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The Pivotal Year: A Deep Dive into the 1970 American Football Season · Sports History Network

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  The 1970American football season marks one of.
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  The most pivotal organizational shifts in professional football history.
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  And college football was at a peak of performance.
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  That was very interesting and there was.
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  Even some twists and turns as we talk about.
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  But this is a year that we really ought to celebrate because there are.
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  So many special things that happened.
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  And we have gone and celebrated all this week, all on our YouTube channel and our podcasts and our website pigskindispatch.com Our American football timeline is focused on the year of 1970, the calendar year.
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  Itself and the football season.
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  Now, we didn't spin over into January, but we have some really great things, including this story of a player that.
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  Was maybe too old to play.
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  In August of 1970, the Raiders cut George Blanda too old.
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  They brought him back as a bench warmer, a 43 year old emergency quarterback, an emergency kicker, a clipboard and a helmet.
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  Then the starter went down.
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  Blanda jogged onto the field.
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  What happened next defied every law of age, biology and common sense at Pittsburgh.
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  Three touchdown passes, Kansas City.
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  A 48 yard field goal with three seconds left.
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  Cleveland game.
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  A tying touchdown and a 52 yard field goal at the buzzer.
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  Longtime radio announcer Bill King screamed he had been elected king of the world against Denver.
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  Another game winning touchdown, San Diego, a walk off field goal.
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  Four wins, one tie, five straight weeks.
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  One old man.
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  In December, the Associated Press named him male athlete of the year.
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  The first football player to ever win it.
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  Yeah, the man who had been cut back in August.
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  Yeah, that George Blanda definitely had a season to remember.
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  43 years old.
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  Tom Brady, eat your heart out.
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  George Blanda did it first at a remarkable season he had.
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  But we had something very interesting develop in September of 1970 that still is with us today.
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  And, and that's the phenomenon of Monday night football.
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  The first game of Monday Night Football on ABC was September 18, 1970, Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
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  The New York jets and Joe Namath.
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  Invade to play that game in front.
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  Of a packed capacity crowd.
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  Keith Jackson was your main broadcaster doing the commentary where you had Dandy Don Meredith and Howard Cosell adding some color and some controversy to that game.
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  And what a memorable game that was.
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  And you know, look at all these years later we still have Monday Night Football.
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  It's not on ABC anymore, but still an ABC owned, is owned by Disney.
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  It also owns espn.
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  That's where the Monday Night Football still lives.
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  But college football really had its twists and turns and we covered that on a segment on our YouTube shorts video.
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  Here's some audio from that 9-12-1970 Birmingham, Alabama Deep in the heart of the segregated South, Bear Bryant's all white crimson Tide take the field against an integrated USC Trojan squad led by fullback Sam Cunningham.
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  USC doesn't just win, they dominate a crushing 4221 blowout that shattered Southern football orthodoxy overnight and accelerated desegregation across the sec.
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  Meanwhile, out in the Midwest, the Nebraska Cornhuskers were quietly building a juggernaut.
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  Unbeaten all season, they charged into the Orange bowl on New Year's Day.
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  After top ranked Texas and Ohio State fell, Nebraska seized their moment, knocking off LSU to claim their first consensus national championship.
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  1970 wasn't just a season, it changed college football forever.
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  For for more great milestones in football history, join us on the Pigskin Dispatch American Football Timeline what's fascinating is that.
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  We really had some unbelievable moments in football history, such as a coaching change that had really we'd never seen before, a team stealing another team's coach.
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  We covered that in a great story that we had on YouTube short and I think you'll like this storyline very much.
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  Did you know a single phone call once cost an NFL team their first round draft pick?
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  On February 18, 1970, the Miami Dolphins pulled off a shocker, naming Baltimore Colts head coach Don Shula as their new head coach and vice president.
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  There was just one massive problem.
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  Shula was under contract with Baltimore.
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  Colts owner Carol Rosenblum cried foul over illegal recruitment and took Miami straight to the league.
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  NFL Commissioner Pete Roselle investigated and ruled in Baltimore's favor.
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  The penalty Miami was forced to forfeit their 1971 first round draft pick to.
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  The Colts as compensation.
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  Losing a first rounder hurt, but Shula delivered Miami with an undefeated season and back to back Super Bowls just a few years later.
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  The best penalty Miami ever paid.
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  By the time the NFL season rolled.
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  Into November, we had one of the most dramatic and controversial moments in NFL history up to that point.
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  We had a kicker that had an unbelievable performance against all the odds and obstacles there was.
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  And it's a record that was set for a very long time.
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  Here's a story on that Tom Dempsey was born with no toes on his right foot, no fingers on his right hand, and he wore a custom flat fronted shoe, a block of leather.
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  Some called it an unfair advantage.
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  November 8, 1970 Tulane Stadium 2 seconds left.
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  The Saints trailed the Lions by one.
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  They sent out their kicker, 255 pounds straight on style from the Saints own 37 yard line.
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  A 63 yard kick.
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  The snap was clean.
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  The hold was perfect.
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  Scarpetti knelt a Yard deeper, buying an extra heartbeat.
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  Dempsey's square toe exploded into the ball and it traveled 63 yards and barely cleared the crossbar.
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  The shoe was in the hall of Fame.
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  The record stood for 43 years.
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  And the NFL passed the rule, the Tom Dempsey rule, requiring kicking shoes to, to look like normal shoes.
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  They literally rewrote the rule book because.
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  A man wore something that allowed him to play the game of football.
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  Years later, when a reporter asked if his shoe was unfair, Dempsey said the biggest story of 1970 in American football had to be the merger.
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  It finally took place.
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  It finally took hold.
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  The afl, which had for almost a decade had been a main competitor of the NFL, but probably its strongest contender for all time for the first many years.
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  Still, I guess if we look back in the first hundred years of the NFL, it has to be that fourth generation of the afl.
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  Well, they decided that the two leagues would merge and become the National Football League, but have an afc, which is the old AFL teams.
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  But they had to have some cast overs from the old NFL to sort of balance that out so that each conference would have 13 teams.
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  So the Steelers, the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts decided to shift over to play in the AFC with the American Football League teams.
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  Now, quite interesting, the Cleveland Browns came out of the aafc, a league that merged.
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  The Baltimore Colts by name only.
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  And it's a different version of the Baltimore Colts were also an AAFC team.
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  You know, a different version of the Colts was an AAFC team.
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  So interesting that they decided to shift over.
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  Steelers were a National Football league team since 1933, so one of the more originating members of the National Football League, but that was the big deal for 1970.
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  They had played a couple Super Bowls.
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  They played three Super Bowls, as a matter of fact, four Super Bowls by the time the two leagues merged because they were the AFL NFL Championships the first couple years, and it became the Super Bowl.
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  But now they were all one league.
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  Having a championship game to crown the NFL winner, not just the world champion, even though we still call it world champions.
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  So fascinating thing there.
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  So that's the biggest, big story.
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  But all these other stories were just amazing.
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  Now, the culmination of the 1970 season actually was played in the next year, 1971, January 17, at the Orange bowl in Miami.
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  The AFC champion Baltimore Colts played against the NFC champion Dallas Cowboys.
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  Now, this was often referred to as the Blunder bowl due to poor erratic play.
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  And the game was marred by a record 11 combined turnovers and 14 penalties.
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  And despite the sloppy execution, the finish was really pretty dramatic.
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  You know, the Colts victory had redemption for their massive upset loss to the jets in Super Bowl 3 two years prior, cementing the competitive parity of the newly merged league.
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  So it's very fitting that the Baltimore Colts, a former NFL team, was still it was the AFC champion right from the beginning.
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  So that is our 1970 coverage.
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  We hope that you enjoyed this week of doing this and we're going to go on to another season coming up next week.
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  I think you should sit back and enjoy that because I think you're really going to love what we have some great stories from another season as we go back on the American football timeline and you can enjoy all
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  of this right now.
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  Go go to the American football timeline on pigskindispatch.com you can search by the day or the year here.
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  In the next coming weeks we're going to have every day of the year is going to be on there once again and every year season from 1869 all the way to 2026 and still counting will be to be
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  dynamic.
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  We'll be adding things as we find older stuff or maybe you have something out there, an event that we don't have yet.
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  We we'd love to hear from you.
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  Pigskindispatchmail.com and we will include it in our timeline and give you credit and your name will be there in the record books helping us to fill out all the significant events of American football along the years.
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  So for prosperity and prosperity and letting people and scholars look back at football and have some good dates and a credible source and a nice database with some some great images too by the way.
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  So also check out our games on pigskindispatch.com we have about five or six of them in there now.
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  More coming all the time it seems like and real, very entertaining.
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  A wide array of entertainment with the theme of American football for all ages that really can enjoy here on pigskindispatch.com but that's all we have for the time for the history today.
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  Thank you.
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  Tune in next week for some more exciting gridiron timeline bouncing and you'll learn some more and enjoy another great year.
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  Till next time everybody have a great gridiron day.