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  “I wrote ‘em a letter,” he said.

  Notre Dame wasn’t altogether unknown in football in 1913. In Midwestern football that is. The Irish had been playing since 1887 and had beaten some tolerably celebrated opponents, including Michigan. But their fame hadn’t reached the East.

  “In those days,” Harper recalled, “we usually got to work on the next fall’s schedule along about February. We wanted an Eastern game, so I wrote a letter to Army and they happened to have an open date and took us on. Why did I pick Army? I don’t know. It was a good game and good games weren’t easy to get. Maybe it’s true, as the old stories go, that Army was looking for a Midwestern opponent that wouldn’t be too tough when they got my letter. But as far as I know, my letter was all there was to it.”

  It is revealing no secret to report that Army took a brief lead of 13 to 7 and did not score again while Eichenlaub’s furious plunges and Dorais’ forward passes to Rockne and Gushurst were bringing five touchdowns and a Notre Dame victory, 35 to 13. Throwing to receivers “as far as thirty-five yards away,” Dorais worked the new-fangled pass successfully thirteen times in seventeen attempts for gains of 243 yards.

  “After the game,” Harper said, “I went in to see Charley Daly, the Army coach, and Major Graves, and off in a corner I saw an officer who really was giving his wife hell. Being a married man, I sidled over to get an earful. Well, he was telling her, well, you’ve been hollering about why we don’t play some decent opposition. Now, dammit, are you satisfied?

  “That winter I ran into a fellow from Annapolis who climbed all over me. ‘We expected to beat Army,’ he told me, ‘but they came along with that forward pass you showed ‘em and blew our brains out.’”

  Harper sat in today’s press conference. It must have been a rewarding experience for him to see three dozen newspaper men from all over the nation solemnly scribbling notes as Moose Krause, Frank Leahy’s assistant, and Jack Lavelle, the king-size scout, dropped pearls of wisdom on the thick rug of the lounge in Rockne Memorial Field House.

  In Harper’s day, a Notre Dame-Army game stirred somewhat less journalistic commotion. When he took that 1913 team to New York the players grabbed eagerly for newspapers to see their names immortalized in headlines. They had to comb the columns before Dorais found an obscure paragraph in the Times.

  “The Notre Dame football team,” the lead said, “which has come all the way from South Bend, Illinois—”

  Dorais crumpled the paper in his hands.

  “Why, the fatheads! They don’t even know what state we’re from!”

  There was, of course, no admission charge for the spectators who lined the unfenced field on the plains of West Point. Notre Dame’s guarantee was a thousand dollars and, Harper said with justifiable pride, the trip produced a net profit of eighty-three dollars. By 1919 expenses were somewhat higher. The earliest Army game expense account still preserved here shows the following items in Rockne’s hand for the West Point game of November 8,1919:

  “Receipts, $1,000. Railroad, $1,381.35; meals, $184; ferry, $6.90; tips to porters, $6; tips to waiters $12 [this was first written as $6 then changed to $12]; trip to Chicago to get shoes, $10.58; transfer of trunks, $3. Total expense, $1,603.83. Loss $603.83.”

  It is worthy of note that Rock drew an advance of $1,600 from the treasurer and reported expenses of $3.83 more than that, even as a touring sportswriter of 1947.

  BACHELORS III

  1969

  Joe Willie Namath, a saloonkeeper from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, was in Santa Monica, California, Sunday night presenting an Emmy award on television. It must have been a nerve-wracking evening for Bill Cosby and Merv Griffin, who appeared on the show with him, and for Columbia Broadcasting System which televised it. For all they knew, they would wake up Monday morning and find they had all been ex-communicated by Pete Rozelle. Guilt by association.

  Ambrose Bierce, a livelier lexicographer than Webster but not so widely advertised, defines impartiality as “inability to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions.” That’s for the white-livered who won’t take either side, but how about the fellow that takes both sides?

  Obviously, there are two sides to the Namath affair, and the disposition here is to take both. It is difficult to see how Pete Rozelle, discovering that the fuzz was taking an unflattering interest in the Namath grog shop called Bachelors III, could do less than direct Joe Willie to get out of the gin mill or out of football.

  Off his established form, it is impossible to picture Namath meekly accepting this ultimatum as long as he felt, and Rozelle publicly concurred, that he had done no wrong. After all, the Securities and Exchange Commission had raised no objections when four stockbrokers ran the same pothouse under the name Margin Call.

  On one side, there is the fact that for years professional football has maintained a list of joints which were off-limits for players because the clientele in these traps included characters not considered desirable companions. “Remember,” players are told before a trip to Chicago or Miami or New Orleans, “if you’re seen in one of these places, you’re out of this game.”

  Nobody has ever seriously disputed the view that professional athletes must be more particular about the company they keep than sportswriters, Senators, or Supreme Court justices.

  On the other hand, if Joe Willie Namath can’t let a friendly bookmaker use his telephone once in a while, how can Art Rooney own the Pittsburgh Steelers? Art Rooney, who was guest of honor along with Namath at the pro football writers’ banquet last week, is respected as one of the gamest gamblers of our time. The tale is told that Art once bet $10,000 on a horse at 60 to 1 and, after the horse finished first, sat quietly while a foul claim was argued.

  The story goes that when the stewards took the horse’s number down, costing Rooney $600,000, his comment was “who do you like in the next?” Strength to that man, but what about Joe Willie, who only sells rye to bookies?

  Bert Bell, who was Pete Rozelle’s predecessor and the chief architect of pro football’s monstrous boom, was an enthusiastic gambler whose wide acquaintance with pros in that field kept him au courant with all irregularities in the betting pattern. This was applauded as a safeguard for football.

  Obviously, there is a double standard here. To be sure, there always has been, and the argument that a football player must be like Caesar’s wife only confirms this. That “Caesar’s wife” bit refers to Pompeia, Big Julie’s second spouse, whom he divorced for playing house with one Publius Claudius. Meanwhile, Julie himself got married three times and had a son with Cleopatra on the side.

  Paul Hornung and Alex Karras admitted betting on football, not dishonestly and not for important money, but improperly under the rules. In Namath’s case there has been no admission of wrongdoing or any suspicion of same.

  Up to now, the worst that has been charged against Namath is that he is a part owner of a watering hole where some of the animals who come down to drink are unappetizing. If there are graver reasons for “law enforcement agencies” to stake out the joint, Joe and his fans are entitled to hear about them.

  Many football players have pieces of restaurants that own liquor licenses. Namath’s teammate, Gerry Philbin, opened one the other night in Amityville, Long Island. The Packers’ Max McGee and Fuzzy Thurston have been running a string of steak houses around Green Bay for years.

  It may be tough to find unsavory characters around Amityville, but if there are any such in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin, they undoubtedly patronize Max and Fuzzy, because Max and Fuzzy serve the best food in the area.

  Who among the patrons of Bachelors III, Toots Shor’s, 21, and Jilly’s is savory and who unsavory? There is a crying need for a bill of particulars.

  WHAT NOW, MR. PRESIDENT?

  NEW ORLEANS, 1972

  On the Miami Dolphins’ eighth play from scrimmage, Paul Dryden Warfield ran a down-and-in pattern from his
wide flanker position, and history quivered in the throes of creation. Lee Roy Jordan, the Dallas Cowboys’ middle linebacker, was helping Mel Renfro cover Miami’s gifted receiver as Bob Griese cocked his throwing arm. The pass was high. Warfield leapt, but could only wave at the ball.

  At least one fan, sitting in statesman-like comfort far from the bitter chill of Tulane Stadium, must have regarded the television screen with a disappointed frown.

  “I think you can hit Warfield on a down-and-in pattern,” the fan named Richard M. Nixon had told Don Shula, the Miami coach, after the Dolphins qualified to represent the American Conference in the playoff for the professional football championship of this mercenary world. Now it turned out that the fan could be mistaken like anybody else.

  Indeed, it turned out that the fan had erred in more than one respect. He had not told Shula what to do about Roger Staubach, the Cowboy with the squirrel-rifle arm. He had set up no adequate defense against the rushes of Duane Thomas, Walt Garrison and Calvin Hill, who operated like infuriated beer trucks. He had prescribed no antidote for the violence of the Dallas offensive linemen, who charged like wounded water buffalo all afternoon, blasting avenues through the Miami defenses.

  Due in part to these errors of omission, Super Bowl VI was a sorry letdown for at least half of the 81,023 witnesses present. Most of them—sharing the mistaken notion of Pete Rozelle, pro football’s supreme being, that New Orleans was in the “warm weather”—had come poorly prepared for this day’s windy 39 degrees. Physically miserable, they were not warmed spiritually by the competition, for as the game progressed it became almost as unhappy a mismatch as the Joe Frazier-Terry Daniels fist fight here last night.

  Coming through at last after making a five-year career of failure in the big games, the Cowboys led all the way in this 24-3 romp, setting Super Bowl records with rushing gains of 252 yards and 23 first downs.

  Not only did they muffle Coach Nixon’s big weapon; they turned another of his favorite tactics to their own use.

  During the regular season, the White House strategist urged George Allen, coach of the Washington Redskins, to use Roy Jefferson on a flanker reverse, sometimes described as the end-around play. Allen did, and Jefferson lost thirteen yards. Today with the Cowboys leading, 10-3, Staubach used his wide receiver, Bob Hayes, on precisely that play, and Hayes swept sixteen yards to the Miami six-yard line. Two plays later Thomas raced on a stuttering slant into the end zone, and the game was out of the Dolphins’ reach.

  In the Dolphins’ nomenclature, there is no such thing as a down-and-in pattern, but they do have two passes answering that description. On one, which they call simply a “slant,” the receiver runs straight downfield 8 or 10 yards, then breaks toward the middle. On the other, called a “post pattern,” the receiver goes deep and angles toward the goalposts.

  Presumably it was the latter which the Machiavelli of Pennsylvania Avenue had in mind. The Dolphins never did make it work with Warfield.

  That incomplete pass for Miami’s eighth play was on the short slant pattern from Warfield’s usual position far out on the left flank. The next time Griese threw his way, Warfield had started downfield and veered out toward the sideline. That pass was too high also, which was just as well politically. Herb Klein, of the White House staff, observed in a speech in Hot Springs, Arkansas, yesterday that no politician sensitive to economic issues would ever call a down-and-out.

  Warfield went back to the short slant toward the middle, and for the third time the pass was too high for him. Not until his fourth attempt did he catch the ball, and that was out in the flat zone for a five-yard gain.

  Late in the second quarter Warfield lined up in “slot left” formation (five yards inside the wide receiver). He raced downfield, threw in a little sidestep, and clutched a pass on the Dallas 24. The gain put the Dolphins in position for their only score, on Garo Yepremian’s field goal.

  Minutes after the game ended, the telephone rang in the winners’ dressing room. It was Washington calling. “He commented on every phase of the game,” said Tom Landry, the Dallas coach. “He singled out our offensive line for praise. He said we played almost a perfect game.”

  How about the down-and-in pattern?

  “He didn’t mention it,” Landry said.

  GOOD OL’ BOY WOODY HAYES

  1979

  People keep saying that Woody Hayes is a great football coach who overstayed his time. This implies that there was a time when slugging a member of the opposing team was proper coachly deportment.

  Let’s face it, throwing a punch at Charlie Bauman of Clemson was only the last degrading incident in a pattern of behavior that had long distinguished the Ohio State coach. For years, Hayes had been throwing tantrums, screaming abuse and striking out at anyone within reach when his team was losing. His employers shrugged off these embarrassments, his idolators chuckled over them and agreed that there was good ol’ Woody for you, and the objects of his spleen turned the other cheek. After he shoved a camera into the face of a Los Angeles Times photographer while Southern California was horsewhipping Ohio State in the 1973 Rose Bowl, the photographer was persuaded to drop charges; when Hayes punched Mike Friedman, a cameraman for ABC, after an Ohio State fumble in a 14-6 defeat by Michigan, that admirable network stood up for its man by saying ABC wasn’t going to make trouble because ABC would have to do business with Woody in the future.

  Evidently nobody in authority realized that a full-grown man who attached such importance to a game was, at best, immature, not to say a case of arrested development. The saddest part of the whole affair is that nobody at Ohio State saw the denouement approaching and protected Hayes from himself.

  The only way to protect him would have been to ease him into retirement, and he would have resisted that. Still, it would have been infinitely preferable to what happened. By procrastinating, the Ohio State brass invited a situation where it became necessary to throw Hayes out on his ear after twenty-eight years of service. The college wound up looking as bad as the coach.

  College football began as a recreation for undergraduates, but it outgrew that role many years ago. Not many thoughtful persons, aware of the abuses that accompanied it, would argue that it had been an altogether healthy growth. Indeed, some might wonder how far the cause of higher education was advanced by shipping a consignment of scholar-athletes from Columbus, Ohio, to Jacksonville, Florida, during their Christmas holidays to lose in the Gator Bowl to scholar-athletes from Clemson, South Carolina.

  “I don’t think it’s possible to be too intent on winning,” Woody Hayes has said. “If we played for any other reason, we would be totally dishonest. This country is built on winning and on that alone. Winning is still the most honorable thing a man can do.”

  Woody and his scholar-athletes were trying to win in the closing moments of last Friday night’s game, when Charlie Bauman intercepted a pass and went out of bounds right where the Ohio State coach stood. That architect of young manhood laid hold of Bauman and fetched him a roundhouse right to the chops. Fists flailing, he tried to charge onto the field, but his own scholar-athletes, already bruised and bleeding from their pursuit of culture, overpowered him.

  Curiously, although all this was visible to a national television audience, it escaped the attention of the ABC broadcasters in Jacksonville. There was neither comment nor replay. For that matter, there was no kickoff in ABC’s version of the Sugar Bowl game later in the weekend. When that game between Penn State and Alabama started, a commercial was on the screen.

  “No alumni and nobody else, not even you members of the press, fire the coach,” Hayes has said. “The players fire the coach and as long as I’m on the same wavelength with them, I can coach as long as I want to.”

  It didn’t work out exactly that way, for the comments of Ohio State players, published after Hayes had been dismissed, indicated that most of them remained loyal to him. Comments from other college coaches were generally sympathetic to Woody, too.

  “
I think you ought to take into consideration the enormous pressure of coaching football today,” said Bo Schembechler of Michigan. The authorities at Ohio State had been taking that into consideration for twenty-eight years in Woody’s case. They had to take it into consideration before Hayes arrived, for there was pressure on Wes Fesler, Carroll Widdoes, Paul Brown and all their predecessors in Columbus, back to Doc Wilce and beyond.

  Coaching in Columbus is not quite like coaching in New Haven. When Francis Schmidt had the Ohio State job, he drove his car into a filling station to have the oil changed and stayed behind the wheel, drawing plays in a notebook while the car was raised on a hoist.

  Oblivious to the world around him, the coach pored over his X’s and O’s, devising an intricate double reverse, setting up a defense to stop it, trying something else. At length he came up with a play that looked unstoppable. With a small cry of triumph, he slapped the notebook shut, opened the door, stepped out and fell ten feet to the concrete.

  PAPA BEAR

  1979

  The Chicago Bears, who have been more cuddly than grizzly most of the last 15 years, are in Philadelphia today, bucking for the half-championship of the National half of the National Football League, but Papa Bear is not with them. George Stanley Halas is the last survivor of that little group of willful men who sat on running boards in Ralph Hay’s Hupmobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, on September 17, 1920, and laid the foundation of the N.F.L.

  Six weeks short of his eighty-fifth birthday, George finds travel difficult, and this last week has been especially hard on him. Early last Sunday morning his fifty-four-year-old son Muggs, president of the Bears, died of a massive coronary. It took a lot out of George but, except when he was at the wake and the funeral, he has continued to keep regular hours in the club office in the Loop.

  Papa Bear is a flaming wonder. As the team he founded winds up its 60th season, he still functions as owner, chairman of the board and chief executive officer. In forty of those seasons he was also the coach, and the Bears have not won a championship since he fired himself for the fourth and last time. In bad weather he has twinges in the hip he injured as an outfielder in the 1919 training camp of the New York Yankees (that was a year before they got Babe Ruth), but he is still tough as a boot.