: Linebacker Fred Carr, cornerbacks Ken Ellis and Willie Buchanon, running back John Brockington, and placekicker Chester Marcol.

Elected from the 1980s: Quarterbacks Lynn Dickey and Don Majkowski; running back Gerry Ellis; receivers James Lofton and Sterling Sharpe; tight end Paul Coffman; center Larry McCarren; tackle Greg Koch; defensive end Ezra Johnson; linebackers Mike Douglass, John Anderson, Tim Harris and Johnny Holland; cornerback Mark Lee; safeties Johnny Gray and Mark Murphy (not to be confused with the Mark Murphy who was Packer team president from 2007 to 2025); placekicker Jan Stenerud; and executive Robert Parins.

*

December 31, 1961 was a Sunday. The AFL Championship had been played a week earlier, with the Houston Oilers beating the San Diego Chargers, 10-3 at Balboa Stadium in San Diego. There had been 2 college bowl games the day before the NFL Championship Game, and the 4 major bowls were played the next day, New Year's Day. This included the Sugar Bowl, at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, in which Number 1-ranked Alabama clinched the National Championship, beating Arkansas, 10-3.

Baseball was out of season. The NBA scheduled no games for the day. The NHL scheduled 2. The New York Rangers lost to the Boston Bruins, 7-4 at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. The Montreal Canadiens and the Chicago Black Hawks were not scheduled.

December 30, 1962: The Birth of NFL Films

Ed Sabol (left), Steve Sabol,

and the camera that started it all.

December 30, 1962: The Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants, 16-7 at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx. Aside from being bitterly cold, with New York dealing with the kind of weather that Green Bay was used to, the game itself was not especially remarkable.

But it was filmed by a crew from Blair Motion Pictures of Philadelphia. This was the birth of NFL Films. That company would be nearly as responsible for the League's growth in popularity as Commissioner Pete Rozelle and the various television network executives.

A son of Romanian Jewish immigrants, growing up in Blairstown, Warren County, New Jersey, Ed Sabol served in World War II, then sold topcoats. But he got a home movie camera as a wedding present. He used it to record his son Steve's high school football games. Then he formed a small film company, named for his daughter, Blair. In 1962, he won the rights to film the NFL Championship Game, by bidding $5,000. And even that was double the winning bid of the season before.

Rozelle was impressed by the resulting film, and in 1965, the NFL team owners bought Blair Motion Pictures, renaming it NFL Films. Each of the League's 14 team owners gave Ed $20,000, and the right to shoot all NFL games, and produce an annual highlight film for each team.

In 1967, NFL Films released a half-hour documentary, The Call It Pro Football, including footage of the game that was retroactively renamed Super Bowl I. It began with the narrator, Philadelphia newscaster John Facenda, saying, "It starts with a whistle, and ends with a gun. Sixty minutes of close-in action from kickoff to touchdown. This is pro football: The sport of our time." It was one of the earliest successes for the company.

In 1970, ABC began broadcasting Monday Night Football, and, during halftime, showed NFL Films' footage of the previous day's games. In 1971, the company began producing This Is the NFL, a Saturday show that showed highlights of the previous week's games, on CBS, featuring the network's lead announcing team, former New York Giants tackle and kicker Pat Summerall, and former Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Tom Brookshier. That program did such a great job of raising the NFL's profile, it inspired Major League Baseball to start Major League Baseball Productions, and start the series This Week In Baseball in 1977.

Three things stood out in NFL Films' broadcasts: The marching-band music, the use of slow motion to capture things like the spinning of a passed football in flight, and the narration of Facenda. Let the record show, however, that he never described the field in Green Bay as "the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field." That was later ESPN announcer Chris Berman, imitating him.

ESPN eventually began doing historical programs, featuring footage from NFL Films' vault at their massive headquarters in Mount Laurel, Burlington County, New Jersey, a suburb of Philadelphia; and interviews with surviving figures from those films, conducted by Steve Sabol.

These included Old Leather, from 1976, about stars of the 1920s, with Red Grange, Fritz Pollard, and Johnny "Blood" McNally among those alive and well enough to sit for interviews; and Their Deeds and Dogged Faith, from 1977, about some of the toughest figures in NFL history, including Chicago Bears (and NFL) founder George Halas.

Facenda died in 1984, his last film being the highlights of Super Bowl XVIII. Another Philadelphia broadcast legend, Phillies announcer Harry Kalas, took over until his death in 2009. They have used various announcers since.

Ed Sabol was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a "Contributor" in 2011. It seemed to be just in time: He was 95 years old and in a wheelchair; and Steve was dealing with brain cancer. Steve died the next year, at age 69. Ed lived until 2015, age 98. Steve was posthumously elected to the Hall in 2020.

*

December 30, 1962 was a Sunday. There were no other football games that day: The NCAA had college football bowl games scheduled for the day before and the day after, but not this day; and the AFL Championship Game was the week before, with the Dallas Texans (soon to be the Kansas City Chiefs) beating the Houston Oilers in double overtime.

There were 2 games played in the NBA. The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons, 135-130 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit. Elgin Baylor scored 38 points. And the St. Louis Hawks beat the Chicago Zephyrs, 107-100 at the Chicago Coliseum. The failing Zephyrs moved the next season, becoming the Baltimore Bullets. They moved to Washington in 1973, and became the Washington Wizards in 1997.

There were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens played to a 4-4 tie at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Boston Bruins, 4-2 at the Chicago Stadium. The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings were not scheduled. 

December 23, 1962: A Long Day In Texas

Tommy Brooker

December 23, 1962: The longest game in professional football history, to that point, is played. But not in the National Football League. This Championship Game is often given credit for boosting interest in the American Football League.

Like the NFL, the AFL was split into geographic Divisions, East and West. Also like the NFL, the AFL's Divisions didn't make as much sense as geography would make fans think. Putting the New York Titans, the Boston Patriots and the Buffalo Bills in the East made sense. Putting the Denver Broncos, the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers in the West made sense.

But there were 2 teams in Texas, and while Texas is the country's 2nd-biggest State by area after Alaska, both were in the eastern half of Texas. And yet, they were in different divisions: The Dallas Texans, founded and owned by AFL founder Lamar Hunt, were in the West, while the Houston Oilers were in the East.

The Cotton Bowl, then home to both the Texans and the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, is at 96 degrees, 45 minutes West longitude. Jeppesen Stadium, then home to the Oilers, was at 95 degrees, 20 minutes West. So the Texans were slightly to the west of the Oilers. This wasn't as bad as the NFL, putting the Cowboys in the Eastern Division and the East Coast's Baltimore Colts in the Western.

The Oilers won the AFL East in 1960, and beat the Los Angeles Chargers in the 1st AFL Championship Game. The Chargers moved to San Diego for 1961, and the Oilers beat them in the Championship Game again. The Oilers again won the East in 1962. This time, the Texans won the West Division. Both teams finished the regular season with a record of 11-3. They had played each other in back-to-back weeks of the regular season. On October 28, at Jeppesen, the Texans had won, 31-7. That was the last regular-season game the Oilers lost. Just 7 days later, they played again at the Cotton Bowl. Again, the visiting team won: The Oilers, 14-6.

Since the AFL followed the NFL's pattern of alternating the site of its Championship Game, the Oilers would host the Texans at Jeppesen. The facility was built in 1942, as Public School Stadium, but the University of Houston campus expanded toward it, and their football team made it their home field in 1946. In 1958, it was renamed for Holger Jeppesen, a school official who had lobbied for its construction. A crowd of 37,981, roughly a sellout, came for the Championship Game.

While the AFL had a reputation for emphasizing the passing game -- people who liked the more conservative NFL called the rebel league a "basketball league" -- both Texas teams relied on the running game. They played it mostly safe, and the only score of the 1st quarter was a field goal by the Texans' Tommy Brooker, a rookie who had been a member of the University of Alabama's National Championship team the year before. At the end of the quarter, George Blanda, the Oilers' quarterback and kicker, missed a 47-yard field goal, keeping the score 3-0 in the Texans' favor.

The Texans extended their lead in the 2nd quarter, as Abner Haynes scored on a 28-yard pass from Len Dawson, and later on a 2-yard run. The Texans led, 17-0, and any thoughts of this game being regarded as a classic had faded away.

But the Oilers weren't 2-time defending champions for nothing, and fought back. In the 3rd quarter, Blanda threw a touchdown pass to Willard Dewveall, to make it 17-7. Blanda kicked a field goal in the 4th quarter, to get the Oilers within a touchdown.

He then used the passing game to creep closer, throwing passes to Charley Hennigan, whose AFL receiving totals had surpassed the longtime NFL records of Don Hutson, and former Louisiana State Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon. Later, Blanda handed the ball to Charlie Tolar, a fullback known as "the Human Bowling Ball," and he barreled in the 1-yard line, tying the game at 17. The Oilers had 1 more shot, as Blanda tried a 42-yard field goal to win it on the last play of regulation, but Dave Grayson blocked his kick. The game went to overtime.

As with the opening of games, the captains met with the officials at midfield to start the overtime. The Texans won the toss. Haynes said, "We'll kick to the clock." He thought that would give the Texans the wind advantage. But by saying, "We'll kick," the referee, Harold Bourne, gave the Oilers the choice of which goal to defend, and thus whether to start with or against the wind.

This could have cost the Texans the championship, and it could have made Haynes the biggest goat in the history of Texas professional sports. As it turned out, it didn't matter: The entire "5th quarter" was played without either team scoring.

Early in the 2nd overtime, the 6th quarter, Dawson threw a 10-yard pass to Jack Spikes. Spikes then rushed for 19 yards. The Texans were in position for a title-winning field goal. Dawson ran a couple of more rushing plays to get Brooker a better kicking position. At 2:54 of the 2nd overtime, Brooker split the uprights, and the Texans won, 20-17. The team that founded the AFL had won its 1st Championship.

But, before the next season, realizing that, despite their title, they were never going to have more fans in Dallas than the NFL's Cowboys, the Texans moved, becoming the Kansas City Chiefs. The Oilers moved to Memphis in 1997 and Nashville in 1998, becoming the Tennessee Oilers, and the Tennessee Titans in 1999. In 2002, to replace the Oilers, the NFL added an expansion team -- and named it the Houston Texans.

The Tennessee team could take the Titans name because the New York team abandoned it in 1963, becoming the Jets. The New England moved to the Boston suburbs in 1971, and changed their name to the New England Patriots. The San Diego Chargers moved back to Los Angeles in 2017. The Raiders moved to Los Angeles in 1982, back to Oakland in 1995, and to Las Vegas in 2020.

The AFL Championship was won by the Oilers in 1960 and 1961; the Texans/Chiefs in 1962, 1966 and 1969; the Chargers in 1963; the Buffalo Bills in 1964 and 1965; the Raiders in 1967; and the Jets in 1968.

The fact that the Texans' title came before the advent of the Super Bowl means that it gets discounted: Even before the distance of time became what it is now, NFL fans have come to regard any title won before the Super Bowl, NFL or AFL, as not a "real" championship. 

In 1980, Jeppesen Stadium was renamed Corbin J. Robertson Stadium, after a University of Houston regent who had funded renovations. In 1996, it was renamed John O'Quinn Field at Corbin J. Robertson Stadium. O'Quinn was a Houston attorney who had donated to the latest round of renovations. The Houston Dynamo of Major League Soccer moved in for the 2006 season, and won back-to-back MLS Cups.

Robertson Stadium was demolished following the 2012 season, and John O'Quinn Field at TDECU Stadium opened on the site in 2014. UH plays football there, while in 2012, the Dynamo moved to a new soccer-specific stadium, currently named Shell Energy Stadium. (UPDATE: For 2026, UH's stadium will be renamed Space City Financial Stadium, due to TDECU's merger with another company.)

Tommy Brooker, who kicked the winning field goal, remained with the Chiefs through the 1966 season, and died in 2019.

*

December 23, 1962 was a Sunday. The NFL was in the off-week between the end of its regular season and its Championship Game. That game was played 1 week later. The Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants, 16-7 at Yankee Stadium.

Baseball was out of season. The NBA was in season, but no games were scheduled for that day. But the NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Chicago Black Hawks, 3-1 at the original Madison Square Garden.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 5-4 at the Boston Garden.

* And the Montreal Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 2-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

December 22, 1962: Britain's "Big Freeze" Begins

December 22, 1962: The "Big Freeze" begins in Britain. There were no frost-free nights until March 5, 1963 – 74 straight days.

The Winter of 1962–1963 remains the coldest since at least 1894-95 in all meteorological districts of the United Kingdom, although in north Scotland the Winter of 2009-10 was equally cold.

A cold easterly set in on December 22, as an anticyclone formed over Scandinavia, drawing cold continental winds from Russia. Throughout the Christmas period, the Scandinavian high collapsed, but a new high formed near Iceland, bringing northerly winds. Significant snowfall occurred on December 26 and 27, as the air mass moved south, and became firmly established.

Overnight on December 29 and 30, 1962 a blizzard swept across southern England and Wales. Snow drifted to more than 20 feet deep in places, driven by gale force easterly winds, blocking roads and railways. The snow stranded villages and brought down power lines.

On December 31, the clock on the Palace of Westminster -- often called Big Ben, even though that's actually the name of the bell in the clock -- was delayed by 10 minutes due to the large amount of snow that had accumulated on the clock hands, and the New Year ended up being 10 minutes late.

The near-freezing temperatures meant that the snow cover lasted for more than 2 months in some areas. There was so much snow, and temperatures were so cold, that the 3rd Round of the FA Cup, which normally begins on the 1st Saturday in January, was not completed until March 11, at a time when the 6th Round, the Quarterfinals, would usually be played. As a result, the Final, usually set for the 1st Saturday in May, was pushed back to the last, May 25.

*

December 22, 1962 was a Saturday. Also starting in England on this day is Ralph Nathanial Twisleton Wykeham Fiennes, in Ipswich, Suffolk. We would know him as the actor Ralph Fiennes, pronounced "Raif Fines."

And, on that day, for the first time, a British band hit Number 1 on the American popular music charts. No, it wasn't The Beatles. It was The Tornadoes, with the instrumental "Telstar," named for the communications satellite launched earlier in the year. As far as the U.S. charts were concerned, The Tornadoes turned out to be "one-hit wonders."

The cold postponed all Football League games in England. In American football, the NFL was between the last week of its regular season and its Championship Game, which, on December 30, the Green Bay Packers won, beating the New York Giants, 16-7 at Yankee Stadium. The American Football League played its Championship Game on December 23, and the Dallas Texans beat the Houston Oilers, 20-17 in overtime at Jeppesen Stadium in Houston. (I have separate entries for each of those games.)

There were 2 college football bowl games played that day. The Tangerine Bowl was played at the stadium then carrying the same name, now named Camping World Stadium, in Orland, Florida. The University of Houston beat Miami University of Ohio, 49-21.

UH did not play its bowl game in Houston. That would be the Bluebonnet Bowl, at Rice Stadium. Missouri beat Georgia Tech, 14-10.

Baseball was out of season. There were 3 games in the NBA, and 2 were a doubleheader at the Boston Garden. The Detroit Pistons beat the Chicago Zephyrs, 122-110. The Zephyrs became the Baltimore Bullets the next season. And the New York Knicks beat the Boston Celtics, 120-106 at the Boston Garden. Richie Guerin scored 37 points for the Knicks.

* And the San Francisco Warriors beat the Syracuse Nationals, 123-118 at the Onondaga County War Memorial in Syracuse, New York. It was just another day at the office for Wilt Chamberlain: He scored 39 points and grabbed 28 rebounds, leading the Warriors to victory. This was the NBA's only season without a Philadelphia team: The Warriors had moved in the previous off-season, while the Nats would move the next off-season, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers for 1963-64.

And there were 2 games in the NHL. The New York Rangers lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. And the Chicago Black Hawks and the Montreal Canadiens played to a tie, 1-1 at the Montreal Forum. The Boston Bruins and the Detroit Red Wings were not scheduled.

December 18, 1974: "The Missiles of October" Premieres On ABC

William Devane as JFK

December 18, 1974: The TV-movie The Missiles of October airs on ABC. William Devane plays President John F. Kennedy, and Martin Sheen plays his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The film is based on Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, written by RFK but not published until 1969, after his assassination.

The film also stars Howard Da Silva as Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Ralph Bellamy as U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.

In 1979, Sheen starred in Blind Ambition, based on the memoir of John Dean, counselor to President Richard Nixon and defendant/informant in the Watergate case. In 1983, he starred in the NBC miniseries Kennedy, making him, as far as I know, to this day, the only actor ever to play both Jack and Bobby Kennedy. That same year, in The Dead Zone, he played a Senate candidate who, in a vision of the future by Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken), becomes a President who starts World War III.

In 2003, playing fictional President Jed Bartlet on The West Wing, Sheen was reunited with Devane, who played Secretary of State Lewis Berryhill. In 2007, he provided the voice of George Washington for the documentary Searching for George Washington.

Devane has also played fictional Presidents on Stargate SG-1 and 24, and in The Dark Knight Rises. In 1991, in the NBC film A Woman Named Jackie, he played Jack Bouvier, father of Jacqueline Kennedy.

Bellamy had played Franklin D. Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello in 1960, telling of FDR's initial struggle with polio before becoming President. He played FDR as President in the 1984 ABC miniseries The Winds of War and its 1988 sequel War and Remembrance, based on the World War II novels of Herman Wouk.

Da Silva, the original Jud Fry in Oklahoma! in 1943, played Benjamin Franklin in the 1969 Broadway musical 1776 and its 1972 film version. And he played FDR in the 1977 film The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover.

In 2000, a theatrical release about the Crisis was released, taking the Thirteen Days name from RFK's book, but based on another book about the Crisis, based on information declassified long after The Missiles of October aired.

*

December 18, 1974 was a Wednesday. Pro Bowl linebacker Peter Boulware was born.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 3 games in the NBA:

* The Boston Celtics beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 131-99 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The Washington Bullets beat the New Orleans Jazz, 113-90 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Detroit Pistons, 100-97 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit. Fred Brown scored 34 for the Sonics.

There were 4 games in the American Basketball Association:

* The Virginia Squires beat the Memphis Sounds, 112-86 at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the San Antonio Spurs, 128-122 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis. George McGinnis led all scorers on the night with 45.

* The Kentucky Colonels beat the Spirits of St. Louis, 110-94 at the St. Louis Arena. Artis Gilmore scored 36 for the Colonels.

* And the San Diego Conquistadors beat the Utah Stars, 113-99 at the San Diego Sports Arena (now the Pechanga Arena).

There were 6 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers beat the Minnesota North Stars, 7-0 at Madison Square Garden. Former Boston Bruins star Derek Sanders scored 3 goals and had an assist for the Rangers.

* The New York Islanders lost to the Buffalo Sabres, 3-2 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 6-4 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat their arch-rivals, the Detroit Red Wings, 7-5 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Kansas City Scouts, 6-0 at the Kemper Arena (now the Hy-Vee Arena) in Kansas City.

* And the Montreal Canadiens beat the California Golden Seals, 4-3 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

And there were 2 games in the World Hockey Association. The Quebec Nordiques beat the Winnipeg Jets, 5-1 at the Colisée de Québec. And the Phoenix Roadrunners beat the Vancouver Blazers, 5-3 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

December 11, 1961: “The Mike Douglas Show” Premieres

December 11, 1961: The Mike Douglas Show premieres, at the studio of KYW-Channel 3 in Cleveland, owned by Westinghouse Broadcasting. It became one of America's top TV talk shows.

In September 1963, the show was syndicated to 4 other television stations owned by Westinghouse: WBZ-Channel 4 in Boston, WJZ-Channel 13 in Baltimore, KDKA-Channel 2 in Pittsburgh, and KPIX-Channel 5 in San Francisco. Less than 1 year later, the show had expanded to a total of 27 cities.

In August 1965, the show moved from Cleveland to Philadelphia to a small basement studio located in the KYW-TV building at 1619 Walnut Street in Center City Philadelphia. At that time, Westinghouse began syndicating the show nationally, bought Philadelphia's Channel 3, and gave it the KYW call letters. (Cleveland's Channel 3 became WKYC.) In July 1972, the show moved to a new studio in the newly constructed KYW-TV studios at 5th and Market Streets in Center City.

In 1978, the show was moved to CBS Television City in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, California. There, it ran until November 30, 1981.

Douglas would do a week's worth of shows with a different guest host every week. In early February 1972, his guest hosts for a week were John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and that's what The Mike Douglas Show is best known for today.

Mike Douglas' real name was Michael Delaney Dowd Jr. Michael Douglas, whose birth name was Michael Kirk Douglas but whose father was born Issur Danielovitch, appeared on the show 9 times from 1976 to 1980. And Michael Keaton, whose real name is Michael John Douglas, appeared on the show 5 times in 1979 and 1980. Early in his career, he told both Mike Douglas and Michael Douglas, "I had to change my name because of you!"

Douglas died in 2006, not long after publishing a memoir titled I'll Be Right Back, in which he wrote that the TV industry would like to dedicate a statue to the inventor of the infomercial: “Imagine: Half an hour of advertising, without all that pesky programming.”  

*

December 11, 1961 was a Monday. Steve Nichol, later to star in soccer for Liverpool Football Club, was born.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek: There would be no Monday Night Football for another 9 years. And no games were scheduled for the NHL.

There were 2 games in the NBA. The Cincinnati Royals beat the Chicago Packers, 133-117 at the University of Dayton Fieldhouse in Dayton, Ohio, a "home game" for the Royals, who got 32 points from Oscar Robertson.

Yes, the Chicago Packers. I'm guessing the name didn't draw a lot of Bears fans. For the 1962-63 season, they became the Chicago Zephyrs. That didn't help. For the 1963-64 season, they became the Baltimore Bullets, and are now the Washington Wizards. The Royals are now the Sacramento Kings.

And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the St. Louis Hawks, 132-119 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Elgin Baylor scored 52 points.

December 10, 1962: "Lawrence of Arabia" Premieres

Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence

December 10, 1962: Lawrence of Arabia premieres, directed by David Lean, and based on The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a memoir published in 1926 by Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, a British Army officer who aided the Arab peoples in the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

The real Lawrence was born in 1888 in Wales, and grew up in Oxford, England, where he studied archaeology at Oxford University. He was working in Ottoman-controlled Syria when the war broke out, and was stationed at the Arab Bureau in Egypt. There, and across the Middle East, he aided leaders such as the man who would become King Faisal I of Iraq. Lawrence led the capture of Damascus, the capital of Syria, a few days before the Armistice in 1918.

The real Lawrence

He then worked in the Foreign Office, working with the British government to establish the nations breaking off from the Ottoman Empire. In 1922, he retreated from public life, serving in the Royal Air Force and writing his books. In 1935, he wrecked his motorcycle in Dorset, England, and died 6 days later, only 46 years old.

Lawrence had already sensationalized his own story, much as American frontiersman Davy Crockett had. The film version did so even more. Albert Finney was Lean's 1st choice, but was fired 2 days after filming began. Marlon Brando was offered the part, and turned it down. Irish actor Peter O'Toole took a screen test, and Lean said, "This is Lawrence!"

Not everyone agreed: Lawrence was short, 5-foot-5, while O'Toole was 6-foot-2. And British playwright Noël Coward told O'Toole after the premiere, "If you had been any prettier, the film would have been called Florence of Arabia."

Laurence Olivier was originally supposed to play Faisal, but the role went instead to Alec Guinness, who had previously starred for Lean in Bridge On the River Kwai. Egyptian actor Omar Sharif played Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish, a composite character. He wasn't the only composite, and there were plenty of other inaccuracies for a film taking place less than half a century earlier. It would be like making a film about Watergate today, and making a single character play the roles of Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Chuck Colson.

Nevertheless, the film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and won 7, including Best Picture, and Best Director for Lean. O'Toole was nominated for Best Actor, and Sharif for Best Supporting Actor, but neither won.

Lean died in 1991, Guinness in 2000, O'Toole in 2013, and Sharif in 2015.

*

December 10, 1962 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. No NHL games were scheduled.  One game was played in the NBA: The Detroit Pistons beat the Chicago Zephyrs, 109-100 -- but not in either team's home city. Rather, this game was played at the Baltimore Civic Center (now named the CFG Bank Arena). Walt Bellamy scored 36 points.

The failing Zephyrs franchise got the message, and moved the next season, becoming the Baltimore Bullets. They moved to Washington in 1973, and became the Washington Wizards in 1997.

December 9, 1961:The Gotham Bowl

The Polo Grounds, set up for football.

Judging by the number of fans and the number of cars,

this is probably for a Titans (proto-Jets) game in the early 1960s.

Definitely not for the 1961 Gotham Bowl.

December 9, 1961: New York City, despite its status as a cold-weather city, tries to get into the college football bowl business. The Gotham Bowl is staged at the Polo Grounds.

The organizers had tried to stage the event the year before, with Syracuse University, defending National Champions and with future Heisman Trophy-winning running back Ernie Davis. But the school announced that it would not accept any bowl bids.

That was not unusual: There weren't so many bowl games in those days, and if you weren't invited to one of the "Big Four" games that were annually held on New Year's Day -- the Rose in Pasadena, the Orange in Miami, the Sugar in New Orleans or the Cotton in Dallas -- it seemed pointless. Notre Dame accepted a bid to the 1925 Rose Bowl, and didn't accept another bowl bid until the 1970 Cotton Bowl.

The organizers then invited the Air Force Academy, figuring that, as a new program -- the Academy had only been founded in 1954, and started playing football the next year -- they would jump at the chance to showcase their team in the Big Apple. But they insisted upon playing Army, since they hadn't played each other in the regular season, even though this would be, essentially, a home game for Army. (West Point is only 47 miles up the Hudson River from the site of the Polo Grounds.) But Army also declined: The Academy never accepted a bowl bid until the 1984 Cherry Bowl. (In contrast, Navy had accepted 8 bowl bids before that, including each of the Big Four at least once, and Air Force had already been to the 1958 Cotton Bowl before considering the Gotham Bowl.)

So the Gotham Bowl organizers invited Holy Cross, Colorado and Oregon State. Only Oregon State accepted, so there was no opponent for them, and the game was canceled.

They tried again in 1961. This time, they got an acceptance from Utah State, undefeated at 9-0-1, Champions of the Skyline Conference, and ranked Number 10 in the nation; and Baylor University, only 6th out of 8 teams in the Southwest Conference, and only 5-5 overall, but willing to go to a cold-weather city for a bowl game. But only 15,123 fans came out, leaving the Polo Grounds with over 40,000 empty seats. Baylor pulled the upset, winning 24-9.

They tried again in 1962. Instead of a Northeastern team going to Miami to play in the Orange Bowl game in the Orange Bowl stadium, the University of Miami, who played their home games in that stadium, came north to play in the Gotham Bowl. They were 7-3, and, while not a ranked team -- the Associated Press then only ranked the Top 10 teams, not the Top 20 -- they had beaten one, one of their rivals, then-Number 9 Florida State.

But the organizers had trouble finding an opponent. It took until December 4, 11 days before the game, for the University of Nebraska to accept a bid. In their 1st season under head coach Bob Devaney, the Cornhuskers started the sellout streak at Memorial Stadium which extends to this day -- the 2020 games with no tickets sold due to COVID restrictions are not counted against it -- and they went 8-2, although they were not ranked, and lost their only game against a ranked opponent, then-Number 10 Oklahoma.

The game was moved to Yankee Stadium, in the hopes that, being in better condition than the Polo Grounds, and then being in a better neighborhood, it would attract more fans. But, in those days before television saturation of college football, and the growth of alumni organizations for faraway schools in big cities like New York, there weren't very many Nebraska fans or Miami fans there. Nebraska and Miami have played each other in some famous games since, raising their relationship to the status of a quasi-rivalry. But, at the time, there was no reason to consider that particular matchup special.

And while ABC had agreed to televise the game live, as part of ABC Wide World of Sports, the New York newspaper workers' unions were on strike, so the papers weren't being published, and they weren't publicizing the game. It got more attention outside the New York Tri-State Area than inside. Advance ticket sales were minimal.

As if enough things hadn't gone wrong, the day before the game, at the airport in Lincoln, the pilot for the Cornhuskers' plane refused to take off until the bowl's check for expenditures cleared. Phone calls went back and forth, the check cleared, and the plane took off. In contrast, the Hurricanes got their promised $30,000 up front.

Finally, on the day of the game, it was damp, and only 14°F. Attendance at the 67,224-seat Bronx ballyard was just 6,166, with another 5,000 tickets given away. In spite of the game actually being a good one, with Nebraska winning, 36-34, the staging of the game was an embarrassment from announcement to final gun.

If there was any consideration of another Gotham Bowl for December 1963, it died with President John F. Kennedy on November 22: Few people would be in the mood to sit in a cold Yankee Stadium to watch two college football teams with whom they were not familiar.

There would not be another bowl game in the New York Tri-State Area until Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands hosted the Garden State Bowl, which lasted until 1981. In 2010, the Yankees began sponsoring the Pinstripe Bowl at the new Yankee Stadium, and it has been held every year since, except for the COVID-restricted 2020.

*

December 9, 1961 was a Saturday. Actor Joe Lando was born.

There was 1 other college football game played that day, the Aviation Bowl, in the Wright Brothers' hometown of Dayton, Ohio. The University of New Mexico beat Western Michigan University, 28-12. The game was played at Welcome Stadium. Built in 1949, and seating 11,000, it is the home field of the University of Dayton, which plays in NCAA FCS (formerly Division I-AA), and some high school teams.

There were no games played in the NFL that day, but there was 1 in the American Football League: The Boston Patriots beat the Oakland Raiders, 35-21 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. (The Raiders played home games at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco in 1960, and Candlestick in 1961. Despite having the Oakland name, they took until 1962 to start playing home games in Oakland.)

Baseball was out of season. There were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the St. Louis Hawks, 102-91 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. Bob Pettit scored 32 points and grabbed 21 rebounds.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Chicago Packers, 135-113 at the Philadelphia Civic Center. Yes, the Chicago Packers, named for the city's meatpacking industry. Having the same name as the football team that Chicagoans hate the most didn't help attendance. Being an expansion team didn't, either. Walt Bellamy scored 39 for them on this day. But, for the Warriors, Wilt Chamberlain scored 61 points and grabbed 36 rebounds. And that was only his 4th-best game of the season.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Syracuse Nationals, 106-102 at the Onondaga County War Memorial Auditorium (now the Upstate Medical University Arena) in Syracuse.

* And Los Angeles Lakers beat the Detroit Pistons, 114-107 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit. Elgin Baylor scored 38 points.

And the NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens played to a tie, 2-2 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 9-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 3-0 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

December 8, 1962: The New York Newspaper Strike

December 8, 1962: The New York Typographical Union goes on strike. This means the newspapers of New York City have to stop publication.

This includes the broadsheets: The New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, The New York Journal American, and the New York World-Telegram & Sun. It also includes the tabloids: The Daily News, the New York Post and the New York Mirror. And it included 2 papers on Long Island, both broadsheets: The Long Island Star Journal and the Long Island Daily Press. Newsday, a Long Island-based tabloid, was not affected.

New York had been a newspaper city for over 100 years. Even the growth of radio hadn't stopped that. Nor had the 1924 merger of the Herald, once the paper of James Gordon Bennett Sr. and Jr., with the Tribune, once the paper of Horace Greeley and the leading voice of the drive to abolish slavery in America prior to the Civil War.

Nor had the merger of the morning American and the afternoon Journal, both owned by William Randolph Hearst's company, in 1937. Nor had the merger of the World, once the paper of Joseph Pulitzer and the publisher of The World Almanac, with the Telegram in 1931, or the 1950 merger of the combined "World-Telly" with The Sun, the paper that declared in an 1897 editorial, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

Nor had radio really hurt the newspaper business. Quite the contrary: Many of the early radio stations were founded by newspapers, and provided a great new source of revenue for them. Indeed, Chicago's best-known radio station, WGN, was founded by The Chicago Tribune, which named the station for the nickname it had chosen for itself: "The World's Greatest Newspaper."

But what radio didn't do, or even try to do, television, however inadvertently, did: It killed the institutions of the afternoon newspaper and the evening newspaper. It was bad enough for papers that there was a 6:00 news broadcast on local TV stations every night. But with the addition of an 11:00 news for when people were going to bed, and the promos throughout prime-time programming of a story they could watch on the news, with the tagline, "Film at 11," the need for an afternoon or an evening paper was gone.

The union knew they had the squeeze on the papers. The papers knew it, too. The strike dragged on through Christmas, New Year's, and the entire Winter. On March 4, 1963, the Post negotiated a separate peace. Finally, Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. brought the sides to the bargaining table. On March 24, the strike was settled.

New York has had newspaper strikes since, but no strike in the history of the American labor movement has hurt an industry more than this one. Several of the papers never recovered. The Mirror published its last edition on October 16, 1963. My grandmother, who grew up in Queens, said it was no great loss: It was a conservative paper of low quality.

The remaining papers did whatever they could to survive, from cutting costs by laying off famous columnists to appealing to the rising Baby Boom generation. The Journal American, in particular, had gambled on gaining younger readers with heavy coverage of The Beatles' visits in 1964 and 1965, something you wouldn't expect a conservative broadsheet to do.

They even hired the famed "pop psychologist," Dr. Joyce Brothers, to analyze the Beatles from a distance. And they had the top entertainment columnist in New York, Dorothy Kilgallen, "The Voice of Broadway" and one of the panelists on CBS' What's My Line?, write about rock and roll for the first time.

But they lost their biggest asset on November 8, 1965, when Kilgallen died. The next year, a long-running power struggle between Hearst company CEO Richard Berlin and the Hearst family did the paper in. The paper's last edition was published on April 24, 1966.

The E.W. Scripps Company gave up on the World-Telegram & Sun the day before, April 23, 1966. The Daily News bought the rights to The World Almanac, and its parent company still publishes it today, although it's really a waste of money to publish a 1,000-page almanac, given how easy it is to look things up on the Internet.

The Herald Tribune, long the beacon of America's "liberal Republicans," with one of the finest sports sections in the country, hung on a little longer, until August 15, 1966. It was the most direct competitor to The New York Times, a.k.a. "The Paper of Record," which eulogized:

The death of The New York Herald Tribune stills a voice that for a century and a quarter exerted a powerful influence in the affairs of nation, state and city. It was a competitor of ours, but a competitor that sought survival on the basis of quality, originality and integrity, rather than sensationalism or doctrinaire partisanship.

For a while, the 3 papers that failed that year tried to band together: The World Journal Tribune began publishing on September 12, 1966. But instead of combining the best aspects of all 3 papers, it seemed to combine the worst ones, and the money problems of all 3. The WJT, or "Widget," never caught on, and Scripps (W-T&S) and Hearst (J-A) pulled the plug on May 5, 1967.

And so, New York City, which had 10 daily newspapers as recently as 1924, and 7 as recently as the Summer of 1963, was down to 3: The Times, the Daily News and the Post. The Daily News and the Post have each survived 2 existential crises since then, as well as their ideological flip-flop of 1976: Rupert Murdoch bought the Post, turning it from a paper for liberal intellectuals, especially Jewish ones, to a populist conservative paper, as the Daily News had been; and the News then became a liberal paper, though still taking conservative positions on crime in New York (helping Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani get elected Mayor), the Israeli-Arab conflict, and Cuba.

One more note: A survey showed that 1963 was the first year in which a majority of Americans said that they got more of their news from TV than from newspapers. The New York newspaper strike of December 8, 1962 until March 31, 1963 may have had something to do with that.

*

December 8, 1962 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. The college football regular season had ended the day before. But each of the 2 pro football leagues of the time played 1 game. In the NFL, the Baltimore Colts beat the Washington Redskins, 34-21 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. And in the American Football League, the New York Titans, forerunners of the Jets, lost to the Buffalo Bills, 20-3 at the Polo Grounds.

There were 4 games in the NBA that day:

* The New York Knicks beat the Detroit Pistons, 87-78 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Syracuse Nationals beat the Boston Celtics, 102-97 at the Onondaga War Memorial Arena in Syracuse. This was the last season for the Nats, who moved the next season, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers. Their arena still stands, as the Upstate Medical University Arena.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Cincinnati Royals, 131-128 at the Cincinnati Gardens. For the Lakers, Elgin Baylor scored 33, and Jerry West and Rudy LaRusso each scored 28. Oscar Robertson of the Royals led all scorers on the day with 42, but it wasn't enough.

* And the St. Louis Hawks beat the San Francisco Warriors, 145-129 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. Wilt Chamberlain scored 39 for the Warriors, but the Hawks got 26 from Bob Pettit, 24 from Cliff Hagan, and 21 from John Barnhill.

There were 3 games played in the NHL, as all of the "Original Six" teams were in action:

* The New York Rangers played the Boston Bruins to a tie, 3-3 at the Boston Garden.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings, 2-1 at the Montreal Forum.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks played the Toronto Maple Leafs to a tie, 1-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. 

December 6, 1962: The Robena Coal Mine Explosion

December 6, 1962: An explosion at the United States Steel Corporation's Robena #3 mine near Carmichaels, in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, kills 37 coal miners, most of them suffocating from carbon monoxide gas.

A snowstorm raged through Carmichaels that day. While the snow fell, two explosions ripped through Frosty Run shaft. The first blast occurred around 1:05 PM, the second about 20 minutes later.

According to a December 7 article from the Daily Courier of Connellsville, "Workers in the corrugated structure got their first indication that something was wrong at 1 p.m. EST Thursday when the ventilator fan at the Frosty Run shaft stopped operating. Shortly after that miners came rushing out of the shaft." 

Miners from as far away as two miles from the blast site said, "they heard a 'thud,' some felt a rush of air. Some said the blast waves knocked their helmets off their heads." 

Some of the escaped miners would join the rescue teams that began to arrive on scene in hopes of rescuing the 37 trapped within the mine. Hope remained that the miners survived the explosions, although the odds were against them, and no communication had been heard since the explosion. Two of the miners trapped below were "crack rescue men," and hopes were that they would find an escape route.

Recovery operations began soon after the second explosion. Emergency equipment and supplies began to arrive, but with difficulty due to the heavy snow and strong winds. Many roads closed that night due to increasingly bad weather. 

*

December 6, 1962 was a Thursday. Actress Janine Turner was born. And Bob Dylan recorded “Oxford Town,” “I Shall Be Free,” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 2 games played in the NBA. The New York Knicks beat the Cincinnati Royals, 99-96 at the Cincinnati Gardens. And the Chicago Zephyrs beat the St. Louis Hawks, 106-93 at the Chicago Coliseum.

And there was 1 game played in the NBA: The Detroit Red Wings beat the Boston Bruins, 5-3 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.