NFL player Dick Plasman |
The NFL regular season schedule wrapped up on Sunday, and 12
teams have survived to make the playoff cut – the Kansas City Chiefs, the
Indianapolis Colts, the New Orleans Saints, the Philadelphia Eagles, the San Diego
Chargers, the Cincinnati Bengals, the San Francisco 49ers, the Green Bay
Packers, the Seattle Seahawks, the New England Patriots, the Carolina Panthers
and the Denver Broncos.
Playoff action will begin on Saturday when the Chiefs play
at Indianapolis at 3:35 p.m. and the Saints play at Philadelphia at 7:19 p.m.
Both of those games will be broadcast on NBC.
On Sunday, the Chargers will play at Cincinnati, starting at
12:05 p.m., and the 49ers will play at Green Bay, starting at 3:40 p.m. CBS
will broadcast the San Diego-Cincinnati game, and FOX will broadcast the San
Francisco-Green Bay game.
On Saturday, I look for the Colts to beat the Chiefs and for
Philadelphia to beat New Orleans. On Sunday, I look for the Bengals to beat San
Diego and for San Francisco to beat Green Bay.
Seattle, New England, Carolina and Denver won their
divisions and earned first round byes, so they won’t play until next weekend,
Jan. 11-12.
Last week: 15-1. So far this season: 176-80.
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From the weird news file this week, I saw in the “Ripley’s
Believe It or Not” comic strip Monday of last week an item that talked about
former NFL player Dick Plasman. Plasman, who played professional football in
the 1930s and 40s, was the last NFL player to play without a helmet, even when
it was mandatory for everyone else.
Plasman was born in Miami in April 1914 and went on to play
eight seasons as a running back for the Chicago Bears and the Chicago Cardinals
(now known as the Arizona Cardinals). The 6-foot-3, 218-pound Plasman played
his college ball at Vanderbilt and was the 28th overall pick in the 1937 draft.
He played for the Bears from 1937 to 1941 and again during the 1944 season. He
played for the Cardinals in 1946 and 1947. He played on NFL Championship teams
in 1940, 1941 and 1947 and was an NFL All-Star twice, in 1940 and 1941.
The last game he played in without a helmet was the 1940 NFL
Championship Game in which the Bears beat the Washington Redskins, 73-0.
(That’s not a misprint.) Not only was this the last game to feature a
helmetless player, but it was also the most lopsided victory in NFL history.
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The Alabama Tourism Department released its list of Top 10
Events for 2014 yesterday (Wednesday), and more than a few sports-related
events made the list. One such event is the Bassmaster Classic, which will be
held Feb. 21-23 in Birmingham and Guntersville. This competition will take
place at Lake Guntersville while the Bassmaster Classic Outdoors Expo goes on
at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex.
Also making the list is the National Shrimp Festival, which
will be held in Gulf Shores on Oct. 9-12. This festival is one of the nation’s
premier outdoor festivals and attracts over a quarter of a million people. Also
that weekend, the Alabama Bass Trail Championship will be held at 21,200-acre
Lewis Smith Lake in Jasper.
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