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.

December 16, 1945: The Cleveland Rams' Championship Farewell

Number 24 is Jim Gillette, who scored the winning touchdown.

December 16, 1945, 80 years ago: The NFL Championship Game is played. The winning team... moves to another city.

You know how, when the Cleveland Browns announced during the 1995 season that they were moving, their fans had such a fit, and talked about how loyal they were? Well, at the time, they were averaging 66,772 fans per home game, which, given the capacity of Cleveland Municipal Stadium, was an average of about 14,000 empty seats.

The Cleveland Rams would have gladly taken that. Founded in 1936, they had hoped to use Municipal Stadium for their home games, but ticket demand was usually so low, instead, they played at 22,000-seat League Park, or the even smaller Shaw Stadium, a high school facility.

In 1945, Adam Walsh was named head coach. He was the center on Notre Dame's 1924 National Championship team, leading the line known as the Seven Mules, so named because they blocked for the backfield known as the Four Horsemen. He saw to it that they drafted UCLA quarterback Bob Waterfield.

Bob Waterfield. Teammate Fred Gehrke,

a graphic artist, invented the modern helmet logo

by painting rams' horns on the helmets in 1948.

And they went 9-1, their best season yet. They played all their home games at League Park, and averaged just 19,402 fans. Granted, a lot of would-be fans were still overseas, as the end of World War II did not mean that every serviceman went home at once. Still, their away games did better: A crowd of 46,219 saw them beat the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds, 40,017 saw them beat the Detroit Lions at Briggs Stadium (later renamed Tiger Stadium), and 38,149 saw their only loss, to the Philadelphia Eagles at Shibe Park.

Since it was the Western Division Champion's turn to host the NFL Championship Game, Rams owner Dan Reeves -- no relation to the later coach of the same name -- booked Municipal Stadium for it, hoping for a big crowd. Certainly, he got the right opponent: The Eastern Division Champions were the Washington Redskins, with superstar quarterback Sammy Baugh, in their 5th Championship Game in the last 9 seasons. (They'd won in 1937 and 1942, and lost in 1940 and 1943.)

But the weather did not cooperate: At kickoff time, it was 8 degrees below zero, the coldest NFL Championship Game ever to that point. (That temperature has only been exceeded once, and that once with an asterisk: The 1967 NFL Championship Game, "The Ice Bowl," was not the World Championship Game.) As a result, in the football-mad State of Ohio, where Ohio State had played to 4 crowds of 69,000 or more that season, only 32,178 fans paid their way into the big stadium on the shore of Lake Erie.

From 1933 to 1973, the goalposts were on the goal line, not the end line. In the 1st quarter of this game, Baugh faded back from his own 5-yard line, into the end zone, and made a bad throw, which hit the goal post. Under the rule of the time, this was a safety for the Rams, who now led, 2-0. It would matter. 

Sammy Baugh

Each team scored a touchdown in the 2nd quarter. Baugh left the game due to bruised ribs, and Frank Filchock came into replace him. The backup to Slingin' Sammy was called Flingin' Frank, and he threw a 38-yard touchdown pass to Steve "Jack Rabbit" Bagarus. Waterfield threw a 37-yard touchdown pass to Jim Benton, and it was 9-7 Cleveland at the half.

In the 3rd quarter, Waterfield threw a 44-yard touchdown pass to Jim Gillette. However, Waterfield, also the Rams' placekicker, missed the extra point, and it was 15-7. Early in the 4th quarter, Filchock threw an 8-yard touchdown pass to Bob Seymour. Joe Aguirre kicked the extra point, and it was 15-14 in the Rams' favor.

Joe Aguirre

But Aguirre, nicknamed "Hot-Toe," blew 2 chances to win the title, missing 2 field goals in the 4th quarter. The 15-14 score held, and the difference wasn't just Aguirre's toe going cold, it was Baugh's end-zone goof.

Redskins owner George Preston Marshall, who had been the driving force behind several notable rule changes, led the NFL to change the rule for the 1946 season: A forward pass that strikes the goal post would now be ruled an incomplete pass. That rule held until the posts were moved back to the end line for the 1974 season, making such a play impossible: It would have required crossing the end line, which has always been a safety.

Reeves lost $64,000 owning the Rams in the 1945 season. And, with the war over, a new league was being formed, the All-America Football Conference. And they would have a Cleveland team, soon to be named the Browns. Reeves knew that it would be folly to stay in Cleveland.

So he went to the previously untapped market of Los Angeles, and moved the Rams there. Since football is only played once a week, teams taking trains to the West Coast and back was the same kind of problem it would have been for baseball teams before jet travel made it easier. Over a decade before baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers moved there, the Los Angeles Rams became the toast of the town, reaching 4 NFL Championship Games between 1949 and 1955, winning in 1951.

Ironically, Joe Aguirre also went west in 1946, kicking for the AAFC's Los Angeles Dons. They did well at the box office, but couldn't outdraw the Rams, and folded with the league. Aguirre went to the Canadian Football League, and was its leading scorer in 1950 and 1954. But he never won a title in any league.

The Redskins got old in a hurry. And Marshall's policy of refusing to sign black players held the team back in the 1950s. Marshall's eventually fatal illness and incapacity held the team back in the 1960s. It would be 27 years before the team reached another championship game, under any name.