Category Archives: Sports

ABC College Football Highlights and NCAA Films

Posted on by
1

National Collegiate Athletic Association News

Nov. 1, 1976

Teamwork produces success in athletic competition more perhaps than any other single ingredient, and, likewise, it is this same essence which contributes most to the production of the weekly NCAA College Football Highlights Show.

Just as no superior football team ever won a championship solely on the talent of one superstar, the College Football Highlights Show never could exist without the network of people who form a “team” for the NCAA Film Service, which produces it for ABC Sports. Highlights of each action-packed week of NCAA College Football arc captured by NCAA Films, and within hours, the excitement and drama arc reproduced for the viewing public’s enjoyment over 78 percent of the stations on the ABC television network.

Perhaps never contemplated by the Sunday morning armchair quarterback, who settles back into his easy-chair to review the clashes staged on the nation’s college football battlefields virtually hours before, is the hectic story of one of the most unique film presentations aired on television today. Continue reading →

When Radio Ruled

Posted on by
Reply

Dick Snider
Topeka Capital-Journal

Radio ruled the airwaves for 30 years, just as television has reigned for the last 50, but if you weren’t there at the time it may be difficult for you to imagine a family gathered around a talking box, listening to “One Man’s Family,” Fred Allen, Jack Benny or some other top show. If you were there, you remember this Benny classic:

Holdup man: “Your money or your life?”

Benny: (Silence).

Holdup man: “I said, your money or your life?”

Benny: “I’m thinking it over.” Continue reading →

Now the Wilkinson Task is to Develop All-America’s Fitness

Posted on by
Reply

Oklahoma Today, Fall 1961

At Oklahoma, Charles B. (Bud) Wilkinson has produced many great athletes. Now, he has taken on an added task that is far more awesome in both responsibility and opportunity. He has been assigned by the President to produce a nation of physically-fit Americans.

It may surprise some to learn the two jobs have little if any, relation to each other. The answer to the physical fitness problem is not more football players. The pressing need is a program that will raise the millions of physically-deficient Americans up to minimum acceptable physical standards.

It is a tribute to Wilkinson, and to the coaching profession, that he was chosen March 23 a Special Consultant to the President on Youth Fitness. His appointment came after several conferences with President Kennedy. Although he is admittedly no expert in the field of physical education, Wilkinson outlined what he thought had to be done. The President told him to get it done. Continue reading →

Black History Month perspective

Posted on by
Reply

Topeka Capital-Journal

This being black history month, what follows is some black history from a personal viewpoint:

In Oakwood, Okla., where I was born, and in Veteran, Wyo., where I lived for a time as a very young lad, there were no blacks.  But, in Veteran, we learned something about mixing and getting along.  At sugar beet harvest time, many Mexican families came north to work.  They were called “beet toppers” and they brought along young kids my brothers and I played with as both sides overcame the language barrier.

In Britton, Okla., where I did most of my growing up, I remember hearing black people talked about, and always referred to with the “n” word by young and old alike.

Continue reading →

A few nice words about Dick Snider

Posted on by
Reply

(In March 2001, Topeka Capital-Journal outdoor writer Jim Ramberg penned this birthday bouquet. Ramberg, a friend of my Dad’s and a regular visitor in the final days, passed in 2007. To read writer Rick Dean’s excellent obit in the C-J, click here.)

Outdoor notes compiled while coming up with a tribute to fellow columnist Dick Snider, who celebrated his 80th birthday a couple days ago.

Let’s see. Dick Snider is …

Well, let’s start off first with some outdoor notes while I think about this. Continue reading →

Columnist Dick Snider dies at 83

Posted on by
Reply
Image

With Will Snider

By Rick Dean, Topeka Capital-Journal

It once was said that the mark of a good newspaper columnist was the ability to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

By that criteria alone, as well as several others, Dick Snider was a great newspaper columnist.

Snider, the longtime Topeka Capital-Journal columnist and former sports editor, died Saturday after a short battle with cancer. He was 83.

A former oil industry executive, he worked briefly in the Kennedy administration before producing “College Football” — a long- running highlights show for the ABC network in the 1960s.

A man who walked comfortably in the world of sports, politics and business, Snider’s ability to apply a sharply pointed needle to people in power, as well as to himself and those he loved, made him as popular with readers as he was pilloried by politicians. Continue reading →