For many of my followers this is old news, but it still stands as the most important time in my life when my handicapping shifted from strictly X’s and O’s to the motivation driving the offenses and defenses.
My Dad and I used to pick the games each week while reviewing the numbers in the Sporting Green on Saturday morning. In 1965, while I was a sophomore in high school, on one of those Saturday mornings we got to a game involving the Minnesota Vikings and Baltimore Colts. Dad quickly picked the Vikings while saying, “They will have no trouble with Johnny Unitas out with an injury.”
I agreed.
But while watching the 49ers and Lions on television the next day with my Dad in his den the scores kept coming in from Minnesota and the Colts were trouncing the Fran Tarkenton led Vikings.
“Maybe this Gary Cuozzo is something special,” Dad said while mispronouncing the Colts quarterback’s name as the final score flashed on the TV: Baltimore 41, Minnesota 21. Once the final score was posted Dad said, “They must have had a great game plan to win on the road with Unitas out.” Dad was a coach, and a coach always thinks it is the game plan that dictates the results.
I thought differently. While my fellow classmates studied whatever was on our high school curriculum that week, I spent my time in the library going through old newspapers to find games in which a team's star starting quarterback was out with an injury and how his team fared without him. Turns out they won more often than they lost with the backup and that wasn’t even factoring in the point spreads which I’m certain had them decided underdogs most times, just as the Colts were on that November afternoon in Minnesota.