How Long It's Been: The Detroit Lions Won an NFL Championship

December 29, 1957, 60 years ago: The NFL Championship Game is played at Briggs Stadium in Detroit -- which will be renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961. Despite Tobin Rote having to substitute at quarterback for the injured Bobby Layne, the Detroit Lions beat the Cleveland Browns 59-14.

That total of 59 points is the highest scored in an NFL Championship Game, under that name or that of the Super Bowl, since the 1940 Chicago Bears beat the Washington Redskins 73-0.

This was the 4th NFL Championship Game between the Lions and the Browns in the last 6 years. The Lions had also won in 1952 and 1953, and the Browns had won in 1954.

The Lions thus won their 3rd NFL Championship in 6 years, and their 4th overall. But they haven't done it in the 60 years since. Indeed, only once since then -- in the 1991 season -- have they even gotten to a Conference Championship Game. They haven't always been a lousy team, but they haven't gotten close to a title.

60 years. How long has that been?

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The Lions were coached by George Wilson, who took the job after Buddy Parker had quit before the season. Wilson would go on to become the 1st head coach of the Miami Dolphins. He was a good end, winning 4 NFL Championships with the Chicago Bears in the 1940s, but should not be confused with early pro football star George "Wildcat" Wilson.

They had 7 Hall-of-Famers: Layne, linebacker Joe Schmidt, running back John Henry Johnson (better known as a San Francisco 49er), offensive tackle Lou Creekmur (of Woodbridge, New Jersey), defensive backs Jack Christiansen and Yale Lary, and center Frank Gatski, who had played against them for the Browns in the 1952, '53 and '54 title games. They also had tight end Leon Hart, who won the 1949 Heisman Trophy at Notre Dame; and running back Howard "Hopalong" Cassady, who won the 1955 Heisman at Ohio State.

(Running back Doak Walker, a major contributor to their 1952 and '53 titles, had already retired. Yale Lary was no relation to another Detroit athlete of the period, Tiger pitcher Frank Lary. Both Larys died this year.)

There are 10 surviving players from the 1957 Lions: Schmidt, Cassady, receiver Dorne Dibble, tight ends Steve Junker and Jerry Reichow, defensive ends Gene Cronin and Gerry Perry, linebackers Bob Long and Roger Zatkoff, and defensive back Gary Lowe.

The Lions left Tiger Stadium after the 1974 season, and it was demolished in 2006. Lambeau Field in Green Bay had just opened. It, and the Los Angeles Coliseum, are the only NFL stadiums in use in 1957 that are in use in 2017.

There was an NFL team in Baltimore, but it wasn't the Ravens. It was the Colts, and they had yet to win a title. Few people outside Maryland had yet heard of their 2nd-year quarterback, Johnny Unitas. The NFL had already expanded to the West Coast, but not yet to the South, including Texas. Iconic teams such as the Dallas Cowboys, Oakland Raiders, Miami Dolphins and Denver Broncos did not yet exist. There were 2 teams in Chicago -- the Cardinals not yet having moved to St. Louis, let alone Arizona -- and 1 in New York, the Giants.

The defending champions of the NFL were the Giants. In the NBA, the Boston Celtics had just won their 1st Championship. In the NHL, it was the Montreal Canadiens, and their star Maurice Richard had recently become the 1st NHL player with 500 goals.

The Brooklyn Dodgers had just announced their move to Los Angeles; the New York Giants, to San Francisco. There were, as yet, no New York Jets, or Islanders, or New Jersey Devils, or Nets in any part of the Tri-State Area.

Every Major League Baseball park had lights, except Wrigley Field in Chicago. But none of them had artificial turf, or a roof, retractable or otherwise. There was still an MLB team that had never played a black player, the Boston Red Sox. Wrigley and Fenway Park in Boston are the only 2 ballparks in use in 1957 that were still in use in 2012 -- or in 2000, for that matter. And no NBA or NHL arena in use then is still used by the team that called it home in 1957-58, although a few are still standing.

Some of the NFL's founding fathers were not only still alive, but still running the team's they founded: George Halas in Chicago, Art Rooney in Pittsburgh, Tim Mara in New York. Amos Alonzo Stagg, who'd played football in the 1880s and invented many of the facets of the game in the 1890s, was 95 years old and still coaching.

Jim Brown and Paul Hornung were rookies. Ray Nitschke was in college. Fran Tarkenton, Roger Staubach, Dick Butkus, Gale Sayers and Joe Namath were in high school. Mean Joe Greene and Larry Csonka were 11 years old, O.J. Simpson 10, Terry Bradshaw 9, Lyle Alzado and Joe Theismann 8, Ron Jaworski 6, Walter Payton 3, Earl Campbell 2, and Joe Montana a year and a half. Lawrence Taylor, John Elway, Dan Marino and Jerry Rice weren't born yet. Nor were any of the current managers and head coaches of the New York Tri-State Area teams.

The Heavyweight Champion of the World was Floyd Patterson. Muhammad Ali was 14 -- and he was still Cassius Clay. Mike Tyson, like Patterson a Brooklynite trained by Cus D'Amato, wasn't born yet.

The Olympic Games had never yet been broadcast on American television. They have since been held in America 5 times, Canada and Japan 3 times; twice each in Italy, Austria and France; and once each in Mexico, Germany, Russia, Bosnia, Korea, Spain, Norway, Australia, Greece, China and Britain.

Real Madrid of Spain had recently won the European Cup, beating Fiorentina of Florence, Italy, 2-0. The World Cup has since been held in Mexico and Germany twice, and once each in America, England, Sweden, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, Korea and South Africa.

Manchester United, led by manager Matt Busby's "Busby Babes," won the Football League title, but were denied "The Double" in the FA Cup Final, when Birmingham-based Aston Villa beat them 2-1 when United goalkeeper Ray Wood was injured, and replaced by centreback Jackie Blanchflower, brother of Tottenham captain Danny. There were  no substitutions allowed in those days, so United played from the 6th minute on with 10 men, until Wood, broken cheekbone and all, returned to the goal for the last 7 minutes (which was allowed under the rules of the time).

Villa haven't won the Cup since. United would make it to the next season's Final, but only after the greatest tragedy any British soccer team has ever suffered to its organization. (Not to be confused with a disaster in the stands.)

There were only 48 States: Alaska and Hawaii were both within 2 years of Statehood. There were then 22 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 had just been passed, but segregation and enforced prayer in public schools were still legal. There was no Voting Rights Act, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Fair Housing Act, no Environmental Protection Agency, no Title IX, and no legalized abortion. Gay rights? Seriously? Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, Tab Hunter and Richard Chamberlain were jammed into the closet.

The President of the United States was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Richard Nixon was Ike's Vice President. Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Eleanor Roosevelt were still alive. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were in the U.S. Senate, and Gerald Ford was in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Jimmy Carter was running a peanut farm, George H.W. Bush an oil company, and the one and only film that co-starred Ronald Reagan and his wife, then still billed as Nancy Davis, had recently premiered: Hellcats of the Navy. Neither Carter, nor Reagan, nor Bush had ever yet run for office. Bush's son was 11. So was Bill Clinton. So was Donald Trump, and he hasn't matured since. Barack Obama wasn't born yet.

The Governor of the State in question, Michigan, was G. Mennen "Soapy" Williams. The Mayor of Detroit was Louis Mirani. Having left office in 1962, he remains the city's last Republican Mayor. The current Governor, the water-poisoning Rick Snyder, and the current Mayor, Mike Duggan, would both be born in 1958.

The Governor of the State of New York was Averell Harriman. The Governor of New Jersey, newly re-elected, was Robert Meyner. The Mayor of the City of New York was Robert F. Wagner Jr., who somehow got re-elected a few weeks earlier, despite having just lost 2 Major League Baseball teams.

Under the law of the time, the man next in line to be Mayor was the President of the City Council. His name was Abe Stark, and he rose to prominence by having a sign advertising his clothing store at the base of the Ebbets Field scoreboard: "HIT SIGN WIN SUIT." Thanks to the fielding of the aforementioned Carl Furillo, and before that of Dixie Walker, Stark only had to award one free suit to an opposing player: Mel Ott of the Giants. Someone suggested that, due to Furillo having saved Stark from having to give out free suits, he should give Furillo one. He did.

Lester Pearson, Secretary of State of Canada, was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts to end the previous year's Suez Canal crisis. In 1963, he would become his country's Prime Minister. The current Prime Minister was John Diefenbaker; of Britain, Harold Macmillan. Queen Elizabeth II was the monarch of both nations. That hasn't changed, but she was only 31 years old at the time.

The Pope was Pius XII. The current Pope, Francis, was then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and had just begun his seminary studies. There have since been 12 Presidents of the United States, 11 Prime Ministers of Britain and 7 Popes.

Crime in New York had yet to get out of control, as it did from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, before Bill Clinton's Crime Bill and Rudolph Giuliani's Mayoralty combined to bring it to heel. The Brooklyn Navy Yard was decommissioned in 1966, and that killed New York as an industrial center. That, and the loss of the middle and lower middle class to Long Island and New Jersey thanks to World War II veterans getting breaks on housing, are what ruined "the old Brooklyn." The loss of the Dodgers was symbolic of this, but, in a practical sense, had nothing to do with it.

There was some dispute as to whether, 92 years after the surrender at Appomattox Court House, there were still any surviving veterans of the American Civil War. Albert Woolson, the last Union veteran, had died in 1956. But so many Confederate records were lost, no one was sure how many of their veterans were left. John B. Salling and Walter W. Williams claimed to be surviving veterans, and when Williams died on December 19, 1959, 9 months after Salling, he was hailed as the last Civil War veteran. Who the last Confederate veteran was may never be known for sure.

There were surviving veterans of America's Indian Wars, the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882, the Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-80, and the Mahdist War of 1882-99. Laura Bullion, a member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, was still alive. So was John Henry Turpin, the last survivor of the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898. So was Raymond Kaighn, who had played in the 1st basketball game in 1891.

Major novels of 1957 included Letter from Peking by Pearl S. Buck, The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever, The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean, The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch, Dr. Seuss' classics The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Ian Fleming's James Bond story From Russia with Love, and On the Road by Jack Kerouac, the defining novel of The Beat Generation. 

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac's close friend and fellow Beat, had gone on trial for obscenity. I can see how it would be considered obscene. But, by far, the most obscene book of 1957 was Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Who was an atheist, in case you didn't know. In fact, she despised Christianity, because of Jesus' message of helping the poor and the sick. Didn't stop her from accepting Social Security when she got old, though. "Who is John Galt"? An economic terrorist.

Only the preceding year had C.S. Lewis finished his Chronicles of Narnia series, and J.R.R. Tolkein his Lord of the Rings series. Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck were still alive and writing novels. J.D. Salinger hadn't yet dropped out of the public eye, while Thomas Pynchon hadn't yet entered it or dropped out of it.

The fiction careers of Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Kurt Vonnegut and Truman Capote were well underway. Joseph Heller had seen chapters of Catch-22 serialized, but the entire novel wouldn't be published until 1961. John Updike and Ken Kesey had not yet been published. Maya Angelou had just entered pop culture -- as a singer, having recorded her 1st album, a collection of calypso songs.

Anne Rice was in high school. Stephen King and Tom Clancy were 10 years old. George R.R. Martin was 9. John Grisham was 2. J.K. Rowling wasn't born yet.

No one had yet heard of Holly Golightly, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, Atticus Finch, Jean Brodie, Alex Portnoy, John Rambo, Spenser: For Hire, George Smiley, Rocky Balboa, T.S. Garp, Arthur Dent, Jason Bourne, Hannibal Lecter, Celie Harris, Kinsey Millhone, Jack Ryan, Forrest Gump, John McClane, Alex Cross, Bridget Jones, Robert Langdon, Bella Swan, Lisbeth Salander or Katniss Everdeen.

The superhero genre had gotten a boost, with a new version of speedster The Flash. But Stan Lee had yet to begin his Marvel Comics revolution, so, as yet, there was no Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, X-Men or Daredevil.

1957 was a big year for movies. It began with the death of Humphrey Bogart and ended with that of French film pioneer Charles Pathé.  But it also featured the births of Mario Van Peebles, John Turturro, Spike Lee, Paul Reiser, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judge Reinhold, Frances McDormand, Kelly McGillis, Cameron Crowe, Melanie Griffith, Denis Leary, Stephen Fry, Daniel Stern, Rachel Ward, Ethan Coen, Dolph Lundrgen, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Steve Buscemi.

Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall starred in Designing Woman, her 1st film after losing Bogie, which had nothing to do with the later TV series of a similar title. Alec Guinness and William Holden starred in The Bridge on the River Kwai, with its whistled "Colonel Bogey March" -- "DA dum... da da da DA DA DA, da dum... "

Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr starred in An Affair to Remember; Jerry Lewis in his 1st film without Dean Martin, The Delicate Delinquent; Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Desk Set; Rock Hudson in a film version of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms; Dorothy McGuire and Fess Parker in Old Yeller; Doris Day and John Raitt (Bonnie's father, who'd been in the original Broadway version) in The Pajama Game; Grant, Frank Sinatra, and, in her big break as far as the U.S. was concerned, Sophia Loren in The Pride and the Passion; and Andy Griffith getting his big break in A Face in the Crowd, in which he plays the kind of character that Andy Taylor would have told Opie to stay away from -- and Ben Matlock never would have defended.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a stylized version of the 1881 Arizona shootout with no pretense of accuracy, featured Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp, Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday, future Star Trek doctor DeForest Kelley as Morgan Earp, Jack Elam as Tom McLowery, and a young Dennis Hopper as Billy Clanton.

Can you imagine Tony Randall and Jayne Mansfield together? In 1957, they were, in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Baseball star Jimmy Piersall's book Fear Strikes Out was adapted into a film that launched Anthony Perkins to stardom -- but playing someone mentally disturbed may have typecast him.

James Cagney played Lon Chaney Sr. in The Man of a Thousand Faces. Jimmy Stewart played Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis. Joanne Woodward, soon to be Mrs. Paul Newman, was in The Three Faces of Eve, although the subject of the book and film, Chris Sizemore, relapsed and would have 23 different personalities until she was finally cured. Akira Kurosawa transplanted Shakespeare's Macbeth to Japan, calling it Throne of Blood, with Japan's most popular postwar actor, Toshiro Mifune, in the role of the Scottish warlord-turned-royal usurper.

Sinatra starred in The Joker Is Wild, as Joe E. Lewis, a singer whose voice is ruined when a Mob enforcer cuts his throat, but survives finds a second career as a comedian. Elvis Presley starred in Loving You and Jailhouse Rock -- the latter also featuring a singer who loses his voice when he suffers a throat injury in a fight, but regains it.

And Zero Hour! starred Dana Andrews, Sterling Hayden, Linda Darnell, and football legend Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch. This is the film, intended to be serious, upon which the disaster spoof Airplane!
was based. ("Airplane? What is it?" It's a motorized conveyance for traveling quickly through the air, but that's not important now.)

TV shows debuting for the 1957-58 season included Perry Mason, Maverick, Leave It to Beaver, Zorro, Have Gun, Will Travel, and, in what must have been shocking for the Ike Age, the 1st version of a show revived 1985-92 and again 1999-currently: Divorce Court. And NBC introduced its peacock logo, designed to show that the program you were watching was in color. Fat lot of good that did, as it would be over a decade before a majority of American homes had color TV sets.

Gene Roddenberry had already begun writing for television. Steven Spielberg was 14 years old, George Lucas 13. Barry Nelson, on U.S. television in 1954, was still the only man to have played a live-action James Bond. George Reeves was starring in the TV series The Adventures of Superman. Robert Lowery was the most recent live-action Batman, and that was in the 1949 serial Batman and Robin. William Shatner, Sean Connery and Roger Moore were already acting. Adam West had just appeared in his 1st film, a Boris Karloff horror film titled Voodoo Island.

Robert Kardashian was 13 years old. Bruce Jenner was about to turn 8. The woman each would end up marrying, then named Kristen Mary Houghton, was a toddler, about to turn 2.

The Number 1 song in America was "April Love" by Pat Boone. The aforementioned Elvis Presley had dominated the year: By the time it was over, he would have 4 singles -- "Too Much," "All Shook Up," "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" and "Jailhouse Rock" -- that would hold the Number 1 spot for 33 of the calendar year's 52 weeks. John Lennon and Paul McCartney had just met in Liverpool. Bob Dylan was in high school. Freddie Mercury was 12. David Bowie and Elton John were 10. Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen were 8. Donny Osmond was born a few days before the game in question. Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna were born the next year.

Inflation has been such that what $1.00 would buy then, $8.69 would buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 3 cents, and a Subway ride in New York was 15 cents. The average price of a gallon of gas was 28 cents, a cup of coffee 32 cents, a McDonald's meal (cheeseburger, fries, shake) 49 cents, a movie ticket 61 cents, a new car $2,100, and a new house $12,220. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the preceding Friday at 432.90.

Telephone numbers were still based on "exchanges," based on the letters on a rotary dial. So a number that, today, would be (718) 293-6000 (this is the number for the Yankees' ticket office, so I’m not hurting anyone's privacy), would have been CYpress 3-6000. There were no ZIP Codes, either. They ended up being based on the old system: The old New York Daily News Building, at 220 East 42nd Street, was "New York 17, NY"; it became "New York, NY 10017."

Computers? Get outta here! They could take up the entire side of a building. And nobody expected them to get any smaller anytime soon. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee were 2 years old. The tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building. The idea of a telephone that you could take with you was ridiculous. Commercial photocopying was not yet possible. There were no credit cards or automatic teller machines.

There were artificial kidneys, but no artificial hearts. Transplanting a kidney was possible, but not yet a heart, a lung or a liver. There was no birth-control pill, and no Viagra.

In the holiday season of 1957, in addition to the events previously mentioned, a rail crash in London killed 92 people. An attempt to assassinate Indonesian President Sukarno at a Jakarta school killed 6 children.

In America, the 1st attempt to launch a satellite to compete with the Soviet Sputniks is an embarrassing failure, as the Vanguard rocket blows up a few seconds after ignition, essentially not even leaving the launch pad. The Boeing 707 was luckier, making its 1st flight. A series of tornadoes struck the Midwest and the South, particularly affecting Missouri. The Music Man opened on Broadway.

Diego Rivera, and Norma Talmadge, and Tony Morabito, the founding owner of the San Francisco 49ers, died. Caroline Kennedy, and Andrew Cuomo, and Kevin McHale were born.

December 29, 1957. The Detroit Lions became NFL Champions.

It's been 60 years, and it has never happened again. How close is it to happening? Well, they go into the final weekend of this year's regular season 8-7, having been eliminated from Playoff contention. But they are hardly hopeless. Stay tuned.