Today in Sports History: December 15th
(Frank Olivo, pictured here wearing his Santa suit. Photo courtesy of AP Photos)
12/15/1968 - Philadelphia boos Santa Claus
Philadelphia sports fans have long been perceived as some of the harshest, most unruly, and most negative sports fans in the country. When Michael Irvin suffered a career-ending injury, they cheered. When J.D. Drew appeared in the outfield, they threw batteries at him. When Donovan McNabb was picked by the Philadelphia Eagles, they booed. But no incident could possibly top the one that happened in 1968, one that was so preposterous in concept that it’s almost unbelievable: they booed Santa Claus.
It was halftime of the final Eagles game of the year. It was a tie game against the Minnesota Vikings, but the fans were in no mood to celebrate. The ‘68 Eagles were sitting on a 2-11 record after losing the first 11 games of the year. Between the terrible football season and the freezing weather, the normally-rowdy Philly fans were not in a good state of mind.
So who should come out for the halftime show but 20 year-old Frank Olivo, the man portraying jolly old Saint Nick. The Eagles fans were having none of it. They loudly booed the rotund gift-giver and even pelted him with snowballs as he left the field. It was not a good moment for the “city of brotherly love.”
“It became a thing that Philadelphia sports fans became famous for doing, and it will never die, I guess,” Olivo said in 2008. “Look how many years it’s been.”
Olivo said he never held a grudge with the fans and even said he appreciated the notoriety. “The team was horrible,” he told Ronnie Polaneczky in 2008. “They wanted to express their displeasure. So they booed and threw snowballs. I’d have done exactly the same thing, if I weren’t on the field.”
(The final score of the worst game ever. Photo by News Sentinel File Photos)
12/15/1973 - Tennessee and Temple play awful game
On this day in 1973, the Tennessee Volunteers defeated the Temple Owls in a game that ESPN.com later deemed the worst sports game of the twentieth century. The final score: Tennessee 11, Temple 6. If that seems like an odd score for a college football game, you're correct. It was a college basketball game.
It was the annual Volunteer Classic and Temple was desperate for a victory. Owls coach Don Casey, who later coached the Clippers and Nets in the NBA, determined that the only way to beat them would be to hold the ball and run out the clock. And with the shot clock still a dozen years from being installed at the college level, there was nothing to prevent him from doing it.
"Tennessee had a great team," he told Basketball Digest in 2003. "We thought this was going to give us the best chance to win. So we took two guys and put them out by the 28-foot line, had them standing about five feet part, and we had them pass the ball back and forth, back and forth. ... This was uncharted territory. We didn't know exactly what we were doing. It got to the point where we said, 'Well, what should we do next?'"
One local newspaper reported that Temple held the ball for 32 of the 40 minutes. The Volunteers still managed to come away with the win, though it wasn't much of a consolation prize to the Tennessee fans, who had just witnessed the lowest-scoring college basketball game in modern history. In fact, the result was so indisputably boring that Edward J. Boling, the president of the University of Tennessee, went on to the court after the game and ordered the Vols to scrimmage.
"The people had come to see basketball," Ray Mears, then the Tennessee coach, also told Basketball Digest. "I was angry. I told their coach after the game was over that this is a game played for our fans. We invited teams from the east and west so they could see different styles of basketball. Temple had an eastern style. I told Casey, 'I gave you $10,000 to come in here to play and I'm disappointed. I'll never invite you back.'"
12/15/2002 - Owens shakes his pom-poms
Before being traded to the Philadelphia Eagles, and before being labeled as an absolute team-killer, Owens was primarily known for his diva-like celebrations. Owens had three big ones before he left San Francisco: the one in Dallas where he celebrated on the Cowboys' star, the one against the Seahawks where he took out a sharpie and signed a football, and the one on this date in 2002...
...where after scoring a touchdown against the Green Bay Packers, Owens ran over to a cheerleader, borrowed her pom-poms, and began to dance with them. That, coupled with his sharpie exhibition, led to a new NFL rule stating that any overdone celebration would result in a fine and an in-game penalty. In a way, you could say that Owens is the father of the over-the-top celebration in professional football.
Further reading:
Philly makes amends with Santa, sort of [USA Today]
Temple set stage for shot clock [GoVolsXtra]
See More:
