My Take on Football

 Teams in this year’s Super Bowl have been selected, the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. NDSU speaks with pride over two of its recent players who have found a place on the Seahawks roster. It promises to be a good game along with all the hoopla that accompanies it, such as the half time entertainment and the advertising. Bad Bunny will entertain. I’d not heard of him before. As for commercials, my all-time favorite was the “Cat Herders” in 2000.

Some features of football are taken for granted, like the fact that each team consists of an offense and a defense. But that hasn’t always been so. In the early days of football, strict substitution rules meant team members played both offense and defense for the entire game. If taken out of the game a player could not return. Not until 1950 did free substitution become legal to open the way to specialty squads. Some other historical facts are fun to look at. The forward pass became legal in 1906; a field goal dropped from 4 points to 3 in 1909; a touchdown increased from 5 points to 5 in 1913; and in 1950, the 2 point option after a touchdown became approved.

Like baseball, we can dig up statistics and regulation minutiae all day long if we want. It’s the people, though, that interests me the most. Football players can be very entertaining. For instance, take one named John Riggins who joined the Washington Redskins as a free agent and achieved legendary status when named MVP of Super Bowl XVII.

Riggins apparently overindulged occasionally, like the time during a Washington Press Club dinner in 1985. Seated at the same table as Sandra Day O’Connor, the first lady Supreme Court Justice, he fell asleep during George H. W. Bush’s speech. Ending up falling from his chair he rolled under the table. Upon waking, he blurted out in his drunken haze, “Loosen up, Sandy, baby. You’re too tight.” They escorted him from the room. A few years later Justice O’Connor demonstrated that she held nothing against Riggins by presenting him with a dozen roses.

In 1969, a brash young quarterback named Joe Namath predicted his underdog team, the New York Jets, would beat the Baltimore Colts. Be darned if they didn’t, by a score of 16-7, marking one of the big upsets in sports history. The win was the first in the Super Bowl for the AFL, which merged with the NFL for the 1970 season. Namath suffered alcoholism, struggled after his football career, embarrassed himself, and sought treatment.

The Manning family produced some impressive football athletes. The father of the clan, Archie, came out of Ole Miss where he was an All-American quarterback and jointed the New Orleans Saints in 1971. His success earned him an invitation for two years to the pro bowl along with numerous other awards. We’re just getting started with the Mannings.

Archie and his wife had three sons, and two of them went on to football fame. Cooper, the oldest, had a physical disability called spinal stenosis for which doctors advised him not to play for fear of paralysis. Peyton played 18 seasons and led two different teams, Colts and Broncos, to Super Bowl wins. The other brother, Eli, led the New York Giants to two Super Bowl victories.

Big things are expected from a third generation Manning, Arch, son of Cooper, who plays quarterback for the Texas Longhorns. He had two fine examples to follow with his uncles’ careers. Only time will tell if he matches up. 

Kurt Warner started his career as an undrafted free agent and became the only undrafted player named NFL MVP and Super Bowl MVP and the only undrafted quarterback to lead his team to a Super Bowl victory. Now that is quite a story, and it might not be finished since he has two sons that play.

A pair of running backs caught my attention in their heyday. Jim Kiick and Larry Csonka played on the Miami Dolphins undefeated 17 win team in 1972. A sportswriter for the Miami Herald learned of their wild, fun-loving ways together and nicknamed them “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” The name stuck. Add in one more name of Mercury Morris that rounded off that superb Dolphin backfield.

Statistically and by consensus, Tom Brady tops the list of best quarterback ever where he leads in key categories of passing yards, touchdowns, and wins, plus holding records for Super Bowl wins and MVPs. His statistics might stand for a long time. At present he is trying to make a broadcaster out of himself. He’s stumbled a bit, but given his competitiveness, he will likely overcome any deficits.

Brady’s coach, Bill Belichick, the eight-time Super Bowl-winning coach, is not a first-ballot Football Hall of Famer. In voting earlier this month, Belichick fell short of the 40 out of 50 votes needed for induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame during his first year of eligibility. Of course, some have called for the identity of the no voters. We can guess why.

We will conclude this article by mentioning  the story of what is called the biggest comeback game in history. On December 17, 2022, The New York Times posted this headline: Minnesota Vikings Beat Colts for Biggest Comeback in NFL history. The Vikings were down by 33 points, but scored five touchdowns in the second half to force overtime. One of the players reported that coach Kevin O’Connell told the team at halftime, “All we need is five touchdowns.” Somehow they found them and went on to win 39-36 in overtime.

Harris Ford

 We walked down the slope to the river where the crossing is located. For the historically oriented person, it brings contemplation and ghosts of wagon trains passing from Fort Abercrombie through Pigeon Point, then on to Fort Ransom.

Let's Talk Baseball

We can still find pleasant topics to fill our thoughts in the winter doldrums brought on in part by the constant barrage of disconcerting news. Read any books lately? Seen any movies? Attended a basketball game? Played in the snow? These activities can occupy us, but we can also talk about baseball, even here in the heart of football playoff season. The one topic that I’ve written about that has brought some feedback are those times baseball has been the topic. 

Shohei Ohtani has a fabulous career going while still a young player. At least the Dodgers think so since they are paying him $700 million over a 10 year period. Really. Are players worth that much? Juan Soto’s 15 year contract will yield him $765 million, although 15 years is a long time to play. Stars like these two usually make a bundle from advertisements and endorsements, too.  The starting pay for players isn’t too bad since the MLB’s minimum starting salary is $760,000.

Baseball likes personality stories. When Randy Johnson, sometimes called “The Big Unit,” played for the Arizona Diamondbacks, his team and the San Diego Padres became involved in a bench-clearing scuffle for some reason. Johnson stands 6’10” tall and could be seen head above the rest. In the excitement his Diamondback hat fell to the ground. Finally he reached down to retrieve it, but without looking picked up a Padre’s cap and put it on. There he stood towering over the rest and looking rather silly. It must not have felt quite right. After a few seconds he took it off, looked at it,  and found the right one. The announcers in the booth had a good laugh over it, as did I.  

Johnson earned the reputation of a menacing pitcher and never shirked from throwing brushbacks very close to batters. Over 22 years while playing for six different teams, he won 5 Cy Young Awards, a World Series in 2001, a World Series MVP, a Pitching Triple Crown in 2002, 10 All-Star selections, and induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. And he will probably always be remembered for hitting with a 100 mph fastball a pigeon that exploded in a cloud of feathers. On first viewing, I thought it was a fake video.  

Remember Frank “Sweet Music” Viola?  It was a real treat watching him in the 1987 World Series where he was named the MVP. That night we let the kids stay up late enough to watch the whole game. The Cy Young winner pitched 15 years, seven of them with the Minnesota Twins. 

Best known for his change-up pitch, he also had a good fastball and curve all of which he put to good use in winning 176 games.

Nolan Ryan stands at the top of my list of outstanding pitchers. A bit of sarcasm from one commentator says quite a lot about ability and longevity: Nolan Ryan’s arm was so damaged by the first 5000 innings of his career that he was only able to strike out 16 Blue Jays when he no-hit them at age 44. Huh? Pitchers are usually taken out of the game after 90 some pitches, right? Check this stat out. Ryan threw 235 pitches in a 13-inning game in 1974, struck out 19 batters,  earned no-decision, even though his Angels won in the 15th inning.

Nicknamed “The Nolan Express,” he holds 51 MLB records, one being his 5,714 career strikeouts. Our above mentioned friend Randy Johnson came in second with 4,875. Sandy Koufax was an excellent player who pitched 4 no-hitters, but Nolan Ryan pitched 7 no-hitters. The list of records gets parsed and analyzed to much more than we’ll list here, but baseball’s Hall of Fame adds the following narrative.

By 1979, Ryan was baseball’s strikeout king and the game’s most intimidating pitcher. Ryan’s fastball – officially clocked at 100.9 miles per hour by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1974 – at times traveled so fast that it was tough for batters to see it, let alone predict where it was going. “I’ve never been afraid at the plate but Mr. Ryan makes me uncomfortable,” Hall of Fame slugger Reggie Jackson once said. “He’s the only pitcher who’s ever made me consider wearing a helmet with an ear flap.”

The 26 year old Robin Ventura took issue with a pitch coming too close for his comfort and charged the mound where the 46 year old Ryan stood. Videos look to me as if Ryan got the best of the younger player.

Sandy Koufax who some called “The Left Arm of God” must be mentioned. He retired after only 12  seasons in the National League for the reason of severe arthritis and pain in his pitching elbow. This youngest inductee in the Hall of Fame counted 2396 strikeouts in his tally.

It’s a fun trip going through the statistics and reminiscing over a few of these great baseball pitchers. Of course, pitching isn’t the only facet of a team, and sometime it will be fun to consider the greats playing in other positions . But there’s still a few pitchers of interest to include today.

The 1920s of a hundred years ago produced some names that are still recognizable today. Take Grover Cleveland Alexander, for example. In three seasons he won at least 21 games. He retired in 1929 after winning his career total 373 games. Walter “The Big Train” Johnson won 416 games, and “Lefty” Grove won an even 300.

I used to enjoy listening to the humorous “Dizzy” Dean holding forth on his radio broadcasts, but his fastball and curve while a pitcher earned him respect. An unfortunate line drive struck him in the toe and one thing led to another that ended his active career. Bob Feller’s debut in 1936 drew attention when he struck out 15 batters in his first game. Four years in the service robbed him of a chunk of career statistics, but he was one of the great ones. But for now, let’s get back to football.

 

RANDOM THOUGHTS - Jan 23, 2026

 The future is very important to me; that’s where I must spend the rest of my life …   It’s -20 degrees this morning  …  Who will win the Super Bowl?  …  I had never known about Bad Bunny  …  Read any good books lately? Democracy depends on reading …  If you tell the truth, you won’t have to remember anything  …  Deadliest earthquake of all time hits China today in 1556 and kills 830,000  …  The first Frisbees introduced today in 1957  …  This bitter cold reminds me of North Dakota  …  In 1885 the first bridge over the Mississippi River opens today at Minneapolis, Minnesota  …  A football rule change today in 1950 allowed free substitution and made the way for the present offense and defense squads  …  On February 8, the Super Bowl will be held in Santa Clara, CA with Charlie Puth singing the National Anthem  …  The farm pictured here is where I spent the first 3 years of my life  …

Pie at Sons of Norway

 Today's pie choice at Sons of Norway, Blueberry and Lemon Meringue.

History Matters

We have a small family and Christmas is a quiet affair since the grandkids have matured beyond the screaming, paper-ripping affair when they open their gifts. Eventually another generation will make the scene, and I hope I’m still around to enjoy that. Receiving a gift card from Barnes and Noble always pleases me, and I’ve already spent one of them on a history book. Actually it’s a biography, but the author was an international journalist who witnessed and experienced much first hand, and his reporting is closely akin to history.

The book’s title is Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life. The author Nicholas D. Kristof writes for the New York Times and his topics always interest me. While reading this book, I came upon a passage that made me stop, re-read,  and then mark with bold strokes of a pencil so it could be easily found again. It had to do with something he experienced in Afghanistan. 

We’ll quote a significant passage: “On one of my early trips, some entrepreneurial Afghans told me of the latest get-rich-quick scheme. They would set up a fake campsite on a hillside, with a few empty tents around a fire, and then collect a cash reward from Americans for offering intelligence about a Taliban camp there. The Americans would drop $10 million worth of bombs on the fake camp, and the Afghans would go the next day on horseback and collect the scrap metal from the bombs and sell it for a few hundred dollars.”

That head-shaker highlights just one little incident of the probable graft and corruption that takes place in a war zone.  It should be no secret that I am a serious student of history. There are not enough hours in a day to read it all, but I try to read “the good stuff.” The historian David McCullough wrote  material that appeals to me. It was he who said that we in this country are historically illiterate. Open any of his books and find reward, such as 1776, which tells the story of those who marched with General George Washington, or Pulitzer Prize winning John Adams. He won another Pulitzer for his book titled Truman, the biography of the man who came to the presidency during a pivotal point in history. Mornings on Horseback relates the story of the young Theodore Roosevelt and The Path Between the Seas covers the creation of the Panama Canal.

His last book has become available after his death in 2023, History Matters. Compiled by his daughter and a research assistant who worked many years for him, it contains many speeches and essays he wrote. McCullough is just one of the good ones, but there are more with whom a reader can spend quality reading time. Most any book by William Stegner, Jon Meacham, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Doug Brinkley, Stephen Ambrose, or David Halberstam will open new worlds of history and understanding. 

There are other directions historical study can take. I read what Daniel Boorstin in The Discoverers thinks was the main factor leading to the advancement of the world as we know it today. What is it? Well, it’s the clock. Yes, a clock built with spiraling threaded screws that can be turned with a driver and driven into surfaces to join objects together and precision measured and cut gears to run inside the clock. In a chapter titled “Mother of Machines,” we read of the need for accurate timekeeping. 

Before clocks people only had the sun’s position in the sky to tell them the time of day. Getting to the point of having available, accurate timepieces took some time and doing. That is the story Boorstin tells. Both metal screws and uniform gear wheels took ingenuity to devise. Gears needed to be cut into precisely measured toothed wheels, while metal screws required the improvement of the metal lathe for their manufacture. Screws had been in use a long while, but they were wooden screws with their  hand cut spirals that sufficed for such things as wine presses. Clocks demanded precision. A whole new world of manufacturing methodology opened up!

The sad story of Anne Frank, forced into seclusion to escape capture by Nazis in World War II, is a modern day story of timekeeping. The Nazis had started taking down the church bells in Amsterdam to melt for weapons and ammunition. Their measured ringing at certain times gave her in her secluded windowless hideaway a sense of time that was lost when the bells disappeared. Now she couldn’t tell night from day. 

But wait! Someone else has a different twist on early beginnings of humankind’s advancement, and it wasn’t screws or gears. One historian says rope, or twisted fibers, became the backbone of civilization. In his book Rope, Tim Queeney includes a picture of a piece of 50,000 year old rope discovered in a cave in France. 

Rope was a necessary element in holding a sailing ship together. Take a look at a picture of a full-masted sailing ship and find a multitude of ropes holding the sails in place. Explorers could now begin finding unknown ports and people and knowledge. Could the pyramids have been built without ropes tugging the stone into place? A structure like the Brooklyn Bridge or the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland used rope in the form of twisted metal fibers in construction.

 

And there is always the story of the printing press having the biggest hand in moving civilization forward. Like I said, there is not enough time to read and weigh it all. We’ve got family history, local history, and state history to read, too.

RANDOM THOUGHTS - January 9, 2026

I’m a level-headed Norwegian; snoose runs out of both corners of my mouth  …  Don’t let appearances lead you to wrong conclusions  …  We’ve got an airbase in Greenland, why more?  …  John leCarre said: “We’ve dealt with communism, now we must deal with the excesses of Capitalism  …  Stamps cost .73 - the days of writing personal letters are over  …  I always thought Darnold was the man, but the Vikings didn’t  …  On this day in 1861 the first shots were fired in the Civil War  …  Ghastly sight of blood covering the airbag of the woman shot in Minneapolis  …  Always read things that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it  …  You can’t see the wind, but you know it’s there  …  I used to carve such things, but now I don’t  …