The San Pedro Beach Bums

A memorable line from a short lived show. After viewing the episode where that line was introduced my fraternity intramural flag football team started using the line to break our huddles on offense. Instead of Ready / Break, our quarter back said FOOTBALL and the rest of the squad responded YOU BET! A fun way to break the huddle that had our opponents scratching their heads as very few of them had watched the show. Using this line added a unique element to our season that I'll never forget. We had our best season during my time in college that year and in a small way it was due to the fun that we had using this line. The show was pretty much a stinker but it lives on in the memories of the 1977 Pi Kappa Phi intramural flag football squad at West Virginia Tech.

Sure, nobody watched this crapfest, but it must have been big with 12-year-olds. For some reason, my whole seventh grade class repeated the insipid line "Football, you bet" for one entire day. I later learned that it was used the night before on this miserable program. Sure, it was yanked after a very short run, but the producers can take comfort in knowing that one line had a huge impact on a bunch of pre-pubescent punks. Must have been a hell of a funny line - sorry I missed it!

Okay, I barely remember this show but I remember liking it.

ABC really hyped this one when it came out. I was maybe eleven years old at the time. Being a young kid in Delaware, the idea of living with my pals on a beach in California seemed like a really cool way to live.

Come to think of it, it still doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

The main two things I remember about the show are Stuart Pankin and that there was a womanizing character named Boychick. Pankin's a great actor and this is probably one of the first things I saw him in. I'm glad he went on to a successful career in movies and television.

It'd be fun to see an episode of this show again. I doubt I'll ever have a chance, but they don't make shows like this anymore - and that's kind of a shame. There's something to be said for the kind of light, fun kind of shows they made back in the Seventies.

Bud Gott

i remember this show - and it was great!!!!

if i were a Hollywood producer, i would do a re-make immediately.

and then there would be the film, parts 1, 2 & 3, and of course, the action figures, and the comic book, and the reruns, and ....

well, you get the idea.

but seriously, what could be better than bums on the beach? in constant sunshine? never working? now that i think of it, watching this show was probably a formative experience, setting the template for my future dating life which, converted to a sitcom, would be called "LA Slacker Musicians".

i should have been watching Marcus Welby, MD.

The odd thing is, I had forgotten where that line came from until I looked up Stuart Pankin and saw this show and "The Line". I thought "OMG! THAT is where it comes from!"

1977-78 was my senior year in high school and I was so busy making sure I had my civic/scholastic ducks in a row for college resumes and a scholarship. I only watched a few of the episodes from the show, but I use the line a lot. Like every time my hubby and I get out of the car to go into Costco or Walmart, one of us says, "Football" and the other says "You Bet!"

It is always in the looking back, comparing shows of then to shows of today we think of the old ones as lame or boring or whatever the description. But truthfully, it is today's shows that are boring. All cookie cutter, all ridiculous angles and quick cuts. I stopped watching television in 2003. We have a TV to play DVD's, but television programming stinks anymore. Maybe if television programming had more "lame" programs like this I'd buy cable again...but I'm not holding my breath.