The 70s: One attracts the other when you're the losin' kind

They say losing builds character.

If so, my character was rock solid by the end of the 70s, even if we just focused on football.

The New York Giants were SO BAD during the decade, fans hired a plane pulling a banner that read, “15 Years of Lousy Football. We've had enough."

Of course, the losing began in the mid-60s, 1964 to be exact. But the 70s were dreadful beyond words.

Number 45 in your program and 
number one in my heart. I wonder
 what  happened to my
 Pete Athas jersey

And I never missed a game.

What a glutton for punishment I was; look at these season records.

1970  9-5

1971  4-10

1972  8-6

1973  4-11-1

1974  2-12

1975  5-9

1976  3-11

1977  5-9

1978  6-10

1979  6-10

That adds up to a 50-93-1 record. By my calculations, there were approximately a little more than 500 Sundays during the decade. Not counting the handful of Monday night games, I was depressed for almost 20 percent of the weekends during the decade. That's how strongly this team affected my mood.

And before I get accused of sending an invitation for a pity party, I will emphatically state that being a fan since, with four Super Bowl wins, has made all that losing worthwhile. At least I keep telling myself that.

There were so many years of guys like Pete Athas, Jerry Goldsteyn, Beasley Reece and Larry Jacobsen. So desperate to identify with someone on the team, I bought a Giants jersey and ironed cornerback Athas's name on the back. Not sure why Athas, other that he seemed to personify a sort of reckless and rock and roll free spirit that was appealing to an impressionable teenager. Of course, like all Giants of that era, he lasted several hit and mostly miss years with the team.

Seasons would start with scads of enthusiasm, all to be squashed by about the 3rd week with a drubbing by the Cowboys or Redskins, or even worse, the Eagles.

Everyone references "The Fumble" as the milestone that represented the ineptitude of the franchise during this time period. But that ineptitude was on display nearly each and every week. With the coaches, with the drafts (Eldridge Small and Danny Buggs, anyone?), with the way Larry Brown ran the ball down their throats twice yearly, with the way Roger Staubach picked them apart in about 400 straight games, with the way the franchise brought in washed-up former stars like Craig Morton and Larry Csonka, with the way they had the indignity of having to play several years of home games at the Yale Bowl.

I saw most of the games on the then WDAU-22 out of Scranton. However, there was some strange glitch in our cable. If Channel 22 had another game scheduled, right at gametime it would somehow switch to Binghamton's Channel 12, which ALWAYS showed Giants games. It was like a miracle to my ever-hopeful fandom, but too often it ended up being a conduit to misery. At the precise moment the game ended, the channel would switch back to WDAU.

And some people don't believe in God and Satan.

These last few seasons have felt like the 70s. I am seeing familiar mistakes and half-hearted efforts, although I can also state that these losses don't affect my mood like they did previously. Real-world issues have a way of putting all things in perspective.

Maybe I will be able to look back at what feels like such misery now as the price paid for recent glory -- or perhaps for glories ahead.

But hey, I'm not getting any younger, so they may want to hurry up.