Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Clouds over the Goalpost: Gambling, Assassination, and the NFL in 1963
    Unavailable
    Clouds over the Goalpost: Gambling, Assassination, and the NFL in 1963
    Unavailable
    Clouds over the Goalpost: Gambling, Assassination, and the NFL in 1963
    Ebook345 pages4 hours

    Clouds over the Goalpost: Gambling, Assassination, and the NFL in 1963

    By Lew Freedman

    2.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The pro football season of 1963 was dominated by the unexpected. In April, months prior to the beginning of play, it was revealed that two All-Star players, Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, were gambling on the sport and would be suspended from play for at least a year. Even worse, in May, one of the league’s bigger-than-life personalities, Big Daddy Lipscomb, was found dead, with police saying he perished from a heroin overdose, something those who knew him best still dispute.

     As play began in September, the Pro Football Hall of Fame opened its doors in Canton, Ohio, the same town where the National Football League was founded in 1921 and inducted its first class. Also, the war for players and prestige raged with the upstart American Football League trying to obtain equal footing in the public eye.
    On the field, it was to be the year the Chicago Bears and their aging owner-coach George Halas knew glory once more, fighting off the latest dynasty Green Bay Packers led by Vince Lombardi in a season-long chase for the Western Division title. Yet even that was overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. While the nation mourned and other sports leagues suspended activity, the NFL played on with its regular season that sad weekend—a choice commissioner Pete Rozelle later called the worst mistake of his tenure.

    Clouds over the Goalpost is filled with controversy not only on the field, but off it as well. From the various suspensions to an exciting championship game between the Bears and Giants, 1963 was a year that the NFL would never forget—for both the good and the bad.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSports Publishing
    Release dateSep 1, 2013
    ISBN9781613216132
    Unavailable
    Clouds over the Goalpost: Gambling, Assassination, and the NFL in 1963
    Author

    Lew Freedman

    Lew Freedman is a longtime journalist and former sports editor of the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska, where he lived for seventeen years. The author of nearly sixty books, Freedman has won more than 250 journalism awards. He and his wife, Debra, live in Indiana.

    Read more from Lew Freedman

    Related to Clouds over the Goalpost

    Related ebooks

    Sports Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      9 Sports Books That Offer Something For Every Fan

      Jan 31, 2019

      Whether an exhaustive new profile of Babe Ruth, the reflections of basketball great Bob Cousy, or a retrospective of the heyday of women’s bike racing, there’s plenty to choose from in this grab bag of books.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Pinch Hitters

      Mar 7, 2023

      In 1941, nineteen-year-old Margaret “Marnie” Danhauser of Racine began working as a book binder at Western Printing and Lithographing—a good, if unglamorous, job with an average salary of about thirty-two dollars a week.1 She was a 1938 graduate of S

      22 min read

    • Article

      ‘I Guarantee It’

      Feb 5, 2022

      ‘I Guarantee It’
      6 min read

    • Article

      Shut Out

      Apr 24, 2020

      Shut Out
      2 min read

    • Article

      Broken Barriers

      Feb 11, 2022

      It’s our pastime. The sport of professional baseball, whose origins date back to the late 1800s, is as American as it gets. Whether enjoyed at the ballpark with snacks and sunshine, or on the radio with that familiar announcer’s voice on a warm summe

      2 min read

    • Article

      Points in History

      Apr 21, 2020

      Points in History
      2 min read

    • Article

      Know More

      Oct 9, 2019

      If superheroes (or supervillains) were real, wouldn’t some of them give up their costumed caper and turn their powers to sport stardom? Or think about it from another angle – as sports fans, we already believe to a large degree that the feats of our

      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘A Story That Didn’t Used To Be Told’: The Rise And Fall Of Baseball’s Negro Leagues

      Jul 5, 2023

      Sam Pollard inherited his love for baseball from his father, a fan of the St Louis Cardinals – Black America’s team in the 1960s. Growing up in New York just made it a long-distance affair. “They had some phenomenal players,” Pollard recalls to the G

      4 min read

    • Article

      Giant Missteps

      May 11, 2018

      In the 1960s, the San Francisco Giants were poised to become the best team in baseball. Not only did their roster sport such fan favorites as Willie McCovey and Willie Mays, but the team had positioned itself to take advantage of the new wave of tale

      9 min read

    • Article

      Why The Super Bowl Still Matters So Much To America

      Feb 8, 2021

      The Super Bowl is a spectacle like no other in world sport. On Sunday, Super Bowl LV will be an exciting sporting event that mixes the mainstream appeal of music and the commercial nature of the US, with a healthy dose of patriotism. The sport itsel

      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘After Jackie’

      Apr 5, 2022

      ‘After Jackie’
      5 min read

    • Article

      Sports Book Roundup: Cubs Books In Time For Opening Day And More

      Mar 28, 2018

      "Try Not to Suck" by Bill Chastain and Jesse Rogers; Triumph (304 pages, $25.95) Cubs fans hope the Joe Maddon story isn't finished just yet. They would like to see him add a couple more World Series titles to his tale. However, this new biography sh

      3 min read

    • Article

      New Book Pays Homage To Iconic 1952 Topps Set

      Jul 17, 2020

      In a salute to the legendary 1952 Topps baseball card set, a new hobby book has been published that takes an in-depth look at the iconic cards that forever changed the collecting landscape. “Baseball & Bubble Gum: The 1952 Topps Collection” (publishe

      2 min read

    • Article

      Where Have You Gone, Jackie Robinson?

      Mar 2, 2023

      Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic … America’s game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere—belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total

      6 min read

    • Article

      Best Baseball Books Of 2023

      Nov 18, 2023

      (EDITOR’S NOTE: Not listed is the author’s latest, Baseball’s Memorable Misses: an Unabashed Look at the Game’s Craziest Zeroes, a Sports Publishing book.) Just because the New York Yankees haven’t been to the World Series since 2009 doesn’t mean t

      14 min read

    • Article

      Sacrifice Play

      Oct 19, 2020

      Sacrifice Play
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Clouds over the Goalpost

    2.5/5

    3 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      More of a hero worship tribute to George Halas than a serious analysis of the 1963 season. Very repetitive and in need of serious editing. Ham-handed attempts at humor fall flat. Biographical sketches of players such as Gene " Big Daddy" Lipscomb are the only strength of the book. Unless you are a Bears and Halas fan, you will find this unworthy of consideration.