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| FILE - In this Nov. 24, 1963, file photo, Detroit Lions' Nick Pietrosante, left, and Wayne Walker (55) stand during ceremonies honoring slain President John F. Kennedy before an NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings at Metropolitian Stadium in Minneapolis. Americans grieved in front of their televisions on a brutally grim Sunday afternoon 50 years ago as a horse-drawn caisson took the body of President Kennedy to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda. As unimaginable as it might seem today, in seven cities men played football as the NFL went on despite the assassination two days earlier. |
Americans grieved in
front of their television sets on a brutally grim Sunday afternoon 50
years ago as a horse-drawn caisson took the body of President Kennedy
from the White House to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
In
Dallas, a nightclub operator named Jack Ruby further stunned the nation
that day by shooting Lee Harvey Oswald to death in black-and-white
images broadcast across the country.
And in
seven U.S. cities, men put on their shoulder pads, strapped on their
helmets and took the field to play games that suddenly didn't seem so
fun anymore.
As unimaginable as it might seem
today - and did seem to many even then - the NFL played on despite the
assassination of a president just two days earlier.
"Everyone
has a different way of paying respects," Commissioner Pete Rozelle said
that day at Yankee Stadium. "I went to church today and I imagine many
of the people at the game here did, too. I cannot feel that playing the
game was disrespectful, nor can I feel that I have made a mistake."
Rozelle
was wrong on both counts, something he would later admit when he called
his decision to play the games the worst mistake he made in 29 years as
commissioner. But play them they did, from stadiums in the East to the
Los Angeles Coliseum even as the rival American Football League canceled
its slate of games and most colleges had canceled theirs the day
before.
Rozelle would later say he made his
decision the afternoon of the assassination based partly on advice from
Pierre Salinger, the White House press secretary, who told him Kennedy
would have wanted the games played. The decision was made a bit easier
by the fact teams in Dallas and Washington were both playing on the road
that weekend and the NBA and NHL went on with their limited schedules.
But
even within the league there were deep divisions on the propriety of
playing before Kennedy had even been laid to rest. The Redskins offered
to forgo their $75,000 guarantee so they wouldn't have to take the train
to Philadelphia, and Eagles President Frank McNamee was so unhappy
about his team playing that he went to a memorial for the president at
Independence Hall rather than the game.
"Simply and flatly the game is being played by order of the commissioner," McNamee said tersely.
If
there were any great performances that day, they went widely unnoticed.
The games were not televised because CBS was devoting its airwaves
fulltime to coverage of the assassination, and sports writers of the day
were as much in mourning as everyone else.
"Big men were playing a boy's sport at the wrong time," sports columnist Arthur Daley wrote in The New York Times.
Some
players - particularly those on the Los Angeles Rams - had no desire to
play. They took the field because they had to, because the commissioner
had declared the games would go on.
Others almost seemed to welcome the respite from the dreariness of the day.
"It was hard to think football before the game," St. Louis quarterback Charlie Johnson said that day. "Then it passed."
"I
think everybody felt something," Chicago Bears tight end Mike Ditka
said. "Not having known the man, however, I think he would have not
wanted it postponed. So we go out on the field - and it's business to us
- and after the first kickoff all you think about is the Steelers."
The
fans might have been seeking an escape themselves. Despite worries that
stadiums could be half empty, games in New York, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh
and Philadelphia were all sellouts. And while about 150 tickets were
sent back for refunds in Pittsburgh, another 300 were sold the day
before the game.
At the stadiums, flags were
at half-staff and there was a moment of silence before the game. Fans
were asked to join in singing the national anthem, and many had
transistor radios tuned in to the latest developments in Dallas and
Washington.
The NFL was hardly the sports
behemoth it is today. It had just 14 teams - the Detroit Lions were sold
that week for $6 million - and lagged behind baseball and college
football in popularity. The league had just weathered a gambling
scandal, it faced competition from the upstart yet still decidedly
inferior AFL and the first Super Bowl was still four years away.
Still,
the decision to play was shocking to many, made even more so when the
shooting of Oswald was captured on TV just minutes before the East Coast
games were scheduled to kick off. So much had happened in the previous
48 hours that it seemed incomprehensible that playing football games
would somehow restore some normalcy to a shattered nation.
That
they played football that Sunday was a blunder Rozelle would come to
regret. It was also one the NFL would take pains to avoid after the 911
attacks, when the entire season was pushed back a week while workers dug
through the rubble of the World Trade Center.
Sports
can be a healer, but it can't heal everything. Certainly not a nation
traumatized by the killing of a president who always seemed so full of
life.
On that painful Sunday a half century ago, nothing could.
