1960 Championship Edition

Missouri Arrows win the first SRFL Super Bowl 24-7. The Arrows downed the Rams for the second time this season to claim the first SRFL Championship Trophy. During the regular season back in week 9 the Arrows defeated Cleveland 27-14 setting the stage for the winner-take-all rematch. Midway through the first quarter Gene Mingo did what he had done all season, converting a short field goal to give Missouri a 3-0 lead. On the first drive of the second quarter the Arrows increased their lead with Milt Plum doing the honors with a 1 yard plunge to make it 10-0. Cleveland then responded with their best drive of the day with an 80 yard march, featuring a 30 yard catch by Jim Colclough and culminating in a Paul Lowe TD run to cut the gap to 10-7. The score remained the same until late in the third quarter. Missouri then put together a 10 play, 63 yard drive that ate up almost 4 minutes of time. Mixing runs with passes the Arrows kept the Rams off balance and finally Milt Plum found Ken Carpenter for a 9 yard TD toss to boost the lead to 17-7. Next the Missouri defense stood tall to force a three and out for Cleveland. Sensing an opportunity for the kill Milt Plum unleashed a dart to the waiting arms of Gail Cogdill for a 76 yard touchdown completion. Now trailing 24-7 Cleveland had less than 14 minutes to turn things around. Dan Lewis broke off a 47 yard scamper to get the Rams withing scoring range. From there the drive stalled and Pat Summerall was able to salvage any points when his field goal drifted left. That would prove to be the last real shot for the Rams as the final 12 minutes of the game were mostly uneventful up to the gun going off and the Arrows celebrating their championship season. Milt Plum was the game MVP throwing for 254 yards and 2 TD's.

Congratulation to the Rams coach Anthony DeNardo for guiding his team all the way to the Championship game, nice work. Of course the ultimate kudos go to the Super Bowl winning coach Dale Ven Deven for his tremendous season. Both teams will have a short respite before the process of putting together their teams for the 1961 season. That Arrow logo may just be a target for all the teams to aim at as they compete to be the next Super Bowl champ. Finally a big thank you has to go out for the Commissioner Robert DiNardo. As is true for all start-ups there were many bumps in the road this year. Through it all Robert DiNardo kept things on track and the season concluded with the inaugural championship. Also the inital preparation for drafting all these players was an immense feat, not to mention the creation of the schedule and numerous other functions that allowed the rest of the coaches to do the easy and fun part of just playing the games. I hope everyone had a good time and I hope to see you all again next season.