Friday Flashback: That Time a Chimpanzee in Shoulder Pads was at a Dallas Cowboys' Playoff Game
By Jason Lisk
This is the second installment of random posts inspired by things Mike Cardillo and I talk about on g-chat. Last week, we went through the one-vote Hall of Fame All-Stars. This week, it all started with sitting around and waiting for Cardale Jones’ announcement, and eventually led to discovering a chimpanzee in the crowd at a NFL playoff game from 35 years ago.
This all began with a future post that inspired Mike Cardillo to bring up the 1978 Rams yesterday. That led us, as is normally the case, to Warren Beatty.
Cardillo: “Is that around the same time as that Warren Beatty movie when he was on the Rams? (“Heaven Can Wait”).”
Lisk: “No idea.”
Cardillo: “I am a big Vince Ferragamo fan … for unknown reasons”
Lisk: “Ferragamo was the next year, he was the Cardale Jones of 1979. Went on the road at 9-7 and upset Cowboys, won at Tampa, almost beat Steelers. Started 5 games in his career before that.”
I then pined to find footage of Ferragamo to Billy Waddy to beat the Cowboys that next year, which set everything in motion. We also discussed our love of old uniforms, as Mike is a big fan of the Rams’ yellow pants while in Los Angeles, and also talked about the best teams not to make the Super Bowl over a period of years (because that Rams team at 9-7 was the only one to make it after they had been great for a decade). But those might be things for another post.
Because then I found this, a recap of the Rams’ 1979 season.
Waddy’s game winning catch is in there, but it was completely surpassed by what appeared in the production right before it. Fast forward to the 24:00 mark, and . . . there is a chimpanzee . . . in shoulder pads and a shirt . . . clapping and cheering.
So many questions. I mean, imagine if this happened on Sunday. Gronkowski scores a touchdown, they flash to the crowd, and a chimpanzee in the middle of the crowd wearing a Gronk jersey is excitedly celebrating. The internet would be broken.
The 70’s were a weird place, man, because a chimpanzee in the crowd probably barely registered. Let’s put it in some context, because primates were everywhere. Like, I remember having a poster that said “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” with a picture of a Chimpanzee wearing Cowboy gear, in 1980. You had the original Planet of the Apes movies from 1968 to 1974. In 1978, Clint Eastwood–Dirty Freaking Harry–was in a movie with an orangutan. One of the biggest television shows of 1979 involved a trucker driving around with a chimpanzee, and the best thing about it was that he didn’t pay property tax.
So if a chimpanzee in a truck stop diner was completely acceptable, I guess buying a ticket for one, walking it into a stadium, and having it wear shoulder pads was cool too.
I can’t even find reference to a chimpanzee at Dallas games on a search.
My best guess about this goes back to Media Day from the previous year, when the Cowboys and Steelers met. According to an article from the Washington Post entitled “Cowboys: Pearson ‘Probable,’ Newhouse to Start; Henderson Becomes a Pied Piper for News-Starved Media;
Media Dances to the ‘Hollywood Hustle'” (man, they don’t make titles like they used to!), the topic of chimpanzees came up.
In grousing about Hollywood Henderson, Jack Lambert said, “If they put a chimpanzee in a football suit, he’d get interviewed in Super Bowl week.” Henderson responded, “Tell Lambert he looks like a chimpanzee when he takes his teeth out.”
So what we may have had here was an enterprising amateur B.J. bringing his best friend to the next Cowboys’ playoff game after that quote. But I still can’t find any reference or record to it, so if you know who the chimpanzee in that clip is, please share. As Cardillo might say about 1979, “what a time to be alive!”