What Redskins' generation are you and what's your first "live" 'skins memory

[Gallen5862]

I am also part of the" I like Sonny" "I like Billy" generation. I am 55 years old and I liked Sonny for several reasons. One he was from my Hometown of Wilmington ,NC  and Two he went to New Hanover High School with my Mom and Dad and was in My Moms English Class. "He use to try to put her hair in the inkwell and tell her pretty little things come in pretty little packages. He signed my Moms senior yearbook so I have his Signature. My big memories was Superbowl VII. Sonny threw the best football and was great especially inside the 20 yard line in the Redzone. Billy threw the wobber which they said was the option pass. They said the option was which end of the football would get to the Receiver.

 

[ntotoro]

I’m 47. First memory is in ‘79 or so, my mother and I betting $1 each against a friend of my Grandmother’s against the Dallas Brokebacks. My mom and I were out a dollar that day. She covered my bet LOL! 
 

Second was 1982, I was 9 years old and the ‘Skins were playing the Falls Church HS faculty in basketball (I grew up in Falls Church in the Tyler Park area). The faculty got killed, as you can imagine. After the game, I got Art Monk’s autograph in my Topps sticker album. Became my favorite player that day and has remained since. 
 

Edit: I still have that album.

[bakedtater1]

On 3/5/2020 at 1:57 PM, Cooleyfan1993 said:

Been a fan since 05. Went to almost every home game for 6 seasons, sat in the upper deck with my brother until he went off to college, then my mom started tagging along and we’d bring neighbors, so we started getting loge or club level seats. 

 

First live memory would have to be at home vs Dallas in 05. We beat them 35-7. 

I absolutely loved that beat down we gave them..if I remember correctly that's the game they were going to come in and get revenge from the monday night miracle game and we stomped there ass.

[Stoox]

This playoff game - and this is the original broadcast on CBS: 

 

 

 

I was 8 years old. Growing up in Ottawa, Canada, we didn't get much NFL on TV in those days - the NFL was a big mystery that my school friends would glowingly talk about. I needed a team to hang out with them, and since everyone else were either Steelers or <choke> Cowboys fans, I needed to root for someone else. When I was allowed to watch TV one Saturday afternoon and this game came on, I was hooked. I still didn't have a team right yet, but I knew I hated the color purple, so I could not be a Vikings fan. So....Redskins. Later on, I found out that this guy named Joe Theismann was playing for the team - my brother told me he had played in Canada. That reinforced my fandom.

 

I took a lot of abuse from my friends until some guy named Joe Gibbs was hired in 1981...and then...

[BRAVEONTHEWARPATH93]

My first member was probably 1998. I was five but my family loved the team and has season tickets so I had no choice 

 

They were playing SF on SNF (?) and got WRECKED. I was so excited to watch but grandma told me going in that we sucked and would probably lose. She was right and has been right pretty much ever since lol 

[hail2skins]

1 hour ago, BRAVEONTHEWARPATH93 said:

My first member was probably 1998. I was five but my family loved the team and has season tickets so I had no choice 

 

They were playing SF on SNF (?) and got WRECKED. I was so excited to watch but grandma told me going in that we sucked and would probably lose. She was right and has been right pretty much ever since lol 

Yes, only the second year in Landover. I went to that game as well (was actually MNF, IIRC), but bailed early when we were getting blown out. Remember listening to the local sports talk station on the way home, as they was taking calls as the game was still going on, and the sheep panic was hilarious!

[Mrsix4g]

I've been a Fan since we lost to the the Dolphins perfect Team. The Mike Bass touchdown was my badge of honor that day...thanks Garo! The Over the Hill Gang....Talbert Biggs, Hanburger, Fisher, Kenny Houston. Charley Taylor was my guy during those years. I think I've always been a big fan of Skins wide receivers...being a tall kid. Taylor to Monk...Just knew Westbrooke was gonna be my guy! still have his jersey in a closet somewhere! lol. Funny I remember Joey T returning punt cuz George Allen burried him behind aging Kilmer and Sonny. Now my hope's are riding on a new #7 and what I hope builds into a defense for the ages. HTTR!

[ddyork]

Sonny Jurgenson and Charlie Taylor giving the Cowboys fits....  Seems like it was a night game.

[Redskin4ever]

My first memory came when I was 5 years old. The Redskins had just won Super Bowl XVII. I didn't watch a single play in the game. But my parents called me into their room to watch as President Reagan called the Redskins in their locker room to congratulate them for winning.

 

My next memory of the Redskins came the next year during the Super Bowl. My parents went to the game and I stayed with a friend of the family. I was running around playing and doing whatever a 6 year old does, and I remember coming into the room where they were watching the game and asking if the Redskins were winning. Obviously they were not and I remember that I was extremely disappointed. I don't think I cried, but I was not happy as I thought they would just win since that's all I knew of the Redskins at that point in my life. 

[JoeJacobyHOForRIOT]

This thread needs a poll OP

 

Also Madden going on and on about Dave Butz big ole head and how he loved the scuff marks of other teams paint on #65'S Helmet always stands out in my mind from childhood memory's watching games. Of all the great games and players , this is what stands out in my mind the most and my earliest memory lol

 

I think it was cause i played D line pee wee football at the time and use to focus on Dave Butz every game 

 

 

[joeken24]

I moved here after 12 years living in California. Football games started at 9 am. Most times, I'd be just getting in from party residual so I normally watched the 4pm games. My team at the time was Bengals (originally from Cinci) but of course they sucked. Fast forward, I get to DC in 95. I actually have no idea when my fan ship took root. I just know that I'm pretty hooked. It did happen in 95 and of course we sucked most of the time. But I enjoyed 2004.

https://www.redskins.com/video/2004-year-in-review

[Gibbs Hog Heaven]

I'll start this with the full journey behind how I got to be a Redskin to start with. Just how did a happy-go-lucky, football-crazy (of the round ball variety) Scouse kid start on the path that's lead to this very post on the official message board of a football team (of the pigskin variety) some three and a half thousand miles or so from his home city?

 

Back in November 1982, all young GHH wanted to do, as he had since he could remember, was kick a soccer ball around with his friends, and hope to get taken to the match on a Saturday if he was lucky. (Times were REAL hard in that absolute biatch Thatcher's England of the day, not least in my home city.). In Liverpool, soccer is the ALL-consuming passion. You're either red or, if you've REALLY sinned, blue. To not like soccer is akin to being an atheist. It dominates the landscape, with both clubs splitting family's right down the middle. Whether through the diverse cultural mix, or just the unique individualism of our nature; we've always considered ourselves different to the rest of the Country. Not English, but Scouse. And as we've dominated on the soccer field, like in comedy and music; soccer is a way to fully express our fierce local pride. So I was already a sports-crazy kid before these padded GIANTS from across the Atlantic entered my psyche. 

 

And enter it with the full ferocity of an EF5 tornado it did when the UK launched a 4th TV channel back in November 1982. (Imagine that you young guys and gals out there. We only had FOUR channels! 😯 And none of them through the night. The World would end if it was like that today. 😂). And with the advent of a 4th channel on TV came this weird and wonderful new sport in a weekly highlights package, American Football. And the spectacle of it all, these gladiators playing out their own tactical war and belting the living daylights out of each other in the process, all in glorious technicolour with team names of animals and warriors that just played into a 10-year-olds imagination. (That was how I initially picked this team that has gone on to be a life's love. I was always on the side of the guys with bow and arrows and headdresses when we played 'cowboys and injuns'; so to see this all dominant team called the Redskins, with a warrior brave on their helmets, was a match made in heaven.). My friends, most of whom followed their dads in mocking these 'soft Yank's with bigger shoulder pads than those worn in Dynasty; who would get their ass' kicked by real men like rugby players'; never got it or my quickly developing rabid passion. But it struck a chord deep within my soul that's lasted nigh on 40 years.

 

When I think of the lengths I've gone to over the years to follow this team, it's enough to have me permanently locked away in an asylum. From sneaking back downstairs in the middle of the night when the house was asleep to catch late-night highlight shows or the very rare event of a live game, an NFC championship game or the SB in the early years, and in so doing being like a zombie in school the next day; through patiently tuning in a long wave radio to the American Armed Forces Radio Network, hoping to get some update of the Redskins score through whichever game they were covering (and it ALWAYS went incoherently crackly at the most vital times. Old school UK football fans will be nodding readily at the memory). And buying publications like 'First Down' on a weekly basis to feed my fix. All with no real outlet to talk to other like-minded fans as football was, and still is to a lesser extent, a cult thing in the UK. 

 

And then we had the home PC/ Internet boom. Which lead me to this wacked out place of ours some 15/16 years back. After a few years of lurking. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

 

Aren't you all just SO glad I discovered ES? (GROANNNNNNNNN! Go the collective readers! 😂). 

 

The passion has ebbed and flowed over recent years. The Sh ..... Sh ..... Sh ..... 'eror' of that SOB who shall no longer be mentioned really tested that long-distance commitment. And Gruden's inept brand of football/ coaching had me dipping in and out like I never had before and being pretty 'meh' most Sunday's. But the second half of last year really reinvigorated me and the pride and fight every week from the team in a horrible situation just reminded me about why I truly love this team and everything it should stand for. And under Coach Ron, taking that progress on, I can only see that bond being strengthened and reaffirmed once more. Win or lose, I feel safe in the knowledge we'll be doing it the right way, the 'Redskins Way' I fell so in love with under Coach way back in the '80's and leaving NO stone unturned and NOTHING on the field come Sunday's. The way it should be. 

 

Oh yeah, my first live memory ..... the one I can honestly remember, is the 1983 Super Bowl and Riggo running over McNeil. There must be memory's leading up to that, that I can no longer recall. But that stands out, not just for the awesomeness of being a SB Champion with your new-found love, but falling asleep on the couch, having sneaked downstairs in the dead of night to watch the live coverage of the show for the first time here with Nicky Horn et al (there's one for the old school UK'ers again), and being woken to a PROPER doing off me Ma the following Monday school morning haha. 

 

Not a bad way to start out on a life long 'Skins journey huh? 

 

Happy days. 😎

 

Hail. 

[l7986]

My first Redskins memory is being absolutely terrified when the stands at RFK started bouncing and thinking the whole stadium was going to cave in some time during the 91 season. Granted I was born in 84 so 7 year old me wasn't very well versed in the fact RFK could handle that happening.  Also remember waiting at the subway station after the game waiting for a train to come by and these idiots that would jump on the side of the train and try to surf on the sides of it for as long as they could before it went into the tunnel.

[Louskins9193]

I've been a Redskin fan since 1968 use to watch Sonny throw the long ball to Charley Taylor. Those were the days

then it was Sonny and Billy at QB Roy Jefferson and Charley Taylor at WR and we had Larry Brown and Charlie Harraway at RBs 

and can't forget Jerry Smith at TE. Chris Hamburger leading the over the hill gang. So long ago its just a distant memory now.

HTTR

[hokiebird]

My first memories started in the 1982 playoffs.  I just turned 6, and had no understanding of professional sports before that.  I remember watching the games with my family and uncle.  My uncle keep saying "this team represents where we live" and that stuck with me.  I instantly felt a strong connection with the team (and was very confused when I returned to school and learned that some people from the same area liked other teams instead).  My uncle wrote a single page on loose leaf paper that summarized the rules of football in a way that made sense to a 6 year old, complete with a few drawings.  I wish I had somehow kept that paper. 

 

There was a part of me that kind of thought it was like a movie, that "the good guys" have to win, and we're just waiting to celebrate at the end.  During the few playoff games that I had watched, Washington always seemed to be leading so that reinforced that feeling.  I remember a distinct moment during the Super Bowl when the Redskins were behind 17-10 and seeing that my family members were all very nervous and I realized that it wasn't predetermined.  The shots of adrenaline that followed on the next three Redskins scores were enough to hook this 6 year old for life. 

[youngestson]

I can distantly remember the loss to the Dolphins in Super Bowl 6? 7? I was a pretty young kid and while I rooted for the team because all my family did I didn't know a great deal about them. 

 

When I really became a fan was a year or two later going to a game against the Eagles. The Skins won fairly convincingly, I got some popcorn, it was cold... the game experience was a bit of a jumble, but somehow I got Charlie Taylor's autograph. I remember him being very cheerful and outgoing, think he even gave me a friendly chuck on the shoulder. From that moment I became a true Skins fan. 

[SonnySideUp]

I started being a Redskins fan when Sonny was the starting QB. I lived in New York at the time but didn’t particularly like either the Giants or the Jets. The first team I really supported during those years was the Steelers and I still root for them when they are not competing against the Skins.

 

The Redskins kept growing on me however and I can remember Sonny getting injured and Billy Kilmer taking over as the starter. After that, it was always “who is the better QB, Sonny or Billy” for a while then Joe T. came in. Also, I HATED the Cowboys during those years (When Tex Schramm still owned the team and Tom Landry was the coach) and have hated them even more since JJ bought the team. That’s another reason it has always seemed natural for me to root for the Skins.

 

Even though I had already been watching Skins games when I could (it was difficult since I was outside the Skins broadcast area at the time) the first REALLY clear “LIVE” memory was the 1973 Superbowl against the Dolphins. I was at a Superbowl party in New York and can remember that game as if it happened yesterday. The room was 100% Skins fans and I don’t think there was a Dolphin fan within miles. There was nothing but gloom in that room when the Skins lost the game.

 

The other thing I really remember during those years was about how George Allen was brought in to be the head coach. He stirred up controversy right away by trading high draft picks for established veterans (the "over the hill gang") and saying “the future is now”. Of the players he brought in that I remember (besides Billy) were Diron Talbert and Jack Pardee (who later became a HC of the Bears and the Skins and DC of the Chargers if I remember correctly).

 

He brought in other players of course but those are the ones that I remember the most. The way he treated the draft was really controversial at the time (does it remind you of someone else in his family tree?) but it did bring quick results. It got them to a winning season and a Superbowl fast. I guess I would have to say that Billy Kilmer was my first Redskins hero although we didn’t realize at the time of course that Sonny would turn out to be the Redskins legend. I really liked Billy because he had fractured his leg and nearly severed his foot in a car accident when he was young then went on to be a darn fine football player in spite of that. I really admired him for that.

 

I hope I got all this correct but that's the way I remember it anyway.