12/30/2023 0 Comments Redskins vs packers play by playThey chatted for several minutes and were joined by Clayton Tonnemaker, the Green Bay center who Justice had teamed with at the 1950 Chicago College-All Star Game. he was walking over to the Packers’ side of the field to greet his UNC teammate Len Szafaryn who played for Green Bay. I had always pictured the team in black and white. Their burgundy and gold uniforms were spectacular. And through my binoculars, there on the field were the Washington Redskins warming up. There were only 22,000 seats, but to me the place looked huge. It also didn’t matter that the Packers were favored we would get to see our football hero and that’s what mattered. Former UNC All America Charlie Justice had made a 47- yard run for the Redskins late in the game that’s what mattered. The Redskins had lost to the Bears, but that didn’t matter. Much of the conversation centered around the game in Columbia the weekend before. So on game day we loaded up a 1951 Buick in Asheboro and headed east to Raleigh-stopping at Raleigh’s S&W Cafeteria for a quick dinner. Columbia, South Carolina, and then to Raleigh. The Redskins started off the ’54 season on August 6th in San Diego, then to Los Angeles. We talked one of our Sunday School teachers into driving us to Raleigh for the game. I saved my allowance and came up with enough money for a ticket-it was four dollars. We had followed them for three years on TV, but none of us had ever seen them in person. The games were played in stadiums across the country and provided an opportunity for teams to show off in front of fans that would likely never get to see them in person otherwise.ĭuring the next nine months, my friends and I looked forward to being able to see our favorite team for real. First string players often played the entire game and teams tried their best to win. In the 1950s NFL exhibition games were very different from the preseason games of today. The game, sponsored by the North Carolina State University Wolfpack Club, would be a night contest against the Green Bay Packers. Allen and Gibbons told the TV audience that the Redskins would be playing an exhibition game (they are called preseason games today) in Raleigh, North Carolina on September 11th of 1954. Then, during the final game of the 1953 season, a game between the Redskins and the Pittsburgh Steelers on December 13th, play-by-play announcer Mel Allen and analyst Jim Gibbons made an announcement that would change the North Carolina–Redskins perspective. And Marshall took full advantage of that fact by drafting players like Charlie Justice from North Carolina, Harry Gilmer from Alabama, Harry Dowda from Wake Forest, and Billy Cox from Duke. Marshall thought of his Redskins as the “Team of the South,” since Washington was the NFL’s southernmost city. Thanks to Redskins’ owner George Preston Marshall’s Amoco–Redskins TV network, I could see all regular season Redskins games that were played east of the Mississippi River. Morton Collection volunteer Jack Hilliard takes a personal look back at that first game.Ĭharlie "Choo Choo" Justice on sidelines with Washington Redskins head coach Joe Kuharich during game versus the Green Bay Packers at Riddick Stadium, Raleigh, N.C., Septemb 11, 1954Īs a little kid growing up in North Carolina in the 1950s, my only real exposure to professional football came on Sunday afternoons at 2:00 in front of my parents’ TV set-a General Electric 14-inch black-and-white model. Since that day in 1954, the Redskins have played here twenty times and will return on October 23rd to play the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte. Fifty-seven years ago, the NFL’s Washington Redskins made the team’s first trip to North Carolina to play one of the state’s first professional football games.
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