It's hard to imagine in this era of Super Bowl parties and fantasy teams, but professional football really was not a big deal in the first half of the 20th century. It ranked behind baseball, boxing, horse racing and college football in national esteem, and across great swaths of the country, people had never seen a professional game.
"When I got back from the season, people asked me where I had been," Summerall remembered.
The league had 12 teams and played a 12-game regular season. There was no national television contract, and most games did not appear on local stations until 1956. Newspapers treated the NFL as an afterthought.
Few if any of the players in the 1958 game had grown up with dreams of playing in the NFL. Over and over, surviving players harped on how much more casual everything seemed in the 1950s.
"When I was drafted, I couldn't have told you who all the other pro teams were," said Giants halfback and subsequent broadcasting star Frank Gifford. "I heard it [that he had been drafted] on the radio on the way back from a ski trip. I didn't get a call from the Giants for a week."
The players weren't rich (even most stars made less than $10,000 a year) or particularly used to adoration. They were the sons of barbers, coal miners and farmers. Many had seen combat in World War II or Korea.
Most of the Giants couldn't afford to live in Manhattan during the offseason. In season, most lived in the Bronx, near Yankee Stadium, and took the subway downtown to hit the saloons.
In Baltimore, the Colts drank beer with steelworkers and cops at Andy's on Greenmount Avenue or ate cheeseburgers at Kusen's in the shadow of Memorial Stadium. Many had jobs and were expected at work Monday morning after playing Sunday afternoon. They were happy to own $5,000 rowhouses next to the other working folks. They coached Little League and hosted barbecues.
"We didn't want to be treated as a big deal," Marchetti said.
Players scrupulously avoided weights in the offseason lest they destroy the desired looseness in their muscles. At 245 pounds, Marchetti was a big player and at 284, his linemate, Gene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb, was a revolutionary Goliath. Many players smoked, and if they needed to bulk up, they turned to beer for help.
Film study was just coming into vogue, and in-game adjustments were primitive. "[Giants co-owner] Wellington Mara would take Polaroid shots from the stands, put them in a sock, put a rock in the sock and toss it down to the sideline," Gifford remembered. "But we hardly looked at it anyway."
