Why 1968 was an epic year for sport

Why 1968 was an epic year for sport

1968 descended into history as one of the most culturally and politically turbulent years ever. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were murdered. There were massive protests from students all over the world. The Chicago Democratic Convention resulted in bloody clashes between police and protesters. The Vietnam War saw the My Lai massacre and the TET offensive. Richard Nixon won the presidency. And the United States was getting closer and closer to winning the space race.

But less known is that 1968 was also a particularly epic year in the sport. The Summer and Winter Olympics have had historic events. Baseball produced a record season. Golf has been an epic disaster, the NHL has been affected by tragedy, and tennis has changed forever. College football has had two notable moments, and Sports Illustrated cleverly tackled the subject of race. In a year already filled with things, sports have refused to be left out of history books.

1 O.J. Simpson won the Heisman

Before O.J. Simpson was totally-not-a-murderer, he was actually a very good football player. And when he came to play at the University, he was the best of 1968.

According to the official Heisman Trophy website, O.J. was transferred to the USC in 1967. There, he ran very quickly on the football field. This season, he led the nation rushing with 1,543 yards, scored 13 touchdowns, and was a big part of why the USC won the national title. But he came second in the Heisman vote that year.

1968 would be different. As a senior, he was even more dominant with 1,709 yards and 22 touchdowns. He carried the ball 334 times, an NCAA record. Absolutely no one was surprised when he dominated the Heisman vote, winning by a record margin of 1,750 points. He was then the first draft pick for the NFL in 1969, breaking a bunch of records, and becoming an actor. Curiously, the Heisman site completes the story of the murder trial.

OJ's Heisman would become an issue in 1997. He could have been found not guilty in the Criminal Court, but the civil court said he needed to pay the families of the victims $ 33.5 million and he did not have the money. So his property was seized. But USA Today reported that the sheriff's deputies could not find the Heisman trophy. O.J told them to push it, but in the end it would be auctioned for $ 250,000 in 1999.

2 The NHL's only player has died of an injury in a match

Hockey is a violent sport. When hand fights are a regular and expected part of a game, it's pretty bad. The players wear blades on their feet and the pucks are small, solid projectiles. But surprisingly, only one NHL player in history died because of an injury sustained during a game. His name was Bill Masterton, and it happened on the ice in 1968.

Masterton had always loved hockey, according to the star, but he was not good enough to play in the NHL, so he went and had a regular career outside the sport. Then in 1967, the league doubled to 12 teams. Suddenly, he had an offer to play for the Minnesota North Stars. He even scored their first goal. But during a game, he took a bad check on his head. He complained of a headache and his face became very red while playing, but he was never sent to a doctor.

While playing his 38th game, he took a Bodycheck routine but something went wrong. Masterton was unconscious even before touching the ground, and died 30 hours later. It is now believed that he had a brain injury, and that the last shot was just too much.

His legacy is remembered every year by the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, given to the player who "best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey. "It's a bit ironic because it was his perseverance to play hurt that killed him.

3 MLB has the year of the jug 

1968 was one of the most epic years for baseball. Newsday says that "by any metric system" it was "staggering" and that we should all still be amazed by what happened half a century later. One of the wrestlers who played that year said, "You look back on it and realize what happened, but I do not think anyone went in this season saying," Oh, yes it will be the year of the jug. " But that's how it would be in the history of sport.

Bob Gibson of the Cardinals of St. Louis (pictured later in life) was a standout individual. He was a former Harlem globetrotter "with a medium streak to go with a fast medium and refined Slider." at one point he won 15 straight games with 10 shutouts and allowed only two runs in 95 innings. Not surprisingly, he won the Cy Young Award and National League MVP that year. Gibson wrote in his autobiography, "In 1968, we from the pitching profession came as close to perfect as we have never come and probably never."

But Gibson was far from the only dominant pitcher that year. Denny McLain of the Detroit Tigers also had amazing stats and became the only pitcher of the modern era to win 30 games. The pitchers in general were so ridiculously good that the MLB lowered the height of the mound and tightened the hitting area after this season.

4 Peggy Fleming changes skating forever

The 1968 Olympic Winter Games in Grenoble, France, are remarkable for many reasons, according to the Atlantic. West Germany and East Germany both participated, the first time they had been allowed to enter as separate countries. Drug testing for athletes has been introduced, as well as sex testing for women's events. And there were some funny moments, like when the bobsleigh events had to be held in the middle of the night, because the track melted during the day.

But, for the United States at least, the biggest event at the Games was when 19-year-old Peggy Fleming won gold in women's figure skating. It would be the only gold medal in the country of the Olympic Winter Games, and it ushered in the modern era of figure skating.

American figure skating was still under reconstruction after a huge tragedy. In 1961, the entire team was heading to the World Championship, when the plane they were on crashed, killing everyone. Fleming's coach was on board. A commemorative fund was created, and the young Fleming used it to buy new skates. She would come sixth at the 1964 Olympic Games, but in 1968 she would dominate.

Fleming's victory landed on the cover of life. Sports Illustrated later wrote that it "launched the modern era of figure skating" by taking a "stilted sport" and, with a little help from the television and a now-iconic costume, would "have a wonderfully glamorous . " Thanks to Fleming, figure skating is now the most popular sport of the Olympic Winter Games.

5 The Summer Olympics saw Black Power

As if the Olympic Winter Games had not been exciting enough, then came the summer games in Mexico City. Tragically, just 10 days before the start of the Olympics, the government slaughtered up to 3,000 unarmed student protesters. So the games were already politically charged before they even started, according to the story. But they were going to be historically.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos were American stars on the track and field. He also happened to be African-American, and what was happening in the country at the time deeply affected them. They helped organize the Olympic project for human rights, a group that demanded more jobs for black coaches and canceled Olympic invitations to apartheid countries. While Smith and Carlos initially considered boycotting the games, in the end, they decided to go protest.

They won respectively gold and bronze in the 200-meter race. On the podium, they raised their fists in a Black Power salute. It was an image that would fall into the story. Smith said of that moment, "it was a cry for freedom and for human rights, we had to be seen because we could not be heard." The third man on the podium, a white Australian, did not raise his fist, but he learned what Smith and Carlos were going to do and asked in advance how he could support them.They gave him a badge of the Olympic project for human rights to wear .

The stadium broke out with racist boos and the three men would be severely punished for what they did.

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6 The Fosbury flop was invented

Less political but still notable things happened at the 1968 Summer Olympics as well. For example, Dick Fosbury completely changed the high jump to what we know today.

According to the Guardian, Fosbury has become a high jump because, as a kid, he really loved the sport, but was terrible at all major. He did not make the football team and despite being really big was a basketball disaster. He ended up trying to track and field, and the thing he was the least bad at was the high jump. Even then, it was not the smooth sail. At college, a friend bets him that he could not jump over a chair, and Fosbury not only failed, he broke his hand in the process.

At the time, most high jumpers jumped over the bar face down. Fosbury had "little success" this way, only clearing 5 '4 ", 23.5 inches short of the world record.After one afternoon he began to experiment.He tried to lift his hips to the up, and his heights suddenly began to improve immensely.More than two years, he perfected what would become the Fosbury flop.

But no one took him seriously and he only had a world ranking of 61 going into the 1968 Olympics. And then he broke the flop. More than four hours into the men's final, he cleared bar after bar, until he reached an Olympic record of 7'4 ", he cleaned it again and won gold.

He changed the high jump forever. Since 1972, no one has won a medal using another technique.

7 The masters have been decided on an incorrect performance card

The 1968 Masters should have been a little more exciting than your average golf tournament. Instead, it is in the history books as a disaster.

Bob Goalby and Roberto de Vicenzo both went for the win on the last day. In the end, they tied, which should have meant a playoff round the next day. Then the disaster happened. De Vicenzo was distracted and did not pay attention when he signed his scorecard. In golf, the person you play with keeps your score, and you sign to make it official. But the Argentine partner had made a mistake, scoring a four instead of a three for a hole. The mistake was made almost immediately, but the officials decided it was. According to Desert Sun, the guy in charge said, "you know the rules of golf, Goalby wins the tournament."

Vicenzo may have lost, but it was really a disaster for Goalby. The members of the media were obviously against him, and he said "there were very few stories written the next morning that was right.Many stories in the newspaper said I kept his score, I got it done on purpose, you know, I took the tournament away from him, for that purpose.

Subsequently, Goalby received hundreds of letters saying he was "the worst if-and-ever lived." He won 11 tournaments in his career, but the 1968 Masters was his only major title, and he was completely corrupted.

8 Sports Illustrated covered the story of racial inequality in sport

By 1968, it was impossible to ignore the importance of the civil rights movement. Then Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. Even the sport could not stay separate from what was happening. To say, "At a time of ubiquitous racial crisis in America, we felt that there was more room for complacency that until now has characterized the world of sport," Sports Illustrated began a series of five seminal weeks called "the black athlete-a shameful story."

According to the magazine itself, it would become their most famous piece of journalism ever. He challenged the idea that sport was an area of ​​society where blacks had found opportunity and equality. Calling this a "myth," the articles quoted coaches who thought they were liberal-minded still used the N-word to describe their stars. He said that when he came to black athletes "almost to a man, they are dissatisfied, disgruntled and disillusioned." Black college athletes say they are dehumanized, exploited and thrown away ... Black professional athletes say that 'they are underpaid, shunted into some stereotypical positions and treated like subhumans by Paleolithic coaches who regard them as idiotic watermelon eaters.'

An editorial of the time said SI got a bigger response from the reader than any other story in their history: 1,000 letters in just a few weeks. While they had some hate mail or people who refused to accept that there was a problem, most people were optimistic. We wrote, "Thank you for shaking me out of the dream in reality".

9 The "open period" of tennis has begun

Tennis.com wants you to know that in 1968, "things got so wild" in the world even the "old stuffy sport" "channeled the anarchic spirit." That's because tennis has finally ended a very divisive distinctive: the difference between amateurs and professionals.

The sport of tennis has always considered amateurs as the best of both. From Victorian England, it meant that you were a "gentleman" who played for the sake of the game, not for vulgar money. They are the amateurs who participated in all the big slams: Wimbledon and the Australians, French and Americans open.

Professionals, meanwhile, would play anywhere they could get a paying audience. They went around the world trying to make a living. They were talented, but they were avoided. Then they embraced the anarchy of the 1960s and pushed for "Open Tennis," where everyone was playing together. In 1968, they finally got their wish.

It happened for the first time at the British Hard Court Championships in Bournemouth, England. They had a terrible time, but 20,000 people came to watch, twice as much as the year before. The organizers called it a "Bonanza. But many of the top amateurs gave a miss because they did not want to hurt their reputation by playing in a "corrupt" tournament. Some of the best women's professionals also boycotted because the price of money for the ladies was a fraction of what men have been, starting this debate for decades long.

In the end the pros would triumph, and the open era of tennis began.

10 Texas Longhorns invented triangle formation

By going into the 1968 season, the University of Texas football team had had three terrible years. ESPN went as far as to say they were "moribund," and coach Darrell Royal was worried about losing his job. But he was busy holding the court in a restaurant near the campus, drinking with people like John Wayne, so he tasked a wizard, Emory Bellard, to come up with an offensive system that would see the team actually win a few games.

Bellard had been a high school coach two years ago, but he took the challenge. He realized that Texas had a "wealth of running backs," so why not capitalize on that and put three rushers in the backfield?

The pressure on Royal to make Texas not suck was so intense that he was ready to "Rubber-stamp" the drastic change. The first two games of the 1968 season when they used this new offense were a disaster. But then he clicked, and they won their next 30. A post Houston writer said the training looked like a triangle, and the name stuck.

The triangle has changed college football forever. Texas has won Back-to-Back Championships because of this. Other schools that have embraced him, such as Oklahoma and Alabama, have revived their football dynasties. Ultimately, it would "turn offensive football at every level of the game." for two decades, it was the only way to play collegiate football. A coach called it "one of the greatest offenses of all time" and said it is "always making an impact today".

الوسوم: sports