PatriotsInGA
In the Starting Line-Up
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2008
- Messages
- 3,658
- Reaction score
- 391
Registered Members experience this forum ad and noise-free.
CLICK HERE to Register for a free account and login for a smoother ad-free experience. It's easy, and only takes a few moments.Flying Elvis definitely
what he said
In his tricornered hat and three-point stance he has been their logo, their symbol, their one constant identity through a roller-coaster history that began with the founding of the late, lamented AFL and has now evolved into - trumpets, please - the Bill Parcells Era.
The challenge confronting the Patriots is not living down their past; it's living up to what they've promised for the future. Indeed, the suggestion - implied or inferred - that their past amounts to little more than skeletons in the family closet is not only inaccurate, it's unfair and insensitive as well, indirectly impugning scores of good people who wore that logo with grace and dignity, if not always with distinction.
John Hannah, the only Hall of Famer the franchise ever produced, made a point of saluting those unheralded troops the night before he flew to his final game, the '86 Super Bowl in New Orleans.
"I'm thinking of a lot of guys who played here and never got this chance," Hannah said emotionally. "A guy like Tommy Neville (offensive tackle, 1965-77), for example. I hate to mention names because I don't want to leave anyone out. I'm talking about guys who, wherever they are today, are probably looking at us and feeling happy for us, yet wishing deep down that this could have happened in their time instead. And I'm wishing they could have had it, too, because so many of them deserved to be where we are now. They worked hard enough for it - I mean really paid the price - but it just wasn't meant to be.
Tommy Neville wore that now-endangered little bugger on his helmet, nobly. So did Julius Adams and Jim Nance and Babe Parilli and Darryl Stingley. So did a lot of people too numerous to mention, all of whom Hannah correctly remembered as winners, records notwithstanding.
Take Houston Antwine, the massive tackle who in partnership with Bob Dee, Larry Eisenhauer and Jim Lee Hunt formed the most celebrated front four in AFL history. Those were the fat years, the mid-'60s under Mike Holovak, years of records like 10-3-1 (1964) and 8-4-2 (1966), including the year (1963) the Pats walloped Buffalo, 26-8, in a snowstorm to win the Eastern Division championship.
Antwine, a Louisiana native, attracted no college attention. He was a walk-on at Southern Illinois. The pros never wooed him either. But the Patriots did make an intriguing offer. They'd fly him to their camp in 1961 at their expense. If he made the team, fine. If he didn't, he'd pay his own fare home. Antwine jumped at the chance and ended up playing a decade with that foolish little bugger on his helmet, bowing out with the dreadful teams of the Clive Rush era.
i think you know my answer
no game
The No Chad Election. It took place sometime in the early 1980s. Michael Chamberlain, one of team owner Bill Sullivan's sons-in-law, thought the team needed a new logo, that old Pat Patriot, designed by cartoonist Phil Bissell in 1960, was out of style. Chamberlain spent more of $30,000 of the team's money on a design firm that came up with a new logo.
Thinking the new was better than the old, Chamberlain decided on an election. During halftime of a game, blown-up shots of Pat Patriot and the new logo were driven down the middle of the field, and the fans, exhorted by the public address announcer, were to cheer for their favorite. Pat Patriot got a standing ovation. The new logo got booed out of the ballpark. And $30,000 meant a lot to the Sullivans in those days.