We have all heard of 2 high school teams co-oping when each was probably too small to field a team by themselves. But there was a case where two pro sports teams co-oped for a season. Who were the teams and what was the reason? First one to answer wins a very old sammich and a very new bottle of wine. The wine is so new it still says Welch's on the label.

Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers merged teams during World War II. I believe they did it for two seasons, because the war had obviously taken a lot of young men via the draft (not the NFL draft, obviously) and both teams were hit hard by it.

Very good, Mike. What you forgot to mention is that they called themselves the Steagles. Isn't it hard to imagine, when we have 34 NFL teams now, that in an era when there were about 12 NFL teams they didn't have enough players to fill all of the teams. Think about the shape of the remaining players if they couldn't pass the military induction physical. "Do you have a pulse?" If NO, "Have you ever known anyone who had a pulse"? Good enough, here's your gear.

The postwar era gave us some of the most physically and mentally tough college athletes in the history of college athletics. The GI Bill gave the returning GIs the chance to go to college that many of them would not have had without it. Getting hit by a linebacker 100 lbs. heavier didn't seem like a big deal to the soldier who had survived the Bataan Death March. College wrestling matches were 9 minutes long then (3-3-3)and that was a stroll in the park for those Marines who had crawled on their bellies across the beaches of Iwo Jima.

Our coach at Iowa State Teachers College (now University of Northern Iowa), Bill Koll, started to ISTC, was an undefeated NCAA champion as a soph. (Freshmen weren't eligible for college athletics then), wrestled a few matches as a junior then went into the army. The equipment manager at ISTC/UNI told me that Coach Koll was great as a sophomore, but when he came back after the war he was driven. He had been in the first wave to hit the beaches of Normandy. His job was to clear the land mines from the beach to the foot of the cliffs before the assault troops landed. He was nearly blinded when a mine blew up in his face. He won two more NCAA championships, both after undefeated seasons. The equipment man told me that in one of his matches an opponent was able to pile up 9 seconds of riding time (not net, total)in one match. That upset him so much because no one else had been able to ride him for more than a second at a time.

His son, Rob Koll, is the head whistle at Cornell University in New York and doing a great job.

Tom Brokaw was right when he named them, "The Greatest Generation".

I'm sure that many of you had fathers, uncles, and grandfathers who served and then came back to compete in college athletics. I'd be very interested in hearing their stories.

When I quoted Tom Brokaw's, "The Greatest Generation" I should have added that we and our descendants for generations to come owe them a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. Fortunately they built such a solid foundation that my generation, which tried to mess up all of good they had done, wasn't successful in destroying the country. We set it back but their good was much more powerful than our bad.

For you young people who weren't becoming adults in the 1950's and 60's we coined such phrases as "God is Dead", "If it feels good, do it.", and the wonderful word "Entitlement".