The Turk (1964)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   ESPN MAGAZINE discusses "The Turk" this week.  I haven't spoken with the writer of the column since "drag racing."  It's about that time of the football year again, and some Dallas Cowboys will be cut by a "Big Tuna."
   The ancestry.com newspapers didn't help.  I searched for "turk" and "football" and "roster" and "cut."  Unfortunately, there was a player named Turk Lown who kept showing up.
   This is a little earlier than the 1964 citation I posted in the archives, and I expect that the CHICAGO TRIBUNE will eventually do better.
   HDAS?



      Pruning Time at Football Camp To Reduce Giants' Squad by 7
       By WILLIAM N. WALLACE.       New York Times  (1857-Current file).       New York, N.Y.: Aug 24, 1964.                   p. 32 (1 page)
   The Turk will stalk the corridors tonight and tomorrow at Loyola Hall, the residence of the New York Giants at their training camp at Fairfield (Conn.) University.  The Turk is an ethereal, symbolical fellow who appears at pro football training camps when squad cuts are to be made.  When a player says, "The Turk got Jones," everyone knows what he means.  Jones was cut.
   The Turk does his cutting with a stained scimitar, which, according to apocryphal history, was first used by George Halas to divide player shares for the Chicago Bears in the nineteen-twenties.  The present Giant squad numbers 54 and must be down to 47 by tomorro evening.  Al Sherman, the coach, said yesterday that he may cut even deeper.  It can be presumed that those Giants eligible for the scimitar include the famous and the not-so-famous.