Starting Lineups for 'The Catch' Game

Don Wassall

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The NFL Network is showing the NFC championship game from January of 1982, which featured the great play from Joe Montana to Dwight Clark to win it for the 49ers. The 49ers started 10 White players in that game, the Cowboys 11.
Both teams featured all-White o-lines. The appropriately named QB Danny White was the other White starter on offense for Dallas. On their 4-3 defense the Cowboys hada Snow Patrol at LB, Charlie Waters at safety and the great Randy White on the line. John Dutton, another excellent lineman, was injured and replaced by a black, otherwise Dallas would have started a majority White defense and a majority of White starters (12 out of 22).

The 49ers had one White lineman and 2 White LBs on defense. In addition to Clark, another White receiver, Mike Schumann, was playing a lot though he wasn't in the starting lineup. Even though he was split wide, as soon as he made his first catch color manHank Stramquickly identified him as a "possession receiver." Later in the game, Stram said that Clark "is faster than people think" then in the very next sentence called him too a "possession receiver."

RB Bill Ring, then a rookie,received a fair amount of touches during the game and looked good.

Offensive lines were roughly 80 percent White then, and the average defense still had 3 or 4 Whites. But the introduction of coal black defenses was just around the corner and a steady trickle of black o-linemen (now a flood) soon began cutting into that long-time White stronghold. Dwight Clark was one of the last White stars at WR; by the mid-'80s the template of the Caste System waspretty much in place. Edited by: Don Wassall
 

Don Wassall

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<DIV align=left>The Catch (the drive starts off with a drop by a black running back
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)

[TUBE]tunyz0WWLSI[/TUBE]Edited by: Don Wassall
 

forty-four

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I watched that game yesterday too. I forgot how different it was even then. It was a sort of tipping point period - followed by what we see today. Now guys like Clark and Ring are almost extinct. I went off to college in the mid-eighties and tuned out of the NFL for a while. By the late eighties things had really changed (at least it seemed so to me). As a Washington fan I could see the demographic shift in "my team" rather oviously. I especially noticed the dramatic difference during the Jimmy Johnson era with Dallas in the early nineties. In high school (early 80's) our team was 90% black but thes chool was probably 60-40 black-white. Even then I wondered how this would impact the future. My white classmates were already moving toward soccer and surfing instead of football. Some didn't want to be around blacks & others simply had surrendered football to them. Actually, I'm surprised it isn't worse than it is.
 

Borussia

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I was watching 'The Catch' late last night as well. Wow, those days bring back fond memories. I was pretty young then, and really only started following the NFL when the Dolphins drafted a strong armed, curly haired kid (lol, I was 8 then) from Pitt named Marino...the mid 80s Dolphins were also pretty White. Actually, one of the most White teams circa '84, '85.

There are many variables that really pushed the Caste system in the 80s. I think the corporate/bank controlled media companies were noticing how popular the NFL was. It around 1981-1983 that Time magazine wrote that the NFL now surpassed baseball as the true national past time, and that Sundays and Monday nights were ritualized as football days and more popular than church.
I believe the cultural Marxists realized then they had to put their multi-culti (read anti-White) stamp on the NFL. Thus, began the true flood of the caste system.

Also, another key figure was definitely black worshiper Jimmy Johnson. What he did at the Univ. of Miami, he basically did to the Cowboys.
Johnson was always the ultimate mercenary and 'true believer' in the black as superior athlete myth.
JJ once was loosely quoted that each position was 'naturally geared' for certain people...code speak for the typical caste position dogma.

There were a few other key pro-Caste figures (Sam Wyche), but a real turning point was JJ. He hated Steve Young too.

Btw, there is an interesting book about the 1982 NFC Championship game and the direction both franchises took.
Cowboys back then were truly a White/blue blood sort of franchise back then. Landry was pure class and not like the fat slob, ill dressed coach dorks of today.

One other thing I noticed in watching this classic: the fans. They were much more hardcore, loud and into it back then. More signs, more crazy outfits, more creative, more blue collar, just more individualistic. Maybe that's SF though.
I have to remind myself that this was before they ever reached a SB. Maybe the fans back then were more hungry.

I'd love to see a game at Candlestick one day.

All in all, it was much more White friendly back then. Or so it seemed..
 

Don Wassall

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Borussia said:
One other thing I noticed in watching this classic: the fans. They were much more hardcore, loud and into it back then. More signs, more crazy outfits, more creative, more blue collar, just more individualistic.

Society is far more conformist and authoritarian now than it was then. There were a lot more eccentric and free-spirited personalities in the '60s, '70s and into the '80s.That was a long time before fans had to go through patdowns and metal detectors to enter the stadium, and before signs had to be approved and limited in number. Now everything is much more regimented, surveilledand scripted. Remember when fans used to storm the field after a championship? Now a distant memory as hundreds of cops would beat and taser any who tried. The last bastion of unabashed fandom is college football and basketball, and it's only a matter of time before they're clamped down on in the same fashion.Edited by: Don Wassall
 

foreverfree

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Don Wassall said:
John Dutton, another excellent lineman, was injured and replaced by a black, otherwise Dallas would have started a majority White defense and a majority of White starters (12 out of 22).</div>

Do not think that the caste gods weren't at work even then, knowing that we'd have this conversation 28 years later. IYKWIM.
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Did Larry Bethea start in Dutton's place? In the NFL Films endzone shot of The Catch, Bethea, Too Tall, and D.D. Lewis are hounding Montana just before he lets it fly.

John
 

speedster

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If all things would have worked out just right we would have seen another White RB with San Fran in that game in the name of Paul Hofer.He had replaced Simpson not once but twice because of injury and because Hofer at this stage of his career was better then O.J.Although Hofer had to get Simpson's blessing that it was okay to replace him since you really couldn't take over from a black legend with a White guy unless he said it was okay.Kind of like Norv Turner cowering in putting Jacob Hester in to replace Tomlinson.A White guy taking over for a black legend,ain't gonna happen.Getting back to Hofer he had been injured the year before,and as they say,was never the same.But I think he did get a Super Bowl ring.
 

foreverfree

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forty-four said:
Dutton was injured.

I knew that from Mr. Wassall's OP before I typed. Reread the first sentence of the second paragraph of my previous post, forty-four. Every. Word.

JohnEdited by: foreverfree
 

white is right

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Games back then had more real fans. If you ever see Ebay or other memorabilia sites you will see face prices on tickets were very reasonable for the early SB games(even factoring the inflationary equivalent). As teams keep on raising the ticket prices conformity will be the norm as only insiders and near insiders will be in the good seats and the "cheaper" seats will be more and more limited.
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white is right

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speedster said:
If all things would have worked out just right we would have seen another White RB with San Fran in that game in the name of Paul Hofer.He had replaced Simpson not once but twice because of injury and because Hofer at this stage of his career was better then O.J.Although Hofer had to get Simpson's blessing that it was okay to replace him since you really couldn't take over from a black legend with a White guy unless he said it was okay.Kind of like Norv Turner cowering in putting Jacob Hester in to replace Tomlinson.A White guy taking over for a black legend,ain't gonna happen.Getting back to Hofer he had been injured the year before,and as they say,was never the same.But I think he did get a Super Bowl ring.
Ring was one of my favorite players from that era. That class of White tailback is all but extinct now. Hofer like many backs of that era probably never recovered from the terrible knee surgeries that all but destroyed careers back then. Younger fans probably can't remember the Frankenstein type knee braces that running backs had wear after knee surgery.
 

forty-four

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Make that: Dutton was injured... before this game and did not play at all in the championship. So, yes Bethea (who graduated from same high school I did) started instead.
 

forty-four

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Apparently, Bethea erred on the famous play according to Charlie Waters.

"A Dobler leg-whip raised a blood clot on Dutton's leg and kept him idle for the 1981 NFC Championship Game against San Francisco. Waters remembered that Dutton's replacement took the wrong stunt that allowed Joe Montana to escape the pocket and find Dwight Clark for "The Catch"Â￾ and a 28-27 victory." Go here for more: http://www.silverandbluereport.com/tag/john-dutton/
 
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Don Wassall said:
<div align=left>The Catch </font>(the drive starts off with a drop by a black running back 
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<div> </div>
<div>[TUBE]tunyz0WWLSI[/TUBE]</div>

The running back who dropped the first pass of the drive was Lenvill Elliot, a journeyman in his 9th and last year in the NFL, most of which with Cincinnati. Ironically, Elliott was supposed to be a good receiver whom Bill Walsh remembered from when he was a Bengal assistant. Elliott did do a good job running during the drive with 4 carries for 31 yards, including a 7 yard gain on the play before Clark's catch.
 
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The NFL Network is showing this game again Saturday night at 8pm ET. It repeats at 12am and Sunday morning at 8am.
 
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