Unveiling the 1946 NFL Championship: Scandals and Glory

Picture this.

1946.

America's back from the war.

A surge of talent floods the football landscape as veterans trade their helmets for pads.

But wait.

A new challenger emerges.

A rival league threatening to establish the order of the NFL.

What were the forces at play?

Who were the heroes who emerged?

And how did this pivotal year shape the future of professional football?

Buckle up, football fanatics, because today we're diving deep into this transformative season with an NFL historian with all the answers.

You won't want to miss this inside look at a truly groundbreaking year.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal deposit of football history.

So some great football history, some great players, and we have some great guests, as always, on here to tell us all about it.

We're bringing in historians and experts, authors and podcasters to talk about teams that they know very well that won the championship that year.

Jack Silverstein, the Chicago sports historian, is with us.

Jack, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me, Darren, thank you for having me back.

Definitely.

Yeah.

This is.

This is an interesting one.

This is a historic season as.

As we will lay out.

You team me up.

I'm ready to go.

You.

You tell the story, my friend.

Your microphone is yours.

All right, so you've had a lot of Bears stories now over the past, you know, however many weeks, because the Bears are the team of the 40s.

They lose in 42, they win in 43.

And now you've fallen off a little bit with the war years.

44 and 45.

And this.

A lot of the players who missed time in the war played incomplete, you know, partial seasons in 45.

This is really the first post war season.

And it's got a few other things that are really interesting as well.

So you've got all these players who are coming back from the war, from 46 and the Bears, as I gave the rundown in our conversation about the 43 title.

But the Bears had lost Hugh Gallarno to the Marines, ken Kavanaugh and two to Air Force.

George McAfee to the Navy.

Joe Steidahar, the great tackle, hall of Fame tackle, also to the Navy.

Norm Stanley, the fullback to the Army.

Young Bussy, the back to the Navy.

He was the only Bears player to die in World War II.

Bulldog Turner went into the armed forces.

Sid Luckman is one of four hall of Fame players who stormed the beaches of Normandy.

He won what was called the Joe Carr Trophy, which was the MVP award.

So he won that in 43.

He set the NFL record for passing touchdowns and passing yards for both a season and a game for both of those.

So the.

The single season record for touchdowns and yards, the single game record for touchdowns and yards as a passer.

And then he goes into the Merchant Marines.

And then he comes back lucky just to survive that.

I mean, the survival rate is, you know, horrendous, you know, unbelievable.

Lucky just to survive.

You're absolutely right.

And.

And also back was George House.

One of my favorite types of championships is a dynasty's last leg title, the one that they kind of pulled out where you weren't really sure.

You know, it's not going to affect your greatness, but I don't know if you can really do it.

That's one where they really, you know, they really clawed it out.

And that wasn't a Dominant team.

And that's the situation, you know, my beloved bulls, the 98 bulls, we had no business being champions that year.

But we're, you know, the.

The smartest team.

We've got the best player, we've got all the heart, the grit, all those intangibles.

Those things are real.

So here is George Hallis, who's now back from the Navy.

This is from his wonderful autobiography, Hal's An Autobiography, also titled Halas by Halas.

He says, he writes, the veterans came streaming back.

McAfee, Osmanski, referring to Bill the Dentist, Kavanaugh, Gallernar, Galar.

No, never say that.

Right.

Turner Wilson, George Wilson and Luckman.

With all that talent, I lacked enthusiasm for picking up new graduates from colleges.

So he's just focused here on his players.

And he says, having been in the service 39 months, I knew my veterans would be fed up with petty regulations.

George House was one of the strictest head coaches and team, and, and team owners in terms of player behavior, curfews, language.

Even though he had a.

What is the expression?

Had a blue streak.

George House.

I always, I always laugh when, you know, we had hard knocks and, and the McCaskey family said that they, they asked HBO not to have any cursing.

And part of it, you know, they say, like, we want to honor George House.

It's like George House was dropping F bombs and his favorite word was.

And like this man.

Like this man was a menace.

All right.

Excuse me.

I don't know if there's any.

Any exciting.

You're good 12 year olds who little, little mini jacks.

Sure, they heard worse on the school grounds.

That's okay.

They probably did.

All right.

So George Howell says, when, when the spring training camp opened, I announced all rules were scrapped.

Bears were men, responsible men, self disciplined men, and would look after themselves.

At a meeting, I asked, how do you fellas suggest we dress when traveling as a team?

Someone said, I think we should all wear shirts and jackets.

Fine, gentlemen, I said, we will wear.

All wear shirts and jackets.

Anything else?

Someone said, a tie.

More a question than a fact.

I said, thank you for the excellent suggestion.

Is it all agreed that we'll all wear ties?

More a fact than a question.

Silence.

Fine.

I said, it is agreed we will all wear shirts and ties and jackets.

And I assume you gentlemen all insist the shoes be well shined.

So George House, a real hard ass, or to use an expression of the time, a red ass.

George House knew that his team had.

Had all the discipline that they needed.

They're all wound up from having been in the war.

And he lets them.

He goes the other way and he.

And he lets them relax.

And I got a question.

If I put on this just.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

So Hallis comes back, he's at full capacity as the coach again.

Yes.

And how was that transition?

Were the other guys that, you know, Hunky Anderson and Patty Driscoll and I'm sorry, I keep forgetting the other guy's name that were sort of subbing in for him.

How did they take it?

Were they.

Was that sort of the agreement when he left?

And yeah, my.

My understanding.

I haven't seen.

I haven't seen direct quotes from them about that return.

I'm sure there are some.

But.

But my understanding is that, yeah, that was always the understanding.

Remember, he was still the owner, the team owner.

He's still the general manager.

He's still doing a lot.

He's not doing as much on his own as he was in the 20s, but he's still doing quite a bit still.

You just think about the modern attitudes of, you know, somebody.

Two guys coach a team and they win a championship.

Right.

Okay.

They get.

The incumbent comes back.

You know, I was just making sure that they're okay.

We're going to go to, you know, Cleveland or something.

Something, you know, go.

We're going to AFL or afc.

I'm sorry.

Coach a team.

You know, just trying to note if anything like that happened.

And that's nobody's fault.

I mean, it's.

Things kind of just kept, you know, caught up with them.

But to the degree that that would have been something that anyone was thinking about, it's not like they were coming off a three peat and George House was.

He still would have taken back over.

Obviously no one loved the coach more, but.

No, that's a great question that I've never seen any indication that there was any, you know, public dissatisfaction.

That's refreshing to hear.

So, you know, coaches out there take note and athletes take note because it's.

Things sometimes were better back in the day.

Attitudes towards playing, you know, you play for the love of the game and took advantage when you could and coach when you could.

And when somebody comes back, that's the boss, you know, you let them take over their team.

Right, right.

And also, it wasn't a situation where he, like, quits.

Like, he left to go to war.

You know, I mean, it was pretty well understood and pretty well respected.

That was a.

That was a pretty good reason.

So.

So.

So the Bears entered the title game eight two and one with losses to the Giants and Cardinals and a tie against the.

The new Los Angeles Rams, who were the defending champions and had moved from Cleveland.

So imagine that a champion relocates.

The Giants entered the title game seven three and one with losses to Washington, Philly and the Rams and a tie to the Boston yanks.

So this is the Bears and Giants, and they're each appearing in their eighth championship game.

Bears and the Giants were in the first two championship games, 33 and 34.

The Giants not as good at 2 and 5.

You know, I consider the Giants.

The Arizona Cardinals go back actually well before that into.

Into the 19th century.

The packers had been.

Had already been playing.

They'd already existed, but they joined what became the NFL.

But I still consider the Giants to be a founding franchise.

What's, you know, what's five seasons between friends, folks, in a league that's lasted a century.

And, you know, the NFL at that time was starting to move from these smaller cities.

Canton.

We.

Well, we.

We mentioned.

We mentioned Cleveland, but Canton and Akron and other.

Other small clubs.

Obviously, Massillon was a huge part of the birth of professional football, predating the NFL.

And, you know, the Bears were in Decatur as the Staleys and a.

Staley told George, Alice, you know, move to Chicago.

New York was one of them.

And that was the game that basically made the Giants a franchise.

Like the Giants were losing money.

And that game put that organization in the black for the season.

You know, I talked in the last episode about how 73 to nothing was really the big bang of offenses.

And central to that was New York and the Giants.

So the Giants as.

As great of a history as the Bears had at this point and they were the, the dominant team, the biggest team in the NFL.

There were several other franchises who were building incredible histories.

The packers were already, you know, a multi time champ at this point.

They'd had a three peak.

They'd had some other titles as well.

Washington had had some championships.

Both Washington and Green Bay had these incredible passers.

They're, they're lifting up the passing game along with the Bears.

They weren't there for those, for those few seasons earlier, but that's okay.

I, I count them as a, certainly a founding member more broadly speaking speaking.

So you've got this huge game and you've got a lot of guys with something to prove.

You know, the Bears, they're trying to get back to their championship ways.

George House wants a championship as, as head coach.

You know, the Giants have been great, but, but not quite, you know, 2 and 5 in the championship game.

So they're definitely looking for it.

And you know, we mentioned all the players who had, who had missed time due to the, due to the war.

Hear about a lot of these backfield players.

So this is, this is how Halis.

And he said we have three solid first teams with backs who are interchangeable.

If my, if my first string back, Sid Luckman Ray Nting, Hugh Gallo and Norman Stanley.

Don't catch fire.

I throw in Bob Snider, Bob Swisher, George McAfee and Bill Ismansky.

And if they don't run, I've got young Bussy, Harry Clark, Ray McLean, Gary family Eddy or Joe Maniasi.

And I know that those all just sound like a bunch of names all thrown together, but a lot of those guys led the NFL in, in one season or another in a major rushing category.

Yards, touchdowns, you know Sid Luckman, obviously we know hall of famer Bill Osmanski, an all time, all time great.

And he broke off the first touchdown in the 73 to nothing game.

Great player.

George McAfee, hall of Famer.

Two guys who, who I love, Gary Famaglietti who was enormous, I mean big among the big.

And Ray Mlean who was a scat back scooter McLean and really a great receiver out of the backfield.

So you've got all these power backs, but you've got these speed backs as well.

And, and that's how the Bears were able to survive during the war was they really just had such crazy depth.

And these two guys weren't household names.

Phil, Chuck, a little bit more.

It had a bit longer of a career.

He was in his first year with the Giants.

Now the NFL had had some scandals earlier with, in terms of players who were still in college.

You know the.

There had been other scandals in pro football.

Canton, Massillon and Carlinsville, Taylorville.

But now the NFL is starting to roll and they've got a lot of challenges.

They're coming back after the war.

And Arch Ward was a visionary.

He sort of used his position on the Tribune to start things.

So he started Major League Baseball's All Star game at Comiskey park because the, the city had had the, the world's Fair.

And he wanted to.

Now, now what are we going to do?

And so he started the All Star Game.

He started an All Star Game between the defending NFL champion and a college All Star team that was played on the eve of each NFL season, mostly at Soldier Field.

There were some games at Dyke Stadium in Evanston, where Northwestern played or still plays now Ryan Field.

But Arch Ward wanted to.

Found.

Wanted to start a new league, and he called it the All American Football Conference.

And right away, this All American Football Conference was grabbing players, some of whom came back from the war.

Norm Stanley from The Bears in 41, came back from the army, went to the AFC.

They had a team in Cleveland, a new team called the Cleveland Browns, coached by Paul Brown and the Cleveland Rams of the NFL.

Their owner, Dan Reaves, had been looking to move.

And when the Cleveland Browns were coming, and Paul Brown, the head coach, had this great history because he was from Ohio.

So he.

He had a great team that he had been coaching in the Navy and he.

And he's from Ohio.

And so they sort of chased the champs out of Cleveland into Los Angeles also, in part because when you have a new.

When you have a new league now, you've got teams that are looking to get into markets that the NFL is not already in, including Los Angeles as a West coast position.

And so the NFL also knew, all right, you can go to LA out of Cleveland, and that's going to be really important to the expansion of the league.

So you've got this great team and this new organization.

It's really kind of a year in flux.

All this to say that there is no good year to go into an NFL championship game.

And to find out the day before, the two players were approached by a gambler to throw the game.

There's no good day for that to happen.

But this was definitely not the year for that to happen.

So there was a lot of attention on gambling, and a.

A bookmaker named Alvin Paris turned out had his phones tapped.

He was arrested and they shook him down.

They interrogated him and he admitted that he had approached two Giants players and offered them $2,500 to fix the championship game.

They were also going to have someone else bet $1,000 a piece in their name.

Why are we getting all this money on the Giants, which is raising the point spread in favor of the Bears, when these are pretty much evenly matched teams?

What's going on here?

So they get Alvin, they arrest Alvin Paris, and he says, yeah, I, I said that I, I, I made these offers to Frank Filch and Merle Ha.

And the head of the New York police calls Tim Mara, the owner of the Giants.

And Tim Mara comes in, and now the head coach is involved.

They get Bert Bell, who is the new NFL commissioner, and Bird Bell brings in Phil Chalk and Hapes independently and interrogates them both independently.

They don't know that the other one is there.

Hapes admits that he was offered this money, but that he turned it down.

Phil Chalk says, no, I don't know.

I don't know what you're talking about.

And as a result, Phil Chalk gets to play in the championship game while Hapes is suspended.

Bird Bell suspends, and Bird Bell says, that doesn't mean Hapes is guilty.

The only thing we have on Hapes is that he did not bring the story directly to Steve Owen, Giants head coach, or any Giant officials.

And so we enter the championship game with this betting scandal, and you've got Phil Chalk playing, and he wants to prove to everyone that he is on the level.

And it's kind of a, it's sort of a lose, lose.

It's a little bit of a catch 22, because if you go out there and you play really well, fans are going to wonder, like, all right, are the Bears now on the take?

But if he comes out and he plays badly, it's going to be like, oh, I thought this guy said.

I thought they said he could play.

He wasn't involved.

Is he involved?

So he wanted to show that he was on the up and up.

The Giants wanted to show that this was just our two, you know, idiot teammates.

This wasn't us.

They're going to play their asses off.

The Bears want to show that they're going to play their asses off, and it's going to be an absolute just beat down of a physical game.

And that's, that's what it became.

We'll get to the game in a moment.

But Sid Luckman went on to Call it the most vicious game that he ever played.

Yeah, it's definitely a setup for some trouble when you, you have all that going on right before the game.

And like you said, it's, it's happened a few times in professional football history.

You know, the, the Green Bay and the other ones that you mentioned.

So yeah, the scandal has always been with football and we still see it today.

And you know, we had it in the 60s with, with Donovan and Alex Karras getting suspended for gambling, so.

And now it's sort of like Carol Rosenbloom.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And now, now it's almost, you know, between DraftKings and FanDuel, it's almost.

They're one of the biggest advertisers of the NFL, so it's kind of gone full circle and I guess they've sort of embraced it a little bit, but.

Yeah, they have, but Burpell was not embracing it that day.

And, and you know, as a fan, you show up to the championship game and word has gotten out and you're sitting there going, I don't, what am I even looking at?

What am I watching?

Is this game on the level?

What's going on here?

And now you've got this other league that did pretty well in attendance.

Pro football is not the kings of NFL.

Then college is still by far more popular than either the pro pro series that are going on.

Right.

And you've got, you've got Major League Baseball, you've got horse racing, you've got boxing.

So it's not yet assured, you know, that the NFL is going to become what it was.

So this is, like I said, there's no good championship game to have a, have a betting scandal break the day before that.

People, people are, have been approached by a gambler to throw the game, but this was definitely not the game for this to happen.

So the Bears ended up as 10 point favorites.

And though the stat sheet will show that Frank Filch did not play well and you might be inclined to read the stat sheet and say, oh, was he playing?

You know, was he throwing this game?

The 46 title game is on YouTube most of it, someone did an incredible job of, of basically doing like a radio call on top of it.

And you can watch.

And Phil Chalk is all over the field and he's playing his heart out.

He, in the first four minutes broke his nose and played the rest of his game.

Ed Sprinkle is in there just taking heads.

Man, he's, he's in there, he's just taking heads off.

And it is a rough, brutal game.

It's not like, it's not like the sneaker games in 34 and 56 in terms of like the field quality.

It's not the ice bowl in 67.

But the weather wasn't great and the field wasn't great and it was just a bang out game.

So let's go to the game itself.

The Giants get on the board first.

Excuse me, The Bears get on the board first.

They got a touchdown pass in the first quarter, Luckman to Ken Kavanaugh, 21 yards again, Kavanaugh back from the war.

And then Dante Mignani, a 19 yard pick six on Phil Chalk.

And that starts Vilchock's bad day.

Now, I've mentioned a lot of Bears players and I want to mention just for a moment, Dante Mignani, not someone who most Bears fans know.

And he, like I mentioned in the 43 call that we did, you know, Jim Benton is known as a Ram, but he played with the Bears in 43.

Minati mostly known as a Ram as well.

So he played with the Rams in 40 to 42 and then 47 and 48.

But he played three seasons with the Bears 43, 46, 49 with World War II in the middle and came up huge in both championship games that he played in.

And in this game didn't do as much on offense.

But he had two of the six interceptions on Filch and returned them 49 yards, including a 19 yard pick.

Six.

So the Bears go up 14 to nothing.

Phil Chalk throws a touchdown pass to Frank Wyble for 38 yards.

And the Bears are up 147 after one.

And they're up 147 at the half.

Scoreless second quarter.

And the Giants tie the game on a short touchdown pass from Phil Chalk to Steve Philipowicz.

And now the game is tied.

And now we come to one of the most underrated famous moments of Sid Luckman's career.

This would have been a great NFL Films moment if George Hallis and, and, and Sid Luckman were wired up, wired for sound for NFL Films.

Because we have, we have Hank Stram in Super Bowl 4, and we've got, you know, Doug Peterson and Nick Foles and Super Bowl 52 with Philly, Philly and, and you would have had George Hallis and Sid Luckman.

You would have had Sid Luckman walk over to the sideline and say, now, George House look at him in the eye and say, now, Sid Luckman went back to the huddle and he called a play called Bingo.

Keep it.

And Sid Luckman did not run much.

And he said he didn't, you know, House didn't want him to get injured, but in a championship game, in a championship game, he could do it and he wasn't worried about that.

So this is how Sid Luckman told the story.

He says, McAfee, you mentioned George McAfee.

McAfee was such a tremendous threat as a runner, they always had to watch out for him.

And he'd been running well off left end all day in that championship game.

So in the middle of the fourth period, I took a timeout and went over to House.

I said, now, he knew the play I meant.

We talked it over before the game.

He nodded now.

So I went back out and called bingo.

Keep it.

And this is, like I said, this is on YouTube.

You can see it's a very traditional bootleg, right?

So he fakes the handoff to McAfee and Boots back around to the right side from the 19 yard line.

It's a 19 yard rush, runs in, takes a hit at around the five yard line, punches it in.

Obviously he had touchdown passes, but the only one.

This is what, this is how Hallis remembered it.

He said Sid took the ball, pivoted as though to hand the ball to McAfee, who was already driving to the left behind a row of blockers.

The Giants went for him.

Sid put the ball on his hip, drifted around the right end and made a touchdown.

The Bears got a field goal and ended the scoring and ended that game 24 to 14.

So while Sid Luffman had a rough game, statistically in terms of his passing, he's all over the field.

He has a passing touchdown.

He's got what's basically the game winning rushing touchdown.

He's got one of the six interceptions and he's the punter.

So in a game where field position was very important.

Sid Luckman had seven punts, Phil Chock two touchdowns, but six interceptions.

Manani had two, McAfee had two, Sid Luckman had one, Bulldog Turner had one.

And this is a quote from an anonymous Bears player on Sil Chock.

He, he played one of the greatest games I've ever seen.

And he had plenty of guts to stay in there for almost 56 minutes with a busted nose.

He hit him hard all the way and he never quit.

Now, Philch did later admit that he did know of the offer.

So he was in the same boat as Merle Hapes.

Should not have played, but, but he lied.

And his motivation was he wanted to play.

Obviously you would, you would get that money if you won the championship.

This was at Wrigley Field.

And the winner's share for each individual player was just over eleven hundred dollars.

And the winning players receive just under thirteen hundred dollars.

So a little bump in pay and.

A bump, a bump in pay and.

NFL makes a little bit more money.

They have higher attendance and you know, probably rationally they probably made more money than the players did.

Their percentage, I'm sure that's right.

Yes.

The players had 70% of the net and all of the numbers that are listed for the, for the attendance for the growth gate, how many people were listening on radio and they call it.

And movies because they, because they weren't on TV yet.

But they, I think this is because they would fill theaters and you could go and listen to.

Is that.

That's correct, right, Darren?

Yeah, that would, they would do that, but they would also.

They had the newsreels, you know, they didn't have the local news and nightly news like we have now on that you could watch.

But you go to the movie theater to see, you know, Clark Gable or whoever's the star at that time.

And they have the newsreels going, you know, what's going on in the war, what's going on in sports.

And they get to watch that little 5, 10 minute clip before their movie comes on.

Yep.

So they note the AP reported Dec.

So the, the NFL is doing.

The NFL has survived this.

Burt Bell changed the rules around what players have to do.

If you're approached by a gambler that you have to report that and the NFL and the AFC or the All American Conference.

Sometimes you'll see it as afc, sometimes as aac, but they would duke it out for.

For the rights to players.

And the player contracts started going sky high.

And after four seasons, the AFC folded.

And a few teams came to the NFL, most notably, from our purposes, the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers.

There was also a Baltimore Colts team that came and then folded, and then there was a new Colts team.

So the Colts team that we have now is not the Colts team from the afc, but.

But they had shown that they could support a team, and that's what they did.

One last quote here, and this is from Joe Steidahar.

Remember this Bears team?

This was kind of the last gas.

Had a shot in 47, and the Cardinals took us out.

Had a good team in 48.

Again, Cardinals knocked us out.

But here's what Joe Steidahar said after.

After the championship.

He said, quote, the most valuable Bear is the old man himself, Hallis.

We didn't have the best personnel in the league, not by a long way, but George made us into a winning unit.

He drove us to a title on psychology and enthusiasm.

He won on spirit.

The old Bear spirit.

That's really important.

You know, George Hallis said after the 43 game that the Bears had the old Bear terror.

And now here's George Steidahar saying the old spirit.

You know, The Bears have nine championships in our history.

And the Bears were great enough and dominant enough that after the 46 season, Howard Roberts wrote a book about the Bears, and he didn't come up with some catchy title.

And there was no subtitle.

The name of the book, all you needed to say, Chicago Bears.

Chicago Bears.

All you needed to say.

And sell some books, you know, you.

Know what the book's about.

You can read the book by the COVID almost.

That's right.

That's right.

So that was the 46 title game.

Well, I mean, that's great synopsis of it and everything.

I like to add a little thing that maybe people aren't aware of.

And being a former high school football official for 27 years, I got, you know, gotta throw some love to the zebras in here a little bit.

Plus a project that I'm currently getting ready to publish.

This man was part of this game.

And I see him here as the headlinesman.

He was also a great major league baseball player for the Philadelphia Athletics and some other teams after that.

So yeah, we get to throw.

How many times do you see a former player?

And you know, I like, to us here in Pennsylvania, we like to think the possible, maybe at least the co champions, you know, they, I think some, some feel they got a raw deal at the.

We got a book coming out about that soon.

But how often do you see a championship caliber player, a college Football hall of Famer, being an official in a championship game for the National Football League?

I don't think it's happened real often.

Definitely hasn't happened lately.

But that's kind of an interesting point to put in there.

I love it.

I love it.

Yeah, that's, that's great.

That's great.

Obviously, like I said, we had a good 47, good 48, good little run in the, in the 50s.

But, but in terms of a team that owned a decade, you know, you've got the, you've got the 49ers of the 80s, the Steelers of the 70s, the Bears of the 40s, packers of the 60s, the Patriots.

But the Patriots, to me that's the greatest dynasty.

And I say this with all love to my beloved Chicago Bulls.

That, that Patriot run, that, that's the greatest dynasty in the history 20, 20 years.

American professional sports.

Yeah, what they did is ridiculous.

But in terms of, in terms of winning four championships in a really, you know, tightly defined time.

Yeah, you've got the, the Bears are the first ones who did it and they, they own the NFL.

They owned pro football.

They were pro football.

Yeah, I think we touched on it when you were on for the 43 show.

And, but this maybe is a good time to look in retrospect because not only were the Bears a dominant team in there and had a great dynasty going on, but they really changed the trajectory of pro football.

You know, we just said earlier in this episode, you know, college football, you know, there's competition from the afc, Major League Baseball, boxing, horse racing, they're all maybe a little bit more popular than National Football League at that point, but the trajectory is changing and the winds of change are coming on and a lot of it's because of the decisions of George Hallis, you know, the, the T formation coming in you talked about it last time with him.

Watching films and having film study Paul Brown adopts that really makes it takes it to the next level.

So PE Professional football players are starting to be professional at their, their craft.

And it's going to get to the point where we have today where they're full time and that's all they do is they, they live, breathe, train, study to play, you know, 16, 17 games of football during the season and make a boatload of money at it.

Yeah, George House is a visionary.

And you know, those early hall of Famers who had wore multiple hats, they got into the hall and they were called like player, coach, owner or, you know, founder.

You know, George Hallis is a Hall of Fame owner.

He's a Hall of Fame general manager, he's a Hall of Fame head coach, and he's an all pro player.

I don't know if he's necessarily a Hall of Fame player.

But Halas was an all pro player and he was hall of Fame in each one of those other spots.

I mean, he saw the future and he made the future.

And you know, he was early adopter on tv, you, you and radio, making deals with stadiums, making sure he, you know, his team had a good cut.

You mentioned what he did with film study, frat.

He changed how practices work.

He changed how, you know, the Bears changed how weight training works.

This was, this was later.

Obviously the Bears changed how offenses worked and you know, really attacked the colleges to make sure that the, that the NFL was becoming on the level of colleges and going after Red Grange when he shot, I would say George wrote rules and then he broke those same rules that he wrote.

You know, the state from the Staley swindle to, you know, talking Portsmouth Spartans into playing a de facto championship game, which they really didn't have to play.

But he always did things to try to get his team in position to, to be there at the end to claim that, that title and the trophy for the National Football League champion.

And you got to give him that.

And he, he took that to the next level, I think as he got older took that competitive spirit into more the.

In between the lines of the rules, I think more so and just change the game for the better.

And where would we be without George Hallis and his contributions?

Right?

And hey, the st we swindle.

That's just smart.

That's just smart thinking.

It was.

It was.

That's just George Hallis being more gung ho about championships than Buffalo.

I got some folks, I don't live too far from Buffalo.

I got folks in Buffalo may disagree with the history on that, but as a matter of fact, Ken Crippen will probably argue with you on that.

Who I know you know, so.

But it's.

Hey, if it's not controversial, we're not talking about it a hundred some years later either.

So that makes it interesting to me.

But you know what is interesting is we all the passion that you've thrown in here to these two Chicago series, you know, we've been really blessed here on the show having yourself, your cohort, Jeff Burkus and also Josie Emba talking about the.

These championships.

And you guys have brought so much passion and brought so much history and brought the players back to life into our modern times and we really appreciate that and preserving the history what you do.

And we talked a little bit about some of your projects and your book that you have over your shoulder there.

You talked about, you know, this first history.

Why don't you tell us a little bit more about it?

What can somebody that buys your book and reads it, what can they find in there that you want them to get out of that?

Definitely.

So this is why we root mad obsessions of a Chicago sports fan.

This is a photo that my friend Ben and I took out front of Wrigley in January of.

I don't remember now if it was 08 or 09, but it was the first week.

That is real snow.

That is real look of terror on my face because it was so damn cold.

And then Ben changed.

He.

He photoshopped the Wrigley marquee, which I.

I love.

Looks great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this is a collection of my sports writing and it covers the last 30 years of Chicago sports.

You can see here this list of the stories that are included.

So basically you think of a big moment Chicago sports in the last 30 years.

And it's probably in here.

And I wrote the table of contents in such a way that you can just skim and like, find the game that you want to look for and, and read about it.

Obviously I'm a Cubs fan.

I make no bones about it.

A lot of Devin Hester, you know, Super Bowl 41.

And it's mostly my fan voice, but I did include two interviews and, and one of them is with Thomas Jones, the Bears running back.

Oh yeah, he's a great one.

Great one and just really explains the realities of life as, as a running back and as an, as an NFL player.

A really beautiful conversation.

TJ's my guy and I love TJ.

So shout out to him.

But yeah, really cool, really cool book and love to have something that you can hold in your hands in this digital day.

Yeah.

And it's available like you said before, Amazon and all the big name stores, it's available everywhere.

It's available on Amazon.

I know some people don't, for whatever reason, for not whatever reason, but for various reasons you might not want to buy something on Amazon.

It's available on, on Barnes and Noble.

Basically anywhere that you can think of it is available.

And, and as I always say, I buy a lot of used books and I love thrift books and it's, they deliver fast and they get your books out to you.

And a lot of my books have the, have the thrift books sticker right over here.

So I love thrift books.

But yeah, you can.

Amazon's been great and, and you can buy on Amazon.

And of course, authors love the vanity of being able to see where we are on the best sellers list.

So this has, has peaked into the top 30, I think.

Nice Amazon among, among sports essay books.

So a lot of people are reading it, a lot of people are enjoying it.

And the son of a friend of mine is freshman in high school and he's doing a book report on it.

He just told me.

So I'm excited.

Awesome.

Excited to read that.

Yeah.

So we appreciate that.

And all the stuff you did telling us about George Halas, too, is tremendous.

So thank you for preserving football history and thanks for joining us today.

Thank you, Darren.

And Joe Zimba did such a great job on that.

And the last play of that game, Red Grange made one of his greatest plays ever in his career because the Bears led by two and the Giants threw what was going to be a hook and ladder, which was very popular, not quite a hook and ladder, but it was a pass and, and the ball carrier was going to pitch it to Mel Hine and it was just George Hallis and George how.

I'm sorry, it was just Red Grange and Red Grange, instead of trying to stop one or the other, he tackled Dale Burnett around his chest so that he tackled the ball so that Burnett couldn't pitch the ball.

Everybody called it one of the greatest defensive plays they'd ever seen.

And unfortunately we don't have a photo of it and we don't have video of it.

We just have these descriptions.

So take advantage of YouTube.

Get on there and see some of these.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

We invite you to check out our website, pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history, but to experience experience positive football with our many articles on the good people of the game as well as our own football comic strip cleat marks comics.

Pigskindispatch.com is also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and don't forget the Big Skin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news and history.

Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our launch.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesterday of your favorite sport.

You can learn more at sportshistorynetwork.

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