Name: Sudden Death
SKU: 9781645386162
Availability: InStock

Description

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Sudden Death: The Green Bay Packers, the Baltimore Colts, and the NFL, 1965

By Richard J. Petre, Jr.

In pro football, the 1965 season was an exclamation point in the sport’s golden age. It was the turning point in the war between the establishment NFL with 14 teams and the insurgent American Football League and featured many of the greatest players ever like Johnny Unitas and Jim Brown, who were longtime stars, and Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers, who were first-year wonders.

The 1965 season offered an epic Western Conference battle between two great teams, the Green Bay Packers and the Baltimore Colts. On the sidelines, Vince Lombardi and Don Shula. On the field, 16 future members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame such as Unitas, Bart Starr, Lenny Moore, Ray Nitschke, John Mackey, Forrest Gregg, Raymond Berry, Herb Adderley, Jim Parker, and Jim Taylor.

After 14 weeks, the two teams were tied. One game the day after Christmas at newly named Lambeau Field would decide the conference championship. And then after four quarters and a stalemate, just one score would.

This is the story of the 1965 NFL season, played against a backdrop of national unrest and war in Vietnam, told through that historic conference race waged by Green Bay and Baltimore.

Author Richard J. Petre Jr. is a retired Louisiana lawyer and the author of a legal handbook. More important, he remembers kids wanting to be Johnny Unitas and Sandy Koufax, listening to games on faraway AM radio stations through bursts of static, and devouring box scores and tables showing league leaders in morning and evening newspapers tossed on front lawns. This is his tribute to that time. He lives in Mandeville, Louisiana.