life-magazine - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights



75 Years Ago NFL Players Looked Like This
"Pro football is almost a different game from college football," LIFE magazine helpfully informed its readers in October 1938. In those years, the biggest pro sports in America were baseball, boxing and horse racing; professional football barely registered on most fans' radar. But pro ball was makin...

A Face Only A Hockey Puck Could Love
Once upon a time, NHL goalies played without masks. Unsurprisingly, their faces often got all fucked up. In 1966, LIFE published an article, "The Goalie Is the Goat," that not only aimed to put a human countenance on "hockey's reviled and bludgeoned fall-guys," but featured a photo of what looked li...

The Badassest Rookie Linebacker The NFL Has Ever Seen
I was never a Bears fan, although I do admire the uniform — orange, black and white together just feels football-y, somehow — and I bawled like a crazy person while reading I Am Third and again while watching Brian's Song. (Damn you, James Caan. Damn you to tearjerking hell.) But recently I came acr...

How A <em>Life</em> Photographer Got This Ridiculous Shot Of 14 NFL QBs In 1961
"I had a local high school football team come to the studio every day for that week," photographer Ralph Morse, now 96 years old, tells Ben Cosgrove, "and we practiced all sorts of scenarios until we had one that worked—the guys in front tossing the ball underhand, the guys in back throwing overhand...

14 Hard-Nosed NFL Quarterbacks Play Nice For One Photographer
[NOTE: The black and white photo that was previously atop this post has been replaced with a far more excellent color picture. Thank you, Hit Bull Win Steak, for pointing out the existence of this version.]...

Tough Love: Watching Football On TV While Sitting In The Snow
At first glance, it's just a photo of Big Blue fans watching the 1962 NFL title game while seated outside a Connecticut motel, beyond the range of the New York City-area TV blackout. (Green Bay beat the Giants that day at the old Yankee Stadium, 16-7.)...

The Kennedys And Their Goddamn Football, Fer Chrissake
Everyone's talking about JFK these days, and why not? He and his messed-up brothers from that twisted, doomed family certainly had style, even if the lads were — by and large — narcissists congenitally addicted to strange. Style. It's a slippery thing. Here, for example, is a picture of Jack tossing...

This Guy Yells At Girls All Day, But It's Cool
In September 1965, LIFE magazine profiled a man named Bill Horan, a World War II vet who spent his days yelling at young women. That's not all he did, though. He also instilled the sort of character traits one might expect from a former paratrooper — tenacity, discipline, resilience — through cheerl...

Joe Frazier Was Cooler Than Ali. Discuss.
Joe Frazier died two years ago today. Now is as good a time as any to pay tribute to the former champ through a single photograph that best captured the unbridgeable distance between the two premier fighters of the age — a picture made at the very moment when the rivalry between Ali and Smokin' Joe ...

Maybe This Is Why UCLA Hoops Once Sucked?
It's been two decades since they won an NCAA title. The glory years of John Wooden's titanic career are faded California dreams. But UCLA remains a nationally ranked team each and every season. This 1945 photograph, meanwhile, might help explain why Bruins hoops endured losing records for so many ye...

Halloween Special: Madness! Torture! Applause!
The legendary Grand Guignol Theater in Paris was not a haunted house, but a serious dramatic enterprise that put on gruesome, faux-blood-splattered shows year-round for decades. It featured staged killings, mutilations and scenes of depravity and torture so realistic that audience members often fled...

Rare Photos Of Musial Remind Us That He'll Always Be The Man
People liked Stan Musial. And he liked them. His teammate (and badass competitor supreme) Bob Gibson once said, “Stan Musial is the nicest man I ever met in baseball. And to be honest, I can’t relate to that.”...
