It wasn’t officially the Super Bowl yet, but it was still a big game, 50 years ago

The second Super Bowl game was played 50 years ago this week at the Orange Bowl in Miami.  The name “Super Bowl” was not formally used for the NFL-AFL championship until the third year.  The January 14th game was two weeks after the legendary Ice Bowl game at Lambeau Field, won by the Packers to get them into the final game for the second straight year.  Green Bay defeated the Raiders 33-to-14, in Vince Lombardi’s last game as head coach for the Packers.  About 40 million people watched that afternoon game on CBS.  Play-by-play announcer Ray Scott even did commercials for an upcoming State of the Union speech by President Johnson.  

LBJ was still planning to run for a second full term that fall, despite challenges within his own Democratic party, from people such as Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy.  On the Republican side, Richard Nixon was running again, and La Crosse’s Wayne Hood would be the Midwest Regional director of the Nixon campaign.  Hood, a vice-president at the Trane Company, had been chair of the Wisconsin GOP in the early 50’s. 

Nixon made a quick appearance on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” on NBC during the ’68 campaign.  Would you believe, “Laugh-In” made its debut as a weekly series 50 years ago, on January 22nd, 1968?  You bet your sweet bippy…yesterday in La Crosse.