This document provides a summary of football highlights from 1962, including stadiums, championships, and notable games. Some key details include: - Cleveland Municipal Stadium and Mile High Stadium in Denver were both multi-purpose stadiums that hosted baseball and football teams. - The Green Bay Packers won their second straight NFL championship in 1962 against the New York Giants. - The American Football League (AFL) was still active in 1962 and featured notable innovations like names on jerseys. - Notable college football stadiums constructed in 1962 included Falcon Stadium and Kidd Brewer Stadium. - The document highlights championship games and provides video links to NFL, AFL, and college football games from 1962.

1. Football Highlights of 1962
by Donald Dale Milne
https://www.roadtrip62.com/football-highlights-of-1962.htm
Hello sports fans! Today Roadtrip-‘62 ™ takes a look at football in 1962. I’ll start with the stadiums, which back then typically hosted both a baseball
team and football team. Cleveland is a good example, with both the Cleveland Indians and Cleveland Browns playing at Cleveland Municipal Stadium back
then. That was one of the early multi-purpose stadiums, originally constructed in 1932 in a failed bid by Cleveland to host the Olympics. It was demolished in
1996 and a new Cleveland Browns Stadium now stands on the lakefront site of the former Municipal Stadium. Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado was also
a multi-purpose stadium, built in 1948 to host the Denver Bears baseball team. It was expanded to accommodate the Denver Broncos, who began playing there
in 1960.
Cleveland Municipal Stadium, Cleveland Ohio (From Photoscream at Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/67827566@N00 ), used by permission.)

2. No new NFL or AFL stadiums opened in 1962. The most recent new stadium before that was Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which opened
in 1957. Lambeau is of course the home of the Green Bay Packers and the stadium was first called City Stadium, the same as its predecessor at the city’s East
High School. It was renamed in 1965 to honor Packers founder, player, and long-time head coach, Curly Lambeau. It is now the oldest continually operating
NFL stadium. When opened, capacity was 32,132 attendees, but it was expanded in 1961 to 38,669, so we would have seen the larger stadium in 1962. The
Green Bay Packers won their second straight National Football League championship this year, defeating the New York Giants. (more on that later)
Two college football stadiums currently in use were constructed in 1962, Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Kidd Brewer Stadium in
Boone, North Carolina. Falcon Stadium is the home of the Air Force Falcons of the United States Air Force Academy. Kidd Brewer Stadium is the home of the
Mountaineers of Appalachian State University. While Green Bay may be unusual for having NFL games played at a municipal high school stadium, many teams
in both the NFL and AFL played at college stadiums. On our US-6 roadtrip through Los Angeles (see https://www.roadtrip62.com/us-6-day-36-sun-valley-la-ca-
long-beach-ca.htm ), we passed the University of Southern California and Exposition Park, right next door. One of the features of Exposition Park is Los Angeles
Memorial Coliseum, which is handy for the USC Trojan’s football team, which plays here. The Coliseum was also home to the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams from
1946-1978.
Lambeau Field, Green-Bay, Wisconsin (Photo by HollyAM at Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:HollyAm ), licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ ).)

3. You may have noticed that I’ve been mentioning two professional football leagues in 1962. That’s because we still had a second pro league, the
American Football League (AFL). The AFL played from 1960-69, merging with the National Football League effective in 1970. Many of the features of
modern football were first adopted by the AFL, such as the two-point conversion, names on the players' jerseys, and nationally televising of all league games
with all teams sharing in the TV revenue. The league also had many civil rights firsts, including the first black head scout and the first black starting
quarterbacks of the modern era. The league began with 8 teams from 1960-65: the Boston Patriots, the Buffalo Bills, the Houston Oilers, the New York Titans
(which became the Jets in 1963), the Dallas Texans (who moved and became the Kansas City Chiefs in 1963), the Denver Broncos, the Los Angeles Chargers
(who moved to San Diego in 1961 and became the Chargers), and the Oakland Raiders. It added a new team in 1966-67, the Miami Dolphins, and a final team in
1968, the Cincinnati Bengals. And of course, the Super Bowl owes its beginnings to the AFL, because without two leagues to challenge each other, it would not
have begun. This first World Championship Game was played in 1967.
1962 Jimmy Hill Post Cereal football card (photo from an online auction)

4. Since I never played football, even in junior high school, football cards were more interesting than the actual game. There were three companies
printing cards in 1962. Topps and Fleer both packaged them with their bubble gum, like baseball cards. But unlike the Topps and Fleer cards, Post Cereals cards
were printed on the backs of various cereal boxes. That meant kids had to cut the cards out themselves and so the margins of surviving cards can vary a lot. Post
Cereals published 200 cards in their set, and all are NFL players. They are broken down alphabetically by team city and then the player's last name. They
published more cards than Topps, meaning that many players featured in the Post set did not have cards in the Topps set, including some who debuted as rookies
in 1962. Card #1 was Henry Jordan, a defensive tackle for the Green Bay Packers. He was named the Outstanding Lineman of the 1962 Pro Bowl classic game.
1962 Alex Karras Topps football card (photo from an online auction)
Topps published 176 cards in their set, and they were released in a single series. Many of the black-and-white inset photos on the 1962 Topps cards do
not show the player whose name is on the card! Topps altered the jersey number on some of the images to match the number of the player. After one year of
featuring players from both the NFL and the AFL, Topps returned to their practice of having only NFL players. Card #1 was John Unitas, Baltimore Colts
quarterback, who was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. His record of at least one touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games stood for more than
50 years. Fleer published only 88 cards in their set. For 1962, Fleer returned to featuring only players from the AFL after a year where both leagues were
included in its set. The set is numbered so the players are grouped by team name. Card #1 was Billy Lott, Boston Patriots fullback. He played only one more
year after 1962.

5. 1962 Johnny Green Fleer football card (photo from an online auction)
Enjoy some video highlights from great 1962 football games! First up is the conclusion of the 1962 NFL Championship Game between the Green Bay
Packers and the New York Giants. The game was played at Yankee Stadium in New York on December 30, 1962. Temperatures during the game were in the
low teens and a raw wind with sustained speeds of 31mph was blowing steadily. Television crews used bonfires to thaw out their cameras, and still one
cameraman suffered frostbite! The conditions of course made throwing the ball difficult. Some fans tore up wooden benches in the bleachers and set fire to
them for warmth! The Cardinal Dougherty High School marching band from Philadelphia performed the halftime show and band members recall, "We didn't
have any thermal underwear. We were so cold that when we finished our pregame performance we were all crying." The horns did not perform due to the cold:
lips might freeze to the metal mouthpieces. Green Bay, perhaps used to the cold, won the match 16-7. You can watch at the NFL website:
http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-videos/0ap2000000253457/1962-NFL-Championship-film-Conclusion .

6. Next we have highlights from the 1962 AFL Championship game between the Houston Oilers and the Dallas Texans. The game was played at Jeppesen
Stadium in Houston, Texas on December 23, 1962. Acting as an honorary referee, Astronaut Gus Grissom placed the ball on the kicking tee at the start. At the
time, it was the longest game in the history of professional American football, and it remains the longest professional championship game in football history. It
ran into two overtimes, including a sudden-death overtime. Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLSBHJpHsRY&feature=youtu.be : Dallas won the
match 20-17.
In college bowl game action from 1962, we have a link to the 1962 Liberty Bowl Game. This game was held in Philadelphia between the Oregon State
Beavers versus the Villanova Wildcats on December 15, 1962. You can see Terry Baker's long run for the only score of the game. Bad weather made for a
frozen field, with the temperature never reaching over 25 degrees. The film also shows highlights from the remainder of Oregon State University 1962's games,
including contests versus Iowa State, Iowa, Stanford, Washington, University of Pacific, West Virginia, Washington State, Idaho, Colorado State, and Oregon.
You can view the video at the Oregon State University website: https://media.oregonstate.edu/media/t/0_gad1ifum . Other bowl games played in 1962 were the
Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Gator Bowl, Bluebonnet Bowl, and the Gotham Bowl. Speaking of college football, the rankings operated
differently in 1962 than they do today. The 1962 NCAA University Division football rankings were a combination of two human polls, the Associated Press Poll
and the NCAA Coaches’ Poll. Unlike most sports, college football's governing body, the NCAA, does not give a national championship.
And finally, we have football for the rest of the world, which we call soccer. The FIFA World Cup Soccer Games were held in Chile in 1962, resulting
in a case of notoriously bad sportsmanship known as the Battle of Santiago. You won’t find Roadtrip-‘62 ™ heading to Chile anytime, but come back soon for a
short trip down highway US-25. Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOtL1m1o_ok&feature=youtu.be .
Chile 1962 5c World Cup Soccer Stamp

7. Visit ROADTRIP-'62 ™ ( https://www.roadtrip62.com/index.htm )for more articles.
Or visit us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Roadtrip62/119235794845685 ,
Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/roadtrip62/ ,
or Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/67972937@N07/page1 .
Author of Roadtrip-'62 ™ ( https://www.roadtrip62.com/ ), Donald Dale Milne
If you haven’t heard of Roadtrip-62™ , my name is Don Milne and I'll be your travel guide on this virtual tour of the U. S. of A. First, I suppose you're
wondering why Roadtrip-62™ is different from other travel sites? There's a very simple answer: everybody else travels only in space, but we also travel in time!
That's right, we don't just go somewhere, we also go somewhen. And the when is 1962. We'll try to see what's left today from 1962, by driving as if it were 1962.
We will drive on highways as they were in 1962, try to eat only at restaurants that existed in 1962, try to stay only at motels that existed in 1962, try to buy gas
and sundries, play the music, see only the sites across America, and just generally live in America as it was in 1962!
What we will do is enjoy the FUN of cross-country driving. And the fun of cross-country travel is all the differences from our everyday life! We'll talk
about politics, food, great inventions, how people lived, television, and more. We'll get to see some of the people that made our history; that made this country
great. We'll stumble across unexpected pleasures, like one trip I made through Cherokee, North Carolina where I just happened to be in town as the 1996
Olympic Torch procession came through on it's way to Atlanta, Georgia. You really never know what you'll find when you travel!

8. 1962-style US-23 signs
Now, let's see where we'll be going! We're going to drive the US-numbered routes of 1962. Because we'll be using the roads of 1962, that means we
won't be on freeways very much. There weren't many freeways in 1962, as the country had just begun building the Interstate system,, so we'll travel mostly the
two-lanes through every little town on the way. Sometimes even where there was a freeway, I'll go back on the old road just to see what was there. Anyway, even
if there was a freeway in 1962, it was only there for a couple of years and things had not changed much. Sometimes a "business route" ran through a town on the
old route, because there were no services at the freeway interchanges yet.
Just in case you're asking why 1962, it's because I remember 1962. I traveled on my first freeway as a boy with my dad about that time, and fell in love
with both travel and freeways. But, besides my own memories and the fact that it was a time largely before interstate freeways, 1962 is just cool...wait and see!
And I'm writing this virtual tour just because I like to drive. I like to go places, see things, and just drive for the joy of driving! I decided I want to talk about it, to
share the fun with others. I'll be doing the driving on Roadtrip-62 ™, but if you see anything you like, I encourage you to get out on the road and enjoy it in
person. This virtual roadtrip may be fun, but there's nothing like the real thing!