Plankton
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This is a very good read
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/06/16/new-orleans-saints-first-season-fiftieth-anniversary
John Mecom looked around at the chaos that engulfed him, at the 50-odd players on the Yankee Stadium field, their fists flying wildly, at the fans pouring down from the stands, legs lurching over the railing to join the ruckus, and the owner of the New Orleans Saints thought to himself, Damn, I probably shouldn’t be out here.
It was fun, for a couple of minutes. Mecom had rushed to the aid of the felled Doug Atkins, who had three Giants players whaling on him. But now Atkins was on his feet, and Mecom couldn’t quite figure out why the 39-year-old defensive end kept tossing his helmet to him. So Mecom just kept throwing it back, like they were playing a game of catch in the middle of a war zone.
“He was trying to tell me to put the helmet on to protect myself,” Mecom, 77, says now. “But I didn’t understand that.”
Had Mecom just wanted to be a fan—had he wanted to sit in the stands—he would have bought a ticket for six dollars. But he didn’t. In December of the previous year he’d paid the $8.5 million expansion fee for the newly minted NFL team in New Orleans. At 26, he was younger than most of the players on his team, and he watched every game from field level. And so when linebacker Steve Stonebreaker had come to the sideline, with the clock winding down in the fourth quarter, and told everyone to gird themselves for a fight that would begin right after the final whistle, ******* if he wasn’t going to run out onto the field with rest of the guys and hit somebody.
These were the 1967 New Orleans Saints in a snapshot. This was the NFL before the league became a massive monolith, before professional football had become the biggest sports business in America. This was a simpler time, a more romantic time, a bygone era in which a team owner could find himself in the middle of a massive brawl during a televised game and not be headline news.
“Before the league got so cleaned up,” as Mecom says.
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/06/16/new-orleans-saints-first-season-fiftieth-anniversary
John Mecom looked around at the chaos that engulfed him, at the 50-odd players on the Yankee Stadium field, their fists flying wildly, at the fans pouring down from the stands, legs lurching over the railing to join the ruckus, and the owner of the New Orleans Saints thought to himself, Damn, I probably shouldn’t be out here.
It was fun, for a couple of minutes. Mecom had rushed to the aid of the felled Doug Atkins, who had three Giants players whaling on him. But now Atkins was on his feet, and Mecom couldn’t quite figure out why the 39-year-old defensive end kept tossing his helmet to him. So Mecom just kept throwing it back, like they were playing a game of catch in the middle of a war zone.
“He was trying to tell me to put the helmet on to protect myself,” Mecom, 77, says now. “But I didn’t understand that.”
Had Mecom just wanted to be a fan—had he wanted to sit in the stands—he would have bought a ticket for six dollars. But he didn’t. In December of the previous year he’d paid the $8.5 million expansion fee for the newly minted NFL team in New Orleans. At 26, he was younger than most of the players on his team, and he watched every game from field level. And so when linebacker Steve Stonebreaker had come to the sideline, with the clock winding down in the fourth quarter, and told everyone to gird themselves for a fight that would begin right after the final whistle, ******* if he wasn’t going to run out onto the field with rest of the guys and hit somebody.
These were the 1967 New Orleans Saints in a snapshot. This was the NFL before the league became a massive monolith, before professional football had become the biggest sports business in America. This was a simpler time, a more romantic time, a bygone era in which a team owner could find himself in the middle of a massive brawl during a televised game and not be headline news.
“Before the league got so cleaned up,” as Mecom says.
