Author: Tilokarat » January 31, 2009, 10:01 am
The heart wins this one.
I was a Chicago Cardinals fan back in 1954, and got really upset when they moved to St. Louis. I saw the Chicago Cardinals trounce the Toronto Argonauts way back when, but at least the Hamilton Tiger-Cats salvaged some pride for the CFL (Canadian Football League) by beating the Buffalo Bills a few years later. Thus, look forward to the Cardinals upsetting the heavily favoured Steelers.
Chicago Cardinals 55
Toronto Argonauts 26
Aug. 5, 1959
In 1959, the Toronto Argonauts moved from Varsity Stadium to the brand new C.N.E. grounds. They opened their new facility in a unique way by hosting the NFL's Chicago Cardinals in an exhibition game. Football fans on both sides of the border were curious as to how the game would take shape and 27,700 showed up for the contest. A blend of Canadian and American rules were employed in the game. The coaches were Hamp Pool for Toronto and Pop Ivy (former Edmonton coach) for Chicago
The Argos surprised everyone by jumping into a quick 13-1 lead using the “Argos Shift”, a formation with three ends and two flankers to get five receivers downfield quickly. Dave Mann caught a touchdown pass from Ronnie Knox to cap a 50 yard, four play drive. Then, Argo defender Bob Dehlinger intercepted a M.C. Reynolds pass and returned it 70 yards for a “major”. Still leading well into the second quarter, the Argos were stunned when their leading defensive player, Don Caraway suffered torn ligaments and had to leave the game. The Cards, who outweighed the Argos by almost 20 pounds per man, seemed to take over at that point. The halftime score was 21-13, Chicago. The Cardinals’ scoring was evenly distributed among its offensive threats as the Chicago offensive line took over the game. The Cardinals scored seven TD’s with Joe Childress, Bob Conrad, Bob Watkins, King Hill, John David Crow, Mal Hammack, Leo Sugar and Lee Williams scoring. Conrad added six conversions and a rouge while Toronto’s Vic Kristopaitis kicked two conversions. The Cardinals had steamrolled the Argos for an easy 55-26 victory.
Historicist: Mismatch of the Century or a Football Game?Every Saturday morning Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.
Sports page from the Toronto Star on August 6, 1959.
Anticipating the arrival of the NFL's Chicago Cardinals for a pre-season exhibition game against the CFL's Toronto Argonauts on August 5, 1959, The Star's Jim Hunt asked the obvious question: "Argos against the Chicago Cardinals—the mismatch of the century or a football game?" The Argos, who'd dominated the CFL for most of the early twentieth century, were now in the early years of what became known as The Dark Ages. The league's perennial bottom-feeders between 1953 and 1983, the Argos went nineteen years between Grey Cup appearances and thirty-one years between Grey Cup victories. As if to make up for their on-field futility, according to Jay Teitel's The Argo Bounce (T.H. Best Printing Co. Ltd., 1982), the franchise simply tried to play with big league style by signing one big-money player after another. In this, the team seemed to reflect Toronto's post-war insecurity and its ambition to prove itself a world class city. With the huge success of the 1959 exhibition game—with 27,770 fans in attendance, it was the largest crowd to watch football in Canada at that time—the Argos hosted similar exhibition games in 1960 and 1961.
The Canadian brand of football was still predominant in the hearts and minds of Torontonians. In the late 1950s, the CFL was a pillar of stability compared to the NFL, which had always been besieged by the greater popularity of college football and by rival leagues raiding its rosters for players and personnel. But by 1959, the NFL was beginning to shake off its bush league status and gain the television presence that would solidify its ascent as the dominant sports league in North America. So a showdown between the two leagues piqued the public's interest.
Leading up to the 1959 game, Toronto's bars and coffee houses were abuzz with debate over the merits of each league. Few gave the Argos much chance of beating the Cardinals. There was already a growing sentiment, as Ron Thomas made clear in The Star, that "Canadian football teams are inferior to those from below the border." Despite the fact that the free flow of players between the two leagues showed that individuals could certainly succeed in either one, the handicaps suffered by CFL teams were too significant. Most notably, CFL players were smaller and usually played on both offense and defense, while NFL teams had the depth to field a roster with specialists at each position. Some thought the hybrid rules being used in the exhibition game might minimize these advantages. Canadian restrictions on downfield blocking were eliminated in favour of American-style play. But Canadian kicking and returning rules would apply, thus eliminating the NFL's fair catch rule. Playing on the larger Canadian field with only eleven players, instead of the CFL's twelve, ensured the game would be a high-scoring shoot-out.
The game was a flashy opener for the brand new home of the Argos, CNE Stadium, which with little protection from the lake's fierce wind, couldn't have been more different than the cozy bowl at Varsity Stadium. Yet before it acquired the "Mistake by the Lake" moniker, CNE Stadium was celebrated as a symbol of Toronto's progress equal to the opening of the Yonge Street subway. Naturally, the game was front page news—but not for on-field action. Instead it was the massive traffic problems that drew the biggest headlines. Police called it the "worst traffic jam in the city’s history" as twelve thousand vehicles vied for the seven thousand parking spots on the Exhibition grounds. Drivers resorted to parking on a section of the still-incomplete Gardiner Expressway and on front lawns in Parkdale.
On the field, the Argonauts surprised everyone by roaring out to a 13-1 lead. By racing to the line of scrimmage to quick-snap the ball on every down, the Argos caught the Cardinal defenders off guard. Quarterback Ronnie Knox thrived in the pass oriented "Argo Shift," a formation designed to get five receivers downfield quickly instead of four. Knox marched the Argos fifty yards down the field in four plays to connect with Dave Mann, a versatile former Cardinal receiver who also acted as the Argos punter, for a touchdown. Shortly afterwards, defensive star Bob Dehlinger intercepted a Cardinals pass and ran seventy yards down the field for another score.
Image of the Chicago Cardinals from the Toronto Star on August 5, 1959.
Initially, it seemed that the weeks of training the Argonauts had gone through were paying off. The Cardinals, on the other hand, had only been in training camp for ten days. But their coach, Frank "Pop" Ivy—considered one of the sport's greatest innovators—was intimately familiar with the Canadian game because he'd coached the Edmonton Eskimos to three straight Grey Cup victories in the mid-1950s.
Toronto assistant coach Steve Owen—who would be enshrined in the hall of fame for his long tenure as head coach of the New York Giants between 1930 and 1953—knew that the biggest obstacle for the Argonauts would be Chicago's massive defensive line. At an average of 255 pounds, the Cardinal linemen outweighed their Argo counterparts by about twenty pounds. It was only a matter of time before this decisive size advantage wore down the Argos and turned the tide of the game.
The Argonauts held the lead well into the second quarter when disaster struck. The heart of the Argos defense, Don Caraway, broke his foot in a tackle. Without their leader, the Argos defense collapsed. The Cardinals won the game 55-26—one of the few bright spots in an otherwise abysmal season that saw them finish last in their NFL division. Three more first-string Argonauts were injured on the day, including the best centre in the Canadian league, Norm Stoneburgh. After the game, these injuries, which ensured the team finished in fourth place in their division and out of the playoffs, led sportswriters and fans to question the wisdom of playing exhibitions against NFL teams.
Sports page from the Toronto Star on August 4, 1960.
Nevertheless, team president Lew Hayman—once a coach of unparalleled success, now an unmitigated disaster in upper management—claimed that because of demand from fans there'd be more NFL exhibitions games. Globe and Mail columnist Milt Dunnell, however, felt the interest in the NFL was inflated because, much to the chagrin of season ticket holders, the Argos had included it as a mandatory addition to the season ticket package. For the most part, the press saw the Argos-NFL exhibition games as mere cash-grabs for a team willing to sacrifice a season's fortunes for the sake of a big day at the box office.
In a 43-16 loss to the Steelers in 1960, the biggest story pitted hall of fame quarterback Bobby Layne against Tobin Rote, the Argos' high-priced rising star, who'd stolen Layne's starting job in Detroit and led the Lions to the 1957 NFL Championship. Over the course of the 1960 CFL season, Rote led the league in every passing category and took the Argos to within a hair of the Grey Cup, but on this afternoon, he limped off the field with an injury. Layne picked the Argos' secondary apart and Steeler running back Tom "The Bomb" Tracy—himself a castoff from the CFL—ran circles around Argo defenders. Sportswriter Tony Proudfoot called the loss humiliating. In The Star, Jim Hunt called it a "debacle" and added that "the score flattered the local heroes."
When the now–St. Louis Cardinals returned to Toronto on August 2, 1961, the game once again drew at the box office but disappointed on the field. Everyone wanted to see CFL superstar Sam "The Rifle" Etcheverry make his debut as the Cardinals quarterback. But he was injured and fans were instead treated to a sloppy defensive showdown. The Argos kept former Heisman Trophy-winner John David Crow to only seven rushing yards for the entire game but sputtered themselves and actually lost 22 yards on the ground. The only real on-field drama was provided by Nobby Wirkowski. Once the quarterback hero of the 1952 Grey Cup, Wirkowski was now an assistant coach with the Argos, calling down plays to the bench from the press box. In the version of the story Wirkowski tells—there are numerous other contradictory ones—head coach Lou Agase approached him at half time:
Tobin [Rote] and [backup quarterback] John Henry Jackson had stunk out the joint in the first half. God, they were awful! Lou said to me 'we have to put on some type of show for the fans. Can you suit up and go out there?' I was wearing slacks and a shirt and hadn't even practiced that week! I said 'okay' and suited up.
Just when it seemed he was getting the Argo offense on track, Wirkowski was tackled by an enormous Cardinal lineman. Falling awkwardly, he destroyed his knee and never played again. The final score, 36-7 for St. Louis, was another lopsided result.
By this time, other CFL teams were cashing in on the novelty of playing American teams. The Montreal Alouettes lost to the Chicago Bears, while the Hamilton Tiger-Cats succeeded in beating the laughing stock of the AFL, the Buffalo Bills. The press, however, remained highly critical, arguing that staging exhibitions against the bigger NFL teams did a disservice to, even cheapened, the Canadian game. Jim Hunt compared the Argos to "a preliminary fighter put in with the heavyweight champion"; "they just didn’t have the tools for the job." For much of The Dark Ages, the Argos weren't willing to embrace that the far-reaching yet subtle rule differences in the Canadian game not only created a different style of play from that south of the border, but created a completely different sport. Instead, the team too frequently tried to contort the Canadian game into something it wasn't and in their strident efforts to appear "big league"—perfectly exemplified in the exhibitions against NFL teams—made themselves appear anything but.
Cartoon of the hybrid rules from The Star on August 1, 1959. Cartoon of Sam Etcheverry from The Star on August 2, 1961.
By Kevin Plummer in Culture on December 6, 2008 12:00 PM 0 Comments 5 Recommended Recommends [ Share + ] add to digg
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Buffalo Bills Canadian Football League Cardinals CFL Football Historicist History NFL Pittsburgh Steelers Sports Toronto Argonauts
Regular Season:
The Chicago Cardinals posted a disappointing 2-10-0 record in 1959. Heisman Trophy winner John David Crow, in his rookie season, led the Cards in rushing. Perhaps one of the reasons Chicago handled Toronto so easily in the exhibition was that their coach was so familiar with the Canadian game. Pop Ivy, former Eskimos coach from 1954 through ‘57 and still the winningest coach in CFL history (.781), coached the Cardinals. Toronto was a talented team with Dick Shatto, Danny Nykoluk, Norm Stoneburgh, Ronnie Knox, Dave Mann, and Jim Rountree. But, 1959 was a frustrating year as the team finished with a 4-10 record and a last-place finish in the Eastern Division. Dick Shatto rushed for 950 yards and led the team with 46 receptions, while a newcomer named Chester "Cookie" Gilchrist won the team's scoring title
with 75 points.
An amazing book by Argos historian, Craig Wallace
and that it won't set any financial record highs, even the Super Bowl will have difficulty defying gravity this year - some sad news from Bloomberg:
