Here are quick descriptions of each of the previous editions of Football Urban Legends Revealed.
To see if they are true or false, you have to click on the link!
* The NFL tried to trademark “The Big Game.”
* A paternity test was done on George Gipp – almost seventy-seven years after he died!
* Ryan Fitzpatrick scored a perfect 50 on his Wonderlic test.
* The Steelers and the Eagles combined teams for a season.
* The Super Bowl is named after the Super Ball.
* Vince Lombardi coined the phrase “Winning’s not everything, it’s the only thing.”
* A player played professional football under an assumed name so that he could play college football, as well!
* Ronnie Lott had an injured finger/part of his injured finger amputated so that he could play in the 1986 playoffs.
* Kurt Warner refused to appear on the cover of an issue of Sports Illustrated about the supposed “Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx.”
* In back-to-back years, two separate Canadian football teams drafted dead players.
* An NFL team coming off of an NFL championship ceded its city to a competing pro football league that was a year away from even playing games.
* Edgar Allan Poe played an early form of football.
* Two Detroit Lions players received a Gold Record while they were still playing pro ball!
* U2 effectively saved Canadian Football in Montreal.
* Pat Summerall got the name “Pat” from, of all things, his position as a kicker.
* Boise State’s blue turf causes duck to think it is water, leading ducks to dive into the turf and die.
* Al Michaels was traded from ABC to NBC in exchange for, among other things, the rights to a cartoon character.
* Joe Theismann changed the way his name was pronounced so that it would rhyme with Heisman
* The NCAA has a rule against Division 1 teams having turf colored anything but green, but Boise State was grandfathered in.
* The referees used video replay to check to make sure they had the right call on the “Immaculate Reception” before ruling it a touchdown.
* The head referee asked about the size of his security detail before making a decision on a crucial play that would affect the home crowd in Pittsburgh.
* Franco Harris was in position to make the “Immaculate Reception” because he was being “lazy” on the play.
* Future NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was Georgetown’s career leader in total rebounds and rebounds per game when he graduated.
* Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia had holes in the locker room of the Eagles cheerleaders where visiting players peeped through.
* A former football Rookie of the Year was involved, without his knowledge, in two separate nationwide scams.
* A tremendously successful college athlete eschewed professional football because his religion would not allow him to work on Sundays.
* Bronko Nagurski was discovered when a college football coach found him doing some mighty acts of strength while plowing a farm by the road.
* Notre Dame used a play called by a terminally ill child in an actual game.
* Spurred on by coach Knute Rockne’s halftime speech, Notre Dame player Jack Chevigny scored the winning touchdown for Notre Dame against Army and cried out “That’s for the Gipper!”
* In 1941, the owners of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers actually traded franchises.
* The famous photograph of Y.A. Tittle was never published in a newspaper.
* The Pittsburgh Steelers chose Mike Tomlin for their head coaching job over Ken Whisenhunt.
* The Kansas City Chiefs sold 25,000 season tickets for their first season without the ticket buyers even knowing what team they were buying tickets for.
* The beginning of the second half of Super Bowl I was re-played because NBC missed it.
* Monster Cable sued the Chicago Bears for their nickname “Monsters of the Midway”
* A lawsuit by an injured rookie very nearly eliminated the NFL draft!
* A fan sued EA Sports because his famous mask was used in Madden 2005.
* One of the most prominent “Mr. Irrelevant”s was irrelevant enough that his team misspelled his name on his jersey when he became the starting quarterback!
* Gino Marchetti won the 1958 NFL MVP Award.
* A player suffered a career ending injury walking back from a coin toss.
* Fresno State wears a “V” on their helmets as in “V for Victory”
* Ohio State once gave up a touchdown…to its own player!
* Sun Devil Stadium had an extreme makeover when Pope John Paul II came to visit during the 1980s.
* NBC sent an employee running on to the field to delay the 1958 National Football League Championship because they had lost the TV signal.
* Ole Miss changed the speed limit around campus in honor of former Ole Miss great Archie Manning.
* The Saints kicker who holds the NFL record for longest field goal inspired the NFL to come up with a new rule because of the special shoes he wore due to having no toes on his kicking foot!
* The Saints got their name because they were founded on All Saint’s Day.
* The Saints field caught fire in the middle of a game!
* A $1 investment by a team manager eventually turned into 10% of the Minnesota vikings.
* A future Hall of Famer was drafted in the last round of the 1934 NFL Draft based on the sound of his name!
* The deed to Kenan Memorial Stadium required that the stadium never rise above the pine trees that surround the stadium.
* The annual Army-Navy Game drew two separate U.S. Presidents directly into the planning of the game and, ultimately, the future of football itself.
* Did the inventor of basketball, James Naismeth, also invent the football helmet?
* The commissioner of the All-American Football Conference awarded Y.A. Tittle to the Baltimore Colts to promote balance in the league.
* Mike Holmgren impersonated God in an attempt to get Reggie White to sign with the Green Bay Packers.
* Jack Lambert was ejected from a game for “hitting a quarterback too hard.”
* Vince Lombardi traded a player five minutes after learning the player had hired an agent to represent him in contract negotiations with the Packers.
* Minnesota Viking football legend Jim Marshall once survived being trapped during a blizzard by burning his money.
* The Washington Redskins used to be the Duluth Eskimos.
* The 2003 Florida Gators media guide featured a crocodile by mistake.
* Andre the Giant once tried out for the Washington Redskins.
* Pamela Anderson got her big break when caught by a TV camera at a Canadian Football game.
* A player who had accepted a football scholarship to Ohio State abruptly changed his mind when saying goodbye to his two best friends before they left for Iowa.
* The Governor of Colorado lost Pike’s Peak to Texas in a football bet.
* The New York Giants originated the “Gatorade shower.”
* The NFL changed the rules for extra points during the 1940 NFL Championship Game because they were running out of footballs.
* The coach of Harvard once strangled a live bulldog to death to motivate his team to defeat the Yale Bulldogs.
* A panty raid helped lead to Auburn’s first national championship.
* Stanford University’s students voted for the school’s mascot (and team names) be “Robber Barons.”
* The National Football League’s official football has a name.
* The Cleveland Browns were named after boxer Jou “The Brown Bomber” Louis.
* The annual Governor’s Cup game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston team from the AFC began due to a legal settlement.
* One of Georgetown’s canine mascots was a war hero.
* The original Rose Bowl was the first postseason “bowl game.”
* The Cardinals got their name from the faded used jerseys they wore.
* Hall of Fame coach George Allen was killed by a Gatorade Shower
Ta da!
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