When Syracuse Whipped Texas for the National Title
When Syracuse Whipped Texas NFL Jerseys Supply for the National Title
In 1960, an undefeated (11 0) Syracuse football team throughly whipped Texas, 23 14, in the Cotton Bowl to win the 1959 college national championship. The Syracuse team featured at least one genuine star: eventual Heisman winner Ernie Davis, the first African American to win the trophy, who would score twice in the Cotton Bowl and was voted the game MVP. Both teams, it turns out, were as tough as any that have ever played for the Nike NFL Jerseys China national title. As LIFE magazine noted in its Jan. Schwartzwalder, an ex paratrooper who had developed Syracuse into the the best college team of 1959, maybe the best team in a decade. He coaches as though getting the team ready for a full scale invasion climbing 20 foot ropes and sprinting half miles.
Last week after annihilating every team they met during the regular season, the hard noses from Syracuse ran into some hard noses from Texas in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas and some tough and bitter things began to happen. Each snap of the ball became a signal for a brawl. A near free brought Benny out on the field to defend his men and avert an honest Cheap Nike NFL Jerseys to goodness fight.
But LIFE also reported that the game moved back and forth on the field and the normal tensions of the players were increased by the body crunching fury of the play, an ugly undercurrent of racial bitterness began to spread with shocking results. But this was short lived. was really dirty, said one Syracuse player afterward. never met a bunch like that before. Once when he was plowing through the line, said Negro fullback Art Baker, of them spit right in my face. To goad him off balance, Brown claimed, Stephens kept calling him big black dirty nigger. Finally, Brown warned him not to call him that again. When Stephens did, Brown swung.
Afterward Stephens apologized to Brown. But Brown had already forgiven him. Texas boy was just excited, he said. forget it. of this back and forth was dramatized in The Express, the largely Wholesale Jerseys fanciful 2008 film about Ernie Davis life. (Davis died of acute monocytic leukemia in 1963, at just 23 years old, before getting a chance to play in the NFL). Both Syracuse and Texas players have noted that quite a bit in the film was pure fiction, and many Texas players have stated in the years since that there was little racial animus on display during that long ago Cotton Bowl.
A number of Syracuse players, meanwhile, respectfully disagree with their Longhorn counterparts version of the game even as Brown himself long argued that many of the racially charged scenarios depicted in The Express were embellished, or even wholly made up.
The Complete Second Season
The replica?oakleys Complete Second Season
Back before there was a second STAR WARS movie in theaters, one of the top shows on network TV was THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. On the tube for seven seasons, the show found a second life later in syndication and then on country cable channels such as TNN, before it became SpikeTV. As for myself, I remember watching the Duke boys careen around Hazzard Country on Friday nights, and for the most part, have fond but fuzzy memories of the show. For a nine year old like myself it wasn't a must see like THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO but still, can any kid that age resist the charm of a show that practically guarantees plenty of cars jumping off of ramps every week?
Now that I've had to chance to watch the second season of THE DUKES OF HAZZARD, all thanks to the miracle that is DVD, that sentimental feeling of being nine and not having a care in the world washes over me once again. THE DUKES OF HAZZARD wasn't cutting edge programming; it's essentially the same story week after week, just with different guest stars. Even the backroads of Hazzard County, which turned out to be just the backlot at Warner Bros., get recycled again and again, but the beauty of DUKES is that it's a fake?oakleys fun show to watch without engaging your brain too much.
Perhaps the show's greatest strength came from the performances of the actors. Tune into the DUKES and you know Sorrell Booke's Boss Hogg is going to be the same slimy guy week after week, or that Denver Pyle's Uncle Jesse ain't ever going to lose his grouchiness, but their characters are all likeable and, more importantly, relatable even to people who've never been to the South. It also helps that even though the show's premise is based on two grown Southern men behaving like borderline criminals, there's a strong sense of family between all of the players, even with the bad guys like Hogg and Sheriff Coltrane (James Best). That's probably what's kept the show in the minds of viewers this past quarter of a century, moreso than the car chases and short shorts that Daisy (Catherine Bach) wears every episode.
I could explain some of the episodes in greater detail but really, is there a need? You know what to expect, and to the show's credit it does spice things up a bit this season with guest appearances from country singer Loretta Lynn (remember, Sissy Spacek's COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER was huge around this time) and race car driver Cale Yarborough. Still, you know the drill: there's some kind of shady dealing going on, the Duke boys gets wind of it, car chases happen and by the end of the show everything has worked out just fine. It's bulletproof!
Included in the set are two bonus supplements, the first being the screen tests for the two Duke boys, stars Tom Wopat and John Schneider. The other feature is a documentary covering the 25th anniversary festival celebrating the show, and I have to admit that it was here that something clicked in my head and the show's appeal became all the more clearer. Watching thousands of fans come together to meet the stars, show off their garage built General Lees and see some of the show's car stunts played out in real life, the thought occurred to me that this was really no different than what happens at a STAR TREK convention (that is, minus the flying cars) or any other kind of gathering where one facet of pop culture is celebrated by its fans. Maybe it's the geek inside of me, but when I made the connection between what was going on with this DUKES festival and the various nerd cons that I've been to, I realized that the idea of having a DUKES OF HAZZARD get together makes just as much sense as any of the others. Also, pay attention here: no STAR TREK con that I've ever heard of has a bunch of good looking folk dressed up Daisy, Luke or Bo Duke; and on the nine year old coolness meter the General Lee manages to rate as high as Han Solo's Millennium Falcon.
In the end I liked my trip back to Hazzard Country but that buy?fake?oakleys I would recommend watching these episodes one or two at a time or saved for a lazy Sunday spent around the house. While enjoyable, it's remains best to spend my time with the Duke boys in short doses.