When I was 15, a lot of sports literally didn't matter
On Tuesday, the NFL announced that it was expanding the regular season (for the first time in 43 years) from 16 games to 17. It also reduced the number of preseason games from four to three.
When I was 15 years old in 1976, the NFL played 14 regular season games and 6 exhibition games. Yes, they were called exhibition games. The stars—even the superstars—played in them. Six weeks of meaningless games. Just try and find the stats of them. Box scores of them. Accounts of them.
Yet, it seemed normal that football players needed that much time to ramp up for a regular season.
And fans seemed to love it. CBS would televise a Friday night exhibition game four consecutive weeks in August. And my guess is that the ratings were great, easily beating summer reruns. Here’s a note from August 26, 1968; about a weekend of NFL exhibition games. Imagine exhibition games attracting more than 70,000 people. But if you move the exhibition games around to non-NFL cities (like Birmingham, Alabama) of course there will be interest.
On Tuesday, UCLA made the Final Four (beating Michigan 51-49), in which they’ll go against an undefeated Gonzaga team.
When I was 15 years old in 1976, UCLA made the Final Four, where they went against an undefeated Indiana team. Indiana was the overwhelming favorite to beat the Bruins in one semifinal. In the other semi, another undefeated team—Rutgers—was favored to beat Michigan. We didn’t get two undefeated heavyweights in the final: Indiana beat UCLA; and Michigan upset Rutgers.
That 1976 NCAA Tournament was significant, in that Bobby Knight’s Indiana team of course went on to defeat UCLA and then Michigan to become the seventh—and last—undefeated team to win the NCAA Tournament. The others were four different UCLA teams (1964, 1967, 1972, 1973), San Francisco (1956), and North Carolina (1957).
But also in that ‘76 Final Four: Indiana and Michigan became the first two teams from one conference (the Big Ten) to reach the semifinal rounds. Of course, just prior to that, only one team per conference was invited. Which made conference tournaments absolute must-sees.
Also in that ‘76 Final Four: On the same Monday night that Indiana won the National Championship, UCLA defeated Rutgers in the Third Place Game. Shortly before Indiana defeated Michigan for the title, UCLA defeated the Scarlet Knights 106-92 in the Third Place Contest.
Yes, a battle for Third Place. It was called the Consolation Game. UCLA—in its first year following the retirement of legendary coach John Wooden—finished in third place. That marked a 13-year run of winning 10 National titles and twice finishing third by winning the consolation contest.
A few years later, the Consolation game for Third Place was eliminated, allowing teams and their fans to leave town immediately after their team lost. No one cares or cared who finishes third, I guess.
Also this week: the Texas Rangers allowed unlimited capacity in their ballpark to see an exhibition game against the Brewers. Would people congregate in large crowds to see an exhibition game? As it turns out, less than 13,000 showed up. Of course, the Texas Rangers might be so bad this season, some of their fans may want to borrow a page from the NFL New Orleans Saints fans (who wore masks out of embarrassment, as opposed to wearing one out of concern and safety for others).
There is no need for teams to play Exhibition games or Consolation games anymore. Exhibition games in baseball (remember the Hall of Fame game played each year in Cooperstown) are long gone. Baseball players used to barnstorm in the offseason, earning additional money. That must have been great fun for those that attended those “games.”
In Gale Sayers’ book I Am Third, the former great Bears running back wrote about in 1969 and 70 playing on the Bears’ basketball team.
Can you imagine a world where the best running back in the world is getting paid to play with his NFL teammates in basketball exhibitions?
Today, baseball players don’t use the spring for training. They report in shape. The spring training games are an additional source of revenue. Players don’t play anything unless it “counts” (in the NFL, even practices are been curtailed).
When I was 15, a lot of sports were played that didn’t matter. But they were still a whole lot of fun, even if I didn’t know the velocity on Catfish Hunter’s fastball or how much money Fran Tarkenton was making; or how much Marques Johnson was risking if he were to be injured in a Consolation Game.