NFL's decision to play two days after JFK's murder was big mistake

The players were told not to go to dinner in a big group. They were told not to wear team colors or tell anyone where they were from or why they were there. They were told that when they took the field at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, that they would be referred to as "the Cowboys." The city name, Dallas, would never be mentioned.

Fifty years ago Friday, after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, there was no plan for what should or should not be done with sporting events in the wake of a national tragedy. In a decision that he later would call his biggest regret as NFL commissioner, the late Pete Rozelle did not postpone the games scheduled for Sunday, two days after the assassination. Fourteen teams, including the Cowboys and Browns in Cleveland, were preparing to play when many players didn't feel like playing.

By contrast, the rival American Football League postponed its three games scheduled for the weekend.

Several days later, in what would become a model for times when sports collided with the real world, the Pentagon postponed the annual Army-Navy game, scheduled for Nov. 30, the following Saturday, to Dec. 7.

President Kennedy, a U.S. Navy commander of a PT boat during World War II, had planned to attend the game at Philadelphia's Municipal Stadium. Instead, it was played as a tribute game with the initials "JFK" painted in the end zone of the stadium that later would be renamed for him.

A different world

The Army-Navy model -- a period of mourning followed by a tribute game -- is almost identical to what took place after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and after Hurricane Katrina.

SEE PHOTOSPhotos: Recalling JFK, who was born 101 years ago today

"It's almost become a ritual or tradition where we find a single sporting event that will give meaning to the tragedy that has just occurred," said Michael Gavin, the author of "Sports in the Aftermath of Tragedy: From Kennedy to Katrina.''

"In my research, the Army-Navy game was really the first.''

It wasn't planned that way. Of course, there was nothing planned or prepared for what happened 50 years ago. About 75 percent of college football games that weekend were postponed or canceled, but the NFL played on.

The Cowboys were getting in a final practice that Friday afternoon before flying to Cleveland. Gil Brandt, the Cowboys vice president of personnel, was in his office preparing for the upcoming college draft when team president Tex Schramm flung open the door.

SEE PHOTOSKennedys in movies and TV

"He said he had just gotten a call from the league office and the president had been shot,'' Brandt said in a phone interview this week.

Brandt recalled that most of the Cowboys players didn't want to play. But Rozelle decided to go ahead with all seven scheduled games after talking with JFK press secretary Pierre Salinger, a classmate of Rozelle's at the University of San Francisco. Salinger later said he thought the country "needed some normalcy, and football, which is a very important game in our society, helped provide it.''

Reality TV

The NFL games that Sunday were not televised, pre-empted by coverage from Dallas on a deeply disturbing day. Accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was gunned down late that morning on a jailhouse perp walk that was televised live, and he died about two hours later. But the games were heavily attended, with three sellouts. There were no player introductions at any of the stadiums and no halftime shows.

"The players may have been upset, but my research shows that a lot of fans weren't all that offended by Rozelle's decision at the time,'' Gavin said. "That's not how it's remembered, though.''

Nothing was normal about the scene the Cowboys encountered at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium. Representing a city that had become notorious overnight, Cowboys team buses bypassed the main gate and used a side entrance. During warm-ups, some fans yelled insults at the players, although Brandt doesn't remember any large-scale booing. Things turned surreal, however, after the team returned to the locker room, and minutes before kickoff a security guard ran in yelling that "the guy who killed the president'' had just been killed.

"I was in the locker room and my head was swimming,'' Brandt recalls. "I'm not sure how we played that game. I think we just went through the motions. I don't think anyone felt comfortable playing, but it was just too late to turn back.''

The final score -- Cleveland 27, Dallas 17 -- was a meaningless footnote.

The same, however, cannot be said about the Army-Navy game, which was played 13 days later.

This was the pre-Super Bowl era when college football was still more popular than the NFL in many parts of the country. When it came to big games, the Army-Navy rivalry ranked right up there with Michigan-Ohio State and UCLA-Southern Cal. Navy was 7-1, eyeing a national championship and led by junior quarterback Roger Staubach, who would win the Heisman Trophy. Army was 7-2, and quarterbacked by junior Rollie Stichweh, a former three-sport standout at Mineola High School.

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, some thought the game wouldn't be played at all.

"We were devastated,'' Stichweh said. "That was our 9/11.''

On Tuesday, Nov. 26 -- the day after Kennedy's burial -- the Pentagon announced that the Army-Navy game would be played Dec. 7 in Philadelphia. It's been reported that it was Jacqueline Kennedy, the president's widow, who urged that the game be played because it had been one of her husband's favorite sporting events. The nationally televised contest drew a crowd of 102,000.

LI's Stichweh leads the way

The game opened with a prayer and a moment of silence, but ended in pandemonium. Stichweh scored on a touchdown and a two-point conversion with 6:19 to play to cut Navy's lead to 21-15. And after Stichweh recovered the onside kick, he led the Cadets on a drive to the Navy 2-yard line. On fourth down, with no timeouts and the final seconds ticking away, the crowd noise was deafening. Stichweh asked for an official's timeout, but he didn't get it and the clock ran out. Army lost.

The result sent No. 2-ranked Navy to the Cotton Bowl -- in Dallas -- against No. 1 Texas, and in a way helped a grieving nation to focus on something other than the assassination.

"At the time, we were young guys and it was a crushing disappointment,'' Stichweh said of losing to Navy. "We were not comprehending the bigger messages. Of course, since then I've come to see it as something that helped us transition from this grief and feeling depressed. It was something people could cheer about and get some normalcy back in their lives.''

Of course, for those involved in the game, life later would be a different sort of normal.

Stichweh and Staubach would become lifelong friends. Stichweh would beat Navy and Staubach the following year before heading to Vietnam as a junior combat officer in the 173rd Airborne Brigade. Stichweh would lose 26 of his classmates in Vietnam, including his best friend, who was in his wedding party.

Staubach also would do a tour of duty in Vietnam before heading to the Cowboys, where he helped rehabilitate the national image of the city by leading what became known as America's Team to two Super Bowl victories.

Said Stichweh: "All of us who were involved in that game can look back and be proud. Army came up short in the game, and I take full accountability. But I think after all these years, that we all came up a winner.''