SWC75
Bored Historian
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 33,873
- Like
- 65,323
We may have done this before: I don't know. It's probably been a while and I'm sure we have some new posters since then.
I was on a thread where I and some other posters were trying to cheer up Mantonio by citing how long we'd been SU fans and all the ups and downs we'd experienced since then and affirming that we'd remain SU fans through any future ups and downs because we survived the past ones. I thought it might be if everyone stated how long they've been an SU fan, with some information of how you became and SU fan and maybe citing some of the best and worst moments.
I was about to turn 8 years old in 1961 when my Dad came home from a bank where they where giving out booklets previewing the 1961 NFL season as a promotion. Dad wanted something we could do together so we spent Sunday afternoons watching the NFL games while he had me read about each team. He told em that the best player in the league was a guy who went to Syracuse, Jimmy brown and that he played for the Cleveland Browns, (which I assumed they'd named after him), so they became my favorite team.
Then Dad told me that the we had another guy like Jimmy Brown on that year's Syracuse team. They were going to play Miami in the Liberty Bowl and it was going to be on TV, (a rare thing for SU in those days)> We watched the game and Ernie led us on a second half comeback to win the game:
I have no memory of the 1962 SU season, (we went 5-5 and probably were never on TV), but do remember the Brown's games from that year. My chief memory of 1963 is watching grainy films of the previous Saturday's games, (to the tune of The Saltine Warrior and with the great Bill O'Donnell narrating) , on the local Tuesday evening news in Syracuse. That's how long it took to process game films in those days.
The Saltine Warrior begins at 1:26 of this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvwbYkvnE5k
Then game films looked and sounded like this but with O'Donnell providing a narration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExxbEw4yigU
I still prefer my highloights with school songs and marches rather than rock or wrap.
The voice of Bill O'Donnell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uqdwPLIpsA
(He went on to join Chuck Thompson in doing the Orio9les games in 1966 and handed the "Voice of the orange" job to Joel Mareiness. Bill died of cancer in 1982 at the age of 56.)
Then in 1964, we got another #44, Floyd Little. Dad agreed to take me to one of the games. Floyd broke the game open against undefeated UCLA with a 91 yard punt return just before the half and we won 39-0. That really hooked me and I've been "on board ever since.
The competitive low point was the oping game of Ben Schwartzwalder's last season. We'd scheduled Bowling Green as an easy early game. I admit I left this one early because I couldn't watch any more. Somebody stopped me and asked me what the score was. I told him " 47-6". The guy was impressed until I told him Blowing Green was leading. They'd had a long interception return for a score. i didn't realize it had been called back. We got one more score to make it a 14-41 final. That's when I and a lot of other SU fans were confronted with the reality that the glory days were long gone and there appeared little likelihood they'd ever come back.
For years the emotional low point was the two games we fumbled away to Penn State: 14-15 in 1969 when they had the nation's longest winning streak and 1985 when they'd beaten us 14 times in a row. But that was topped in 1998, Donovan McNabb's last season, when we lost by a point to Tennessee's eventual national champions on a controversial call in the opener, then blew defending national champion Michigan out fo their own place and followed that up by scoring 70 points on Rutgers. I really, really felt like this team was going to run the table and play for the national title while McNabb was going to win the Heisman Donnie McPherson got gypped out of a decade before. Then we went to Raleigh and laid a dinosaur egg. I'd allowed my ambitions for the team to fly to high and I crashed very badly, wondering if it was really worth it to be an SU fan. But I decided to stick it out.
The competitive and emotional high was the greatest day of my sporting life, (until 4/7/03, anyway), the cathartic annihilation of hated Penn State after those 16 losses in a row.
So...when and how did you get "on board" and what have been the low and high points since then?
I was on a thread where I and some other posters were trying to cheer up Mantonio by citing how long we'd been SU fans and all the ups and downs we'd experienced since then and affirming that we'd remain SU fans through any future ups and downs because we survived the past ones. I thought it might be if everyone stated how long they've been an SU fan, with some information of how you became and SU fan and maybe citing some of the best and worst moments.
I was about to turn 8 years old in 1961 when my Dad came home from a bank where they where giving out booklets previewing the 1961 NFL season as a promotion. Dad wanted something we could do together so we spent Sunday afternoons watching the NFL games while he had me read about each team. He told em that the best player in the league was a guy who went to Syracuse, Jimmy brown and that he played for the Cleveland Browns, (which I assumed they'd named after him), so they became my favorite team.
Then Dad told me that the we had another guy like Jimmy Brown on that year's Syracuse team. They were going to play Miami in the Liberty Bowl and it was going to be on TV, (a rare thing for SU in those days)> We watched the game and Ernie led us on a second half comeback to win the game:
I have no memory of the 1962 SU season, (we went 5-5 and probably were never on TV), but do remember the Brown's games from that year. My chief memory of 1963 is watching grainy films of the previous Saturday's games, (to the tune of The Saltine Warrior and with the great Bill O'Donnell narrating) , on the local Tuesday evening news in Syracuse. That's how long it took to process game films in those days.
The Saltine Warrior begins at 1:26 of this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvwbYkvnE5k
Then game films looked and sounded like this but with O'Donnell providing a narration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExxbEw4yigU
I still prefer my highloights with school songs and marches rather than rock or wrap.
The voice of Bill O'Donnell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uqdwPLIpsA
(He went on to join Chuck Thompson in doing the Orio9les games in 1966 and handed the "Voice of the orange" job to Joel Mareiness. Bill died of cancer in 1982 at the age of 56.)
Then in 1964, we got another #44, Floyd Little. Dad agreed to take me to one of the games. Floyd broke the game open against undefeated UCLA with a 91 yard punt return just before the half and we won 39-0. That really hooked me and I've been "on board ever since.
The competitive low point was the oping game of Ben Schwartzwalder's last season. We'd scheduled Bowling Green as an easy early game. I admit I left this one early because I couldn't watch any more. Somebody stopped me and asked me what the score was. I told him " 47-6". The guy was impressed until I told him Blowing Green was leading. They'd had a long interception return for a score. i didn't realize it had been called back. We got one more score to make it a 14-41 final. That's when I and a lot of other SU fans were confronted with the reality that the glory days were long gone and there appeared little likelihood they'd ever come back.
For years the emotional low point was the two games we fumbled away to Penn State: 14-15 in 1969 when they had the nation's longest winning streak and 1985 when they'd beaten us 14 times in a row. But that was topped in 1998, Donovan McNabb's last season, when we lost by a point to Tennessee's eventual national champions on a controversial call in the opener, then blew defending national champion Michigan out fo their own place and followed that up by scoring 70 points on Rutgers. I really, really felt like this team was going to run the table and play for the national title while McNabb was going to win the Heisman Donnie McPherson got gypped out of a decade before. Then we went to Raleigh and laid a dinosaur egg. I'd allowed my ambitions for the team to fly to high and I crashed very badly, wondering if it was really worth it to be an SU fan. But I decided to stick it out.
The competitive and emotional high was the greatest day of my sporting life, (until 4/7/03, anyway), the cathartic annihilation of hated Penn State after those 16 losses in a row.
So...when and how did you get "on board" and what have been the low and high points since then?
and watching Little and Csonka play...I was very, very young. 
