AMERICA AT LARGE:The NFL Championship Game of 1958 proved a watershed moment in the sport's history, writes George Kimball

EVEN ITS surviving participants concede that this "greatest game" stuff is a misnomer.

"I don't think any of us who participated in that game could ever imagine it being called that," recalls Pat Summerall, the old New York Giants placekicker.

"It wasn't 'the greatest game ever played'," says Frank Gifford, who also played for the Giants that day. "For God's sake, there were six fumbles." (Three of the fumbles were by Gifford himself.) And, reminded that NFL commissioner Bert Bell "had tears in his eyes" at its conclusion, Raymond Berry, who caught 12 passes for the Baltimore Colts that day supposed: "Maybe he realized the impact. If so, he was the only one."

The 50th anniversary of the 1958 NFL Championship Game is, in any case, upon us and the watershed moment in the sport's history has already spawned two books, Mark Bowden's The Best Game Ever and The Glory Game: How the 1958 NFL Championship Game Changed Football Forever, Gifford's own first-hand reminiscence co-authored by Peter Richmond.

(Although both the Bowden and Gifford-Richmond books became instant best-sellers, John Steadman's The Greatest Football Game Ever Played, written to coincide with the 30th anniversary, remains out of print; pre-owned copies are available on Amazon.com for €81 and up.)

The classic game, the only championship game to be decided in sudden-death overtime, has been further celebrated this week with the premiere of ESPN's The Greatest Game Ever Played, a two-hour documentary produced in conjunction with NFL Films which figures to receive multiple worldwide airings before the DVD hits the streets.

The retrospective of the historic occasion combines game footage, interviews with surviving players from both teams, nostalgic recollections from eyewitness partisans of both sides, such as Barry Levinson, the Baltimore- born filmmaker whose breakthrough film Diner was a paean to the Baltimore Colts, and renowned New York photographer Neil Leifer, then a 16-year-old amateur shutterbug who snapped the classic picture of Alan 'The Horse' Ameche's plunge into the end zone for the winning touchdown.

Fifty years ago professional football was not only a poor stepsister to more popular sports like baseball, boxing, and horse racing - it occupied a status well behind that of the college game in the eyes of the nation.

All of that immutably changed with the December 28th, 1958, clash between the Colts, a representative of blue-collar Baltimore, and their glamorous rivals from the Big Apple. Played at Yankee Stadium before a crowd of 62,000, the epic contest was viewed by a then-unheard of television audience of 45 million.

The future popularity of the NFL can be traced to the events of a single afternoon, and the lingering significance of the event remains such that it was to have been the subject of the late David Halberstam's next book. The esteemed journalist and historian was on his way to interview the old Giants quarterback YA Tittle when he was killed in California in a car crash two years ago.

The death of Halberstam, a close friend, inspired Gifford to embark upon his own book project. (Gifford had been as the object of Frederick Exley's adulation in his 1968 A Fan's Notes.) The impending anniversary had simultaneously attracted the interest of Bowden, previously known for Black Hawk Down and The Killing of Pablo Escobar.

In addition to capturing the drama inherent in the occasion, the ESPN film is replete with insights from the now-geriatric participants. The winning players' share was €3,487 - today's Super Bowl winners receive €122,067 per man - a matter which caused a near-fistfight in the locker room between Gifford and linebacker Sam Huff before the game. The object of contention was whether third-string quarterback (and future Republican vice- presidential nominee) Jack Kemp, who hadn't played a single down that season, merited a full share. (Gifford argued that he did.)

Since the tie-breaking procedure had never come into play before, exhausted players on both sides were caught by surprise when the captains were summoned to midfield for the coin-toss preceding overtime.

"I'd never heard of 'sudden death,' says Art (Fatso) Donovan, the Baltimore defensive lineman. "I just assumed it was a tie and we'd be co-champions or something." The winning drive was interrupted while the police chased down a fan who had run onto the field, an episode which turns out to have been staged. Someone had accidentally kicked out an electric plug, knocking out the television transmission. What appeared to be a forerunner of the modern-day Super Bowl streaker was actually an NBC production assistant who led the cops on a merry chase to delay the game until power could be restored.

Since Baltimore owner Carroll Rosenbloom was an inveterate gambler, it has been assumed over the years that behind the Colts' decision to forego the conventional wisdom of kicking a perfunctory field goal was that Rosenbloom needed a touchdown to cover the 4-point spread.

Not so, according to The Greatest Game. Raymond Berry notes that since there'd never been an overtime game before, no one had bothered to work out a strategy and hence "conventional wisdom" didn't exist. Berry also added, "we had total confidence in our offence scoring, and a total lack of confidence in the field goal team making it". Given the 32-man rosters of the era, teams couldn't afford kicking specialists.

Twelve of that day's players, and 17 participants in all, would go on to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Summerall and Gifford had long broadcasting careers between them and served as the announcers for 22 Super Bowls. The Giants had just two assistant coaches. Vince Lombardi, the offensive assistant, would go on to win the first two Super Bowls as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers. (The world championship trophy now bears his name.) The defensive assistant, Tom Landry, would coach the Dallas Cowboys for the first 29 years of their existence.

Weeb Ewbank, who coached the Colts in the 1958 game, was fired after the 1962 season and signed with the New York Jets, whom he led to their monumental upset victory in Super Bowl III and hence, notes the film, was the winning coach in the two most significant games in NFL history.

An unfortunate fault of the documentary is its attempt to bridge the 50-year gap with the on-camera presence of contemporary members of the Giants and Colts. The latter now play in Indianapolis, making it dismissive of the team's 1958 status as a sacred object of civic pride in hardscrabble Baltimore.

In a shameful episode in NFL history, the Colts pulled up roots and stole out of town in the dead of night 25 years ago, but the Baltimore Colts Marching Band didn't disband until 14 years later. In a most poignant moment of The Greatest Game Ever Played, Bill Miller, a septugenarian trombonist sits in his kitchen playing a solo rendition of the Colts' Fight Song the band performed at halftime at Yankee Stadium in 1958. Fifty years later, it sounds more like a dirge.