Monday, Dec. 29, 2008

Weeb Ewbank

The Game: Convinced that the Giants were spying on him, the Colts head coach refused to detail plays in the Yankee Stadium locker room because he was convinced it was bugged. He mouthed them instead. Ewbank had some reason to be paranoid. The Colts had spied on the Giants practices all week, and he feared revenge.

Post-Game: Came back to haunt his former team in 1969, when as head coach of the New York Jets Ewbank guided his upstart AFL team, led by cocky quarterback and victory-guarantor Joe Namath, to a 16-7 upset of the mighty Colts. The NBC broadcast of the Colts-Giants championship had been lost, but in 1998 a documentary producer discovered raw footage of the game, taken by a Colts cinematographer, among a pile of film canisters in the corner of Ewbank's house. Ewbank, a 1978 Hall of Fame inductee, died later that year, at the age of 91.