John Steigerwald: YouTube rabbit hole proves useful in sportsless world

Now what?

We’ve now gone through a full sportsless weekend, and it’s hard to imagine any American, who’s alive today, ever experiencing it.

This, of course, doesn’t include the millions of people in America who couldn’t care less about sports. Remember, when the Pittsburgh Steelers play on Sundays, between 40 and 50 percent of the people in the Pittsburgh market are not watching the games.

Nationally, it’s even fewer. The Steelers-New England Patriots Sunday night opener last September had a 17/30. That meant only 17% of the people in the country were watching. Seventy percent of the people who were watching TV that night were watching something else.

I ate dinner in a pizza shop Saturday night. It only has one TV, and it’s always tuned to sports. I was exposed to UFC (the only sports available) on ESPN and actually watched some of it. I would have liked a blank screen better.

Who watches that?

I have no interest in watching headlocks and scissors. We could go 10 years with no sports, and I’d never voluntarily watch that garbage.

So, what to watch?

YouTube, baby. Lots of it.

I spent Saturday trying to come up with events from the past that I wanted to watch. Not highlights. Events. Games.

I came up with a list. In no particular order:

Game 7 of the 1960 World Series.

Pitt vs. Georgia in the 1976 Sugar Bowl.

The 1958 NFL championship also known as The Greatest Game Ever Played. Keep in mind that the idea is to watch the entire game start to finish. How great was the game? I plan to find out.

The final round of the 1986 Masters won by Jack Nicklaus.

Pittsburgh Penguins vs. Chicago Blackhawks Game 2 of the 1992 Stanley Cup Final.

Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

Larry Holmes vs. Renaldo Snipes for the heavyweight championship at the Civic Arena in 1983. Prime time on ABC with Howard Cosell.

I decided to start with the 1974 AFC championship game between the Steelers and the Raiders in Oakland from Dec. 28, 1974.

Again, no cheating. I put the video on my 60-inch screen and watched it as though it were live. I didn’t fast forward through the commercials because they were a good part of the show.

Obviously, YouTube has thousands of choices and you can watch games/events that you’re old enough to remember or games you’ve heard about all your life and weren’t around to see. But how great is it to be able to watch these games in their entirety?

I didn’t want to watch Super Bowl games involving the Steelers because I’ve seen the highlights a million times, but I remembered nothing about the win that put the Steelers in the Super Bowl the first time.

Some things that jumped out right away:

• No graphics on the screen during plays. Just the live action. That was refreshing. Fantasy football didn’t exist, believe it or not, and there was no reason to show individual player stats on the bottom of the screen.

• Jack Lambert was out of his mind. Blitzing, playing the run and in pass coverage. He was a rookie, by the way. Talk about bursting on to the scene.

• The Raiders had 29 yards rushing in the game.

• No sideline reporters.

• There was a long, incomplete pass down the sideline from Terry Bradshaw to Lynn Swann on third-and-8 with a little more than two minutes to play in the game and the Steelers ahead 20-13. Swann got in the official’s face looking for an interference call. I waited for the replay to see if he had a legitimate beef. NBC never showed a replay. Imagine that happening in 2020.

• Chuck Noll looked really nervous on the sideline late in the fourth quarter.

• The game ended with a gun shot — imagine that — and announcer Curt Gowdy signed off in less than 30 seconds. No ceremony on the field.

Pick a game from your past you remember or pick a game that came before your time and watch it all.

You’ll get through this.