I’ve been fortunate to broadcast Boerne ISD football games for 23 years now and one of the fellows I’ve worked with, former KSAT 12 sports anchor Paul Alexander, would always start the opening kickoff by saying, “We are playing the great game of football.”
There have been some great games at all levels, but have you ever thought about which football game is considered the greatest at the NFL level?
Of course it’s subjective, but many would say the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants is the greatest.
They battled for the league championship before there was a Super Bowl and it was played Dec. 28, 1958, basically 66 years ago this week.
In 2019, a national poll of media members voted it the NFL’s best game in its first 100 years.
What made it so special?
First, the game involved 17 individuals – players, coaches and administrators – who would eventually be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Among the 17 were Giants offensive coordinator Vince Lombardi and Giants defensive coordinator Tom Landry. Imagine having Landry and Lombardi on the same coaching staff.
The Super Bowl trophy is named after Lombardi and of course, Landry coached the Dallas Cowboys for nearly 30 years.
The game also contained San Antonio Jefferson graduate Kyle Rote, who finished the contest with 2 catches for 76 yards.
In my opinion, Rote is the greatest pure athlete to ever come out of the greater San Antonio area as evidenced by the fact that he has been inducted into 11 different Hall of Fames, including the NFL Hall of Fame. Rote was second in the Heisman voting in 1950 while at SMU and was the very first pick in the 1951 NFL draft.
Another thing that happened is that the game went into overtime, the first time that happened in an NFL championship contest.
Colts QB Johnny Unitas (one of those hall of famers) said many of the players didn’t know how they were going to decide the winner because they had never played in an overtime game before.
Because it was tight throughout, people stayed tuned in and it drew 45 million viewers, a huge number for 1958. This game is credited with causing a surge in viewership in subsequent years.
The ’58 title game also introduced the viewer to the “two-minute drill,” a common phrase in football nowadays.
Baltimore was trailing 17-14 when Unitas led them on a two-minute, 73-yard drive deep into Giants’ territory.
With 10 seconds remining in regulation, the Colts’ Steve Myhra kicked the game-tying 20-yard field goal to send it to OT.
New York had the ball first in overtime and went three and out before they punted. The Colts took over at their 20 and moved 80 yards in 13 plays.
Baltimore had the ball on the Giants 1-yard line and on second down, Unitas, who called all the plays on the drive, handed off to Alan Ameche who plunged into the end zone to end it with 6:45 left and the 23-17 victory.
Some of the fans stormed the field at Yankee Stadium in New York where the game was played and since the grass had gone dormant by then, mostly the fans kicked up dust.
Ameche knew he had helped the team win, but he probably had no idea he just elevated football to a new level of popularity in American culture and had just played in the “greatest game.”
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