Print this page  |  Close Window

By Lauren Deason
PGATOUR.com Editorial Coordinator

ATLANTA -- Some have likened this year's TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola to the first "Super Bowl" since it culminates the inaugural PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup.

Others, like Adam Scott, referred to the "Grand Final" in the Australian Football League, the premier sporting event in his native country.

Only time will tell if the first Playoff winner will be looked at in such historical reverence as the first Super Bowl winners, World Series champs or FIFA World Cup holders. But that got us thinking -- who were the first winners of playoffs in other sports? What was the game/race/match like? Did the players and coaches realize they were making history?

Take a look at some of the first finales in several popular sports, including football, basketball and baseball.

National Football League's Super Bowl

Date: January 15, 1967

Betcha didn't know: If not for a little girl's toy, millions in America would gather for wings, refreshments and commercial-watching on "The Big One" Sunday or "The Final Game" Sunday. Those were the original name suggestions but, after watching his daughter play with bouncy Super Ball, Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt jokingly proposed the final showdown be known as the "Super Bowl" until a better name could be found. By 1969 the name had officially stuck and in 1970 tickets were printed with Super Bowl IV (Roman Numerals were used from the very beginning instead of numbers) as the title.

Super Bowl I: It's the fans that are supposed to enjoy pre-game adult beverages, not the players. But second string wide receiver and season-long benchwarmer Max McGee figured he'd spend the game watching instead of playing so enjoyed a night out that didn't end until around 7 in the morning on the day of the game.

Unfortunately for McGee, Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi called him into the first championship game against the Kansas City Chiefs after Boyd Dowler got hurt. Borrowing a helmet from a teammate since he'd left his own in the locker room, not-so-sober McGee caught seven passes and two touchdowns to help lead his Packers to a 35-10 victory.

It was the first head-to-head battle between the upstart American Football League and the long-established National Football League, so naturally the fanfare was unparalleled. Though not a sell-out with just 61,946 in the 100,000-seat Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, an estimated 60 million watched on television. Befitting the entertainment-and-sports-crazy hoopla that surrounds the game today, in 1967 the bands played, choruses sang and 4,000 pigeons were released from the stadium's turf pre-kickoff.

Commercials were a bargain -- one-minute spots sold for just $75,000 on NBC and $85,000 on CBS. That's chump change compared to the $2.6 million price tag attached to a 30-second commercial on CBS in 2007.

FIFA World Cup

Dates: July 13-30, 1930

Betcha didn't know: Uruguay won the football title in the 1928 Olympics so the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (aka FIFA) selected them as the hosts for the first World Cup. It was the only World Cup where all countries were invited without needing to qualify but the cost of a trans-Atlantic trip to the South American country was too high for many European teams to travel. Despite football tracing its modern roots to 19th century England only four teams from across the pond made the trek.

FIFA World Cup '30: Lucien Laurent of France made the first-ever World Cup goal in his country's opening game against Mexico on July 13 but the moment was anticlimatic.

"Everyone was pleased but we didn't all roll around on the ground - nobody realised that history was being made," Laurent later said of his goal scored on a snowy winter's day in the Southern Hemisphere. "A quick handshake and we got on the with game. And no bonus either; we were all amateurs in those days, right to the end."

The 13 teams were eventually whittled down to two with host Uruguay taking on Argentina in an all-South American final. Uruguay was down 2-1 at the half but came through in the clutch, scoring three second half goals to Argentina's zilch to win 4-2. FIFA President Jules Rimet, who would later have the World Cup trophy named after him, presented the first "Victoire aux Ailes d'Or" trophy to the proud Uruguayans.

In addition to celebrating their 100th year of independence in 1930, Uruguay now had another football title to commemorate and declared a national holiday for July 31st to continue the party.

NCAA Men's Basketball

Dates: March 17-27, 1939

Betcha didn't know: The men's college basketball tournament has spawned several well-known terms and traditions so just when did these surface in history? "March Madness" was supposedly coined by Brent Musburger during CBS Sports' coverage in 1982. The term the Big Dance was used to distinguish the championship from the conference tournaments and the NIT, which one rivaled the NCAA Championship as the top season-ending playoff. And the anthem "One Shining Moment" was originally played following the 1987 game on CBS, though the opening lyrics had to be changed from "the ball is kicked" to "the ball is tipped" since the network was supposed to air it during the Super Bowl earlier that year but ran out of time.

First Tournament: University of Kansas coach Phog Allen was instrumental in the formation of the first NCAA men's basketball tournament in 1939, but Allen's Jayhawks weren't amongst the first "Elite Eight" colleges. Instead, it was Ohio State, Brown, Villanova, Wake Forest, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Utah State who battled for the inaugural title.

The eight schools began the single elimination tournament in two different sites before the final two teams met in Evanstown, Ill., to determine the first official NCAA Men's Basketball Champion (the Helms Athletic Foundation retroactively selected National Championship teams prior to the tournament's formation). A near-capacity crowd of 5,500 showed up at Northwestern's old Patten Gymnasium for the festivities, including an exhibition game prior to the 8:30 p.m. start that was played with peach baskets and under the original rules created nearly 48 years earlier. A special guest was in attendance for the game -- the father of basketball, Dr. James Naismith, sat in the stands.

By today's standards it was a low-scoring affair, as the Oregon Ducks coached by Howard Hobson prevailed over Harold Olsen's Ohio State team with a score of 46-33. The Ducks out of Eugene, Ore., consisted of players mostly 6-ft.4 or taller, so naturally were nicknamed the "Tall Firs". Despite wearing uniforms with an image of Donald Duck, the team demonstrated their toughness by dominating the boards and using their height and a zone defense to shut down Ohio State's top scorer and tournament MVP Jimmy Hull.

Though now relegated to a less prestigious, runner-up spot in men's college basketball today, the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) actually pre-dates the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament by a year and was considered just as elite at the time.

Major League Baseball's World Series

Dates: Oct. 1-13, 1903

Betcha didn't know: In 1884, the Providence Grays of the National League bested the American Association's New York Metropolitan Club in a three-game series originally dubbed "The Championship of the United States." Newspapers dubbed the Grays team the "World Champions", hence we now have "World" Series champions despite the tournament taking place between North American teams.

World Series No. 1: Three years into the 20th century, America's favorite pastime spawned what would eventually become a hero-making and career-breaking pastime of its own -- the World Series.

The "best-of-nine" affair only made it to eight games in the first go around, with the Boston Americans prevailing over the Pittsburgh Pirates five games to three. It was the first time the newly-formed American League and the veteran National League played against each other in an effort to promote unity and reconciliation after years of league fighting.

Pittsburgh, representing the Nationals, had just won their third straight pennant and were set to take on the Americans, who won their flag by 14 and a half games.

The Pirates took the first game 7-3, with right fielder Jimmy Sebring scoring the first home run of the World Series and driving in three other runs during the game as well. Boston evened it up with a 3-0 win the next game, but soon fell to 1-3 in the series as the Pirates won the next two games. Thanks to the clutch play of Pittsburgh pitcher Deacon Phillippe -- who filled in when Sam Leever injured his shoulder trap-shooting -- the Pirates won the three games in the series he pitched and the team found themselves with a two-game advantage.

It wasn't meant to last, however, as Boston sent in Cy Young for a resounding 11-2 rout in Game 5 and earned a 6-3 win in Game 6 to tie the series.

Phillippe's luck gave out, losing the seventh game and his first of the series after Boston won 7-3. Phillippe played (again) the following game but Boston's winning pitcher from the second game, Bill Dinneen, out-dueled the Pirates. Dinneen and his Americans won 3-0, giving Boston their fourth straight win (sound familiar?) and the first World Series trophy.

While Phillippe missed his chance to earn a World Series, he did earn an unusual honor in 2003 when actor Ryan Phillippe (a distant relative) and actress Reese Witherspoon named their first son Deacon in honor of the first World Series-winning pitcher.

If you've made it this far and haven't fallen asleep from the history lesson, you'll notice that we left off a few -- the roots of the first official hockey playoffs are a bit muddled, the first NASCAR Chase seemed like just yesterday and it's arguable that college football doesn't have an actual playoff system.

Besides, this is PGATOUR.com. Let's focus on the first-ever PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup.