A football oddity occurred on the final the weekend of the NFL’s 2005-06 regular season: New England quarterback Doug Flutie converted a point-after drop kick in the fourth quarter against the Miami Dolphins.

It was the league’s first successful drop kick since the NFL championship game 64 years ago. On Dec. 21, 1941, just two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Ray (Scooter) McLean of the Bears converted one in Chicago’s 37-9 victory over the New York Giants at Wrigley Field. McLean’s kick, unremarkable at the time, was almost a footnote in the AP report that appeared in the Morning Tribune the next day:

“The Chicagoans’ final touchdown came when the Giants’ attempted lateral pass, Hank Soar to Andy Marefos, was fumbled and end Ken Kavanaugh grabbed the ball to run 42 yards for the marker. There was a minute and a half left to play when McLean drop-kicked the point.”

More interesting to modern readers might be a brief analysis that appeared in the Tribune the same day:

GOLDEN ERA OF PRO GRID
OVER; FUTURE UNCERTAIN

By STEVE SNIDER

Bruce Smith

CHICAGO – (UP) – The championship playoff between the New York Giants and Chicago Bears Sunday probably has ended the golden era of America’s fastest growing sport – professional football.

No sport faces a more uncertain future. Its life blood is the constant flood of ready made stars from the collegiate ranks to replace veterans forced into retirement by the bruising pace of five or six seasons in the National league.

How many current college seniors are interested in football for 1942? Typical is the answer of Bruce Smith, Minnesota’s great halfback who won both the Heisman trophy and a scroll as football’s man of the year:

“THERE’S A BIGGER GAME THAN FOOTBALL GOING ON NOW.”

The 10 national League club owners meet Monday for their annual draft. Each club draws 20 players each from the hundreds graduating in June. The draft, giving each club the right to negotiate with its 20 players without interference from other clubs, once was considered the ideal means to balance the weaker clubs and the tough ones.

Today, the draft is a joke. Most seniors are eligible for selective service.

Others, like Smith, are ready to enter the armed forces and the National league faces future seasons with much of its personnel consisting of married veterans or men with minor defects which do not affect their football.

A quick check on the married men shows the Washington Redskins with 22, Green Bay Packers 20, Chicago Cards and Cleveland 19, Pittsburgh Steelers 18, New York Giants 17, Chicago Bears and Brooklyn Dodgers 13, Detroit 12 and Philadelphia 10.

Bears Get $430
Each of All-Time
Low Pro Melon

CHICAGO – (UP) – Thirty-eight members of the Chicago Bears earned $430.94 each by defeating the New York Giants for the National Professional Football league championship today.

League headquarters said the figure was an all-time low for a National championship game. The Bears received the winners’ share of a gross gate of $46,108.45, collected from a disappointing crowd of 13,341.

The Giants voted 39 shares of $288.70 out of their slice of the receipts.

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