Up, Down And Up Again

All these tidal gatherings, grow and decay ,
Shining and darkening, are forever Renewed; and the whole cycle impenitently
Revolves, and all the past is future .
—ROBINSON JEFFERS

This is no time, obviously, to douse the high spirits of Giants fans, even with Gatorade. And yet in these last few giddy moments before Super Bowl XXI, unthinking revelers might do well to pause and reflect a bit on the cyclical nature of their game and their team. Oh, these are grand times, no denying. The Giants set a franchise record for wins in a season with 14. The combined score of their two playoff wins was 66-3. They are top-heavy favorites to bring the Vince Lombardi Trophy back with them to New Jersey. But remember and be warned, those of you too young to recall the "Goodbye Allie" refrain, that not so long ago life was quite different, and the dark hand of despair rested on the blue jerseys now riding so high above the battle. Think back for a moment, if you will....

The Giants didn't even make it to postseason play between 1963, when they lost the NFL championship game to the Bears, and 1981, when they squeaked into the playoffs as a 9-7 wildcard team. Between those two seasons they had only two winning years, finishing 9-5 in 1970 and 8-6 in '72. In 1961, when Allie Sherman became head coach, the Giants were playing to hometown fans whose expectations had already been painfully diminished.

"At that time," says Sherman, "the public was accepting of the fact that the Giant era was over." Against all odds, in Sherman's view, and to the surprise and delight of the city, the Giants won three straight Eastern Conference titles, in 1961, '62 and '63. "That team was much older than people realized," Sherman says, "but after three conference championships in a row, everybody suddenly looked a lot younger." Those three conference crowns, though, were followed by three straight defeats in the title game, and in 1964 Sherman began hearing the "Goodbye Allie" chants in the old Yankee Stadium. What a melancholy tune it was, half dirge, half lullaby. "Good...bye, Al...lie...."

The team was 2-10-2 that year, and things were not exactly looking up, what with the recent retirement of old guardsmen Frank Gifford, Y.A. Tittle, Andy Robustelli, Alex Webster and Jack Stroud and the departure of punter-placekicker Don Chandler, Dick Modzelewski and the legendary Sam Huff by trade. But in July '65, team president Wellington Mara responded disarmingly to the lament of the faithless: He signed the 42-year-old Sherman to a 10-year contract. Ten years? For a coach? Hello, Allie. As a matter of fact, that contract nullified a five-year deal Sherman had signed only two years earlier. Mara, whose bookmaker father, Tim, bought the franchise for $500 in 1925, wasn't one to throw up his hands at the first sign of discontent among the paying customers. They were still showing up, weren't they? They always have, through thick and thin. The Giants historically have the longest waiting list in the league for season tickets.

Alas, Sherman did not survive the term of that generous contract. The 1966 season alone should have been cause for dismissal. The team went 1-12-1, the worst record in the history of the franchise, and gave up 501 points, then a league record. The losses included these whoppers: 52-7 to the Cowboys, 55-14 to the Rams and 72-41 to the Redskins. It was just one of those years when nothing went right. Bob Timberlake, a quarterback and theology student from Michigan, whom the Giants had signed in '65 and still had high hopes for in '66, didn't make it past training camp. Their top draft pick, Francis Peay, was described by The New York Times as "a sluggish player with aching arches."

The 1967 and '68 seasons were comparatively productive, however. The Giants finished 7-7 both years, presumably helped by a papal blessing they received before the '67 season and by a trade for quarterback Fran Tarkenton, also that year.

Sherman remained in Mara's good graces until the eve of the 1969 season, when a 37-14 loss to the cross town Jets in a preseason game finished him. The owner had steadfastly refused to recognize the existence of the Jets. But they were hard to ignore after their Super Bowl III upset of the Colts. That was bad enough, but to lose to them by such a lopsided score, even in an exhibition game, was too much to bear. Webster, an old hero with no previous head coaching experience, came in to replace Sherman. Under him, the team fell to 6-8. This was also the year renegade tackle Steve Wright scooped management by announcing his own reinstatement from a suspension at a press conference in a bar called Mr. Laffs.

The beat went on. Webster quit as coach just before the final game of the '73 season, a 31-7 loss to Minnesota. The city of New York, peeved because Mara had already announced plans to move the team across the Hudson to a new stadium in the Jersey Meadow-lands, evicted the Giants from Yankee Stadium halfway through the season so the old park could be prepared for a multimillion-dollar remodeling. The last few home games were played in the hoary Yale Bowl, 77 miles from New York City in New Haven, Conn.

Robustelli, another figure from the past, took over as "director of operations" in 1974, with instructions to set the football team straight. Robustelli was "family," said Wellington Mara. He had also been out of football for the past 10 years, operating a travel agency. With Bill Arnsparger as the new head coach, the Giants went 2-12. Arnsparger held on until midseason of '76. Robustelli went back to the travel business in '78.