Roger Staubach, the Houdini of the backfield, was on the recalled LIFE cover. (Michael Beschloss/Twitter.com)
Roger Staubach, the Houdini of the backfield, was on the recalled LIFE cover. (Michael Beschloss/Twitter.com)

There were 7 million copies of LIFE Magazine coming off the presses on Nov. 22, 1963 that were scrapped when news broke that President John F. Kennedy had been shot.

The LIFE management put an immediate hold on the trucks that were to deliver the magazines to newstands across the country. When it was announced that President Kennedy had died, the company recalled all of the magazines and worked feverishly to add a new cover (with a close-up of JFK) and add assassination-related material. 

Before the assassination, the cover was going to feature Navy quarterback Roger Staubach as promotion for the upcoming Army-Navy game.  

"College football then was bigger than pro football," Budd Thalman, Navy's sports information director at the time, told the Washington Post this week. "There was no Super Bowl then. The biggest event of the football year usually was the Army-Navy game."