If not for Sullivan, the franchise would have been in Philadelphia.
The deal was already set.
The team would have had to be sold to out of state interests without a stadium. Without state or Boston funding he slapped together Schaefer stadium and kept a team in Massachusetts again.
I guess in an era of billionaires and state of the art stadiums, it's hard to imagine a guy grabbing a team that's already assigned to another city and devoting his whole life to keeping it afloat.
The Billy Sullivan Patriots were like the little girl with the curl. When they were good, they were damned good. When they were bad?....at least entertaining.
I'm sure the old time fans have enjoyed our success as much or more than anyone. World class all the way From Kraft and BB on down.
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But something in me will always root for the guy who doesn't have anything going for him but heart.
People don't believe it, but the early 60's teams were very competitive, with a great four man line, Parrilli, Cappeletti and some decent backs including Garron and later Jim Nance. Sullivan must have known a little about football, because there wasn't much more than him and Holovak back then.
I would seriously say that you could pick a team from the late 70's to the 85 Super Bowl team as good or better than any Patriot team, excluding Mr. Brady, of course. I don't care to argue the point, but start with a defensive backfield of Haynes and Clayborn and John Hannah at guard and you're competitive with most any team, not just any Patriots team.
Yeah, Sullivan stole when he had to...he stole the team right from under The Philadelphia Baseball organization.
(From Annihilus's great history page at Patriots Planet)
Patriots Planet
Boston Herald.
November 11, 1959
Bill Cunningham
I can't honestly say Mr. Sullivan didn't mention to me what he was up to. In fact, I couldn't avoid knowing he was on the long-distance telephone practically all day Sunday. That was after the story in Sunday's papers that Philadelphia, not Boston, had the inside track for the new league's eighth franchise
It further said Bob Carpenter, the Phil's baseball magnate, would announce his new connection with pro football at a special press conference called for 10 o'clock Monday morning...You'll notice he didn't.
According to one of my favorite movies nothing is a pretty cool hand.
Billy Sullivan played his hand full of nothing for 28 years and I always thought it was pretty cool. Awful in spots, but always entertaining and always from the heart.
A lot of the silliness is in this article, and that was part of the fun. I cherry picked some quotes from the other viewpoint though.
Archives - Brockton, MA - The Enterprise
It seems the Patriots have been battling the odds since Nov. 16, 1959, when it was announced that Billy Sullivan had scraped up enough money to plunk down the $25,000 fee required to field a franchise in the fledgling American Football League. Rather symbolically, Sullivan opened the team's offices in the basement of a building in downtown Boston.
"God bless 'em, they tried. The Sullivans meant well," said Tippett, the franchise's all-time sack leader with an even 100. "They wanted it to be like it is today. They just lacked the financial resources to make it happen."...
"Billy Sullivan did everything he could on limited resources," said Grogan. "We were close a few times. We had some great teams � '76 and we went to the Super Bowl � but for one reason or another we were lacking a little bit."...
"The Sullivans were great to me. They did the best with what they had," said Jones (Cedric), who now works for the National Football League as its vice president of youth football development. "Patrick (the team's general manager), Chuck and Mr. Sullivan poured their hearts and souls into it, but they didn't have deep pockets. They didn't have the funds that Mr. Kraft had from his other businesses."...
"We had some good, young players, though," said Tippett, "and we'll always be able to say that we (were the Patriots team that) went to the (franchise's) first Super Bowl."...
Raymond Berry's 1985 wild-card team did the unthinkable in winning three playoff games on the road to get to Super Bowl XX
And you sure couldn't say they weren't fighters.:violent:
Ciao