Treasures from the SI Vault

[BlueSky]

Here's a start for this. Two Super Bowl-winning QBs in one 1981 picture! Eli is the infant and Peyton is in the yellow shirt. In the white shirt is Cooper, who IIRC was a promising WR until being sidelined by injuries.

Link

And here are the two items posted in another thread that motivated a topic devoted to sharing interesting tidbits from SI Vault.

Dogfighting was obviously seen in a different light back in the day. From 1969's When the Saints Go Stumbling Out:

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One day last week, as they prepared for their game with Baltimore on the practice field Mecom (John Mecom, owner at the time) built for them, they were loose and confident and spending a good bit of time kidding Doug Atkins about his dog. This animal was tied at the edge of the field, where he was sleeping. In the dressing room after practice Atkins handled him gently, showing a friend a series of deep slashes on the dog's neck.

"His name's Rebel," said Atkins. "He's a pit bull and a hell of a fighter. Matched him with a Doberman last night and the Doberman gave him fits for four or five minutes, but ol' Rebel never quit. Why, he can fight at full speed for 35, 40 minutes and he finally wore that Doberman right down. Got him down and probably would have killed him, but ol' Rebel ain't got any teeth. Had to gum the Doberman until he quit."

Rebel walked into a corner, moving gingerly, as if he were aching, and then flopped down. He's a good-looking black-and-white creature, gentle and friendly with humans.

"His muscles are sore," Atkins said. "Just like me on Monday after a ball game. Takes a while to get rid of the aches and pains."

"He don't know quit," another player said. "Makes no difference how big the other dog is, ol' Rebel just keeps goin'. And Doug don't make no easy matches for him, either. You'd figure he'd match him with a cocker spaniel or something once in a while, just for a breather, but he never does. He don't get any more easy contests than we do."

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It's a little shocking how this kind of racism was once the norm. From 1970's This Saint Has Been Called a Sinner:

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Wheels (Saints RB Ernie Wheelwright) contends that off-season employment for black players in New Orleans is limited to manual labor. "One of my black teammates pumped gas," he said. "Imagine a man playing for the NFL and pumping gas! During the season you go to parties, and the respectable people slap you on the back and say look me up after the season and we'll talk about a job. When you do, they're out and don't return your call, or they tell you the time isn't right, the area isn't ready. Hell, they're going to the moon, they've been there two or three times, yet New Orleans isn't ready for a black man to wear a coat and tie and sit at a desk! Even a black man has to live 12 months a year."

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Good grief.

[BlueSky]

This stuff is golden. This is about Burt Reynolds going to a party with Don Meredith, from a 1974 article about the making of The Longest Yard. It's called The Con Game That Got Rough.

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While the players pulled off their overcoats for the maid at the door, word bounded through the place that a number of Dallas Cowboys had arrived. A tall woman who had more ice on her fingers than she did in her drink approached Meredith and smiled.

"You must be Lee Roy Jordan," the woman said.

"Yes ma'am, I am," said Meredith. "I love to hit people and knock 'em down. I sock 'em good, I really do. I purely love it."

"Which one is Don Meredith?" the woman said.

"Bless your heart, he's this cute rascal right behind me," said Meredith. "You ought to get to know him a lot better. There's nothing but pearls comes out of his mouth."

The woman bore in on Reynolds and pressed him toward the wall, telling him he looked like a tremendously physical person, not quite as big as she had expected, maybe, but terribly physical nevertheless, and it was a thrilling experience for her to meet a famous quarterback.

"It was incredible to me," Reynolds remembers. "Almost nobody at that party knew who I was, but this woman heard me identified as Don Meredith, and so here she came with all this cleavage and diamonds. I had a lot of fun holding court, pretending to be Meredith, talking about Freudian interpretations of football, anything else I could have fun with, and people gathered around and took it all in. I thought: So this is what it's like."

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[Joshawaggie]

I like lookin at a lot of the old ads. This is definitely very fun to look back at this stuff. Makes me want to join the guy in my sig.

[TFoA]

I like lookin at a lot of the old ads. This is definitely very fun to look back at this stuff. Makes me want to join the guy in my sig.

You know he actually went back, right?

But yeah, this is definitely cool. I'll happily join int he search for some of these treasures.

[OB33]

Two of the faces ended up much more famous then the rest of the crowd.

[gingerbreadmann]

September 17, 1984:

In a pregame press conference Alabama coach Ray Perkins described Boston College's Doug Flutie as an "ideal Canadian quarterback" because of his CFL mobility and non-NFL size (5'9¾", 177 pounds). "That's his opinion," countered Flutie, who then led BC from a 31-14 third-quarter deficit to a 38-31 victory at Birmingham. Flutie passed for 254 yards and two TDs and ran for another score. "We couldn't stop Flutie from making turmoil-type plays," said Perkins. "There's not a defense in the country that's going to stop him." Said joyful Eagle flanker Gerard Phelan, "He's done it before, and he did it again."

This stuff is amazing.

[1_ILWT_1]

I like lookin at a lot of the old ads. This is definitely very fun to look back at this stuff. Makes me want to join the guy in my sig.

the guy in your sig looks alot like the (former?) wrestler Test...lol

[smzimbabwe]

I vaguely remembered an article that came out about the "Expansion Bowl" between the Seahawks and Buccaneers, so I did a search for "seahawks" in the 1970's. A series of photos came up dated 11-25-78. But in them, Steve Largent has the Seahawk head on his sleeves and in another one, Jacob Green is sacking John Elway...

[Mac the Knife]

I did some research on articles of the 1960's American Football League. Turns out that SI gave the league the benefit of the doubt from day one, saying after its first season essentially that if its owners hung in there, it'd make it. They've been skeptical (and admittedly, rightly so) about every challenger since.

[Viper]

1) It's not very often that SI puts out a cover without a caption. But then I guess some images just speak for themselves:

2) Remember Sidd Finch? Here's the text of the infamous ersatz SI April Fools' piece on the NY Mets' faux phenom.

3) Speaking of faux phenoms, albeit of a totally different variety, it's hilarious how quickly SI drank the Kool-Aid over Tony Mandarich:

Of course, three years later SI was singing an altogether different tune:

Ironic how Mandarich's Packers career flamed out just as Brett Favre's was taking off... which brings me to...

4) the first mention of Favre in an SI article (Oct. 5, 1992 - just one week after the Mandarich "Incredible Bust" cover above)

[TFoA]

It's really a damn shame when you make the cover of SI for being a bust.

[Spearhead]

A long one but a classic: THE DISCIPLES OF ST. DARRELL ON A WILD WEEKEND

[Shumway]

Granted, it's only from 6 years ago, and I have it sitting in my room, but I never get sick of seeing this:

And, to my fellow wrestling fans(or Wu-Tang fans, since GZA referenced him), a Ken Patera article, back when he was a weightlifter:

Link

[BBTV]

Found on the comments of the uniwatch blog, this one is about some of baseball's new uniforms in 1971, as well as the opening of the Vet. There is also a quote "Philadelphia is the East Germany of America."

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...767/2/index.htm

[Sport]

What I love is what a great picture resource it is. Think of all the images we can now post on here that we were always struggling to find.