Football
Definition Team sport
Professional and college football gained increasing popu-
larity during the 1980’s, replacing baseball as America’s
most significant sports obsession.
In 1981, a CBS-New York Timespoll reported that 48
percent of U.S. sports fans preferred football, while
31 percent preferred baseball as their favorite spec-
tator sport. By 1984, football’s popularity had sky-
rocketed, and a similar survey found that American
sports fans enjoyed watching football more than
baseball by a margin of almost three to one.
Professional Football During the 1980’s, the Na-
tional Football League (NFL) solidified its domi-
nance of both professional American football and
American sports in general, as well as establishing
itself as a corporate entertainment giant.Monday
Night Football, an American Broadcasting Company
(ABC) television program, was typically among the
highest-rated shows among male viewers. Most of
the league’s games were played during the day on
Sundays, and the two teams chosen to compete on a
given Monday night came to relish their moment in
the prime-time spotlight. The 1980’s also saw an in-
crease in female viewership, and the NFL’s annual
championship, the Super Bowl, became a family
event, attracting huge audiences of both sexes and
all ages. Three Super Bowl broadcasts during the
1980’s are among the most-watched television pro-
grams of all time. In 1982, for example, nearly half of
all U.S. households tuned in to Super Bowl XVI, and
the game was viewed by more than 110 million fans.
As a result, the Super Bowl became the premier
showcase for new and innovative advertisements,
such as the famous 1984 commercial introducing
the Apple Macintosh computer.
During much of the first half of the decade, the
sound ofMonday Night Footballwas easily identified
by its charismatic and often controversial announcer,
Howard Cosell. Cosell teamed with a number of
memorable cohosts, including Frank Gifford, Don
Meredith, Alex Karras, and O. J. Simpson. In 1984,
another announcer joined the show, former New
York Jets quarterback Joe Namath, who eventually
went on to launch a significant career in entertain-
ment.
During the 1980 season, the NFL’s regular-season
attendance of nearly 13.4 million set a record for
the third year in a row. The fans’ enthusiasm for
the game was well rewarded, when the Pittsburgh
Steelers’ “Steel Curtain” defeated the Los Angeles
Rams 31 to 19 in Super Bowl XIV, becoming the first
team to win four Super Bowls. Super Bowl XV in
1981 featured two “wild-card” teams—teams that
were not divisional champions but were chosen to fill
extra playoff berths based on their records. In this
championship game between the Oakland Raiders
and the Philadelphia Eagles, Oakland bested Phila-
delphia 27 to 10 to become the first wild-card team
to win a Super Bowl. That same year, the NFL began
a campaign to recruit more black athletes by hosting
representatives from predominantly black colleges.
The 1982 season saw a fundamental change in the
pay structure of the NFL as a result of a fifty-seven-
day strike that cut the regular sixteen-game sched-
ule down to just nine games. Minimum player sala-
ries were established, and pay and benefits were
increased. That year heralded the decade’s biggest
challenge to the NFL’s supremacy, when the well-
financed United States Football League (USFL) was
created. Despite a lucrative television contract and
several big-name players, however, the league lasted
just three years. The 1983 college draft became
known as the “Year of the Quarterback” because
an unusually large number of quarterbacks was
selected. Several proceeded to become household
names, including John Elway, Jim Kelly, Tony Eason,
and Dan Marino. Elway and Kelly eventually made a
combined nine Super Bowl starts, and Marino be-
came the first rookie player to start in a Super Bowl
in 1984. Furthermore, of the twenty-eight players se-
lected in the first round of the 1983 draft, fifteen
went on to play in at least one Pro Bowl, the league’s
showcase game for its most skilled and popular
players.
The 1984 season became a year for breaking rec-
ords. The Miami Dolphins’ Dan Marino passed for
5,084 yards and 48 touchdowns; Eric Dickerson of
the Los Angeles Rams broke O. J. Simpson’s single-
season rushing record by gaining 2,105 yards; Wash-
ington Redskins wide receiver Art Monk caught 106
passes; and Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears
broke Jim Brown’s career rushing record, ending
the season with a career total of 13,309 yards gained.
In Super Bowl XVIII, the Los Angeles Raiders de-
feated Washington by an impressive score of 38 to 9.
The following year, the San Francisco Forty-Niners,The Eighties in America Football 381