What it Was, Was Football

What it Was, Was Football is a monologue by comedian Andy Griffith, recorded in Raleigh, NC in 1953 and released in that year by Capitol Records (Capitol F2693). On the original single, the monologue is credited to "Deacon Andy Griffith". [ [http://dmdb.org/cgi-bin/plinfo_view.pl?SYN053537 details for What It Was, Was Football - Deacon Andy Griffith ] ] The monologue is a description of a college football game, as seen by a naive country preacher who attends the game by accident. It proved one of the most popular comedy records of the time, selling over 800,000 copies, [ [http://www.lib.unc.edu/fol/andy_griffith.html Andy Griffith ] ] and was instrumental in launching Griffith's career in television, stage and film; an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show followed in 1954, in large part due to the popularity of the record. [ [http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/G/htmlG/griffithand/griffithand.htm Griffith, Andy ] ]

"What it Was, Was Football" was printed in MAD Magazine in 1958, with illustrations by artist George Woodbridge. Most of the text of the recording is printed verbatim with faithful renderings of Griffith's accent as heard on the recording; however, Griffith's original climactic description of "the awfullest fight that I have ever seen..."in my life"!" is moved to an earlier position in the printed version. Also, while the original recording makes no direct reference to a specific university as a setting for the game witnessed, the illustrations in the MAD version refer to both the Ivy League and University of Notre Dame. Due to licensing issues, this adaptation had to be omitted from the Totally MAD CD-ROM collection of the magazine's run. [ [http://www.collectmad.com/madcoversite/index-missing.html Doug Gilford's Mad Cover Site ] ]

In 1997, the monologue was made into a short film, directed by Griffith. [ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380060/ What It Was Was Football (1997) ] ]

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