The pressure was on for the 1988 Boston Red Sox. After their pennant-winning campaign of 1986 ended with a crushing World Series collapse, the Red Sox kept the collapse going through a poor 1987 season. Manager John McNamara’s job was on the line and everyone in baseball knew it when the 1988 season began. The […]
The 1988 Minnesota Vikings were coming off a year where a strong postseason run left them just one play short of the Super Bowl. A well-regarded team, they spent much of 1988 looking ready to take that next step before an inexplicable late-season loss set them up for playoff disappointment. GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTSStart reading today. […]
The 1988 Cleveland Browns were hungry for a Super Bowl breakthrough. The first three years of Marty Schottenheimer’s tenure had ended in postseason heartbreak. The Browns lost a crusher to the Dolphins in 1985. They lost two of the most famous endings in AFC Championship Game history to the Broncos in both 1986 and 1987. […]
The period from 1983-87 was, by the standards of Bo Schembecler’s Michigan program, a dry one. The Wolverines “only” made it to one Rose Bowl in that five-year stretch. In ‘87 they lost four games. Perhaps most galling was that in-state rival Michigan State had won the Big Ten in 1987. And at a time […]
The University of Oklahoma has been much more renowned for its football program than what they do on the basketball court and that was certainly true in the 1980s when Barry Switzer had OU football rolling and won a national championship. But the 1988 Oklahoma Sooners basketball team were awfully good themselves and nearly gave […]
The basketball program at Kansas State has had a long and steady history of producing winning teams. What the school hasn’t done, at least in modern times, is make it all the way to the Final Four. Not since 1964 have the Wildcats danced on college basketball’s biggest stage. The 1988 Kansas State basketball team […]
The 1987 Miami Hurricanes were in need of some redemption. Each of the last two years they’d gone into the major bowls in position for a national title. Each time they lost as a favorite. GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTSStart reading today. The first one came to Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl following the 1985 season. Worse […]
I suspect I’m not the only baseball fan feeling a little bleary-eyed today, in the aftermath of the Chicago Cubs’ 8-7 win over the Cleveland Indians last night in an amazing Game 7 of the World Series. And I suspect I’m not the only one wondering if I just the witnessed the greatest baseball game […]
An upstart champion, a dramatic pennant race and the derailment of a potential dynasty were all a part of an exciting 1987 baseball season that included the following highlights… *How the Minnesota Twins used a potent lineup and a top-heavy pitching staff, led by Frank Viola and Bert Blyleven, to navigate their way to a […]
The Rose Bowl had been a long time coming for the good people of East Lansing. They hadn’t been to Pasadena since 1965 and hadn’t won there since 1955. In 1966 they were denied a trip because of a Big Ten rule preventing a team from going in consecutive years, even if they were conference […]
It had been a dry football decade for the good people of the Twin Cities as the 1987 Minnesota Vikings prepared for the season. After their team dominated its division and won three NFC titles in the 1970s, the winning slowed down in the 1980s. The last playoff appearance had been in the strike-torn year […]
The 1980s hadn’t been kind to the Houston Oilers. After a three-year stretch from 1978-80 where they made the playoffs each year and reached two AFC Championship Games, the Oilers fell hard. They hired a colorful new coach in Jerry Glanville for the 1986 season and the result was a 5-11 season. But Glanville and […]
