jrn / sps 362 - lecture eighteen

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of FootballRich Hanley, Associate ProfessorLecture Eighteen

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football


Review• Vince Lombardi represented the

last of the buzz-cut pro football in terms of his approach to the game: rigorous and relentless repetition of simple plays such as the Packer sweep.

• The world, though, had changed, and so had the NFL by the time he died in 1970.


Show Business• Two men played pivotal roles in

the change from the Lombardi era to one signified by celebrity and spectacle, Joe Namath and Roone Arledge.

• A third man, a player named George Sauer, detected something had gone awry in both the old and the new eras and did something about it.


Show Business• Namath would leave Alabama

and coach Bear Bryant as a coveted player in the 1965 draft.

• Drafted by the Jets after Alabama lost the Orange Bowl, Namath arrived in New York with a $400,000 salary and swagger to match.


Show Business• The AFL-NFL merger was driven

in part by sizeable contracts signed by college stars such as Namath with the Jets and Tommy Nobis with the NFL Atlanta Falcons.

• But it was Namath would had the wattage to illuminate the game’s elevation from sports to popular culture.


Show Business• Ironically, Namath shared the

same geographical background as the great Johnny Unitas.

• Both were from western Pennsylvania, in the football crescent, and Namath would be coached by Weeb Ewbank, who won the 1958 NFL Championship.


Show Business• Namath emerged as a bona fide

celebrity a decade after that game.

• The quarterback led the Jets to an 11-3, including a game that underscored his importance to the NFL and of the NFL to the nation.

• It was the “best game no one saw.”


Show Business• On Nov. 17, 1968, the Jets

played the Raiders in Oakland. It was the West Coast game for NBC.

• The lead changed six times in the first 59 minutes, with the Jets taking a 32-29 lead with 1:05 left on a field goal by Jim Turner.


Show Business• The Raiders launched a drive

after the Jets’ field goal and were moving when NBC cut to Heidi on all affiliates east of Denver after a commercial.

• The reaction was immediate and massive.


Show Business• Phone lines jammed NBC’s

switchboard, making it impossible for executives to call the west coast to reconnect the game feed.

• The New York Police Department received so many calls that true emergencies went unanswered for awhile.


Show Business• The Raiders, meanwhile, scored

a touchdown with 42 seconds left to take the lead.

• The Jets fumbled the ensuing kickoff, and the Raiders scored again to win.

• NBC ran a crawl to inform viewers of the score but the network even blew that.


Show Business• According to published accounts,

the crawl occurred just when Heidi’s paralytic cousin tried to walk, sucking the emotion out of the scene.

• NBC issued a formal apology 90 minutes after the game.


Show Business• That would be the last time the

Jets would lose that season.

• The Jets met the Raiders again in the AFL championship game at Shea Stadium in New York, and a Namath pass to Don Maynard – who played in the 1958 game – set up the winning score.


Show Business• In the NFL, meanwhile, the 13-1

Baltimore Colts met the 10-4 Cleveland Browns in the championship game to determine who would meet in the Super Bowl.

• Led by backup quarterback Earl Morrall substituting for the injured Unitas, the Colts routed the Browns in Cleveland, 34-0.


Show Business• That set up a Super Bowl III

showdown between the team that defeated the Giants in 1958 against another team from New York, this one led by a quarterback who reflected the emerging culture of the period.


Show Business• Baltimore coach Don Shula was

born in the football crescent in Ohio and had played under Paul Brown in Cleveland.

• In 1963, he replaced Ewbank – a Paul Brown assistant coach at one time - as coach of the Colts.


Show Business• Baltimore was favored by as

many as 16 points, as few gave the Jets and the AFL much of a chance against the establishment Colts who had manhandled the Browns in the NFL championship game.

• And the Colts had Johnny Unitas in case the game turned against them.


Show Business• Namath and Unitas were

opposites from head to toe. Namath wore white cleats; Unitas high-top black ones.

• He also had long hair, not a crew cut.

• Tex Maule of Sports Illustrated described Namath as “the folk hero of a new generation.”


Show Business• Even the helmet decals

represented the old against the new:

- The Colts’ horseshoe emblematic of the old West. - The Jets name and projected movement emblematic of the jet age.

• The NFL Films myth-making account focused on these distinctions.


Show Business• Namath added a sense of

unbridled confidence as well, shattering the pro forma humility embedded in football’s honor code.

• He not only predicted the Jets would win; he guaranteed it.

• And he remained true to that.


Show Business• The Jets proved to be more

physical and skilled than the experts had reckoned when installing the Colts as a 16-point favorite.


Show Business• Namath threw a total of 28

times, completing 17 for 206 yards.

• The Jets’ Matt Snell ran for a touchdown and Jim Turner kicked three field goals to lead New York to the 16-7 win.


Show Business• The counterculture had

seemingly won football.

• Namath became the most celebrated athlete in America after that victory that shocked the nation and gave the AFL the credibility its teams needed as it headed toward the full merger in 1970.


Show Business• A year later, the Kansas City

Chiefs, showcasing a plan known as the “offense of the 70s” for its creative vitality, stunned the old-school-style Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV, giving the AFL its second straight win against the establishment.

• That win validated what the Jets accomplished.


Show Business• Outside the game, Namath

represented the transformation of athlete into a celebrity for the age of color television, rock music, sex, drugs and all the other signifiers of the period.

• But Namath appealed to the older generation, too, who admired his boyish charm and sex appeal.


Show Business• In the process, Namath redefined

masculinity as presented by NFL players.

• He wore furs, and he served as a spokesperson for pantyhose, for example, and his apartment featured shag carpeting among other hip design elements.


Show Business• This was the birth of the cool for

the NFL.


Show Business• The reality of Namath, however,

was something different.

• He retained the conservative intellectual infrastructure common to pro football’s culture.

• After the Super Bowl, he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and toured U.S. military posts with the USO.


Show Business• And his celebrity as an individual

would only be permitted to go so far.

• When confronted by commissioner Pete Rozelle with allegations that gamblers cavorted at his nightclub Bachelor’s 3, Namath said he would retire rather than sell it at a tearful - unusual for a football player - news conference.


Show Business• Namath later agreed to sell his

interest in the club so he could play football.

• The tears at the press conference announcing his retirement would soon evaporate.


Show Business• Namath would never win another

championship after that culture-changing victory over the Colts and Johnny U.

• Like Grange and Jim Brown, Namath heard Hollywood’s call and starred in film and appeared on stage.

• He even had his own talk show.


Show Business• Namath would retire in the mid

1970s after a series of knee injuries and a short-lived move to Los Angeles.

• But he had set the template for the quarterback as celebrity, and he single-handedly proved that a star could carry the game into prime-time television.


Show Business• As Namath pushed the idea of

quarterback as modern celebrity, Roone Arledge pushed it firmly in the direction of entertainment as head of ABC Sports.

• Arledge would take the epic myths constructed by NFL Films and transform the stories into prime-time entertainment programming.


Show Business• The origin story of prime-time

NFL football begins with the 1966 merger with the AFL.

• NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who engineered the pact and the multiple anti-trust exemptions from the U.S. Congress, wanted to extend the NFL into prime-time.


Show Business• With Friday and Saturday nights

blocked due to the agreement with Congress for the exemption, the NFL looked for another night to colonize.

• NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Arledge collaborated on the decision.


Show Business• Arledge had earlier established

his football credentials with his work in televising the early AFL games.

• He later invented one of the most popular sport programs in television history.


Show Business• In Wide World of Sports, Arledge

combined a sophisticated appreciation of technology to old-fashioned showmanship to his productions.

• Arledge was among the first to use satellites for live coverage of sporting events from Europe, for example.


Show Business• But why pro football – a game

available on Sundays - in primetime?

• Arledge said in published interviews that each game would be an event unto itself as there were so few football games anyway.


Show Business• Arledge said that he saw the way

the lights bounced off the helmets, creating an aura around the players, creating a sense of both sex and drama under the lights.

• He convinced ABC affiliates that a single game on a single night would draw viewers in every market regardless of the teams involved.


Show Business• The game would be presented

not as “coverage” but as an entertainment spectacle in its own right.

• That gave the game a production value that enhanced the drama and narrative trajectory.


Show Business• Arledge borrowed from

techniques he perfected in Wide World of Sports programs and later in broadcasts of the Olympic Games.


Show Business• “What we set out to do was get

the audience involved emotionally,” Arledge said in an article in Sports Illustrated. “If they didn’t give a damn about the game, they might still enjoy the program.”


Show Business• Just as the Sabols had perfected

their cinematic presentation with on-player microphones and tight shots of the action, Arledge sought to make the game “up close and personal” for the television audience only in real time, without the benefit of the art of film editing.


Show Business• Arledge deployed the use of

multiple games pointed, counter intuitively, away from the action.

• That transformed coverage toward the spectacle of the game to widen the audience.


Show Business• For example, cameras focused

on cheerleaders, which helped to draw in male viewers, and unusual characters in the crowd.

• Each shot was short, leaving the viewer wanting more.

• Shots of players in tight-fitting uniforms attracted the female viewer.


Show Business• The Monday Night Football

broadcast used nine cameras instead of the usual five deployed for Sunday broadcasts to keep the show moving.

• MNF also introduced handheld cameras for sideline tight shots of players and cheerleaders, getting the close-ups Arledge required.


Show BusinessDirector Chet Forte explained his tactics in moving the action around the game:


Show Business• “What I wanted to do on Monday

Night Football was get away from the conformity of CBS and the dictum they laid down for their directors: a wide shot to a tight shot, a wide to a tight, over and over. I wanted to gain impact with enormous close-ups …


Show Business• “I wanted to see all the action

bigger…. More meaning by going tighter. It’s a little more strain on the cameramen, but they never complain.”

• Arledge, meanwhile, completed the show-biz approach with a team guaranteed to create fireworks – and ratings.


Show Business• For its September 1970 debut,

MNF teamed a professional play-by-play announcer, Keith Jackson, with the glamorous former New York Giant Frank Gifford and the opinionated Howard Cosell to provide some sharp edges to analysis instead of the usual fare.


Show Business• The first game in September

1970 featured Joe Namath and the Jets against the Cleveland Browns.

• The Browns won the game, and Monday Night Football was here to stay


Show Business• But Arledge worked to refine the

form over the next year to move even closer to making the announcing team entertainers.

• He replaced Jackson with Don Meredith, a folksy former quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys who played in the famous Ice Bowl in 1967.


Show Business• With Gifford handling play by

play, Meredith and Cosell provided a running commentary based on the old hayseed versus city slicker trope.


Show Business• Monday Night Football became

an event above the game it nominally covered with the tight shots, quick edits and chatter in the booth, particularly between Meredith and Cosell.

• In the language of the day, Monday Night Football became “a happening.”.


Show Business• That “game as happening”

meant that the NFL had transcended sport.

• With Monday Night Football, the NFL merged pop culture and would come to dominate the instrument that lorded over American culture for generations: television.


Show Business• The triumph of Monday Night

Football as the focal point of pop culture meant that it could replicate and strengthen itself simply by being itself.

• Celebrities such as John Lennon showed up in the booth to be part of the spectacle.


Show Business• In December 1980, reality

intruded in this grand spectacle.

• Cosell at first did not want to go live on the air with it, but he eventually delivered the news that Lennon had been shot and killed in New York.

• The news stunned the audience.


Show Business• In triumph and tragedy, Monday

Night Football underscored the NFL’s cultural role as more show than anything else.

• Arledge’s approach influenced how NBC and CBS covered games, transforming bland pre-game and post-game shows and intros into pure entertainment.


Show Business• But ABC’s Monday Night Football

had its critics – particularly among traditionalists – who saw how show business had trumped the essence of Walter Camp’s game.

• The celebrity aspect undermined team and humility gave way to show-boating.


Show Business• Not since the Harvard player

accused Princeton players of assault in the 1920s had even players emerged to publicly assail the game with such energy and vitriol.

• Former players wrote books highly critical of the game that had provided their livelihood for years.


Show Business• In 1971, Bernie Parrish, a

defensive back for the Cleveland Browns, wrote about the 1964 championship season in the context of farce.

• He revealed stories of owners cavorting with gamblers and the infiltration of the game by organized crime, among other things.


Show Business

It was a best-seller, showing that the country wanted to read about the inside story of football instead of simply consuming the positive material coming from the television networks and the NFL.


Show Business• Dave Meggysey of the St. Louis

Cardinals wrote non-fiction books and appeared on television talk shows to discuss the game’s brutality, racism, drug abuse and win-at-all-costs mentality, among other things.


Show Business• In Out of Their League,

Meggyesy noted the violence, he noted how players were scared, and he documented the treatment of players by sadistic coaches and how college coaches exploited players and held little respect for academics.


Show Business• “If we can play football, the

country is not disintegrating,” said Meggyesy about the decision to play football two days after the Kennedy assassination in the context of showing how the game served as a distraction from larger, darker issues confronting the country.


Show Business• In 1973, a former wide receiver

for the Dallas Cowboys named Pete Gent fictionalized his experiences in the NFL with North Dallas Forty.

• Gent compressed a season of pathologies into an eight-day period in the life of the book’s protagonist, wide receiver Phil Elliott.


Show Business• Elliott describes the violence in

football as reflecting “the technomilitary complex that was trying to be America.“

• The movie released in 1979 starred Nick Nolte as Elliott.


Show Business• George Sauer emerged as one of

the more interesting former players who openly criticized football.

• His criticism stung more than that of others; his dad, left, was a star at Nebraska and the family hailed form the heart of the old football crescent in Ohio.


Show Business• Sauer played for the University

of Texas but sought to leave after the 1964 season and the team’s loss to Alabama and Joe Namath in the Orange Bowl.

• He wanted to sign with the Jets.


Show Business• Texas’ coach Darryl Royal

refused to let Sauer leave, stating he had a year of eligibility left and thus could not play in the pro league.

• But Sauer won the argument and turned pro, to join Namath in New York.


Show Business• Sauer teamed with Don Maynard

to give Namath a lethal combination of receivers.

• Sauer was a more than capable wide receiver, if not a major star, throughout his career.

• In 1966, for example, he was team MVP.


Show Business• In the epic Super Bowl victory

against the Colts, Namath consistently turned to Sauer who caught eight passes, the most on the team.

• That isn’t surprising, given that Namath and the introverted Sauer were close despite the sharp differences in personality.


Show Business• But in 1971, at the age of 27,

Sauer retired to become a writer.

• Sauer said at the time he was “generally dissatisfied with the game the way it is played now.”


Show Business• Sauer elaborated in a critique of

football in the San Francisco Examiner.

• In it, he wrote that “I know that several times I have found myself in the locker room, caught up in it all and acting like a 7-year-old. After years of this kind of living, what else can you be but an adolescent?”


Show Business• Sauer added that the game “can

really touch you as a human being if you are permitted to touch others as human beings. But this is difficult when you have the Vince Lombardi-style of coach hollering at you to hate the opponent, who really is just a guy like you in a different color uniform.”


Show Business• In 1983, Sauer wrote in the New

York Times that, “Football is an ambiguous sport, depending both on grace and violence. It both glorifies and destroys bodies. At the time, I could not reconcile the apparent inconsistency.”


Show Business• “I care even less about being a

public person. You stick out too much, the world enlarges around you to dangerous proportions, and you are too evident to too many others. There is a vulnerability in this and, oddly enough, some guilt involved in standing out.”


Show Business• Despite these critiques, football

thrived as never before.

• Innovations in rules and tactics and new stars kept football fresh.

• Critics gnawed around the edges, but they never touched the game’s place at the core of America’s dream life.

jrn / sps 362 - lecture eighteen

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