Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Anybody remember watching this way back in the day (believe it was in '89 at the beginning of the season that it aired). I just watched one of the games for it off of youtube and that is what brought it to mind. It was pretty cool back in the day. That was before video games were really able to pit all time teams up against eachother so that would have been one of the very first times (if not the first times) someone could watch Super Bowl champions square off against eachother on their tv screen (I know that people who were into board games had been able to do stuff like that for quite some time though).

I don't know how much data they actually used to come up with the results back then but the data they said they used isn't much different than what they currently use to come up with results for all the simulation games like front office football.

Anyways what I found interesting is where they got all the highlights from in order to put the games of the week together. The game I watched was the '85 Bears vs the '77 Cowboys. I know the Bears and Cowboys both played eachother in '85 and in '77 so I assume they got most of their footage from those two games. There however was some highlights that were from games in Chicago and I'm not sure exactly what season that footage would have come from.

Also some of the footage looked heavily edited so some of the highlights could have taken place in games against totally different teams and then they would just edit a few Cowboy or Bears players in there to make it look like it was footage from a game between those two teams.

I'm not 100% sure I saw this, but I recall watching something like this on ESPN. I definitely wasn't interested in history back then, so its not something that captured my interest. Most recently, I read about it in the book "Gridiron Gumshoe: My Life in and out of the NFL Films' Vault". The book has the backstory.

ESPN did a similar thing years later called "Matchup of the Millennium". 60s Packers, 70s Steelers, 80s 49ers and the 90s Cowboys in a tournament. The Steelers won. They used soundbites of Howard Cosell during the games.

MatthewToy wrote:ESPN did a similar thing years later called "Matchup of the Millennium". 60s Packers, 70s Steelers, 80s 49ers and the 90s Cowboys in a tournament. The Steelers won. They used soundbites of Howard Cosell during the games.

The Cosell's soundbites were the best part of that show. The narrators (Steve Sabol, amongst others) were talking about the game and Cosell interrupted them with: "Terry Bradshaw is a nice country boy".

MatthewToy wrote:ESPN did a similar thing years later called "Matchup of the Millennium". 60s Packers, 70s Steelers, 80s 49ers and the 90s Cowboys in a tournament. The Steelers won. They used soundbites of Howard Cosell during the games.

I remember the final play of the game they used the footage of the immaculate reception and superimposed 49ers uniforms over the Raiders uniforms. Also, it was a two-hour, two-part episode, and the first half was played at Candlestick, while the second half of the game was played at Three Rivers.

I would love to see NFL Films do some sort of show like that with all the Super Bowl champions. Maybe after Super Bowl LXIV, they will have 64 Super Bowl champions, and they can do something like that. They could probably do it now, and get 14 of the strongest Championship teams of the pre-Super Bowl era to go with the 50 Super Bowl winners.

Rupert Patrick wrote:

MatthewToy wrote:ESPN did a similar thing years later called "Matchup of the Millennium". 60s Packers, 70s Steelers, 80s 49ers and the 90s Cowboys in a tournament. The Steelers won. They used soundbites of Howard Cosell during the games.

I remember the final play of the game they used the footage of the immaculate reception and superimposed 49ers uniforms over the Raiders uniforms. Also, it was a two-hour, two-part episode, and the first half was played at Candlestick, while the second half of the game was played at Three Rivers.

I would love to see NFL Films do some sort of show like that with all the Super Bowl champions. Maybe after Super Bowl LXIV, they will have 64 Super Bowl champions, and they can do something like that. They could probably do it now, and get 14 of the strongest Championship teams of the pre-Super Bowl era to go with the 50 Super Bowl winners.

Couldn't agree more, except I would take it further. In a hypothetical 1999 Rams versus 2000 Ravens matchup, I'd like to see a real breakdown of how that GSOT would fare against the Ravens defense, what each unit may be able exploit for success.

Teo wrote:

MatthewToy wrote:ESPN did a similar thing years later called "Matchup of the Millennium". 60s Packers, 70s Steelers, 80s 49ers and the 90s Cowboys in a tournament. The Steelers won. They used soundbites of Howard Cosell during the games.

The Cosell's soundbites were the best part of that show. The narrators (Steve Sabol, amongst others) were talking about the game and Cosell interrupted them with: "Terry Bradshaw is a nice country boy".

My favorite line:
"Terry Bradshaw is a nice kid, but he's a real dope."

conace21 wrote:

Teo wrote:

MatthewToy wrote:ESPN did a similar thing years later called "Matchup of the Millennium". 60s Packers, 70s Steelers, 80s 49ers and the 90s Cowboys in a tournament. The Steelers won. They used soundbites of Howard Cosell during the games.

The Cosell's soundbites were the best part of that show. The narrators (Steve Sabol, amongst others) were talking about the game and Cosell interrupted them with: "Terry Bradshaw is a nice country boy".

My favorite line:
"Terry Bradshaw is a nice kid, but he's a real dope."

I like when he sang the Miller beer jingle with Joe Theismann and belched.