End Zone Insight

On August 6, 2022, coach Dick Vermeil was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. END ZONE INSIGHT sat down with Coach Vermeil for a trip through his illustrious career. Not planning to go to college, Vermeil was energized by a late-blooming interest in football. It sent the enthusiastic Californian into the coaching ranks. He made his way through Stanford, the Los Angeles Rams, and as head coach at UCLA where his Bruins stunned no. 1 Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. The Philadelphia Eagles came calling after 15 years without a playoff appearance. This half of the Vermeil story ends with the crazy “Miracle at the Meadowlands.”

It’s impossible today to reconstruct an offense in a few weeks of training camp, but END ZONE INSIGHT takes its listeners on a magical ride in the summer of 1961 when the New York Giants created a record-setting aerial attack by making three astute trades that netted a top tight end, a super-fast wide receiver, and Hall of Fame passer. And they did it in virtual anonymity in a small west coast town while Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris of the Yankees were stealing the headlines chasing Babe Ruth’s single season home run record.

Starting as a preseason bowl game at Giants Stadium in 1983, the Kickoff Classic aimed to match the previous season’s national champion team against new season’s no. 1 ranked college team (or at least a highly ranked opponent). The ambitious formula was achieved in year 1. The game was played before 71,000 fans as top-ranked Nebraska crushed the 1982 champion Penn State Nittany Lions, 44-6. But a pair of ridiculous remarks by Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer built skepticism among coaches that an extra game was wearing down participating squads. The Kickoff Classic was never quite the same again.

A growing cottage industry is in place to grade the NFL Draft. It is made up of an army of self-appointed opinion-makers known as “Draft Experts.” Listen while the Pigskin Pod Cats have fun unmasking the annual buffoonery. Note to the experts: nobody can see the future.

The Baltimore Colts owned the NFL’s first overall pick, but Stanford’s John Elway, a once-in-a-lifetime catch in a great QB class that included Pitt’s Dan Marino, held strong-arm leverage over a team he wanted no part of. Follow the drama as the great 1983 NFL draft unfolds.

The fall of 1970 brought a plethora of talented passers. From Jim Plunkett to Joe Thiesmann, from Rex Kern to Archie Manning. All were swept up by the NFL to replenish an aging group of quarterbacks. And it would be the last time for 12 years such a bonanza was available.

The Heisman Trophy may be the ultimate individual trophy in American sports.  Yet the Heisman does not always reward the winner's team with immediate on-field success.  In fact, the team featuring the winner of the Heisman as often as not stumbles in contests played soon after the award's presentation.  It is the dreaded Heisman Hex so win the trophy at your own peril.  You have been warned by us, the Pigskin Podcats!  Join us for a look back at some interesting cases of great college football teams stumbling right after the star player wins the Heisman Trophy.

Paul and Bob dissect a recent list of the so-called “25 All-Time Best Football Movies” published recently by USA Today. The “Pigskin Pod Cats” discuss what should and what shouldn’t be labeled a football movie. They discuss the good choices in the list and what they believe are awful choices on the list.

Arriving in Vancouver from Australia in the 1890s, Patrick O’Dea miraculously finds his brother coaching rowing at the University of Wisconsin. Pat is discovered by Badgers football coach Phil King and his incredible kicking makes him an All-American. A bizarre story grows: criminal indictment, assumed name, and reported WWI casualty. All ends well as O’Dea is welcomed back to Madison years later.

William Ryzcek, author of Crash of the Titans, reminisces about the financially challenging, but comical early days of the Harry Wismer-owned, Sammy Baugh-coached New York Titans. The interview follows colorful stories of better-than-given-credit players and outrageous in-game results, while looking at the foundation built for Joe Namath and the Jets to take the AFL to the heights by winning Super Bowl III.

A question answered: what didn’t Fritz Pollard accomplish? Not only did Pollard fight racial prejudice during his life but was a great football player in the Ohio League and helped pioneer what would become the National Football League. Pollard’s intelligence, winning personality, and all-around skill made him a Hall of Famer and the NFL’s first black coach. More than an athlete, he excelled organizing barnstorming teams, booking great black entertainers, starting a coal heating company, and launching a newspaper.

We celebrate Black History Month with the many “firsts” achieved by Fritz Pollard. Not only did Frederick Douglass Pollard come from a well-educated family, but he was perhaps the greatest early African American football player. In this episode, Fritz goes through early life in Chicago and plants a toe in nearly every Ivy League college before leading Brown University to the Rose Bowl and its greatest heights in 1916.

Mark Yost, author of Tailgating, Sacks, & Salary Caps and a writer for the Wall Street Journal visits Paul and Bob to talk about how the NFL became so filthy rich. Yost also looks at the future of fantasy and sports gaming with cautionary words of overexposure.

The Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Colts played in the first Super Bowl after the NFL-AFL merger. They bumbled, stumbled, and blundered through a combined 11 turnovers. Did either team want to win? Hall of Famers were in the middle of crazy plays: a multi-tipped pass landed in the lap of Colts TE John Mackey and went for a 75-yard TD, Cowboys DB Mel Renfro’s mental lapse allowed a field goal to be downed at the Dallas 1, and Colts QB Johnny Unitas had a rough day and fractured a rib. The outcome hinged on a field goal by a super-nervous kicker.

A set of Hungarian refugee brothers survive a harrowing escape from the crushed revolution in their Communist-governed homeland, emigrate to the United States, and create a revolution of their own. Pete and Charlie Gogolak became catalysts to sweeping change in the way all football placekicking would be made. The “Sidewinders” were more than a curiosity.

Charley Trippi, an all-around athlete from Pennsylvania coal country, fulfilled a promise to enroll at the University of Georgia and leads his Bulldogs to a Rose Bowl victory and national championship before making the College Hall of Fame. After World War II, Trippi had the opportunity to become both a Yankee football HB and a Yankee baseball outfielder, but he again fulfilled a promise and became a Pro Football Hall of Famer with the NFL Chicago Cardinals.

While it is almost comical how many college football games are tagged as the “Game of the Century,” the 1935 “Game of the Century” battle between Southern Methodist and Texas Christian Universities provided a thrilling late-game touchdown to decide a winner from a pair of undefeated teams from neighboring cities. The game’s importance would elevate the Southwest Conference football into a national spotlight. The winner would head to the Rose Bowl for that great venue’s first-ever sellout.

If ever there was a football coach who wanted no part of rookies, it was George Allen. When he arrived in Washington with an unlimited expense account, which he quickly exceeded, he acquired every available veteran player he could find. He traded for, signed, or cajoled them into joining the Redskins. When the dust settled, so to speak, the roster was unrecognizable and given the nickname of the “Over the Hill Gang.”

The confident, upstart Miami Hurricanes, winners of 10 games in a row, planned to use a vocal home crowd in Miami’s Orange Bowl to prevent the mighty, top-ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers from securing coach Tom Osborne’s first national championship. The contrast in styles—Miami’s passing versus Nebraska’s power running—and the shifting of momentum made for one of the greatest-ever college games, as it came down to a last moment decision for Coach Osborne.