2011-2012 Giants Season In Review, Week 4: Giants 31, Cardinals 27

Famous photo

A photo of a dazed Tittle in the endzone taken by Morris Berman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on September 20, 1964, is regarded among the most iconic images in the history of sports. Tittle, who was in the final season of his career, was photographed helmet-less, bloodied and kneeling immediately after having been knocked to the ground by John Baker of the Pittsburgh Steelers and throwing an interception that was returned for a touchdown at the old Pitt Stadium. The quarterback suffered both a concussion and cracked sternum on the play. He would go on to play out the rest of the season, but the Giants would finish a disappointing 2-10-2.[citation needed]

Post-Gazette editors at first declined to run the photo, looking for “action shots” instead, but Berman entered the image into contests where it took on a life of its own, winning a National Headliner Award. The photo was ineligible for a Pulitzer Prize because it was not published, but it is regarded as having changed the way that photographers look at sports, having shown the power of capturing a moment of reaction. It now hangs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.[citation needed]

After at first having failed to see the appeal of the image, Tittle eventually would grow to embrace it, putting it on the back cover of his 2009 autobiography. “That was the end of the road,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. “It was the end of my dream. It was over.”[citation needed]

Tittle and Berman weren’t the only ones to profit from the famous image, Pittsburgh player John Baker (who hit Tittle right before the picture was taken) ran for Sheriff in his native Wake County, North Carolina, in 1978 and used the photo as a campaign tool. Baker went on to serve for 25 years.3

The photo was identified so heavily with youthful years of the baby boom generation that Miller Beer used it in an iconic ad relaunching its “Miller High Life” brand in 2007-2008.4

[edit] Post-retirement