Teacher was a bit of a stretch...but..a basketball coach? Brilliant! Far more daring than Gene Hackman.
2) Steeler Pimps
Those tam-and-platform-heel-wearing dudes wearing black and gold leisure suits on the sidelines at Steelers home games - they are visible in footage of the Immaculate Reception. What were they exactly? Pimps with field passes? The Pittsburgh version of male cheerleaders? No wait scratch that - the Steelers didn't have cheerleaders.
3) Slap Shot
More characters and memorable lines than the entire active membership of the Writers Guild could ever concoct and most of those characters and lines were drawn from real life.
4) Neckties
As in those ties the approximate length and width of living room drapes that poor coaches had to try and keep knotted. Admittedly incomplete without accompanying muttonchop sideburns and some form of hair tonic in use.
Possibly irrelevant fact: did you know Ralph Lauren's Polo empire was started in 1967 when he peddled those ridiculous wide ties?
5) Sports Illustrated
It was the 1970s. There was no Internet. SI was really all we had except for a few uninspiring competitors such as Sport with its cryptic title font (way too avant-garde then and now).
SI's weekly arrival in the mailbox presented a conundrum - read the whole thing in a frenzy of gluttony? Or...you could savor each morsel including the letters section (called the 19th Hole, it appeared in the back of the magazine rather than the front and was edited by the immortally-named Gay Flood) and even Faces In The Crowd even when you really weren't interested in the no-hitters pitched by Sally Smith in the South Dakota high school softball tournament.
Admit it - when you think of big 70s sports moments you are just as likely to recall the SI cover as you are the event itself.
6) Super Bowl Halftime Shows...more specifically Super Bowl Halftime Shows That Are Properly Treated As Meaningless Time-Killing Filler Because That's What They Really Are.
Up With People is a sportswriter's go-to gag when he's facing a deadline and doesn't want to miss the free buffet but for some in the 21st century the Super Bowl halftime has become a referendum on the viability of entertainment in Western Civilization. Since the 1970s the Super Bowl halftime has been co-opted by media conglomerates pushing talentless cat-suited popettes doing atrocious lip-synchs or by wrinkly rockers seeding ticket sales for their summer ampitheatre tours. All the while an army of unpaid local schoolkids suckered in by the chance to be ‘part of the show’ prances around in leotards while being ignored by one and all.
Those who believe USA Today's AdMeter has redeeming scientific value will probably be shocked to learn that Super Bowl halftimes in the 70s featured...marching bands! Strike a fortissimo note of triumph for the 1970s.
7) Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
Before Hooters and before there were strip clubs in the smallest of towns (how can you live in a municipality of 1,500 persons and not already be nodding acquaintances with anyone who might be an employee or a patron of a small-town strip club? Are you supposed to pretend you don't know the stripper? Are you supposed to pretend her name is Samantha when you know it's Susan?), there were the Cowboys Cheerleaders who provided one of the few outlets for possibly unclean male adolescent yearning.
The Cowboys were hated with relish thanks in no small part to the unproven-then-and-now America's Team appellation and CBS's cynical programming which force-fed the Cowboys as the nationally-aired 4 pm game whenever CBS had the doubleheader. Cookie duster mustaches, Camaros and Cowboy fandom - it was a 70s trinity.
But even those who avoided any combination of silver and blue clothing in that decade had grudging respect - OK, lust - for the Cowboys' distaff dancing columns of big teeth, big hair and big, er, pompoms. During one game a CBS announcer solemnly intoned that fraternization between Cowboys players and cheerleaders was forbidden - which either made you laugh or cry. Telling a Cowboy not to fraternize would be like telling an addicted gambler down to his last $5 that the Megabucks slots were about to hit big.
If memory serves there was a controversy involving some ex-Cowboys cheerleaders who posed nude in the iconic costumes. Ah - memory does serve:
http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F2/600/c1184/231419/
8) 1970s sports venues
Cookie-cutter multipurpose bowls with intentionally vague level names such as ‘loge’ and ‘plaza’ that were universally ignored in favor of the simple and hyper-accurate ‘blue seats’ or ‘red seats.’ Creaky old arenas with wooden seats that appeared to be hewn from the True Cross worn smooth by decades of wear. Inadequate parking in unsafe neighborhoods. Advertising featuring local businesses and brands of beer (Burger anyone?). PA announcers that used a blessed monotone, announced each point, run, touchdown or goal by either team in exactly the same manner and didn't scream and shout. House lights that stayed on throughout team introductions. Souvenir stands that featured pennants, buttons and hats – and that’s all. Sportservice vendors introducing the concept of price gouging long before many of us took an economics course. Smoking on concourses and in the restrooms. Ugh...those restrooms. More nadir than apex really. Let’s move on.
9) 1970s uniforms
This subject has been worn threadbare (no pun intended) on a variety of blogs and sites but it's still difficult to survey uniform designs in the 1970s and not come away convinced that teams were actively attempting to out-ugly one another in the uniform version of mutually assured destruction. Still, it produced designs that will never be approached in terms of quirkiness and pointlessness.
10) Local sports media
Sleep patterns were frequently disrupted as youngsters attempted to stay up late or wake up early to see a coach's show or a local sports digest that aired at a ridiculous hour either side of the test pattern because syndicated Star Trek and M*A*S*H were too lucrative to move off the schedule.
Newspapers had beat writers who employed the Mad Libs approach to game stories using one of four templates....hometown team wins big...hometown team ekes out win....hometown team thumped...hometown team loses heartbreaker...but you still hung on every word. Newspapers had sports editor/columnists who presided for decades, protecting their cronies and demonizing their enemies without encountering direct criticism from readers except for that crackpot from the East Side who kept mailing letters in and the editor told his secretary to throw those away. The editor/columnist usually hosted an annual sports banquet, golf tournament or both – featuring more of his cronies of course.
Radio broadcasts had one or two sponsors that were mentioned at the start of the game, at halftime and after the game and certainly weren't mentioned at every timeout or whenever the sun went behind a cloud. Local TV sports departments struggled to get footage from a single Friday night game on the air. If your team appeared on the screen even for a fleeting moment it felt like winning the lottery.
Nostalgia is defined as ‘a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life.’ But 30 years on will today’s youngsters get misty about watching Britney’s Greatest Post-Hysterectomy Hits Halftime Extravaganza or their 8th repeat of The Old Spice Xtra-Smelly Stuff Cos You Haven’t Showered In Three Days NFL Mock Fantasy Draft?
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