Sports Biblio Digest, 11.25.18: Southern Quarterbacking Icons: Brett Favre and Terry Bradshaw
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: An Epic Night at the L.A. Coliseum; Condoleeza Rice; Adrian Beltre; The Fabulous Sports Babe; The Broad Street Bullies; Copa Libertadores; Scottish Football; Sonny Sixkiller; Shooting College Football; Remembering David Pearson
* * * * * * * *
As explained more in the item below, 2018 is already an incredible season for quarterback play in the NFL, eclipsing some rather heady performances in years past.
For those of us accustomed to watching traditional drop-back quarterbacking, the video game nature of what’s unfolding these days seems beyond frenetic.
I find it rather breathless, to be honest, while admitting how entertaining and fan-pleasing it is for the masses who just want to enjoy the spectacle.
At the risk of sounding nostalgiac, I yearn for the days when quarterbacks were fueled by their own personalities and idiosyncracies rather than fitting into the template of the systems that are on display today.
With that in mind, I wonder how Brett Favre and Terry Bradshaw, subjects of compelling 2017 biographies, would fit into today’s uptempo templates.
Both Pro Football Hall of Famers, Favre and Bradshaw also embodied a certain kind of Southern persona that’s an indelible part of what helped elevate them into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Above all, Favre and Bradshaw were personality players, whose success was never guaranteed nor inevitable, and who sparred with coaches often over autonomy that went far beyond play-calling. Their rebellious spirits weren’t identical, and they channeled them in different ways, but their careers played out as the NFL was reaching, and maintaining, the pinnacle of American spectator sports.
The messy humanity of Favre, on and off the field, gets first-rate biographical treatment from Jeff Pearlman in “Gunslinger” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). The son of a hard-driving high school coach from the hamlet of Kiln, Miss., Favre was a delayed phenomenon at all levels, drawing some comparisons to an earlier sly Southern QB, Ken Stabler.
Favre led Southern Miss to upsets of big-time college powers, then rode the bench with the Falcons, partying too hard in Atlanta during the forgettable Jerry Glanville period before getting shipped off to Green Bay.
Along the way, Favre fathered a daughter out of wedlock, drank too much, got addicted to painkillers and guided the Packers to their first Super Bowl win since Vince Lombardi. As that game drew near in nearby New Orleans, national media flocked to Kiln, drawing a typically stereotypical portrait of a working class family from the piney woods of the Deep South.
While Favre flinched about the excessive spotlight, the gunslinger persona he embodied was summed up by a teammate: “It was his willingness to try anything.”
Later, as his years at Lambeau flickered toward their end, Favre turned his nose at his heir apparent, Aaron Rodgers. Neither did he endear himself later in short stints with the Jets and Vikings.
As Pearlman writes in his final paragraphs:
“What Brett Favre offered, more than anything, was a never-before-seen merger of toughness, recklessness, skill and joy. . . .
But that’s just it—Favre was never perfect. He mangled plays, threw off the wrong foot, made the sloppy read, misjudged, and miscalculated.”
When Favre was a toddler, Terry Bradshaw was coming out of another pocket of the rural South with a higher profile and a blank slate of an opportunity to revive a failing franchise.
In “Terry Bradshaw: From Super Bowl Champion to Television Personality” (Rowman & Littlefield), Brett Abrams doesn’t skimp on the formative experiences that molded him into the one of the more dual-success figures in those two worlds.
From his stardom in Shreveport, La., and Louisiana Tech to leading the Pittsburgh Steelers to multiple Super Bowl crowns, Bradshaw battled perceptions about his background and intelligence, even from head coach Chuck Noll.
Abrams frequently weighs Bradshaw’s career in the 1970s against the backdrop of the rise of the Sunbelt South, long the breeding ground for college football dynasties but with new NFL franchises in their midst:
“While people poked fun at Bradshaw’s Southern ways, Georgian Jimmy Carter became the country’s president and professed that Jesus Christ was the driving force in his life. A political movement arose with the essence of promoting a new personal morality tied to religious fundamentalism.”
Both figures enjoyed long and perhaps even more notable second careers, in the entertainment and human rights fields. Both men also dropped stunningly candid interviews with Playboy magazine.
The former president admitted he had lusted in his heart, while the ex-quarterback professed his evangelical Christianity.
While Carter toured poverty-stricken Africa and established Habitat for Humanity, Bradshaw made daytime talk-show rounds as a country music singer, his rendition of “I”m So Lonesome I Could Cry” breaking into the Top 10.
Bradshaw’s musical exploits were short-lived, then he turned to movies, starring with Burt Reynolds in “Hooper” in another pop culture vehicle Abrams noted for its importance in the South, where the film industry has exploded in the last 40 years.
After retirement, Bradshaw went into sports TV, and he got off to a good start as a pregame host for CBS, as Abrams writes:
“He was Cosell without the ego, Costas without the cuteness and Madden without the boom—and don’t forget to toss in a wide smile and Southern drawl.”
But Bradshaw had some setbacks there too, and needed time to fit into his own skin after moving to Fox, where he remains today. Abrams does well to explain this evolution, and how Bradshaw had to loosen up and appreciate the entertainment value he provided that was an intrinsic part of his personality. It took awhile, but wasn’t afraid to look the part of the fool, or even embrace it:
“I want people to feel good when I’m on the air. Millions of people like what I do. We’re not creating the world. It’s a game.”
As he added other television work, including commercial appearances and a return to music, Bradshaw also wasn’t afraid to sound off on issues such as brain trauma (admitting to having some memory loss) and domestic abuse in the NFL.
He also published two books and is the only former NFL player to have a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That was before he starred with Kathy Bates in a romantic comedy, “Failure to Launch,” that got mixed reviews. Abrams writes:
“Bradshaw has bemoaned the fact that people confuse him with his character. But celebrities have always faced this problem.”
And yet Abrams thinks Bradshaw’s amiable persona did more than just cut through redneck stereotypes and demonstrate authenticity with his reaching out across racial and other cultural lines:
“The many public images of Terry Bradshaw have revealed an individual who is very much a man of his time who stood out in it well.”
Neither author had access to their subjects, which I think makes these books more interesting. Pearlman, in fact, has a penchant for turning in exceptional work without such cooperation.
By excavating research material and interviewing those closest to these NFL legends, with their outsized personalities, Pearlman and Abrams have added welcome new dimensions to their personae. There’s only so much talking that they can do, and they’ve left enough material behind for others to paint an even more expansive picture of their noteworthy careers, and lives.
The New Gunslingers
After the hype of last week’s showdown between veterans Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, and another sterling performance by the magnificently aging Drew Brees, two young quarterback stars were at the center of one of the more astonishing games in NFL history on Monday. Jared Goff’s L.A. Rams outlasted Patrick Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs 54-51 in a game that featured 14 touchdowns and rocked the L.A. Coliseum. It was to have been played at El Azteca in Mexico City but was moved for stadium safety reasons.
At the Coliseum, and in the first game in NFL history in which both teams scored 50 points or more, defensive backs on both teams were in constant danger of being burned. Almost instantly, the reasons explaining the scoring gluttony were attributed to new safety rules and the increase of high-pressure offenses that a number of coaches admittedly do not like.
While they may sound familiar to critics of the Golden State Warriors’ 3-point shooting propensity, NFL teams adapting to the changes aren’t hesitating. Mahomes leads the league with 31 touchdowns and more than 3,000 yards passing. Goff, the first pick in the 2016 NFL draft, is averaging more than 300 yards a game in passing as well.
As Robert Mays writes at The Ringer, Mahomes and Goff are among a number of younger QBs who were drafted by teams that traded up to get them, eager to incorporate their high-flying college experience into the pros. It’s a move that doesn’t always work out, but he cites several struggling franchises that may be facing similar decisions for next year, and especially in 2020, when possible Heisman Trophy winner Tua Tagovailoa of Alabama is eligible to turn pro.
Women and NFL Coaching
ESPN NFL reporter Adam Schefter published a story last week about the Cleveland Browns reportedly being interested in interviewing Condoleeza Rice for its head coaching vacancy. That Condoleeza Rice. As head coach. While she’s a noted Browns fan, serves on the College Football Playoff selection committee and has stated she’d love to be an NFL commissioner, this would be more than a leap of faith (or insanity?) by the chronically dysfunctional Browns.
Rice has neither played nor coached in any sport, much less football, although she expanded her profile recently by serving on (a rather toothless) NCAA committee responding to corruption trials that have netted a few convictions in college basketball.
My guess is the usually reliable and well-plugged-in Schefter got played on this, or just plain got it wrong, and not just because the Browns and Rice almost immediately denied the report.
In her first column as a new contributor for the New York Daily News, former ESPNer Jane McManus weighs in on the Rice issue as might be expected: The former Secretary of State isn’t qualified to be a coach, but she was right to urge the NFL “to develop a pool of qualified women coaches.”
Dan Wetzel at Yahoo! Sports chimed in along a similar vein, saying the league remains a stubborn boys’ club. While I’ve known Dan for years and think he’s in the top tier of columnists, I’m disappointed to see him echo a refrain that’s become the party line in mainstream sports media. Women do work in NFL and Major League Baseball front offices and in many other capacities.
Kim Ng could very well be a baseball general manager soon after many years of serving in front office roles, and Amy Trask is a former CEO of the Oakland Raiders. It’s not far-fetched to think Rice might even fare well as NFL commissioner. But coaching and team managerial positions are a different matter, since they did not play the game.
One can bemoan that football and baseball haven’t been open to women players like so many other sports. I think the doors ought to allow any woman who wants to work her way up the NFL coaching ranks (or college or high school football, for that matter) like men have always done.
What we’re hearing now, especially in respectable media corners, are demands to hire women just for the sake of hiring women, regardless of the level of interest or qualified candidates who may actually exist. Because why? Crack the glass ceiling, I suppose. This isn’t mentioned, but it’s certainly implied.
Like in STEM fields and other areas that remain—shall I say stubbornly?—dominated by males, the subject of women coaching in football will continue to receive such unhelpful scrutiny. The absence of women must be the presence of discrimination, goes so much of this thinking.
But the NFL has plenty of larger issues to deal with, and it may take quite a few years for that female coaching pool to develop. I’m not sure what Wetzel means when he suggests NFL franchises should “exploit market weaknesses that ignore the best female candidates,” but those words fit a familiar narrative that’s little more than wishful thinking.
Women and the Sports Media Grind
I wasn’t intending any followup to last week’s ruminations here about women and sportswriting, but the announcement this week that ESPN writer and TV panelist Kate Fagan is leaving the network included some interesting observations from her about the kind of work she wants to do, and where she might best be able to do it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she lands at The Athletic in some capacity, given her longform projects at ESPN, and she’s getting into some television writing. Like former ESPNer Jemele Hill, she won’t be without meaningful work for long.
A former basketball player at Colorado, Fagan showed some versatility. She also published two books, one a compelling memoir about coming out in her sport, and the other about a college distance runner who committed suicide.
Fagan wanted to continue to write and speak on-air about social and cultural issues, something ESPN is moving away from after getting backlash from viewers who prefer to watch sports on a sports network. She was hoping to do a show “that made women’s sports really cool” and go in-depth on LGBT and mental health issues.
She did some of that on the espnW platform, but what really struck me about Fagan’s comments was that in order to stay, “I would have to be immersed in the day-to-day in sports.”
That’s a breathtaking comment from someone still in her 30s, who was at ESPN as long as it took me to get to a big newspaper. To walk away from the kind of media opportunities that many of us of a different generation were summarily booted from is hard for this old ink-stained wretch to absorb.
The “day-to-day in sports” is how many of us were able to carve out a career, as long as we were granted that privilege. I wrote occasional feature stories and freelance columns on the side to get a foot in the door covering women’s sports in the 1990s, when some of us realized there already was a “cool” factor.
I realize media work is much more varied and demanding these days, and jobs don’t last very long, and younger journalists are smart to always shop around. Some of us stayed put until it was too late.
When I hear complaints about a lack of women in sports media, that some visible figures groomed as future stars don’t want “to be immersed in the day-to-day in sports” needs to considered. While I respect Fagan’s choice, the reality is that’s where most of the jobs are, and will continue to be. For women and men.
One area of sports media that’s perhaps the most underrepresented of all is talk radio. The first woman to have a nationally syndicated sports talk radio program, Nanci Donnellan, was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame last weekend in New York.
Better known as “The Fabulous Sports Babe,” Donnellan didn’t attend. She’s been battling a myriad of serious health issues that have dashed her comeback from those heady days of the 1990s, when she got picked up by ESPN Radio.
The Sports Babe did the talk radio grind as well as the guys, and with a feisty, passionate style that won over a strongly male audience. Some of them likely didn’t mind her insults, and respected her knowledge of sports (especially hockey, and her beloved Boston Bruins). She deeply understood and respected her audience in return.
For any woman aspiring to follow suit, the Sports Babe provided a straightforward template. But few women have done that, something I’ve always found puzzling. There’s no lack of women getting into sports television (mainly as sideline reporters), and some podcasts feature women hosts or are devoted to women’s sports. A few mix television and radio.
Those are all fine, but as a radio fanatic from the start (I listened to baseball games on my transistor before I ever saw one with my own eyes), I figured there would be more Sports Babes. Or at least women modeled on her success. Could there be a female equivalent to Clay Travis, a late 30s lawyer-turned-blogger-turned-radio-host and multiple book author? Regardless of what you think of his schtick and pointed political commentary, that’s a gender-neutral roadmap that will reward an enterprising individual.
Cooperstown Miscellany
The 2019 Today’s Game Era ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame was issued this week, and includes Harold Baines, George Belle, Joe Carter, Will Clark, Orel Hershiser, Davey Johnson, Charlie Manuel, Lou Piniella, Lee Smith and George Steinbrenner. The voting results will be revealed Dec. 9;
Adrian Beltre retired this week after a 21-year career, and assessments of his Hall credentials were soon to follow: 477 homeruns, 3,166 hits, five Gold Glove awards. I think he’s a lock.
A Few Good Reads
The all-Buenos Aires finals of the Copa Libertadores, South America’s club soccer championship, were delayed Saturday after street violence that injured a player. Fans of River Plate lined up to attack the bus carrying Boca Juniors players, and officials initially pushed the start time a couple hours. Instead, it’s been rescheduled for today. Once upon a time, the Copa winner squared off against the European club champion in the Intercontinental Cup, and in 1992, it provided a memorable match in Tokyo between Sao Paulo and the “Dream Team” of famed Barcelona;
It’s been 20 years since Scotland played in the World Cup and in any other international competition. But Oliver Burke and his Scottish Under-20 teammates who reached the semifinals of a summer tournament are giving the Tartan Army a glimmer of hope those misfortunes can be reversed;
Imagine being an aspiring and talented youth soccer star from a country that doesn’t exist. Young men from Somaliland, which re-declared its independence from Somalia in 1991, have been playing unrecognized friendlies against squads from other de facto nations, autonomous regions and minority peoples with backing from London investors for the last four years;
In the early 1970s, the Philadelphia Flyers ruled the NHL in brawling, roughneck fashion. The Broad Street Bullies were as notorious as they were successful in winning two Stanley Cups, but this year the Flyers are among the least-penalized teams in the league. Rules changes have a lot to do with that, as ex-Bully Dave “The Hammer” Kelly observed: “I don’t feel there’s any hate in the league any more;”
It’s been nearly a half-century since Sonny Sixkiller starred at quarterback for the University of Washington as perhaps the most recognized Native American athlete since Jim Thorpe. His pro career was short-lived, but Sixkiller remains popular in the Seattle sports community as a businessman and as a manager for the Huskies’ media partner;
From the Knoxville News-Sentinel, a photo essay by a millennial photographer who actually enjoys shooting Volunteers games on 35-mm film, and explains how he finds the right shots;
Some recently released football books may help dispel George Plimpton’s observation that “the smaller the ball, the better the book.” For The Washington Post, Robert Birnbaum takes a look at new releases about the NFL, Bill Belichick, the USFL and Jim Brown, among other subjects;
The Dallas Texans of 1952 enjoyed one shining moment during a dreadful season, in a Thanksgiving Day miracle win that was second fiddle to high school fare in a noteworthy doubleheader in Akron, Ohio.
Sending Good Vibes
Best wishes to Alex Belth, classic sports journalism curator extraordinaire and a friend of this newsletter, who wrote touchingly and bracingly honest this week at Men’s Health about his role as the longtime caregiver for his wife, who has been suffering from chronic illnesses.
Passings
David Pearson, 83, was known as the “Silver Fox” on the NASCAR circuit, winning 105 races, second only to Richard Petty’s 200 victories, including a record 10 titles at Darlington Raceway. While Petty usually prevailed when they were going head-to-head, Pearson’s most famous win was his only Daytona 500 victory, in 1976, when he bested Petty after both collided near the finish line and spun out into the grass.
Petty said Pearson, who was part of NASCAR’s second Hall of Fame class in 2011, was the best driver he ever competed against. They, along with Cale Yarborough Bobby Allison, natives of the Carolinas all, helped popularize stock-car racing in the 1960s.
* * * * * * * *
The Sports Biblio Digest is an e-mail newsletter delivered each Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives.
This is Digest issue No. 144, published Nov. 25, 2018.
I’d love to hear what you think about the Digest, and Sports Biblio. Send feedback, suggestions, book recommendations, review copies, newsletter items and interview requests to Wendy Parker at sportsbiblio@gmail.com.
You can also follow Sports Biblio on Twitter and hit the “like” button on Facebook.