March 20, 1976: Rutgers Basketball Reaches the Final Four

March 20, 1976, 50 years ago: The men's basketball team of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, beats the Virginia Military Institute, a.k.a. VMI, at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina. This advances them to a record of 31-0, and to the NCAA Semifinal at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. Rutgers has reached the Final Four.

One of nine "colonial colleges," which opened before American independence in 1776, Rutgers was best known as the site of the 1st American football game in 1869. But, since then, sports successes had been few and far between.

Now, under coach Tom Young, they had a basketball team that was ready to challenge the rest of the country. The usual starting lineup was guards Mike Dabney and Eddie Jordan, forwards Phil "the Thrill" Sellers and Hollis Copeland, and center "Jammin'" James Bailey, a freshman.

It was one thing to beat regional rivals like Princeton and Seton Hall (also in New Jersey); Columbia, Fordham, Manhattan College and Long Island University (New York City); the University of Pennsylvania and Temple (Philadelphia); Bucknell, Lehigh and Lafayette (Northeastern Pennsylvania); the University of Delaware; the Naval Academy (Maryland); American University (Washington, D.C.); the University of Connecticut; and Boston College.

But beating bigger teams was another thing. On December 4, 1975, they beat Big Ten team Purdue. Between Christmas and New Year's, they went to Greenville, South Carolina to play in the Poinsettia Classic, and beat The Citadel (not a big deal) and Georgia Tech (which was a big deal). They beat West Virginia at Madison Square Garden on February 5.

By this point, home games at the 3,200-seat College Avenue Gymnasium, built in 1931 after a fire burned down the previous gym on the site, roughly on the site of that first college football game, in New Brunswick, Middlesex County, New Jersey, were next to impossible to get into unless you were a student. It got so loud, paint chips fell from the ceiling. (I have had this confirmed by an RU graduate, Class of '76.) The decision to build a new arena was made.

The College Avenue Gym

Rutgers beat the University of Pittsburgh, then Syracuse. On March 1, they closed the regular season at home to St. Bonaventure, still undefeated at 25-0. The Bonnies took an early lead, but the Scarlet Knights came back, and won, 85-80. They entered the ECAC Metro Tournament at Princeton's Jadwin Gymnasium, and beat LIU and St. John's -- schools from Brooklyn and Queens, respectively -- to go 28-0.

It was on to the NCAA Tournament. This was only the 2nd time RU had made the Tournament, having gotten in the year before, and going out in the 1st Round. They had gotten to the Semifinals of the NIT in 1967, with future North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano playing for them.

They played Princeton -- not in New Jersey, but at the Providence Civic Center in Rhode Island. (It's now named the Amica Mutual Pavilion.) It was the closest game of the season, but Rutgers beat their ancient rivals, 54-53.

On to the Regional Semifinal, in Greensboro. Connecticut was not yet the power it would become, and Rutgers won, 93-79. That led to the Regional Final, also in Greensboro, against VMI. This time, Rutgers was solidly favored, and won, 91-75. They were undefeated. They were 31-0. They were ranked Number 4 in the country. And they were on their way to the Final Four.

Hail the Heroes:

* Number 12, a 6-foot-5-inch senior forward from Brooklyn, New York: Phil Sellers.

* Number 20, a 6-9 freshman center from Boston, Massachusetts: James Bailey.

* Number 22, a 6-3 sophomore guard from Washington, D.C.: Stanford Nance.

* Number 24, a 6-7 senior center from Parsippany, Morris County, New Jersey: Bruce Sherer.

* Number 30, a 6-1 junior guard from D.C.: Eddie Jordan.

* Number 32, a 6-4 senior guard from East Orange, Essex County, New Jersey: Mike Dabney.

* Number 34, a 6-5 sophomore forward from Trenton, Mercer County, New Jersey: Hollis Copeland.

* Number 42, a 6-2 junior guard from Queens, New York: Mark Conlin.

* Number 44, a 6-2 senior guard from Queens: Jeff Kleinbaum.

* Number 50, a 6-5 sophomore guard from East Rockaway, Long Island, New York: Steve Hefele.

* Number 52, a 6-7 senior center from Hackettstown, Warren County, New Jersey: Mike Palko.

* And Number 54, a 6-7 freshman forward from Belleville, Essex County, New Jersey: Abdel Anderson.

Since it was 1976, the Bicentennial year, the Final Four, and the All-Star Games for MLB, the NBA and the NHL, were held in Philadelphia. On March 27, against the University of Michigan, ranked Number 9 entering the Tournament, the bubble finally burst. The Wolverines jumped out to an early lead, and the Knights just couldn't get into their game. Michigan won, 86-70, and RU were 31-1.

In those days, there was a 3rd Place Game, and Rutgers lost that, too, 106-92 to defending National Champion UCLA, to finish 31-2. Indiana, coached by Bobby Knight, and featuring future NBA players Kent Benson, Scott May and Quinn Buckner, beat Michigan, and completed an undefeated season, 32-0. There hasn't been an undefeated season in college basketball since.

Calendar year 1976 was magical for Rutgers: In the Autumn, the football team also went undefeated, 11-0, but was not invited to a bowl game.

In 1977, Rutgers moved into the Rutgers Athletic Center, a.k.a. The RAC (pronounced like "rack"), across the Raritan River from New Brunswick, on the Livingston Campus in Piscataway. From 1986 to 2019, it was named the Louis Brown Athletic Center, after a donation from Brown's family.

Now named the Jersey Mike's Arena, it only seats 9,000, and has never been very good. Plans for renovation, or for a new arena in downtown New Brunswick, have been floated, but it looks like the current nondescript chunk of concrete is going to stay.

The College Avenue Gym still stands, and hosts the RU wrestling and volleyball programs.

Rutgers made the NCAA Tournament again in 1979, getting to the Sweet Sixteen. They made it again in 1983, getting to the 2nd Round. In 1989, they made it as Champions of the Atlantic-10 Tournament. They made it again in 1991. Both times, they went out in the 1st Round. They didn't make it again until 2021, but made it again in 2022.

Despite being the team's top player, Phil Sellers played just 1 season in the NBA, with the 1976-77 Detroit Pistons. Hollis Copeland played 2 seasons with the New York Knicks. James Bailey lasted 9 seasons, playing for both the Knicks and the New Jersey Nets, among other teams.

Eddie Jordan had the most successful pro career, playing 7 seasons, 3 of them with the Nets, and 3 with the Los Angeles Lakers, including winning the 1982 NBA Championship. He later coached the NBA's Sacramento Kings, Washington Wizards and Philadelphia 76ers.

Tom Young started at Rutgers in 1973, and coached them until 1985, when he was lured away by Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He later served as an assistant to Jordan on the Wizards. He died on March 20, 2022, the 36th Anniversary of his Final Four achievement.

Phil Sellers died on September 19, 2023. The remaining players are still alive.

March 19, 1966: Texas Western vs. Kentucky

March 19, 1966, 60 years ago: The NCAA hosts the Final of its University Division Men's Basketball Tournament, at Cole Field House, on the campus of the University of Maryland, in College Park, outside Washington, D.C.

The University of Kentucky went into the game 27-1, having lost only to the University of Tennessee. Their players included Louie Dampier, who would team with later Kentucky star Dan Issel to lead the Kentucky Colonels to the 1975 ABA Championship; and Pat Riley, who would play for the Los Angeles Lakers' 1972 NBA Champions, and then coach the Lakers to 4 titles and the Miami Heat to 1.

The Wildcats were coached by Adolph Rupp, known as the Baron of the Bluegrass. He was 64 years old, looked older, and had been their head coach since 1930. He had already coached them to 22 Southeastern Conference (SEC) regular-season Championships, 13 SEC Tournament wins, 6 berths in what would now be known as the Final Four, and 4 National Championships: 1948, 1949, 1951 and 1958. That did not include the 1954 season, when they were undefeated, but chose not to play in the NCAA Tournament, because 2 players were declared ineligible for having already graduated -- a rule since overturned.

Rupp was from Kansas, and was not known to be personally racist. However, Kentucky was a Southern State, and, while the Wildcats' arch-rivals, the University of Louisville, had racially integrated, UK had not.

But the writing was on the wall. The Civil Rights Movement had made great gains. And a black man from Louisville, Muhammad Ali -- born Cassius Clay, and that Sports Illustrated cover shown above still listed him as such, 2 years after he changed his name -- was the Heavyweight Champion of the World.

Rupp had asked University President John W. Oswald to take the program out of the SEC, so that he could recruit black players. At one point during the 1965-66 season, Rupp did some writing of his own. He wrote the top 3 teams in the Associated Press poll on his blackboard at practice:

1. KENTUCKY

2. DUKE

3. VANDERBILT

Duke University is in Durham, North Carolina. Vanderbilt University is in Nashville, Tennessee. Rupp told his players, "Look at that. The top three teams in the country. All Southern. All white. You'll never see that again." He knew that Southern teams that integrated would be able to compete for national honors, and those that were slow to do so would get left in the dust. Not just in basketball, but in football, and in every other sport.

Previous Rupp teams had had nicknames: His 1948 National Champions were the "Fabulous Five." His 1958 team didn't look so good at first, and he complained to the press that they were "just fiddling around." So they were known as the "Fiddlin' Five," but won the title, anyway. His 1966 team was short, and were known as "Rupp's Runts."

At the time, the NCAA Tournament had 24 teams, with only conference champions and a few independents invited. Kentucky were SEC Champions, and got a bye into the round of 16, the Regional Semifinals, where they beat the University of Dayton. They beat Michigan to make the Final Four at Cole Field House. In the National Semifinal, they beat Number 2 Duke 83-79. They figured that was "the real final," because they underestimated their Final opponents.

That team was Texas Western University, based in El Paso, Texas, on the State Line with New Mexico and the national border with Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Their head coach was Don Haskins, only 36, and despite Texas being a segregated State, he fielded an integrated team. They finished the regular season ranked Number 3, and also entered the Final at 27-1. Their only loss was 74-72 against Seattle University, then famous as the Alma Mater of Laker superstar Elgin Baylor, who led them to the NCAA Final in 1958, but downgraded to the NAIA in 1980, before being restored to NCAA Division I in 2008.

The Miners entered the NCAA Tournament with an all-black starting lineup: Guards Bobby Joe Hill from Detroit and Orsten Artis from Gary, Indiana, outside Chicago; forwards Dave Lattin from Houston and Harry Flournoy from Gary; and center Willie Cager from New York. Willie Worsley and Nevil Shed were also black players from New York.

In the 1st Round of the tournament, Texas Western beat Oklahoma City University. They needed overtime to beat the University of Cincinnati. They needed double overtime against the University of Kansas to make the Final Four. And they beat the University of Utah in the Semifinal.

The Final began at 10:00 PM Eastern Time, and was not broadcast on national television. While Loyola University of Chicago had won the 1963 NCAA Final with a majority-black starting lineup, four out of five, Texas Western was the first team that had dared to start an all-black starting lineup. Kentucky, of course, was all-white.

Cole Field House. It would host the Final Four again in 1970.

Haskins told Lattin to dunk the ball early if he got the chance, to "send a message" to Kentucky. He did, twice. Hill made steals on back-to-back Wildcat plays, putting the Miners up 16-11. They led at halftime, 34-31.

Curry Kirkpatrick covered the game for Sports Illustrated, and said it was "slow, tedious, almost flat." Disagreeing was Gary Williams, then a junior at the host school, the University of Maryland. He was impressed by the Miners' ball movement, recalling, "There were possessions where Texas Western passed it 10 times before taking a shot." He would be Maryland's captain the next season, and coach them to the National Championship in 2002.

Kentucky continually fouled Texas Western, with 2 players fouling out and 2 relegated to the bench after receiving 4 fouls each. Over a stretch of 37 minutes, the Miners went 26-for-27 on free throws. This made the difference: Had they made 2/3rds of their free throws, they would have lost. Instead, they made 96 percent of them. Final score, Texas Western 72, Kentucky 65.

Point totals: For Texas Western: Hill 20, Lattin 16, Artis 15, Worsley 8, Cager 8, Shed 3, Flournoy 2; for Kentucky: Dampier 19, Riley 19, Larry Conley 10, Thad Jaracz 7, Tom Kron 6, Cliff Berger 4; and Bob Tallent, Jim LeMaster and Gary Gamble played without scoring.

On March 13, 1967, just short of 1 full year later, Texas Western University changed its name to the University of Texas at El-Paso, a.k.a. "Texas-El Paso" or "UTEP," though keeping the team name of Miners.

The Miners were less successful in the pro game than the Wildcats. Bobby Joe Hill, Orsten Artis, Harry Flournoy and Willie Worsley went undrafted. Cager was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets, but a heart condition prevented him from playing. Nevil Shed was drafted by the Boston Celtics, but was injured in his 1st training camp, and never played a professional game.

Dave Lattin played the 1967-68 season with the San Francisco Warriors, 1968-69 as an original member of the Phoenix Suns, 1970-71 and 1971-72 with the ABA's Pittsburgh Condors, and 1972-73 with the ABA's Memphis Tams.

Indeed, despite the team's great achievement, the man who turned out to be the most famous athlete at the school at the time was Bob Beamon, who set a stunning world record in the long jump at the 1968 Olympics.

Rupp finally recruited a black player for the 1970-71 season, Tom Payne. But he became a disciplinary issue. He played 1 season in the NBA, 1971-72, for the Atlanta Hawks. Three times, he would be convicted and imprisoned for rape.

Rupp retired in 1972, having won 876 games, more than any college basketball coach before him. He died in 1977, a few months before his former assistant and successor, Joe B. Hall, took Kentucky to its 1st National Championship in 20 years.

Both head coaches now have their names on their respective schools' buildings: Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center opened in downtown Lexington, Kentucky in 1976; and the Special Events Center opened on the UTEP campus in 1977, renamed the Don Haskins Center in 1998.

Haskins never got past the NCAA Tournament's Sweet Sixteen again, but remained at UTEP through the 1999 season. He won 7 regular season titles and 4 Tournaments in the Western Athletic Conference. His career record was 719-353. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2006, on the 40th Anniversary of the title, the entire team was elected to the Hall as a unit.

Among the other players Haskins coached at TWU/UTEP were Nolan Richardson, who coached the University of Arkansas to the 1994 National Championship; and Nate "Tiny" Archibald and Tim Hardaway Sr., who have joined Haskins, Richardson and the entire 1965-66 TWU Miners team in the Hall of Fame.

Hill died in 2002, Haskins in 2008, Flournoy in 2016. Artis in 2017, and Cager, despite his heart condition, lived until March 19, 2023, the 57th Anniversary of the epochal game. The rest are still alive.

TWU/UTEP were the only team from Texas to win the NCAA Tournament until Baylor University did it in 2021.

What Would You Say to Him?

What would you say to him? Here's what I would say:

You're 26. That means you were 21 when he left office the first time. You were an adult. You were capable of knowing what was going on.

He had a record in the office. You were capable of knowing the truth. You either didn't bother to find it out; or you did, and you chose to ignore it, and yo voted for him, anyway.

And now, you feel betrayed.

For this, you do not deserve my sympathy. You made your choice. So did 77 million other people. And now, all of us, whether we deserve it or not, we have to live with it.

Next time, take this feeling of betrayal, and remember that it isn't just Trump, it's the Republican Party as a whole, that betrayed you, and vote for the Democratic nominee for President. And if he -- or she -- wins, then things will get better, as they always do.

March 17, 1776: The Siege of Boston

Henry Knox

March 17, 1776, 250 years ago: The Siege of Boston ends. No, this has nothing to do with the Yankees playing the Red Sox, or any other sporting event. It is the 1st great victory for the Continental Army in the War of the American Revolution.

The siege began on April 19, after the first battles of the war, at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, when Massachusetts militias blocked land access to Boston. The Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, formed the Continental Army from the militias involved in the fighting, and appointed George Washington as commander in chief.

In June 1775, the British seized Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill, two Continental Army positions overlooking Boston. But their casualties proved heavy, and their gains were insufficient to break the Continental Army's encirclement.

After this, the Americans laid siege to Boston. No major battles were fought during this time, and the conflict was limited to occasional raids, minor skirmishes, and sniper fire. British efforts to supply their troops were significantly hindered by the smaller but more agile Continental Army and patriot forces operating on land and sea. The British suffered from a continual lack of food, fuel, and supplies.

In November 1775, General Washington sent General Henry Knox on a mission to bring the heavy artillery that had recently been captured at Fort Ticonderoga in Upstate New York. In a technically complex and demanding operation, Knox brought the cannons to Boston in January 1776, and this artillery fortified Dorchester Heights, which overlooked Boston Harbor.

This development threatened to cut off the British supply lifeline from the sea. The British commander, General Willie Howe, saw his position as indefensible, and he withdrew his forces from Boston to Halifax, Nova Scotia on March 17.

It has often been said that the American Revolution began in Boston on March 5, 1770, when British militia -- effectively, the first Boston Police -- fired on people throwing snowballs at them, killing 5 of them, the event that became known as the Boston Massacre. Six years later, the British bugged out of Boston. For what would eventually become known as the Hub City, the war was essentially over.

That would not be the case for points west and south: Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia would all suffer terribly over the next 5 years.

When Washington became the 1st President of the United States, he appointed Knox to be the 1st Secretary of War, the post known since 1947 -- despite what Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth might now say -- as Secretary of Defense.

March 15, 1956: "My Fair Lady" & "Forbidden Planet" Premiere

March 15, 1956, 70 years ago: The musical My Fair Lady premieres at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York. Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music) based it on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, itself based on a Greek myth about a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he had carved.

Rex Harrison plays Henry Higgins, a linguistics professor in 1912 London, who bets that he can take Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl one step ahead of homelessness, played by Julie Andrews; and, within six months, pass her off as a Duchess at a ball.

Eliza's Cockney accent makes this the greatest challenge of Higgins' career. He accepts her offer of 1 shilling, thinking it as being like 60 or 70 pounds from a millionaire. In 2026 money, that 1 shilling would be about £8.00, or about $11.20. In contrast, £60 would be about £9,000, or about $12,600.

Ultimately, Eliza applies herself out of spite, because Higgins is a misogynist and an elitist who pushes her so hard. Or, as the man himself puts it, "I find the moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. And I find that the moment I make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical." 

Spoiler alert: Higgins was already selfish and tyrannical, as seen in his first song, a bigoted piece that asks, "Why can't the English learn to speak?" In it, he insults the Cockneys of London's East End, Yorkshiremen, Cornishmen, the Scots and the Irish, remarking, "There even are places where English completely disappears: Well, in America, they haven't used it for years!"

Act I of the play is about Eliza's transformation. Act II is about her reaction to it, and Higgins' reaction to that. In the original play, Pygmalion, she chooses to marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill, a well-to-do, well-meaning but not very bright young man who fell for her before the transformation was complete, an "I knew you when" situation.

In the musical, she goes back to Higgins, who will always see her as the flower girl that she was. The play was written for pre-World War I Britain by the egalitarian, socialist Shaw; the musical was written for post-World War II, male-dominant America.

The musical won 6 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and Best Actor for Harrison. It was filmed in 1964, by director George Cukor for Warner Brothers, and won 8 Oscars, including Best Picture, and Best Actor for Harrison.

Audrey Hepburn replaced Andrews as Eliza, because Cukor didn't want an actress who had never acted in a film before. Well, Hepburn became the latest actress to get her singing dubbed by Marni Nixon, and was beaten out for Best Actress by... Andrews, for her 1st film role, Mary Poppins, in which she spectacularly did her own singing.

The Mark Hellinger Theatre was at 237 West 51st Street. In 1989, the building was converted, or so to speak, into The Times Square Church, and is still in use as such today.

George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, Stanley Holloway (Eliza's father, Alfred, in both musical and film) in 1982, Robert Coote (who appeared in the musical as Colonel Hugh Pickering, the linguist who bets that Higgins can't do it, but nonetheless stands up for Eliza) also in 1982, George Cukor in 1983, Alan Jay Lerner in 1986, Frederick Loewe in 1988, Wilfrid Hyde-White (Pickering in the film) in 1991, Audrey Hepburn in 1993, Jeremy Brett (Freddy in the film) in 1995, and John Michael King (Freddy in the musical) in 2008. As of March 15, 2022, Julie Andrews is still alive.

*

Also premiering on March 15, 1956 was the film Forbidden Planet, directed by Fred M. Wilcox. This is the first science fiction film in which humans are depicted traveling in a starship of their own creation, rather than aliens coming to Earth. It is also the first science fiction film set entirely on another world in interstellar space, far away from the planet Earth.

By calling that planet "Altair IV," meaning the 4th planet revolving around the star that Earth astronomers have named Altair, it established the sci-fi concept of doing that for planets, most often used in the Star Trek mythos.

The film marked the debut of Robby the Robot, who would become a science fiction icon, mainly because it was cheaper to put an unknown actor in an already-built robot suit than to design and operate a working robot, or even to make a new robot suit.

Forbidden Planet owes much to William Shakespeare's last great play, The Tempest, with Walter Pidgeon's Dr. Edward Morbius standing in for the wizard Prospero, Anne Francis' Altaira for Miranda, and Robby for Caliban.

It also owes much the writings of psychologist Carl Jung, then still alive. Jung had written of a "collective unconscious." In the film, Dr. Morbius swears he is not the villain, but he proves to be an unwilling one, as his unconscious mind was the main threat. Science fiction had already, in print, tried to challenge the ideas of good and evil, showing that what appears to be the hero might not be, and what appears to be the villain might not be.

And the film reminds us all that Leslie Nielsen, here playing Commander John Adams, was once a great dramatic actor. I am serious, and don't call me "Shirley."

March 15, 1926: Norm Van Brocklin Is Born

March 15, 1926, 100 years ago: Norman Mack Van Brocklin is born in Parade, South Dakota, and grows up in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, California. He left high school to enter the U.S. Navy during World War II, and starred at the University of Oregon, before playing for the Los Angeles Rams, debuting with them in 1949.

This led to perhaps the NFL's 1st great "quarterback controversy," as the Rams already had Bob Waterfield, who had already led them to the NFL Championship in 1945, their last season in Cleveland. In 1949, Waterfield started 11 of 12 games, and the Rams reached the NFL Championship Game, but lost it to the Philadelphia Eagles. In 1950, Van Brocklin started 7 games, Waterfield 5, and again, they reached the Championship Game, losing it to the Cleveland Browns. Both times, Waterfield started, but Van Brocklin did play.

In 1951, Waterfield started 10 games, Van Brocklin only 2. One of those was on September 28, against the woebegone football version of the New York Yankees. He completed 27 of 41 passes for 554 yards. Despite all the advances in the passing game over the last 75 years, that is a single-game record that still stands. Once again, the Rams reached the Championship Game. Once again, head coach Joe Stydahar, previously a Hall of Fame lineman with the Chicago Bears, named Waterfield the starter. This time, the Rams beat the Browns.

In 1952, Van Brocklin started 7 games, Waterfield 5. Waterfield then retired. Van Brocklin got them back to the Championship Game in 1955. In 1958, he was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles. In training camp in 1959, a young tackle was injured, and Van Brocklin taught him how to watch film. That tackle never played a down of pro ball, but a coach was born that day: John Madden. He also tutored the Eagles' young backup quarterback, future Hall-of-Famer Christian "Sonny" Jurgensen.

I think that's Ray Nitschke,

the Packers' Hall of Fame linebacker, behind him.

In 1960, Van Brocklin led the Eagles to a 12-2 record, winning the NFL Championship Game over the Green Bay Packers, 17-13 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. This made him the 1st quarterback to lead 2 different teams to the NFL title. There have been 2 since: Peyton Manning and Tom Brady *.

After that game, Van Brocklin retired as a player, and, with Eagles head coach Buck Shaw also retiring, fully expected to be named head coach. He wasn't, and 1960 remained their last NFL Championship for 57 years. The Curse of the Dutchman? Oddly, when they won again in the 2017 season, it was in part because they had to change quarterbacks late in the season, as Carson Wentz got hurt, and Nick Foles led them the rest of the way.

For the 1961 season, Van Brocklin was named the 1st head coach of the expansion Minnesota Vikings, leading them through 1966. He tutored their 1st starting quarterback, future Hall-of-Famer Fran Tarkenton. From 1968 to 1974, he coached the Atlanta Falcons. He never reached the Playoffs as a coach.

Tarkenton and Van Brocklin

He died on May 2, 1983, only 57 years old, after battling brain cancer: After leaving the hospital, he said he got a brain transplant: "They gave me a sportswriter's brain, to make sure I got one that hadn't been used." A 9-time Pro Bowler, he is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Oddly, neither the Rams nor the Eagles have retired his Number 11.

March 15, 1946: The Arrest of "Axis Sally"

March 15, 1946, 80 years ago: Mildred Gillars, the Nazi propagandist known as "Axis Sally," is arrested.

She was born in Portland, Maine on November 29, 1900, and grew up in Bellevue, Ohio, about halfway between Cleveland and Toledo. He studied drama at Ohio Wesleyan University, dropped out to move to New York, and her level of success in theater suggested she shouldn't have dropped out.

She moved to Paris and Algiers, and got a job as an English teacher at the Berlitz School in Berlin in 1934. When the Nazis started World War II in 1939, the U.S. government told its citizens to leave all German territories. Her fiancé was a German citizen, who said if she went home, he would divorce her for abandonment, and, under German law, she would get nothing. She stayed. He was sent to the Eastern Front, where he died for his Fatherland.

Gillars was working as an announcer for German State Radio. At first, her broadcasts weren’t political, but did start with the words, "This is Berlin calling." In 1942, she started fooling around with the program director, Max Koischwitz, who had lived in the U.S. and even became an American citizen, but was deported after his rabid anti-Semitism went too far.

Together, they launched a new show called Home Sweet Home, with Mildred as co-star, to broadcast Nazi propaganda. She told U.S. soldiers things like how their wives and girlfriends were finding men who were 4-F in the Army medical offices but 1-A in bed. She told the boys their girls wouldn't want them when they came home, especially "if you boys get all mutilated, and do not return in one piece."

Once, while on the air, she called herself "the Irish type... a real Sally." Often called "The Bitch of Berlin" by the G.I.s, she was "Axis Sally" from then on.

The tide turned in 1944. On June 6, the D-Day invasion came. On August 25, Paris was liberated. And on August 31, Max died of tuberculosis. Mildred was alone, and, as it turned out, she couldn't do the broadcasts very well when she did them alone. She made her last broadcast on May 6, 1945, 2 days before V-E Day.

She stayed in Berlin, but U.S. authorities tracked her down, and arrested her on March 15, 1946. It took until January 25, 1949 for her trial to begin. Her lawyers said that, while her broadcast stated unpopular opinions, they did not amount to treasonable conduct, and that she was under the "hypnotic influence" of Koischwitz -- who, of course, was dead, and thus unable to defend himself against that charge, regardless of whether it was true.

But with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) having recorded her broadcasts, the evidence against her was conclusive enough to convict her of one count of treason on March 10. She was stripped of her U.S. citizenship, sentenced to 10 to 30 years in prison, and fined $10,000.

She served 12 years in prison, and was paroled. Having converted to Catholicism in prison, she returned to Ohio, and taught German, French and music at a Catholic girls' high school. But she never renounced her Nazi beliefs. Certainly, unlike Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a.k.a. "Tokyo Rose," she was no victim of circumstance: Mildred Gillars chose to be a Fascist pig. Axis Sally joined her Führer in the ultimate bunker on June 25, 1988, at the age of 87, long forgotten.

Actress Meadow Williams financed the 2021 film American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally, and played the title role. Al Pacino played her defense attorney. This time, he did not tell the court, "This whole trial is out of order!"