May 27 - "Papa Bear" George Halas retires as head coach of the Chicago Bears.
Green Bay -- Lovie Smith can accomplish something Sunday in his fifth season as coach of the Chicago Bears that the "Papa Bear" himself, George Halas, couldn't manage in 40 years on the sideline. That is, Smith would capture his fifth straight victory on Wisconsin soil if his Bears (5-4) beat the Green Bay Packers (4-5) at Lambeau Field.
All of Sunday's fuss and furor are temporarily over. Postponed until the Super Bowl. It puts me in mind of a quote by Bill Brinkley of the New York Post in its Sunday edition, 1981. "Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. It's much more serious than that. The names resonate. Mike Ditka, Dick Butkus, George Halas. Then there are Bart Starr, Vince Lombardi and Lambeau Field. History is all helmets and cleats and clipboards. On Sunday, all of these figures may well have been at Soldier Field in spirit, braving the frigid temperatures, a muddy field and making another chapter in the football playbooks.
PITTSBURGH -- Let those other teams wear throwback uniforms. The Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers are throwback teams, descendants of the single-wing days of leather helmets, canvas pants and single-platoon football. Their coaches are named John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin, but during a different time it's easy to picture these Ravens and Steelers being coached by George Halas or
[Eddie Robinson], the son of a cotton share-cropper, had more impact on football than any man in the game's history since Knute Rockne-more than George Halas, Bear Bryant, or anyone," wrote veteran sports writer Alien Barra recently in the Village Voice. Robinson joined Grambling in 1941 as coach for the football program as well as men's and women's basketball. He also taught physical education and served as the football team's bus driver, uniform launderer, field keeper and publicist. To put his football powerhouse on the national radar screen, Robinson took his team on the road in 1968. The tour, which coincided with the release of a documentary entitled "Grambling College: 100 Yards to Glory" produced by the late Howard Cosell, helped catapult the college's football program into the...
There's a limit to everything. Life ends. Curly Lambeau is gone. It's a world of turns. Curly gave me some of my greatest battles when he had the Green Bay Packers. He did a tremendous job. I doubt if the league would exist today without the likes of Lambeau. He was one of the builders of the National Football League . . . It's a great game and it'll get better. Let's thank the likes of Curly Lambeau. George Halas, Chicago Bears, in an open letter to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, June 1965
WASHINGTON - To hear the lovefest going on between UCLA and Temple, you'd think George Halas was squaring off against Vince Lombardi, they'd be coaching Emmitt Smith and Johnny Unitas against Lawrence Taylor and Deion Sanders and their EagleBank Bowl matchup on Tuesday pitted the top two teams in football history. What UCLA forgets, though, is the Owls, despite nine wins, played a Mid-American Conference schedule loaded with more cupcakes than a bakery.
PITTSBURGH - Let those other teams wear throwback uniforms. The Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers are throwback teams, descendants of the single-wing days of leather helmets, canvas pants and single-platoon football. Their coaches are named John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin, but during a different time it's easy to picture these Ravens and Steelers being coached by George Halas or Curly Lambeau. They hit hard, play with a fury, own a yard-wide mean streak and give an inch as grudgingly as if they were giving up a first down.
There's no instructional book, no "Idiot's Guide to NFL General Managing," that tells you how to build a winning pro football team. George Halas didn't come down from some mountaintop with a pair of stone tablets. Don Shula, as far as I know, hasn't published his diaries. No, every club concocts its own formula and tries to make it work - some, obviously, more successfully than others. Luck aside, the Super Bowl champ is really the team that had the best plan that year - or did the best job of implementing its plan - the best job of prioritizing, identifying talent, acquiring it, nurturing it. This is how Lombardi Trophies are won.
No, they were hardly losers even after falling to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XIJT. The New England Patriots have so much to be proud of. But, for one day and 60 minutes, the Patriots were the losing team to a squad just as proud, one that believed in themselves when no one else did. The New York Giants football team came of age during a stretch of five weeks. This proud franchise and its late owner, Wellington Mara, along with the Chicago Bears and George Halas, were the glue that kept the NFL together. It was during the years of racism when the greatest athletes in history were denied their right to play on teams in the NFL, including the Giants. Through the years of evolution when the "Color Ban" began crumbling and in the 50's and 60's when the ban was completely lifted, openi...
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