Red Grange

In this episode we discuss the early college and NFL superstar Red Grange and some interesting tidbits of his legacy from author Chris Willis who wrote a book on the great athlete. “Red Grange: The Life and Legacy of the NFL’s first Superstar.”   We will provide you with a little bit of football nostalgia on one of the legends that helped the game so popular.

The picture in the banner above is from the US Library of Congress' collection and was contributed by Underwood & Underwood circa 1925 and is titled " Red Grange's shirt, a trophy ."

We try whenever we can to honor the gridiron memories of people who had such an impact upon the game of football that they are still on the lips of many even 100 years later by serving up a podcast devoted to the individual complete with an expert on their gridiron History. We are releasing this episode on June 13 to reflect our remembrance of a great player of the game we love in the legendary Harold Edward “Red” Grange. Our expert is none other than Chris Willis who wrote a fantastic book on our subject titled “Red Grange: The Life and Legacy of the NFL’s first Superstar.”  If you remember Chris visited us on our Football by Numbers series when we chatted about the NFL’s jersey number 26. Chris is an accomplished author with multiple books on NFL subjects not only with Red Grange but others too such as Joe Carr and Dutch Clark just to name a few and did I mention he has maybe one of the best jobs ever as he is the head of the NFL Films research library! As a matter of fact with NFL Films he has been nominated for a couple of Emmys and even won the award for his work on the 2016 seasons Hard Knocks program on the Houston Texans. 

Chris goes into great detail on Grange's early life and how h got the nickname "Red." The tragedy of losing his mother at a young age and the family then moving from Pennsylvania to Illinois had an impact on the family and especially a young Red Grange. His professional career was predominantly with the Chicago Bears, although he did spend a season with an ill fated New York Yankees Football team in 1927, which was an endeavour by Grange and his agent C. C. Pyle when they tried forming a rival league, the American Football League. The AFL only lasted one season and then Red Grange returned to Chicago to play out the remainder of his career. Red's prolific college career at the University of Illinois made him legendary and the signing with George Halas' Chicago Bears gave legitimacy to the fledling league. 

Tune into this fascinating podcast episode above where the our author Chris Willis explains it all in great detail. And better yet pick up a copy of this wonderful book at his publisher's link here: Red Grange: The Life and Legacy of the NFL’s first Superstar.