NFL: The 1973 Season

[EDIT 6/22/2015: Apostrophe groundskeeping]

[EDIT 11/30/2023: Removing justification and introducing "football" label]

A little late? Maybe not. After all, the 2013 NFL regular season ends tomorrow.

 

The Miami Dolphins defend their title by defeating the Minnesota Vikings 24-7 at Super Bowl VIII. Larry Csonka runs for 145 yards on 33 carries and scores both of the Dolphins' touchdowns. Just like last time, Miami never loses the lead, and the other team's only score is in the fourth quarter.

 

With a record-setting 2,003 rushing yards, O.J. Simpson of the Buffalo Bills is the consensus MVP of the NFL. In the first game of the season Sept. 16, he runs for 250 yards. Simpson's mark is 140 yards better than Jim Brown's 1963 record, and each man was playing in a 14-game season. The record will last until 1984, by which time there will be 16 games in a season.

 

The AP Offensive Rookie of the Year and the league's Rookie of the Year as selected by Pro Football Weekly is the Vikings' Chuck Foreman, who goes 801 yards on 182 carries and gets 362 yards on 37 receptions.

 

The UPI Coach of the Year for the NFC is Chuck Knox, who brings the Los Angeles Rams from 6-7-1 to 12-2 in his first year with the team. For the AFC, it's John Ralston of the Denver Broncos, a second-year coach who brings his team from 5-9 to 7-5-2.

 

Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys is the leader in quarterback rating for the year of its introduction with 94.6. The Vikings' Fran Tarkenton is second with 93.2. Roman Gabriel of the Philadelphia Eagles – who leads the NFL with 3219 passing yards and ties with Staubach for the passing touch­downs lead – is fifth with 86.3.

 

Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler has an 86.2 completion percentage in a game against the Baltimore Colts, breaking the single-game record 85.7% Sammy Baugh set in '45.

 

Staubach's 62.6 completion percentage for the season is, and will be, his personal best.

 

The receptions leader is Harold Carmichael of the Eagles with 67 for 1,116 yards.

 

Offensive guards launching Hall of Fame careers this year: John Hannah of the New England Patriots and Joe DeLamielleure of the Bills.

 

Johnny Unitas, quarterback for the San Diego Chargers this season only, wraps up his career and is bound for Canton. His 471 passing yards give him a total of 40,239. His final completion is a seven-yard pass, his only one of a game against the Kansas City Chiefs.

 

Meanwhile on the Chargers, new quarter­back and future Hall of Famer Dan Fouts makes his debut.

 

New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath misses eight games, seven in a row due to a separated shoulder.

 

Ray Guy of the Oakland Raiders punts 3,127 yards in 69 attempts to begin his career as the best punter ever.

 

Don Maynard, a former Jets receiver now with the St. Louis Cardinals and playing his final season, makes an 18-yard reception at Veterans Stadium September 16. This is catch number 663 for him, and his total is brought to 11,834 yards. Both are records at this point. He makes no receptions in his only other game.

 

Paul Warfield of the Dolphins scores four touchdowns in the final game of the regular season Dec. 15. He gets six passes for 103 yards at home against the Detroit Lions. His eleven TDs this season are among 29 receptions.

 

John Brodie finishes his career with 31,548 passing yards and 214 passing touchdowns. For now, he is the best quarterback the San Francisco 49ers have ever had.

 

Fred Dryer forces two safeties for the Rams in a game against the Packers Oct. 21.

 

Besides Unitas and Maynard, other retiring players who will make it to the Hall of Fame one day are Bob Brown, Dick Butkus, Gene Hicker­son, and Leroy Kelly. This is also Weeb Ewbank's last year coaching.

 

Extensive renovations of Yankee Stadium begin, and progress on the new stadium in New Jersey hasn't gotten far past the groundbreaking, so the New York Giants play part of this season and all of the next at the Yale Bowl. Their final game in the Bronx is a 23-23 tie with the Eagles Sept. 23, and their first New Haven home game of the regular season is a 16-14 loss to the Green Bay Packers Oct. 7.

 

Rich Stadium, home of the Bills, opens August 17 to a crowd of 80,020. The Bills lose the preseason game to the Washington Redskins 37-21 at this new stadium just outside of Buffalo.

 

At the Pro Bowl in Kansas City, Garo Yepremian of the Dolphins kicks five field goals for all of the AFC's 15 points. The NFC scores the game's only touchdown, but they come up two points short.

 

This is the first season in which first-down markers have rubber caps at the bottom instead of metal points. Some call this the Bubba Smith Rule after the Colts defensive end who was injured by getting caught in the chains at a 1972 preseason game in Tampa and missed the subsequent season because of it.

 

Pete Gent's North Dallas Forty is published. The novel is a fictionalized, autobio­graph­ical account of being an NFL player.

 

Starting this season, there will be no blackouts for games that sell out 72 hours before kickoff. Though there are 63% more no-shows in '73 than in '72, it isn't as bad for the NFL as Commissioner Pete Rozelle will continue to say it is.

 

Two days after a post-season owners' meeting in Florida February 25 in which Rozelle announces a four-year deal worth $60 million a year with the networks, the commissioner gets a ten-year extension on his contract and is given power to arbitrate.

 

For Super Bowl VIII, the least expensive ticket at Rice Stadium is $15. It will cost at least $20 to be at Tulane Stadium for Super Bowl IX.

 

LINKS

1973 season overview at Pro Football Reference

Stats leaders

The story of Giants Stadium

Fred Dryer's two-safety game

Pete Rozelle's objection to the blackout rule

Super Bowl VIII, according to NFL.com

Happy New Year. Next month, 1973-74 in the NHL and the WHA.

College Football: The 1973 Season

[EDIT 6/22/2015: Assuring apostrophe uniformity]

[EDIT 11/30/2023: Removing justification and introducing "football" label]

I've laid out a monthly schedule for this blog, but I haven't edited the list of bullet points so it isn't boring. Here's the first installment.

Notre Dame defeats Alabama 24-23 in the Sugar Bowl. The AP declares the 11-0 Fighting Irish champions, but the coaches' poll sticks with the 11-1 Crimson Tide.

Penn State defeats LSU 16-9 in the Orange Bowl. Ohio State wins the Rose Bowl 42-21 against USC.

 

Penn State halfback John Cappelletti wins the Heisman Trophy as well as its less prestigious parallel, the Maxwell Award. The consensus All-American running back has 1,522 yards on 286 rushes and 17 rushing touchdowns.

 

Ohio State offensive tackle John Hicks wins the Outland Trophy and the Lom­bardi Award, both of which are awards for line­men, the former for interior line­men. Hicks is also the runner-up for the Heisman.

 

Alabama's Bear Bryant is named Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association. The FWAA gives Johnny Majors of Pittsburgh that honor, as the Panthers improved from 1-10 in '72 to 6-5-1, including a Fiesta Bowl loss to Arizona State, in '73.

 

Tom Osborne coaches Nebraska for the first of what would prove to be 25 years. The Cornhuskers go 9-2-1, as they had the year before; they went 11-0-1 in 1970 and 13-0-0 in 1971.

 

Barry Switzer begins his 17 years as Oklahoma head coach. Steve Davis begins a three-season, 32-1-1 run as Sooners QB.

 

The consensus All-American quarterback is Dave Jaynes of Kansas with 196 completions for 2,349 yards and 14 touchdowns.

 

Mark Kellar of Northern Illinois is the leading rusher with 1,719 yards in 11 games.

 

The passing leader and total offense leader is Jesse Freitas of San Diego State with 227 completions in 11 games. He throws for 2,293 yards and 21 touchdowns, and his total offense is 2,901 yards.

 

Jay Miller of Brigham Young University gets 22 catches in a game Nov. 3 against New Mexico. This is a record that will stand until 1994. Miller is the receptions leader for the season with 100 in 11 games. He has 1,181 yards and 8 touchdowns.

 

This is the University of Kentucky's first year at Commonwealth Stadium.

 

The first-ever Division II champions are Louisiana Tech. The first-ever Division III champions are Wittenberg University.

 

In the Senior Bowl, a postseason all-star game, Lynn Swann of USC catches the winning touchdown pass. The Pittsburgh Steelers will pick the consensus All-American in the first round of the '74 draft.

LINKS

More on the '73 season from Sports-Reference.com

Week-by-week AP polls

Bowl game results

 

 

NEXT MONTH: The '73 NFL season

Introduction

This project started as a gathering of information about a certain year in sports with a book of essays about that year in mind as one of my many pipe dreams. I ended up printing it out into a mini-book for Christmas 2011. Now that the 40th anniversary of these events (and the last one that's really all that worthy of celebration until the 50th) is coming up, I thought I'd make it a blog. What follows is copied and pasted from the book with a few modifications, which should explain how formal it might be.

So, why 1974? It was a year in which the NFL, NBA, and NHL all had competitors at the same time, all with varying degrees of success. It was a year in which the Yankees played at Shea Sta­dium and the Giants played at the Yale Bowl. The Superdome and the Silverdome were among the facilities under construction. Seattle had an NBA team, but no MLB or NFL teams. You could watch a Capital Bullets/Kansas City-Omaha Kings game in the winter of '74 and the debut season for a Washington or Kansas City NHL team in the fall. The Sears Tower was in its infancy, we were left to hope the situation in South Vietnam would turn out for the best, and there were more game shows on the daytime schedule than ever before or since.

 

Most impor­tantly, it was the year of Muhammad Ali and Hank Aaron in terms of sports, and their moments may have been talked about as much as the developments revolving around Richard Nixon. Sure, the years just before and after had important elements that '74 didn't, but this one's interesting to think about. It must have been a rough one to live through, though. With so many crises and so much stress, the world of sport could make us forget for a while or it could be an unwanted reminder.

What's to come? College football, the NFL, and the WFL. College basketball, the NBA, and the ABA. The NHL and the WHA. Baseball and boxing. The World Cup and Wimbledon. Jack Nicklaus and jockeys.

 

Stay tuned.