Classic Football Recordings

They say that baseball is the Great American Pastime, and it is, to be sure, a great game that takes place on beautiful green grass, under stunning blue skies, and features the performances of marvelously talented and fun to watch athletes. However, sitting through an entire baseball game can be as exciting as watching paint dry.

Recent polls and TV ratings indicate that Football surpasses Baseball in popularity, and it is not hard to understand why. Even though there is no clock in Baseball, the action is easy to follow because it occurs an even and predictable pace; There's the windup, the pitch, the batter either hits the ball or he doesn't; if he does there are a few more seconds of intense action, if not, get ready for the next pitch, for at least three pitches per side per inning for nine innings.

The action in the American version of Football also has a definite starting point, when the Center snaps the ball, but the success of the play often depends upon misdirection and subtlety to move the ball forward. Several factors combine to make it a truly American game, especially the fact that success depends upon coordinated team effort as well as an outstanding individual effort.

Football celebrates ceremony and pageantry, very little of which has any effect on the outcome of the game. This may be important because America does not have a State Religion or a Royal Court. The ceremonial aspects of a football game demonstrate that there are more involved than the 22 players on the field. Cheerleaders work the sidelines to whip the crowd into an enthusiastic frenzy, often aided by a brass band. The players of the home team come dashing onto the field to the cheers of the crowd, and after they warm up the team captains are greeted at midfield by the referees for the coin toss. When the action breaks at halftime, the marching band performs on the playing field in a spectacle which may involve more people than play on both teams, combined.

Naturally, the pageantry and level of play at the professional level are without equal, but to truly appreciate it we recommend that you attend a few Friday night high school games, especially in rural communities. The level of play will be several degrees lower than you will see in the Big City where high school programs draw on a talent pool nearly as deep as the big college leagues enjoy. What you will see at these small-town games is a group of young men playing their hearts out, not for glory or fame, not for a professional contract or even a college scholarship. These young men have endured weeks of training and sacrifice and are out there tonight for the love of the game, for the fellowship of their team-mates, and to demonstrate their place and role in American Society.

• Fibber McGee and Molly, October 29, 1940. Harlow, Uppy, Boomer, Nick Depopulis, Gildersleeve, and the whole gang are piled into the McGee's jalopy for a road trip to see the Army-Notre Dame game. During the 1940s, West Point's rivalry with the Fighting Irish was even more intense than the one with Navy.
• A Day in the Life of Dennis Day, October 9, 1948. Recalling his glory days as waterboy for the Weaverville High football team, Dennis gets drafted to spy on the Middletown's gridiron gang and steal their plays. Of course, if he gets caught, he will get clobbered, what could go wrong?
• Life with Luigi, November 1, 1949. "The Little Immigrant" is intrigued by football because he heard that the best players are made "All Americans". Luigi wants to go to his first football game, and his classmate Olsen has two tickets that he cannot use, but Luigi will have to take Olsen's niece, Marta.
• The Great Gildersleeve, October 4, 1950. The Great Man is in charge of the Community Chest Fund Drive Junior Football Game, even though nephew Leroy is not much of an athlete. However, Bullard's niece is impressed with football players, so Leroy will be on the field if he can keep from giggling every time Brenda speaks.
• The Hallmark Hall of Fame, October 24, 1954, "Knute Rockne". The great Notre Dame coach taught his boys as much about life as he did about football. This is the story of his last championship against USC in Los Angeles. Apparently, the great coach had "a feeling" about going to California, and he was, in fact, a very sick man having been diagnosed with a blood disease a few months before. The Notre Dame squad was missing its best players and the newspapers were predicting a heavy defeat for the Irish, but Rock was not going to disappoint his boys.
• The Grantland Rice Story, Episode #23, 1955, "Football's Most Famous Coaches". Granny has met and worked with many great coaches over the years but admits that he learns more from a coach after they have lost a big game than when they win.

The American form of the game is also referred to as gridiron football and is as much a game of gaining and controlling territory as it is of scoring points. It is a game of inches played on a field measured in yards. Each team defends the field behind its line and tries to invade the other's territory until they are in a position to score a touchdown or a field goal. As such, American football is a form of ritualized combat, but it differs from combat sports like boxing, fencing, or wrestling in that the battles are won or lost by a team rather than an individual, and just like an army, each soldier or player has a job to fulfill on the road to victory or defeat.

If it all seems complicated, well, it is if you have not grown up watching or playing the game. This is part of what makes football such a great topic for Old Time Radio. Another reason is the sense of ritual which surrounds the game. Football season is in the autumn, traditionally after the harvest has come in. The most exciting games are not necessarily those for the season championship, but the games between rival schools. It gets to the point that a school’s reputation is judged more by the football team’s prowess on the gridiron than the academic success of its alumni.

It is hard to express the athletic grace and power of even a star football player on the radio, but we can see the reactions of those around them. Fans may swoon in such a godly presence while rivals may stoop to almost melodramatic measures to keep the hero from performing in the big game. Whether you are a fan or not, there is plenty of drama in our Football Collection for fans of football and Old Time Radio.

This collection contains some classic American football matches fans are sure to enjoy including:

• Army v Notre Dame, 1946
• Rosebowl, 1953
• Baltimore v NY, 1958
• NY v Greenbay, 1962
• NY v Chicago, 1963
• Baltimore v Cleveland, 1968