Sports Biblio Digest 9.8.19: The Demise of An English Football Club
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: A History of the NFL in 100 Objects; ESPN at 40; The Yankees in the 50s; Baseball’s Attendance Problem; The University of Chicago Maroons; Reviving HBCU Football; Olympic Basketball in Munich; Remembering Jack Whitaker and Chester Williams
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Some grim headlines from the English Midlands greeted the start of a new Premier League season.
Not far from the lush grounds of reigning champion Manchester City and Premier League dynasty Manchester City, Bury Football Club was booted out of the English Football League due to a lengthy series of financial problems that seemingly made its fate inevitable.
The club that was founded in the Lancashire town of Bury in 1885 has only two major championships to its credit—FA Cup trophies in 1900 and 1903, and hasn’t been in the top flight since 1929. But long after it had succumbed to lower levels of the organized English game, the “Shakers” of Bury FC were a source of pride in an industrial community that’s being left behind as the continuing Brexit saga rolls on.
As David Conn wrote in The Guardian right before the EFL’s decision, Bury was one of several clubs in that part of England that became post-Victorian professional powerhouses. But as manufacturing prowess of these towns declined, so did some of the clubs who fell out of favor to bigger-city organizations that now dominate the EPL.
Much has been made of the Premier League, which formed in 1992, and which has been blamed for so many of the problems of smaller clubs. While there’s no doubt the economics of the game have taken a toll, Bury’s problems lingered for years. Even after being relegated from the fourth division for this season and finding a buyer, Bury wasn’t to get a reprieve.
The club issued a statement of surprise at the expulsion, which is a rare thing in England, but the mismanagement has been self-inflicted. Police have reportedly launched a fraud investigation as heartbroken fans mourn and chaplains urge the EFL never to put supporters of other clubs through such an emotional ordeal.
A good number of them aren’t blaming the forces of soccer’s increasing globalization that has turned the Premier League into a glamour circuit, and has left the lower leagues to battle for scraps.
Sunderland, a 140-year-old club in England’s working-class northeast, was relegated from the Premier League in 2017 and has fallen to the third-flight League 1. Its troubles, chronicled in the Netflix documentary series “Sunderland 'Til I Die,” illustrate how swift the fall can be, and how increasingly unlikely any resurrection may also be, despite first-rate facilities and a passionate fan base. The opening episode pans inside a church sanctuary, with a priest praying to restore the fiscal and competitive health of the club because "the success of our team leads to the success and prosperity of our city."
Fans of another former Premier League club, Bolton Wanderers, are breathing a sigh of relief as that financially-strapped club got a reprieve after announcing its sale to a new ownership team.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a fan of a club that’s facing such long odds of surviving. In North America, franchise relocation inflicts similar pain. The departure of the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Colts and especially the Brooklyn Dodgers are still deeply felt by those fans who remember them. After this season, Oakland Raiders fans will feel the loss of their forlorn team for a second time.
The more sobering prospect is that Bury FC may be only the first of other such demises, even beyond Britain, and more unsettling questions are being openly pondered:
“Is consolidation the answer? Should the poorly run teams be allowed to die to streamline the whole thing – in England and in every other country where clubs are perennially in financial distress?
“That feels heartless and destructive of the culture that makes soccer unique.”
A Few Good Reads
It’s been 80 years since the University of Chicago—alma mater of Jay Berwanger, very first Heisman Trophy winner—abruptly dropped football, for many of the excesses and abuses that are cited today regarding college athletics;
At The Atlantic, Jemele Hill argues that elite black athletes at the mostly white football and basketball powerhouses should shake up the NCAA by opting instead for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), which have a long history of producing some of the best players in NFL history, especially during the Jim Crow era in the South and in particular at Grambling. But considering the more recent likes of Walter Payton and Jerry Rice, this is not only unlikely to happen. It's also doubtful it will prompt needed reform, give black athletes more power and boost HBCUs, some of which have serious financial and other challenges;
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the National Football League, which kicked off on Thursday, Sports Illustrated put together a list of 100 figures who shaped the game, in alphabetical order, and with links to each individual;
As Antonio Brown was released by the Raiders (and then signed by the Patriots), Julio Jones signed a three-year, $66 million extension with the Falcons that could set a new standard for how elite NFL wide receivers work their contracts;
At Trona High School, near California’s Death Valley, fielding a football team has been an occasional struggle for several decades. This fall, the Sandmen, who play the eight-man variation of the game, are hurting to find enough players in the wake of recent earthquakes;
As ESPN marked its 40th anniversary this week, Bryan Curtis of The Ringer talked to the legendary “SportsCenter” team of Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick, whose prominence really set the sports cable giant on its dominating path during the 80s and 90s;
Sports TV writer Tom Hoffarth produced a list of his 40 favorite ESPN memories, including the publication of three very different books about The Worldwide Leader;
This has been written many times before, and will continue to be written about, unless or until the narrative is borne out: Why does baseball have an attendance problem? The real issue is a concern in other sports as well, and not just generational, as more fans opt to stay home, save money and enjoy watching on HD;
Bob Hope (not the entertainer) was for many years a public relations man for the Atlanta Braves, before starting his own public relations agency. At the age of 73, and following the death of his wife, Hope is downsizing his life and recently put a hefty collection of sports memorabilia up for auction, much of it baseball oriented;
Published last week by the University of Nebraska Press, “Three Seconds in Munich” is author David Sweet’s account of the controversial ending of the 1972 Olympic basketball gold medal game. Sweet, a Chicagoan who previously wrote a book about Lamar Hunt, interviewed several of the U.S. players who have forever sworn never to accept silver medals;
From the U.S. Sport History blog, a review of “The New York Yankees of the 1950s,” by David Fischer, published by Lyons Press in April;
After AC Shilton gave up competitive long-distance running, cycling and triathlon, she bought a farm in Tennessee and discovered that “producing my own food is the hardest endurance sport I’ve ever done. No level of training compares to the day-after-day-after-day grind of wrestling food from the earth.” And yet, “farming is the sport that’s made me the most at peace with myself;”
In the 1970s and 1980s, Maccabee Los Angeles won five U.S. Open Cup soccer titles. The club was founded by Holocaust survivors and Israeli expatriates who admitted they heard anti-Semitic remarks while playing in the Greater L.A. Soccer League;
From Bloomberg, there’s a bit of a panic going on in the cross-country skiing circuit after the European Union banned fluoro wax, a substance many think is one of the best speed aids in the sport, for health and environmental reasons. Some in the United States fear the Environmental Protection Agency may follow suit.
Passings
Jack Whitaker, 95, one of the most versatile and decorated television sports announcers in the United States, called almost every major sport and earned a reputation as a thoughtful, wide-ranging and occasionally controversial commentator. A U.S. Army veteran who was wounded in the Battle of Normandy, Whitaker joined CBS in 1961 after working in his native Philadelphia, then went to ABC in 1982. Although he never worked with Whitaker, CBS’Jim Nantz was good friends with Whitaker, and wrote this tribute at The Athletic;
Ross Conway, 70, was a longtime sportswriter for the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune (Mass.), and his investigative reporting from his smalltown perch helped bring down Alan Eagleson, an agent and former head of the NHL Players Association, who was convicted of bilking and defrauding players he represented. Conway was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work and is inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame in the writer’s wing;
Chester Williams, 49, was the only black player on South Africa’s Springboks team that won the 1995 Rugby World Cup, held in that nation in one of the first significant post-apartheid events. He had been coaching at the University of West Cape at the time of his death earlier this week of a suspected heart attack. The Springboks’ story was the subject of the 2009 film “Invictus,” directed by Clint Eastwood, in which Williams made an appearance.
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This is Digest issue No. 177, published Sept. 8, 2019.
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