NFL in the 1950s Trivia Quiz

Answer: Otto Graham

Graham's first pro football successes came in the All-America Football Conference, which started in 1946 as a rival to the NFL. He took his Cleveland Browns team to titles in each of the four years that league was in existence, then continued his winning ways in the NFL.

The Browns beat the Rams 30-28 to win the NFL championship in their first season in the league, then won two more titles in 1954 and 1955 after losing the 1951-53 championship games.

Answer: San Francisco 49ers

San Francisco's 1954-56 backfield included future Hall of Famers Y.A. Tittle at quarterback, halfback Hugh McElhenney, and fullbacks Joe Perry, and John Henry Johnson. They were the first backfield foursome from the 20th century NFL to all be enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

Answer: A phone call to Pittsburgh, to invite Johnny Unitas to join the team

Unitas was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers, who weren't impressed with him, thinking he wasn't smart enough to remember the plays. When the Colts called him in February 1956, the man still considered by many to be the best quarterback in NFL history was in Pittsburgh, working as a pile driver operator and playing semipro ball for $3 per game.

Their 80-cent telephone call brought them a quarterback who led the team to three NFL titles.

Answer: Within just a few seasons, almost all players were wearing helmets with rigid facemasks

The "BT-5" (for "bar tubular, fifth version") was football's first successful face mask. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a few players attempted to protect their faces using lucite strips attached to their helmets, but the lucite was a safety hazard because it often shattered into sharp pieces. Lucite also fogged up from player's breath, was impairing vision. Cleveland Browns coach Paul Brown helped the Riddell sporting goods company develop the BT-5 before the 1955 season to protect his quarterback Otto Graham, who'd suffered a broken jaw. Constructed from rigid plastic covered with protective rubber, the single-bar BT-5 quickly gained popularity, and within two seasons, almost all players were wearing face masks derived from it.

Answer: Dallas Texans

The Texans sprang up after a Dallas businessman bought the failed New York Yanks franchise from the NFL. They played their first game in front of 17,000 fans spread throughout Dallas' 75,000-seat Cotton Bowl, and home attendance just continued to drop from that point. Midway through the season, their owner sold the Texans back to the league. Scheduled to play their final "home" game against the Chicago Bears, the team couldn't get the rights to the Cotton Bowl, so they instead played in Akron, OH, 1,200 miles away.

The good news was that they beat the Bears. The bad news was that their contest drew fewer fans than the high school game that had taken place on the same field immediately before. The league folded the team after the season. Since 1952, every struggling NFL owner has been able to successfully move or sell his team, and no other franchise has folded.

Answer: All of these

Ollie Matson delayed his NFL debut to allow him to compete in the 1952 Olympics, where he won a bronze medal in the men's 400 meter race, and a gold as part of the US 4x400 relay team. He was such a force as a pass-catching halfback that the Los Angeles Rams traded nine players in 1959 to acquire him from the Chicago Cardinals.

When he retired after the 1966 season, his six kickoff returns for touchdowns, and his nine touchdowns from combined returns (punts and kickoffs), were NFL records, and his 12,844 total net yards was second only to Jim Brown's total of 15,549.

Answer: Both Browns and Lions

The Browns won titles in 1950, 1954, and 1955. The Lions won in 1952, 1953, and 1957. The 1950s had the unusual distinction of having two teams win three titles in the decade, and having three teams (Browns, Lions, and 1958-59 Colts) win consecutive titles.

Answer: So his coach could call plays from the sidelines

Browns coach Paul Brown, one of the most innovative minds football ever saw, probably reached too far with his 1956 radio helmet. Faced with a new quarterback after coaching no one but the legendary Otto Graham, Brown thought that a small radio receiver in Ratterman's helmet would allow him to call plays from the sideline without substituting a player into the huddle.

Unfortunately, radio technology in 1956 was relatively primitive, so much of the time, Ratterman would have to stand far from the other players, turning slowly until he could pick up Brown's voice.

He often received other signals, including taxi dispatchers when the Browns played in Chicago. And opposing defenses loved to slap Ratterman's helmet in hopes of dismantling the electronics.

The NFL banned the radio helmets a few games into the 1956 season, although the devices, finally working the way Brown had envisioned, were again legalized in 1994.

Answer: Jim Brown

When Brown broke into the league in 1957, the NFL had been keeping rushing statistics for 25 years, and in eight of those seasons, a rookie led the league in rushing. In the next 25 years, it happened only twice. Brown went on to set records for just about every category of rushing, and continues to be widely considered the greatest running back to have ever played pro football.

Answer: Crazy Legs

"Hirsch ran like a demented duck. His crazy legs were gyrating in six different directions all at the same time," wrote a Chicago sportswriter after seeing him play in college, and from that point on, Elroy Hirsch was known as "Crazy Legs." After he helped his Rams team win the 1951 NFL championship, quarterback Norm Van Brocklin said of him, "Talk about the gent who zigged when he should have zagged. Roy also has a zog and a couple of varieties of zug when he's under full steam." Hirsch later served as general manager of the Rams, and later athletic director for University of Wisconsin, before passing away in 2004.