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.
