A couple of thoughts about today’s game:

1. Will the Yank Durham rule apply? Durham was the manager of former heavyweight boxing champ Joe Frazier during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1966, Frazier faced rugged Argentinian heavyweight Oscar Bonavena, who decked him twice in the first round. Frazier got up and hammered out a 10-round decision. After Frazier was champ, he faced Bonavena again. Frazier won, but Bonavena was one of the few men to last 15 rounds with Smokin’ Joe.

After the second fight a reporter asked Durham if Frazier would fight Bonavena a third time. Durham said absolutely not, that experience had taught him that if a fighter fought a good fighter enough times, then that other fighter would eventually beat him. Ezzard Charles, the superb fighter who had the misfortune of succeeding the legendary Joe Louis as heavyweight champion, found that out the hard way when he made the mistake of taking on Jersey Joe Walcott for the third time in 1951.

Walcott knocked Charles out with a picture-perfect left hook. And it wasn’t just any knockout; it was one of those facedown, derriere-in-the-air jobs, the most humiliating kind.

The Steelers have beaten the Ravens twice this season. Will the Yank Durham rule apply today? I sure hope so. But the pundits have pointed out that it’s been fairly common in the NFL for one team to beat another three times in the same season. But those are other teams; we’re talking the Ravens-Steelers rivalry here. Only once before have these clubs met three times in one season. That was in 2001, when they split the regular-season games and the Steelers won the playoff game. I’m hoping this rivalry is so intense that it’s virtually impossible for either of these teams to beat the other three times in one season.

2. Will the Baltimore City College 1965 football team jinx apply? For the past couple of seasons, members of City College’s 1965 football team have met at a local restaurant to watch a Ravens’ prime-time game and gather for a minireunion. Lately — and today is no exception — members of the team will meet at the Applebee’s in the Reisterstown Road Plaza.

A little more about City College’s 1965 team: It went undefeated, crushing seven teams from the old Maryland Scholastic Association and demolishing two Washington, D.C.-area teams. (One of them was St. Johns, by a score of 32-7. St. Johns had an excellent team that year.)

Judging from some of the scores, the 1965 City College football team didn’t have a season; it was more like a reign of terror. Yes, they were that good. On Thanksgiving Day, they demolished then-undefeated archrival Poly 52-6. City College’s quarterback was some guy named Kurt Schmoke, who subsequently fell from grace and ended up taking a low-level job as Baltimore’s mayor.

The Poly game has become famous as the one when Schmoke didn’t give the ball once to City College fullback Kenny Dutton, who needed only 10 yards to break the MSA rushing record that year. Dutton jokes that he hopes Schmoke shows up at one of these minireunions “so he can give me my 10 yards.”

For a while the Ravens had never won a game when the ’65 City College team met. But they’ve won the last two. The jinx, if indeed there was one, may be broken.

Let’s hope so.

Gregory Kane is a columnist who has been writing about Baltimore and Maryland for more than 15 years. Look for his columns in the editorial section every Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at [email protected].