Back in the 60s or early 70s the NFL used to have a companion game to the superbowl where the final losers of the playoffs would compete for 3rd and 4th place. When was the last year they did that? Cite?
E3
It was called the Playoff Bowl and was last played in January 1970, the final year prior to the NFL-AFL merger. I know of no online site that lists the results of all of the Playoff Bowls, so I don’t know what year it was first played. At first, when the NFL had two divisions and the division winners played in the championship game, it matched the second place teams. Later, after the playoffs expanded, it matched the semifinal losers. The game became supremely stupid after the advent of the Super Bowl, since the NFL semifinals were the Pro Football quarter-finals. It was mercifully dropped as part of the merger.
There was another no longer existent game, where a professional team would play a college team. What was the name of that game?
That was the never-to-be-forgotten College All-Star Game, originally conceived at about the same time, and by the same person, as the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. It was played as a pre-season game every summer in Soldier Field, between the previous year’s NFL champion and a team of college all-stars. The idea of pitting professionals against college kids got a little more ridiculous with each passing year, and the game was discontinued in 1976.
The Playoff Bowl was originally called the Bert Bell Benefit Game was annually played in the Orange Bowl.
The College All-Star game was dropped for a variety of reasons:
- The college players almost always lost
- Nobody really cared to watch
- Teams didn’t want their top draft picks practicing for an exhibition game when they could be in camp learning the offense and defense
The last game was stopped in the second half when a big thunderstorm hit Soldier Field.
The Steelers were playing in the game and I remember seeing Terry Hanratty running for cover. He was the only recognizable player on the Steelers in the game at the time.
The OP asked for cites, so here are two.
According to the NFL’s website, it was first played in 1961. Wikipedia also has an entry on the history of the Playoff Bowl.
Freddy complained that no online site has the results, so here they are:
January 7, 1961 Detroit 17 Cleveland 16
January 6, 1962 Detroit 38 Philadelphia 10
January 6, 1963 Detroit 17 Pittsburgh 10
January 9, 1964 Green Bay 40 Cleveland 23
January 8, 1965 LA Rams 24 Green Bay 17
January 9, 1966 Baltimore 35 Dallas 3
January 8, 1967 Baltimore 20 Philadelphia 14
January 7, 1968 LA Rams 30 Cleveleand 6
January 5, 1969 Dallas 17 Minnesota 13
January 3, 1970 LA Rams 31 Dallas 0
The NFL doesn’t maintain any official records for these games because they were considered to be exhibition games. They did not determine 3rd place and I don’t think there was any extra compensation for the victor.
Note that the Packers’ 24-17 defeat to the Cardinals (not the Rams) is not counted against Lombardi’s 9-1 all-time playoff record (or their win the prior year, for that matter).
FWIW, Pro-Football-Reference only lists the score for the '64 & '65 games. My guess is that the main purpose of the 3rd place game was to provide some competition for the AFL playoffs. Perhaps they aired directly opposite each other?
At first the idea wasn’t that weird. The NFL didn’t have much star talent; many good college players didn’t go into the pros. A team of college stars could match up pretty well with a typical NFL team.
This changed in the late 1930s. By the late 1950s, most college stars were at least trying out the NFL. The 1963 game was a fluke.
Only once did the Playoff Bowl occur on the same weekend as the AFL championship game, and in that instance (1963), the NFL game was on saturday and the AFL game on Sunday.
The AFL did not have playoff games preceding the championship until 1969. Neither did the NFL, for that matter, until 1967.