They Called Him Assassin

When I was a kid Jack Tatum was one of the most famous players in the league. Kind of a strange position to be in for a safety. And no one thought he was the greatest safety either; dude never made an All-Pro team despite what some of the recent obituaries are saying. Tatum was a good player but the All-Pro nods in his time all went to guys like Jake Scott, Dick Anderson, Ken Houston, Paul Krause, Cliff Harris and Donnie Shell. But Tatum was a bigger name than all of them. Why? Well, for one he seemed to wind up a part of some of the most high-profile moments of the 70's. Tatum was the guy who popped Frenchy Fuqua in the 1972 divisional playoffs and set in motion the Immaculate Reception. He knocked Lynn Swann from the 1975 AFC Championship Game with a concussion. Tatum was the guy who jarred the ball loose from Rob Lytle causing the fumble that wasn't in the 1977 AFC Championship Game. And Tatum made one of the biggest hits in Super Bowl history when he blasted the helmet right off Sammy White's in Super Bowl XI. Yeah, Tatum made some big hits.


That's what he was famous for. Like another of his contemporaries, Conrad Dobler, Tatum got a rep as a dirty player, a cheap-shot artist. Maybe it was unfair. Maybe he was just a bad-ass. An enforcer. An intimidator. An assassin. If any receiver tried to make a play in Tatum's territory he was going to pay a price for it. Tatum was doing his job. That's football. To some people Jack Tatum played the game like it was supposed to be played. Old school. But I wasn't one of those people.

I've written before about how much I hated those "Bad Boy" Raiders teams. They cheated. They played dirty. And they revelled in it. When Chuck Noll called out the "criminal element" on the Raiders he was referring to Tatum's teammate George Atkinson but everybody took Noll's words and applied them to Tatum as well. Mel Blount and Jack Lambert weren't angels either but there was just something about the Raiders. They seemed to go all-out to move the borderline separating a legal hit from a cheap shot. Tatum more than anyone.

And Tatum's reputation was sealed forever after he delivered his most infamous hit, a hit that unlike the ones listed above came in a game that didn't even count. Tatum didn't get flagged for his paralyzing hit on Daryl Stingley and he didn't get fined either. So it was a legal play, something Tatum's defenders over the years have used as their main evidence that Tatum did nothing wrong. I remember getting into an argument about it with a college roommate (a Raiders fan) several years later and that's exactly what he said. And now in the wake of Tatum's death a lot of people are claiming Tatum was completely blameless over what happened.

To me, Tatum made a conscious decision to try to hurt somebody in a game that meant nothing, on a play that meant nothing. He said so himself in his book, "It was one of those pass plays where I could have attempted to intercept, but because of what the owners expect of me when they give me my paycheck, I automatically reacted to the situation by going for an intimidating hit."  And then to compound it all Tatum went and put out that book where he bragged about his efforts to maim his fellow players and seemingly savored his reputation as a football assassin. In fact, he put out a couple of follow-up books as well where he did the exact same thing.  Worse, he never expressed true regret over what happened to Stingley. Now I suppose Tatum thought he did nothing wrong so no apology was necessary.  But some sort of gesture towards Stingley should have been made, some expression of remorse, some show of kindness.  And Tatum never made one. Actually on one occasion, years later, Tatum did make an overture, an offer of reconciliation. But he wanted it to be televised. And Stingley found out why; Tatum had another book coming out. The proposed meeting wasn't heartfelt after all. Tatum just wanted to sell some books. About the affair Stingley said in 2003:

"I told him if they showed up at my door without a camera then we could have some real healing," Stingley said. "This is a world built on hype. Selling newspapers. TV ratings. Those are real. But in my world what's important is to have a forgiving nature. I was always ready for reconciliation with Jack Tatum. I was willing to do it once before until we learned at the final hour that it was about selling a new book. That changed my mind. I could not allow anybody to capitalize on my situation any more.

"I could not understand why a person would still take that approach so many years later. How could he try to take advantage of the situation again? How could he not feel serious regret or remorse for what happened?

"If he called me today, I'd answer. If he came to my house, I'd open my door to him. All I ever wanted was for him to acknowledge me as a human being. I just wanted to hear from him if he felt sorry or not. It's not like I'm unreachable. But it's not a phone call I'll be waiting for anymore."

Though hurt by Tatum's behavior Stingley spoke eloquently and forgivingly about the man.  But he died four years later without ever having received the acknowledgement from Tatum that he'd hoped for.  Many understandably don't want to think about that in the wake of Jack Tatum's death but I don't see how you can ignore it.


Postscript: The man who threw that fateful pass to Stingley, Steve Grogan, shared some interesting thoughts on Tatum.

Blindsided

Past Interference’s first book review and I won't make you wait for the verdict. I loved it. The book's great. Buy it. I can't imagine any thinking football fan not liking K.C. Joyner's Blindsided.  Joyner's known as "The Football Scientist" but he didn't put anything into his book that's not easily understood by an intelligent reader. No crazy numbers. No esoteric mathematical formulas. Just nicely reasoned discussion. Careful arguments. And tables. Lots of tables. Joyner runs through a wide variety of NFL topics.  PI’s long been interested in how the NFL’s greatest teams were put together and in who should be in the Hall of Fame so chapters on those very topics clearly apppaled to me. But I also loved the chapters on things I’ve never thought twice about, like why Art Rooney's Steelers were so bad for so long or why Bert Bell is an overrated NFL commissioner. Really, there wasn't one part of this book I didn't find to be of interest.


Ok, the unalloyed praise is out of the way. Now let me nitpick a couple of things. In perhaps the most intriguing chapter of the book, The Darwinism of the Coaching Forest, Joyner posits the existence of two separate coaching alignments: Personnel/Scheme and Athletic/Hitter. The first alignment divides coaches into those who try to beat opponents with superior talent and those who try win with superior play-calling. The second alignment, as Joyner explains it, divides coaches into those who try to beat opponents with athleticism and those who try to win by administering punishment to the other team. This part of the book is of extra interest to a Dolphin fan since Joyner uses Don Shula's place on each coaching axis to illustrate what Joyner's talking about. Joyner contrasts Shula with Tom Landry to show the difference between a Personnel coach and a Scheme coach. Shula, according to Joyner, designs his offensive and defensive schemes to fit the talent he's got, while Tom Landry runs the offense and defense he wants to run regardless of the talents of his players. Shula tries to acquire the best players he can and makes the most of their talent; Landry tries to obtain those players who best fit into the system he already plans to run. I suppose I can accept that coaches have tendencies along these lines and that Joyner has Shula and Landry pegged correctly. But can we really classify coaches so easily?

Bill Walsh is your classic Scheme coach right? Mr. West Coast Offense. But if you read Dr. Z’s classic column "The real West Coast Offense" you see that Walsh, as offensive coordinator for Cincinnati in 1970, only came up with the seeds of his West Coast Offense after the Bengals QB Greg Cook got hurt. Cook was “a big, strong armed kid who could also throw with touch”. When he went down the team replaced him with Virgil Carter “smaller, agile, quick-thinking”. As Dr. Z puts it:

Carter was able to go through his progressions quickly and throw on the go; not blessed with a big arm, but accurate. So Walsh crafted an offense to suit him, a horizontal offense with a lot of motion and underneath routes and breakoff patterns an attack that now goes by the misnomer "West Coast Offense."

This indicates Walsh might not in fact have been a true scheme coach at all. Rather he designed an offense to fit his personnel. Ok, he was just a coordinator back then, not the coach. And maybe he hadn’t developed his coaching philosophy yet. But how do you explain this? Years later Dr. Z asked Walsh what his system would have been like if he'd had Cook for 10 or 12 years and Walsh said "Completely different…It would have been down the field." So Walsh himself says he would have installed an offense that fit the talents of his quarterback, one totally different than the West Coast Offense.  If Walsh had gotten John Elway or Dan Marino to run his offense then I'm guessing it would have looked a lot different than the West Coast Offense he designed for Virgil Carter.  And something like that happened in reality with Don Shula who abandoned his run-dominated offenses of the 70’s for downfield passing once he installed Marino as his QB. 

Joyner categorizes Bill Belichick as a Scheme coach and claims the reason for Belichick’s refusal to coach the Jets after Bill Parcells stepped down in 2000 was that Belichick knew it couldn’t work since Parcells, a Personnel man, would still be running the organization. That’s certainly a more than interesting hypothesis but I’ve never heard anyone else suggest anything like that as the reason for the schism .  It would have been nice if Joyner actually cited to something in support of his theory.  I doubt he finds another sportswriter to back that up.  (Money and/or power, as is so often the case, seem the more likely answers). 

I have even more of a problem with Joyner's second axis, the Athletic/Hitter one. Here Joyner contrasts Shula, the Athletic coach with Chuck Noll, the Hitter coach. Now obviously Noll's teams were known for hitting while Shula's teams weren't. But was that because Shula didn’t stress hitting or because Noll had better hitters than Shula? And even if we can say Joyner’s right on Shula and Noll on the Athletic/Hitter axis why would that axis continue to exist today? Joyner’s got a table of every Super Bowl winning coach and that coach’s Scheme/Personnel Alignment. Lombardi’s Personnel/Hitter. Shula is Personnel/Athletic, Shanahan is Scheme/Athletic, etc. In the first 42 Super Bowls, just ten of the winning coaches are on the Athletic coaching tree. And out of the first 30 Super Bowls, coaches favoring the Athletic alignment won just four of them (Ewbank, Shula twice, and Walsh in his first SB. Joyner has him switching to the Hitter alignment for his two later wins). We know the NFL’s a copycat league. Soccer-style kicking. The Shotgun. The West Coast Offense. If something works other teams are going to adopt it. If something fails miserably teams drop it like a live grenade (anyone bringing back the single-wing?). So why would any coach in his right mind have favored the Athletic Alignment if the Hitter Alignment was going to give you a far better chance of getting a Lombardi trophy? It makes no sense. According to Joyner coaches on the Athletic side have had more success in recent years but were the 2002 Bucs and 2007 Giants really Athletic squads? They sure seemed like hitting teams to me. Well, PI may not have been able to make much sense out of Joyner’s alignments but it sure made for a fascinating read at least.

My one other quibble with the Football Scientist was with his Hall of Fame chapter, specifically with his contention that Ray Guy needs to be in the Hall of Fame. Seems to me you have to do two things to make the case for Guy. First, you have to show a pure punter, any pure punter deserves induction. In other words, quantify a punter’s contribution to his team. What’s the difference between a really good punter and a really bad one? How much greater are a team’s chances of winning with a great punter? Clearly HOF voters don’t think it’s that much as they’ve yet to vote in any pure punter. But you’d think a football scientist could come up with a formula to show us the actual value of a punter. But Joyner doesn’t do that. He simply asserts that since punters are already honored with All-Pro and Pro Bowl selections they ought to be picked for the Hall. The obvious problem with what he’s arguing is that an entire starting lineup is named for the All-Pro team and you get two entire rosters of Pro Bowlers. Meanwhile, the Hall of Fame can only induct a maximum of seven players a year so who wants to waste a valuable spot on a friggin’ punter at the expense of a “real” football player?

But assuming for the sake of argument that the HOF should immediately induct the greatest pure punter ever we also have to know who that is. Is it Guy? Joyner says it is but he doesn’t refer to any stats at all in support of this; he just highlights Guy’s nine selections to All-Pro teams (six consensus All-Pros). I’ll admit that’s impressive but All-Pro selections can’t be the be-all end-all of the “best ever” argument, especially at a position, like punter, where we actually have numbers that can show us how good somebody actually was. And right now Guy stands at 67th place all-time in punting average. And his net average is even worse! Unless you want to argue it’s become a lot easier to post better punting averages since Guy retired how can anyone say Guy was the best ever? Plus there’s like 23 guys ahead of Guy in gross average who started their careers before his anyway. Tommy Davis punted over a decade before Guy came into the league, his average is much better, he punted in much tougher conditions (San Francisco), and he also doubled as a very good placekicker. Why shouldn’t he go in before Guy? Davis retired over 40 years ago and he’s still ranked 9th in punting average!

Guy had a fairly long career for a punter, 14 years, but Jeff Feagles just retired after playing for 22. Guy’s career average is half a yard more than Feagles but what about their other stats? Guy kicked 210 punts inside the 20. They didn't count the stat for his first 3 years so let's be really really generous and bump him up to 300. Jeff Feagles has 497. Guy had 128 touchbacks. Feagles has only 122 in a much longer career. Feagles owns every cumulative punting stat in the book. And his net average, the more important stat anyway, is higher than Guy’s (35.9-33.4). Guy’s touchback, inside the 20, and net average numbers would all indicate that while he might have had a big leg and great hang time he wasn’t all that accurate at dropping his punts where they needed to go. Joyner finesses this by saying he once talked to a special teams coach who told him that when it comes to a punter the only thing that mattered was hang time. Say WHAAAT?! If that’s true then why is Joyner expending all this effort to make a case for Ray Guy? One punter with decent hang time’s as good as the next. Are we going to put them all in the Hall? Or rely solely on All-Pro selections to sort them all out?  That doesn't sound like Football Science to me.

Ok, so what about all this All-Pro stuff? Guy had to be great to get picked all those times no? Well, I have a theory about this. Hear me out (or rather, read on). Back in Guy’s day there was no such thing as the internet. There were no pro football databases to access. No websites to check. What you had was the newspaper. And once a week the paper would list the league’s punters in order of gross average. That was it. If you wanted to find out who the leaders were in net average (gross average minus return yards and touchbacks), you couldn’t. If you wanted to know who was the best at dropping kicks inside the 20, too bad. All you had was one stat: gross average. And in his day Guy had a pretty good gross average, better than most of his fellow punters. If you were sportswriter voting for the All-Pro team you looked at the same list everybody else was looking at. Plus Guy played for a great team and was on TV a lot where he could uncork a big punt for all to see. He also had a well-liked coach, John Madden, who told everyone Guy was the best. And without access to the statistics that would sort it all out who could argue? And when you get in once, you've got a good chance to make it again.  So Guy would make the All-Pro team year after year based on gross average and reputation. That couldn’t happen today. It’s also likely Guy was aided by weak competition at the position. We might living in the Golden Age of Punting today but when Guy kicked there weren’t a whole lot of quality punters out there. It wasn’t until the late great Reggie Roby debuted near the end of Guy’s career that we had another guy with a big leg and some serious hang time to talk about.

Look, if Guy really had such great hang time on a consistent basis he’d have the high net average to go with it. But he doesn’t. So he’s not the all-time greatest punter. Not even close. Sorry KC. I still loved your book though. And here’s an idea for your next one: come up with a way to mathematically value the contributions of the punter. The world needs it.

Rosy Grier

Rosy Grier's one of those rare athletes who becomes even more famous for something he did off the playing field. In his case he'll forever be the man who acted bravely in the midst of unspeakable horror and tragedy when he pried the gun from the hand of Bobby Kennedy's assassin. At least Grier helped make sure nobody else got shot on that terrible evening.  

Past Interference feels a bit proprietary about Mr. Grier. I have no memory of him as a player but I was just the right age to have witnessed, and in some way been affected by, his brief performing "career", something I once had a bit of fun writing about.

But Rosy Grier's a complicated person, a serious person, who's certainly done a lot for others over the years. And he's still out there trying to make the world a better place. He's worked with troubled street kids, helped organize the construction of federally financed senior housing projects, founded an organization offering job training and housing to inner city residents, and currently he helps the cause of prostate cancer prevention awareness and, an ordained minister, "speaks and preaches frequently on the need to end violence, greed, hatred and racism." It's all here. Read it. 

I have nothing profound to add. Good people who do good things deserve some recognition and since this is a football blog I'm using it to salute the good works of one Roosevelt Grier. A great guy. The end.

The Decision

Sorry for the dearth of posts lately (I love using the word "dearth"). 

Pundits of all colors and stripes have spent the past two week rightfully excoriating the combination of egomania and stupidity that Lebron James showed in allowing something like “The Decision” to ever see the light of day. No need for Past Interference to beat that dead horse. As for the decision itself, I asked my friend and ex-Cleveland resident Jim for his opinion and he said simply, “He gave them seven years” and “stars always leave Cleveland”. That says it all. No matter how big a jerk King James might have acted towards his now former fans in Ohio they should probably remember Lebron never chose to play there. He was drafted. He might be from there but he never picked them. Only upon the expiration of his contract did Lebron have a chance to choose the place he wanted to play. He did. And he didn’t pick Cleveland. As a free agent he gets to do that. That’s sports. He doesn’t owe them anything (beyond common courtesy).


Past Interference is old enough to remember a time when free agency didn’t exist in sports. A team drafted a player and that team then owned the player’s rights for the rest of his career. And with no bargaining power players in the pre-free agency era could either take whatever money their teams offered them or hold out. Players made just a tiny fraction of what they were worth to their team. NFL players actually had jobs in the offseason. Jobs! Until the free-agency era began, no matter how well they performed NFL players had no leverage whatsoever. With one exception. Or maybe that should be four exceptions.

Four happens to be the number of professional football leagues in the post-war era that made a serious attempt to challenge the dominance of the NFL in America. Ironically, one of those leagues birthed the greatest moment in the history of South Florida sports, the creation of the Miami Dolphins, while another of those leagues was responsible for maybe the saddest moment in Miami Dolphins history.

Each time one of those new leagues came along established NFL players and/or college stars would receive higher-paying offers from the new league than they ever could have expected to receive from the older established league. This is turn created upward pressure on salaries for everybody as NFL owners responded by trying their best to keep their players in the fold. The AFL was so successful in the 60’s that it forced a merger with the NFL that ended the costly bidding wars and brought the Dolphins into the NFL. Another rival league, the WFL, didn’t even last two full seasons but on the way to its own funeral the WFL hastened the demise of the Dolphin dynasty of the Seventies.

The WFL tried to make a splash in 1975 by fielding some top NFL talent, namely three Miami Dolphin stars: Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield, and Jim Kiick. The announcement was made during the 1974 season and so the gut wrenching playoff loss to the Raiders that ended Miami’s year symbolized the devastating consequences of the impending loss of two future Hall of Famers plus another quality RB. Miami never could adequately fill the huge holes at the skill positions those players left behind. Not that you could ever truly replace players of that magnitude, especially Csonka the heart and soul of the Dolphins. When those guys left the era of Dolphin dominance ended and to this day the franchise has never again fielded a team approaching the quality of the Csonka-Warfield era Dolphins.

But who could blame them for leaving? Csonka got over a million to sign with the Memphis Southmen, Warfield $900,000 and Kiick $700,000. All guaranteed. That was huge money back then for a professional athlete and they weren’t getting anything close to that from Joe Robbie. The athlete’s career’s a short one, especially in football, so take the money and run. With free agency (or what the NFL calls free agency anyway), a star player can expect to earn millions off of his labors today No such situation existed in 1974. The WFL’s brief existence came along at a bad time for the Miami Dolphins, but at a great time for Csonka, Warfield and Kiick.

Tommy Thompson

An odd little debate recently erupted in the football world on the matter of whether the late Pat Tillman should be inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame. I most definitely do not want to besmirch Tillman's memory, and do not believe I am doing so, when I say I don't even see how this even is a debate. Election to the Hall of Fame is for the game's greatest players and nobody considered Tillman to be on that level when he left the game for the military. Nor is anybody arguing (I don't think) that Tillman would have become one of the all-time greats had he lived. So that settles it. Past Interference certainly does hope everybody long remembers Tillman's patriotism and sacrifice. Without question he deserved whatever military honors the military posthumously bestowed upon him. But the NFL doesn't give out those military honors, the U.S. goverment does. Sure I understand the thinking behind wanting to induct Pat Tillman; it would be a thank you and a show of respect for the man's service and sacrifice. But Tillman is not alone in deserving the respect of the NFL and its fans. Well over 1000 NFL players have served in the military at one time or another and, including Tillman, 26 of those men made the ultimate sacrifice. If Tillman is to be honored it would only be right to also honor the other 25 who fell. And maybe the league should indeed do something to commemorate all of them but it should be something other than induction to the Hall of Fame.


Past Interference does have a suggestion for the Hall of Fame though. If you're looking for a Hall of Famer there is somebody out there who both served his country with distinction in wartime and also played some brilliant football, somebody who despite all that has for some reason been kind of forgotten. (It was really hard finding out anything about this man beyond the basic historical details).  When you're arguably the greatest quarterback in your longtime franchise's history you ought to be better remembered. There's only a few candidates for the title of "Greatest Quarterback in Philadelphia Eagles History" but if your number one criteria is winning then the title has to go to Tommy Thompson.

From 1947-1949, Thompson led the Eagles to three consecutive NFL championship game appearances and back-to-back titles. Including Thompson only 12 QB's have ever won back-to-back titles and they're ALL in the Hall of Fame...except for Thompson (and Tom Brady who will be inducted as soon as he's eligible) (see List 1 below). And, including Thompson, only 8 QB's have ever led their team to three or more consecutive title game appearances and they're ALL in the Hall of Fame...except for Thompson (see List 2). And, including Thompson, only 6 men have accomplished both of the above feats and they're ALL in the Hall of Fame...except for Thompson (see List 3). It can't be said those Eagles teams carried Thompson to the title game--he led the league in passer rating in '48 and '49 and was second in '47. Nor can it be said those were the only three good years of his career. Thompson ranked third in passer rating in 1941 and 1942.

Thompson's career passing numbers look like nothing special today of course. Drew Brees' total passing yardage for the past three seasons alone blow away Thompson's career passing yards. But you have to judge a player by what he does in his own era and Thompson was one of he best QB's of the 1940's. His numbers don't approach those of his Hall of Fame contemporaries Baugh and Luckman, but they're certainly comparable to another HOF contemporary, Bob Waterfield. Waterfield has a small advantage in yards and touchdowns but Thompson's career passer rating is a good five points higher. Both men quarterbacked their teams to two titles and while Waterfield made it to one more title game than Thompson, Thompson has the better postseason winning percentage. Thompson may not have been as versatile a player as Waterfield (who kicked and punted), and Thompson may not have shagged any movie stars, but he didn't share quarterbacking duties in any of his championship years either (like Waterfield did with Norm Van Brocklin).

The reason Thompson's passing numbers aren't bigger than Waterfield's has nothing to do with Thompson's play on the field. World War II was to blame. Thompson missed both the 1943 and 1944 seasons serving in the United States Army. And while fighting overseas he "received the Purple Heart when he was wounded while landing with the second wave at Normandy."  He returned to the NFL in 1945 but played very little as the Eagles stayed with the guy holding down the fort in Thompson's absence, Roy Zimmerman. Thompson got his job back in '46 but only part-time; he played well but had to split time with Zimmerman. When the Eagles traded Zimmerman after the season and gave the full-time gig back to Thompson he rewarded them by leading the Eagles to what remains their greatest period of dominance in franchise history.

Had Thompson's career not been uninterrupted by military service, his career passing numbers would have far surpassed Waterfield's and there was also a good chance he would have thrown for more career yards than another Hall of Fame contemporary: Sid Luckman. If that had happened, then Thompson would almost surely have been elected to the Hall of Fame. And I submit to you that if Thompson would be in the Hall of Fame but for his military service, then he should be in the Hall of Fame regardless. He didn't play himself out of a job. He didn't get injured on the field. No, the man fought Nazis in combat. He got wounded at Normandy for crying out loud! He absolutely has to get credit for the yards he would have thrown for in those three years of football he lost in serving his country. And if you give him that richly deserved credit then he's a Hall of Famer. So vote him in already Veteran's Committee. Do the right thing.


1) Back-to-back Titles: Luckman, Thompson, Layne, Graham, Unitas, Starr, Griese, Bradshaw, Montana, Aikman, Elway, Brady

2) Three-or-more conecutive title game appearances: Luckman, Thompson, Layne, Graham, Starr, Tittle, Griese, Kelly

3) Both of the above: Luckman, Thompson, Layne, Graham, Starr, Griese

Past Interference Gets Results

We get results! A couple of years ago I wrote about the acting "career" of former NFL QB Jim Plunkett. The Internet Movie Database absurdly listed him as having played the role of Stan Laurel in the 1965 mainstream Hollywood non-hit movie Harlow. I hadn't seen the movie (and doubt I ever will) but the absurdity of this struck me as the perfect topic for the stupid kind of blog post I like the best. I mean, just the thought of a teenage Mexican American quarterback playing a famous middle-aged English comedian in a movie. High comedy right? Well, no doubt somebody brought my brilliant post to the attention of the IMDB folks and a recent check of the site now reveals the former two-time Super Bowl winning passer is credited no more with playing Mr. Laurel.  A different Jim Plunkett now gets the credit. A mysterious Jim Plunkett as it happens--No other show biz credits. No biographical information.  No nothing. But the acting career of "our" Jim Plunkett hasn't vanished into the mists of error, for his other IMDB acting credit still remains: as "Stretch" in The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters. I'd like to confirm Plunkett truly acted in this film but I have to say the odds of me seeing that are even less than of me seeing Harlow. I do love the idea that Kid Plunkett may have acted in something like this so hopefully IMDB got this one right. They don't want another piece of Past Interference.

Pete Axthelm: The Ax

Lebron James. Why'd he play so poorly against the Celtics? What does it mean for his legacy? Will he ever win a title? What team will he play for next year? I don't know and I don't care. But good grief there was no escape from Lebron-mania the other week. Day after day, hour after hour. Has sports media ever been so all-consumed by anything like this? I thought the Peyton Manning Super Bowl stuff was bad. But it was nothing compared to this Lebron thing. Everybody with a sports platform offered their answers to the above questions with utter certainty although they couldn't possibly have known the answers. The questions aren't currently answerable. I've never seen or heard anything like it. ToO summarize it all in a quick visual, just imagine a bunch of gums flapping and spittle flying in front of a giant screen of endless Lebron highlights.  

We're not big hoops fans here at Past Interference. The National Football League, the greatest sports league that has ever existed or ever will exist, will always be our primary focus. So why am I even bringing up Lebron James? Because the whole Lebron saga brought into focus for me just how different the sports media world is now compared to my youth. Not necessarily worse. Just different.

Today we've got a number of shows on TV featuring sportswriters arguing with each other. These are ostensibly supposed to be "America writ large" as they say. You know, "we're just like you and your buddies sitting around and talking about sports". But there's one big difference. You actually like your friends.  And you enjoy talking sports with them. Compare that the experience of watching these shows featuring people who, apparently, don't like the folks they're talking to and don't enjoy talking about sports at all. One of the worst offenders is Skip Bayless. I don't get why he goes on ESPN in the first place. When athletes are caught up in scandal, it irritates him to no end. If a player gives a disappointing performance, Bayless is irritated. If someone disagrees with his opinion, he's irritated. Having to show up on the set? Irritating. And having to watch someone who's so irritable? Yeah, it's irritating.

Now if you don't get enough of Bayless on TV there's always the books he cranked about the Dallas Cowboys. He got himself in trouble for this one where he disseminated unsubstantiated rumors about Troy Aikman's personal life. Of course Bayless defended himself by claiming Barry Switzer was the one spreading the rumors and Bayless was just writing about what mean 'ol Switzer was doing, in the process showing just how badly the "ethics" our hopeless political media have infected our sports media. I didn't read that book. I'd already soured on Bayless after reading his earlier book on Tom Landry. 

An author couldn't be more condescending about his subject if he tried. The book's not completely without merit. But the way Bayless talks about Landry, one of the greatest coaches of all-time, is just...yeah, it's irritating. As you may know, Landry had a bit of a reputation as a reserved, straight-laced, unemotional person. Or as Duane Thomas ungenerously put it, a "plastic man". As you may also know, Landry was a devout Christian in life and apparently could speak of his faith quite movingly to groups of fellow Christians. To Bayless, Landry walling himself off from his players instead of holding their hands and sharing the Good News somehow represents hypocrisy of the highest sort. To us normal people it's obvious that Landry, a consummate professional, knew his job wasn't to minister to his player's souls but to get them to win as many freaking football games as possible, something incidentally that he did just about better than any football coach who ever lived. To Bayless, 270 wins, 20 straight winning seasons, five Super Bowl appearances and two championships aren't enough. Right.

Believe it or not watching Bayless is actually a joy compared to the chore of seeing one Jay Mariotti in action. Bayless may irritate, but at least you get that he might occasionally respect the opinions of the people he's debating on TV. Not so Mariotti. Has there ever been anyone this smug? With every smirk, with every shake of his hand, with every gesture, Mariotti communicates nothing but his utter contempt for everyone who disagrees with him. In other words, he's dismissive. And when confronted with the spectacle of someone that dismissive that often you do what? That's right.  You dismiss them! And I know I'm not the only one.

Like I said it's a different world now. When I was a kid if you wanted sports commentary you didn't get it from TV.  The first guy I remember popping up on television to offer commentary on a sporting event rather than call the event was Jack Whitaker. CBS would always drag him out to give us some high-minded verbiage on golf and horse racing. To me he was just a boring old guy in a loud jacket waxing eloquent about stuff I could have cared less about but, to be fair, I was a kid and hardly in his target audience of golfing grandpas. But Whitaker was a rarity.  If you wanted sports commentary you got it from magazines and newspapers. I was lucky. My hometown paper, the Miami Herald, had Edwin Pope writing for them.  A man thrilled by the best in sports and disgusted by the worst. He was insightful, respectful, perceptive. Clearly not someone cut out for TV work at all.  I also got lucky with magazines too; my dad subscribed to Newsweek for years. As a kid the dull dry articles about high finance and world affairs held no appeal for me, bo-ring, but Newsweek had one of the best sports columnists around, maybe the best sports columnist around, Pete Axthelm. He could really write. Just amazing stuff.

I don't know which sportswriter gets the credit for making the first official historic leap to television commentary but the first sportswriter I personally remember making an impact on TV was Axthelm. NBC hired him for their NFL studio shows and when they let him go ESPN snapped him up. I know it's hard to believe but back in Axthelm's heyday ESPN Gameday was only on for an hour and featured just Chris Berman, Tom Jackson and Axthelm. The Ax certainly didn't look like somebody cut out for TV work. He was pudgy and balding and looked like everybody's uncle. While quite witty he wasn't there as a joketeller like we saw years later with Monday Night Football's aborted Dennis Miller experiment. Axthelm knew his football.

I remember after Dan Hampton retired from the Bears Axthelm matter-of-factly stated that while other Chicago defenders might have gotten more press in a few years it was going to be Hampton quietly entering the Hall of Fame (Ax was right). Another time, after the underdog Dolphins were humiliated at home in a late 80's Monday Night Football game, Axthelm sadly and correctly noted that this was the kind of game that the Dolphins used to win. But the funny stuff he said is what has stayed with me. When the Steelers were making a playoff run a decade after their dynasty ended Axthelm pointed out how those old Steeler greats had names that seemed practically scripted: Jack Ham, Lynn Swann, Mel Blount, Mean Joe Greene, and he wondered if the Steelers could win now with guys named Bubby and Weegie. 

When Green Bay and Tampa Bay were both horrible in the Eighties and played each other twice a year, Axthelm famously nicknamed the series the "Bay of Pigs". Berman loved that one and used it all the time. My own favorite Axthelm on-air moment was probably his most legendary one. As I've written about before, back in the 70's and 80's it was not uncommon for NFL placekickers to hail from foreign lands. Often a land where futbol is far more popular than football, such as Mexico. And in 1987-1988, three different Mexicans, the Zendejas brothers, Luis, Max, and Tony, each kicked for NFL teams. But none of the brothers turned out to be models of kicking consistency and for awhile every single week one of them was missing a critical kick that cost his team the game. As the misses mounted Axthelm began slamming the brothers every week until he finally snapped and ranted in mock exasperation: "Enough with the Zendejases. Luis , Max, Tony, Julio, Willie and Waylon. How many are there? No more Zendejases!" It was some funny stuff. Axthelm picked the pointspread winners every week and no doubt the misses hurt his picks. More than that they probably cost him some actual money.  A lot of money. 

You certainly don't have to read between the lines of this tribute column to figure out Axthelm had a serious gambling problem.  So his "mock" exasperation with the Zendejas Bros and their missed kicks was probably all too real. I said before that Axthelm didn't necessarily look like somebody made for TV and TV wasn't necessarily made for Axthelm either. The few minutes he was allotted on TV each week couldn't possibly have been enough for him to fully explore his subject the way he could in his columns or his books. And the time he spent working for the networks no doubt cut into his writing time. Axthelm wrote several books in the 1970's, including his classic The City Game, but I don't think he wrote any other books after he became a television fixture. The frequency of his columns dwindled as well. It's understandable though; I'm sure he made a lot more money from TV than from writing.

His writing, his TV work and his life all ended when he died at age 47. From liver failure. Which suggests gambling hadn't been his only problem.

All these years later I still miss seeing him on TV. Nowadays it's all a blur of yelling and arguing and people talking over each other and "controversial" opinions and attention grabbing and ignorance and stupidity. I can't tell you how much I'd like to have Pete Axthelm's eloquence and wit back.