A Blast from the Past

[SWC75]

There's nothing I love more than the original broadcasts of historical games. Someone has found the second half of the 1957 Syracuse-Penn State game. The play-by-play man is Lindsay Nelson, the voice of college football when I was growing up, not unlike Keith Jackson decades later. (Lindsay also became part of the Met's famous announcing rotation with Ralph Kiner and Bob Murphy 5 years after this.) The date is October 26, 1957 and the venue is Archbold Stadium. The color man is one Harold "Red" Grange!

 

[SWC75]

Per the NCAA Guide, in 1957 Syracuse's enrollment was 9,918 and Archbold, (the venue for this game) held 39,701. Penn State's enrollment was 12,000 and 'Beaver Field' had a capacity of 30,000, so the schools were of comparable size and resources. Syracuse beat Penn State in 1950, 1952, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1970. SU-Penn State was to the east what Ohio-Michigan was to the Big 10, Oklahoma-Nebraska to the Big 8, Texas-Arkansas to the SWC, Alabama vs. LSU, Tennessee, Auburn or Georgia in the SEC and USC-UCLA in the Pacific Coast league.

 

[SWC75]

This guy has a huge number of old clips:

https://www.youtube.com/@collegefootballhistorian2078/videos

The '57 Penn State game is one of seven with Syracuse:

https://www.youtube.com/@collegefootballhistorian2078/search?query=Syracuse

 

[Dinkyspond]

These are great SWC, I go down rabbit holes when you post them. The one with Jack Buck doing the Missouri-Kansas 1961 basketball game is great too. Thanks a million for taking the time.

 

[MikeSU02]

There's nothing I love more than the original broadcasts of historical games. Someone has found the second half of the 1957 Syracuse-Penn State game. The play-by-play man is Lindsay Nelson, the voice of college football when I was growing up, not unlike Keith Jackson decades later. (Lindsay also became part of the Met's famous announcing rotation with Ralph Kiner and Bob Murphy 5 years after this.) The date is October 26, 1957 and the venue is Archbold Stadium. The color man is one Harold "Red" Grange!

This is great. Thanks SWC75

 

[SWC75]

These are great SWC, I go down rabbit holes when you post them. The one with Jack Buck doing the Missouri-Kansas 1961 basketball game is great too. Thanks a million for taking the time.

You-Tube is a wonderful time machine.

 

[HtownOrange]

There's nothing I love more than the original broadcasts of historical games. Someone has found the second half of the 1957 Syracuse-Penn State game. The play-by-play man is Lindsay Nelson, the voice of college football when I was growing up, not unlike Keith Jackson decades later. (Lindsay also became part of the Met's famous announcing rotation with Ralph Kiner and Bob Murphy 5 years after this.) The date is October 26, 1957 and the venue is Archbold Stadium. The color man is one Harold "Red" Grange!

Thanks, SWC75.

 

[Dinkyspond]

I love it when I heard Lindsey say"#78, Ron Luciano for Syracuse." I remember Ron's battles with Earl Weaver as an AL umpire and his emphatic out calls on close plays at 1st. Few people knew or realized that Ron was a great O lineman at Cuse, a multi-year starter I believe.

 

[SWC75]

Here's another Blast from the same source. It's SU's first ever game with U of Miami, the final game of the 1960 season. This is not the original broadcast but an episode of a highlight show they did back in the day that, in this week, featured this game. The narrator, a Philadelphia broadcaster named Gene Kelly, (no relation to the dancer), tells us that Syracuse is trying to get into a bowl game. In fact this team, in the eyar after the national championship game, was so disappointed to sustain two loses that they voted not to go to a bowl that year. It was certainly a different era.

There are several shot of Ernie Davis in his prime, rushing for 130 yards on 16 carries. John Mackey, Dick Easterly, Al Beimiller and Fred Mautino are also prominently mentioned. SU debuted its new blue uniforms in this game, but rarely used them until 1967, (I know of two other games we used them before that: the Liberty Bowl, also against Miami, in 1961 and the 1/1/65 Sugar Bowl against LSU. Note also that the tune played at times in the background is "The Saltine Warrior", which is what I usually heard over SU highlight films like this when growing up, not "Down Down the Field".

 

[SWC75]

Here's a much briefer highlight clip of a game agaisnt Kansas earlier that season, narrated by Chris Shenkel:

 

[SWC75]

We beat Penn State 21-15 for our 15th win in a row:

 

[jgeorge322]

Such meathead football

 

[OrangeAl]

Several penalties for clipping. When did that word leave the football vocabulary?

 

[0.2 YNdeeR]

Here's another Blast from the same source. It's SU's first ever game with U of Miami, the final game of the 1960 season. This is not the original broadcast but an episode of a highlight show they did back in the day that, in this week, featured this game. The narrator, a Philadelphia broadcaster named Gene Kelly, (no relation to the dancer), tells us that Syracuse is trying to get into a bowl game. In fact this team, in the eyar after the national championship game, was so disappointed to sustain two loses that they voted not to go to a bowl that year. It was certainly a different era.

There are several shot of Ernie Davis in his prime, rushing for 130 yards on 16 carries. John Mackey, Dick Easterly, Al Beimiller and Fred Mautino are also prominently mentioned. SU debuted its new blue uniforms in this game, but rarely used them until 1967, (I know of two other games we used them before that: the Liberty Bowl, also against Miami, in 1961 and the 1/1/65 Sugar Bowl against LSU. Note also that the tune played at times in the background is "The Saltine Warrior", which is what I usually heard over SU highlight films like this when growing up, not "Down Down the Field".

Some interesting game notes:
- old-school toe-kicking;
- stellar backfield with Mackey and Davis!;
- Davis playing Defense?; and
- Nice win over UM!

 

[SWC75]

Some interesting game notes:
- old-school toe-kicking;
- stellar backfield with Mackey and Davis!;
- Davis playing Defense?; and
- Nice win over UM!

Traditionally, football players played both offense and defense and position players did the kicking. After WWII, depth in college ball was unusually great, especially for those schools that had coaches who had coached service ball and knew who the best players were. The guys that would have been in college during the war joined the guys who became college age in the late 40's. Any school from that time who had a good team usually regard that team as their best ever for at least a generation afterwards. Fritz Crisler, the coach at Michigan, came up with the idea of forming separate offensive and defensive units made up of the players who were best at that. He won national titles in 1947-48 and other coaches copied him. The pros also followed suit.

In1953, the NCAA decided 'one platoon' football was a purer version of the sport and tried to legislate it back into existence by limiting substitution rules. The used a modified version of baseball's system: if a player leaves the game in a quarter, he cannot return to that game in the same quarter. Instead of separate offensive and defensive teams, you had a first team, a second team and maybe a third team. They all played both ways. A coach would pull out the first team late in the 1st and play the second team until early in the second, then put the first team back in and do the same in the second half. Paul Dietzel at LSU won a national title by giving his third team a nickname "The Chinese Bandits" and starting the game and the half with them. But with the pros using two platoons, pressure on the colleges to conform to that cause the NCAA to loosen up the substitution rules and by 1964, the colleges were two-platoon as well.

Jim Brown and Ernie Davis didn't play the whole game on offense, something to remember when looking at their stats, (they also didn't play varsity and freshmen and the length of the seasons were less). Floyd Little and Larry Csonka played only offense and did that for a larger portion of the game.

 

[OrangeAl]

Here's a much briefer highlight clip of a game agaisnt Kansas earlier that season, narrated by Chris Shenkel:

Had to laugh. At the 7:00 mark in the Miami video, Ernie Davis and Pete Brokaw are back to receive the kickoff. Brokaw takes it and Ernie just jogs behind the play. That doesn't happen today.