Craig Morton

Craig Morton spent a decade sometimes playing quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys stuck, as he was, between the careers of Texas folk hero Don Meredith and national legend Roger Staubach.

In 1974, the New York Giants traded a 1975 first choice and a 1976 second choice for Morton, hoping his rocket launcher arm and Cowboy background could right a Giants ship that was listing at 1-5 and about to go under.

Craig Morton: Bad team, ugly helmet logo

For a moment, it looked like a brilliant move. In his first full week as a Giant, Morton led the team to an upset win over the Kansas City Chiefs, a glimmer of daylight in a gloomy year that saw the Giants lose the rest of their games that season.

But with a roster of guys either on the wrong side of 30 or rookies, the Giants’ issues went further than quarterback, compounded by three years spent wandering the wilderness with home games played at the Yale Bowl in New Haven and at Shea Stadium while Yankee Stadium was under renovation and Giants Stadium was under construction.

Over the next two years the Giants finished 8-25 with Morton. He was traded to Denver and took them to Super Bowl. The Cowboys used the first-round choice from the Giants to select defensive tackle Randy White, who’d end up in the Hall of Fame.

The Giants only dug themselves an even deeper hole, turning to Paterson Plank Joe Pisarcik at quarterback.

“We needed Morton, we had to have a competent quarterback. Maybe we paid too much for him. We probably did. But there was no choice, not really, and I’d do it again,” Giants general manager Andy Robustelli said later. “I think Morton was the right guy but on the wrong team.

“Craig often needed a kick in the ass to get his attention and let him know he couldn’t call his own tune. Instead of being the positive influence I had sought, the opposite occurred. I take nothing away from Craig’s football abilities, but he was not the kind of leader we sought.”

Craig Morton died earlier this month, age 83. His time with the Giants was short but it felt like an eternity at the time, Morton forever running for his life, playing for a team that was forever on the road.

Postscript:

Had they existed back then, the internet, ESPN, sports talk radio and every barroom and office baseball and football fantasy league would have blown up on October 22, 1974.

It was a Tuesday, the NFL’s last call for trading. The Giants followed the Morton deal by sending incumbent quarterback Norm (Losing Pitcher) Snead to San Francisco for two draft choices. The Green Bay Packers in desperation traded five choices, including two first rounders, to Los Angeles for 35-year-old quarterback John Hadl. Kansas City sent John Matuszak to Houston for Curley Culp.

And if all that wasn’t enough, in a mind-blowing deal, the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants announced they had swapped Bobby Murcer “the next Mickey Mantle,” for Bobby Bonds, “the next Willie Mays.”

Nowadays, trades are rare and if they happen at all they’re based on data or salary cap implications. In 1974 it was all driven by gut instincts and angry team owners.

C.C. & Company

The following is part of the So Bad It's Good blogathon hosted at 

Taking Up Room – Reviews. History. Life.

It’s never good when the best part of a movie is its first five minutes.

C.C. & Company (19700 starts with Joe Namath, as a member of an outlaw biker gang “The Heads,” pretending to grocery shop while actually making a sandwich for himself by taking food from the shelves (and resealing packages as he goes along – the golden age of product tampering), washing it down with a stolen pint of milk, then helping himself to a napkin and a package of Twinkies, begging the question, do biker gang members use napkins? Or eat Twinkies?

Never underestimate the importance of a nutritious lunch 

From that point forward, C.C. & Company unfolds like an R-rated Elvis movie, with Namath as the loner with a chip on his shoulder but a heart of gold. He even gets a cool Elvis character name, C.C. Ryder. And like many Elvis movies, C.C. & Company ends with a climactic alpha-male competition where the hero wipes the smirk from his rival.

(There’s no way Presley would have signed on for C.C. & Company. There’s beer guzzling, disrespect for authority, a biker chick skinny-dipping, a couple of blurred nude biker asses and Ann-Margret telling a biker to fuck off).

Namath, at the time one of the most recognizable people in America, got the call. When his New York Jets upset the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl, he was everywhere. Books, magazine covers, a syndicated talk show, commercials. The path led, inevitably, to movies.

After their not-so-cute first meeting – C.C. steps in to stop two of his motorcycle buddies from raping Ann (Ann-Margret) when her limo breaks down in the desert – C.C. wins first prize in a motorcross event and leaves The Heads, pocketing the prize money instead of tossing it into the gang’s beer fund, angering head Head Moon, played by the always menacing and excellent William Smith. Other Heads include notables Sid Haig and Bruce Glover, all of whom, in the golden tradition of biker movies, generally behave like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It also leads us to wonder how clean-cut C.C. ever got mixed up these guys. He doesn’t drink or smoke, and while the rest of the Heads are acting up, he works on his motorcycle. Marlon Brando = the Wild One, C.C. = the Mild One.

C.C. quits The Heads, trades in his motorcycle jacket for track suits and striped bellbottoms, and hooks up with Ann. They hit a club where, in an ultra-meta moment, the bizarrely coiffed Wayne Cochran and his band, the C.C. Riders sing the blues/rock standard See See Rider.

Wayne Cochran gets ultra-meta

That’s followed by a Hallmark moment “falling in love” montage, C.C. and Ann feeding ducks and riding a pedal boat as Today: The Love Theme from C.C. & Company sung by Miss Margret provides a suitable soundtrack.

But the Heads are still trying to reclaim the money C.C. took. They kidnap Ann from her huge glass-walled home – we’re not sure what she does for a living. At one point it’s said she owns a New York City “fashion house,” but she also seems to art direct photo shoots and write news releases.

All of it leads up to the big motorcycle race/duel to the death between C.C. and Moon seemingly lit with a flashlight.

Namath is personable, self-deprecating and laid-back. He isn’t given much in the way of dialogue (or at least many lines of dialogue strung together) so there’s no need for any emotional heavy lifting. Ann-Margret and William Smith handle that department.

As biker gang movies go, C.C. & Company is pretty tame. It’s worth checking out, but if you switch to something else after the sandwich scene, it’s understood.

Detroit cool

For a couple of hours there, it looked like we lost Lem Barney.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the NFL Hall of Fame announced Barney’s death at age 80 and published an obituary, only to follow up a few hours later admitting that the news was unconfirmed, a false report.

Lem Barney, 1971

Born in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1945, Barney was a standout at Jackson State University during a golden age of historically black colleges and universities football programs. Drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1967, his rookie season is still considered one of the best by a defensive back — 10 interceptions and the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year award. Over his 11-year career, he totaled 56 interceptions, seven defensive touchdowns, seven Pro Bowls, and three All-Pro selections before entering the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1992.

(1967 was a big year for Barney. In the off-season he was married and also served six months of active duty in the Navy).

Barney was also a spectacular kick returner. His 61-yard punt return against Cincinnati in 1970, a display of cunning and confidence, should run on an endless loop in the Football Hall of Fame. A Cincinnati punt hits the ground in front of Barney as three Bengals close in. But they can’t locate the bouncing ball and during the confusion, Barney grabs it off the ground and outraces everyone for a touchdown.

Playing in Detroit had some advantages and in 1968, Barney and teammate Mel Farr became friends with Marvin Gaye, who lived in a toney Detroit suburb. The three bonded over sports and music, playing golf and shooting hoops.

Marvin

When songwriters Obie Benson and Al Cleveland shopped their very un-Motown song about the state of America circa 1970, Gaye agreed to sing What’s Going On but only if Barney and Farr sang background vocals.

They’d been in the studio before as Gaye’s guests, but they were now behind microphones contributing to the background singing and the soul-brother speak that fades in and out of the mix: ‘Hey, brother, what’s happening?! Solid! Right on!”

At a time when there was zero crossover between sports and popular music – these were the days when Anita Bryant and Al Hirt provided the halftime entertainment at Super Bowls – Barney and Farr became athletic avatars of cool.

Yet just as Barney and Farr were hanging their gold record plaques, Gaye had another request: he wanted to try out, at age 31 and with no experience, for the Lions.

He moved his Rolls Royce out of his garage, turned it into a gym and began an impressive training regimen, running 4-5 miles per day and lifting weights, bulking up nearly 30 pounds.

The Lions organization agreed to give Gaye a tryout; after all, this was the team that once allowed George Plimpton to attend training camp and play quarterback in a preseason game. Gaye looked good, but not good enough to be invited to camp.

Gaye would have one more brush with sports when he sang the national anthem before the 1983 NBA All-Star game, a remarkably cool performance of that awkwardly phrased “song” that had women in the audience swooning.

Barney would get another chance at show biz, starring as one of The Black Six (1974) a biker exploitation flick that included five other NFL bad asses.

Marvin Gaye died on April Fool’s Day, 1984, shot to death by his father. Barney and his wife attended Gaye’s funeral. Farr passed in 2015. As of today, Lem Barney is still alive and hopefully well.