Perfection Isn’t the Only Historical Implication

By Dave “Large” Larzelere
The Giants hosting a showdown with historic potential? Underdogs facing the premier quarterback of their generation? A game with not only enormous implications for football, but for the future of football on television?
Check, check and check. Only it’s not tomorrow, it was forty-nine years ago today, December 28, 1958, when the Giants hosted John Unitas and the Colts at Yankee Stadium in the NFL Championship Game. It was coincidentally the first NFL title game to be televised and the first to go into overtime, as Johnny U built his legend with two very famous long scoring drives, one that tied the game and one that gave the Colts a 23-17 victory in OT. Today this donnybrook is known to all as “The Greatest Game Ever Played†and is credited with the beginning of a new phase of football’s national popularity.
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As for corollaries with tomorrow night’s game, they’re coincidental, but they’re there. The history at stake in the ’58 championship, other than the fact of the championship itself, was only clear in hindsight, whereas tomorrow’s historic possibility is crystal clear going in. And though the Giants were indeed underdogs to the Colts in ’58, it was only by three and a half points, a fact that long has led to speculation that Unitas insisted on taking it into the endzone in OT not because he was a gambling S.O.B., but because, well, he was a gambling S.O.B.
Which brings me to the question of Unitas v. Brady. That’s a tough one. Three rings apiece. Myself, I suspect that Brady will have the overall edge on Johnny U by the time he retires, and yet I know that merely to suggest such a thing is to offend cigar-chompers everywhere with the most egregious heresy. The cigar-chompers are very serious on the question of Unitas.
In conclusion, there is of course one other comparison to be made between these two big games featuring the Giants. The Giants losing.
(Check out the original SI article on the ’58 Championship Game from their January 5, 1959 issue.)↵