Thread: Wow! Watch Floyd Little's Final Game With Syracuse In Color

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5T0wae4tP0

This is the 1966 Gator Bowl form Jacksonville, FL and one of the earliest surviving color sports broadcasts known to exist. The game pits 7-3 Tennessee vs. 8-2 Syracuse (featuring future Broncos Hall-of-Famer Floyd Little) and makes for a fascinating time capsule to see how college football was played and how television covered it 50 years ago.

Among the things you'll notice:
*Future Super Bowl MVP Larry Csonka as Syracuse's fullback.
*Aside from Little, there were extremely few African-Americans on the field.
*Yes, that is future Super Bowl coach Tom Coughlin playing wingback for Syracuse.
*Goalposts were on the end lines instead of the goal lines.
*There is seemingly spearing and late hits on nearly every running play.
*TV commentators were unwilling to criticize players and coaches, unlike today.
*TV ads include cigarettes which weren't banned from the airwaves until the early 70s.
*TV ads largely promoted the actual product being sold.
*"Instant Replay" was invented in 1963 (ironically used weeks later after it was first used at the 1963 Army-Navy game to replay the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald for news viewers) and you can see here that the replays in 1966 are black-and-white despite color in the "live" parts of the broadcast. Many of the graphics are crude compared to today.

There's an interview of Floyd at the end of the game where he says he could still "go another quarter or two" after running for a Gator Bowl record and returning many of their kicks. That was one tough little dude. He would be drafted by the Broncos in the first combined AFL-NFL draft so he (and all the other college players coming out that year) no longer had the negotiating leverage of playing one league's offer against the other league's offer.

Set aside a couple of hours during this off-season and remember a truly great Bronco.

Most importantly, Tennessee won.