Football History

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The video covers an interview with Ken Crippen, the founder of the Football Learning Academy, an online school teaching pro football history. The academy aims to provide historical context to today's game by educating about the origins, players, and early days of football. It also serves as a platform to raise funds and support retired players in need, especially older players struggling with medical bills.

Crippen discusses the academy's classes, featuring interviews with legendary figures like coaches, broadcasters, executives, and players from different eras. He highlights a recent class on historical scouting reports, where he and a colleague analyze film and grade players, focusing on older candidates for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The class includes biographies, honors, statistics, and interviews with players discussing position-specific skills across different eras. Crippen emphasizes the importance of preserving firsthand accounts and providing information to aid the Hall of Fame's senior selection committee.

Ken and his team just launched a new class at the Football Learning Academy: Historical Scouting Reports. This class has:

-Video interviews with players talking about how to play their positions during their eras

-Historical scouting reports of players going back to the 1920s

-Profiles of potential contributors for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

-Transcript of Chat with KenCrippen FLA Historical Data

Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darren Hayes at pigskin -dispatch .com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your report of our positive football history. And welcome to another great edition where we get to visit with one of our friends, a football historian, the leader and founder of the Football Learning Academy, Ken Crippen. Ken, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Ken Crippen
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Darin Hayes
Ken, you have a lot of things going on at the Football Learning Academy. We really haven't touched base with you in probably probably almost a year now. And I know you have so many exciting things going on. And you have one thing in particular you want to talk about today. But won't you give us a general overview of what the Football Learning Academy is and some of the happenings you got going?

Ken Crippen
All right. The Football Learning Academy is an online school teaching pro football history. And what we're trying to do is to put today's game into historical context by teaching about where the game came from, the people who played the game, especially in the earlier days. And then second to that is that we have a platform to be able to help retired players in need. So, you know, we know that players are struggling to pay their medical bills, especially the older players. They're not making the millions of dollars like a lot of players are today. So I want to be able to use this platform to raise money to be able to help those players. So portion of all the proceeds generated at the football learning academy go to help those retired players that need it the most.

Darin Hayes
Uh, that is definitely a worthy cause. And, uh, we were so great, glad grateful that you were doing that. And I'm sure the players themselves that are receiving the benefits of it are as well, and it seems like you have some great participation because you have so many former players and former, uh, people that were involved in pro football, uh, aiding you and coming in and doing classes and, uh, being guests, uh, on both the, your, your lessons and on your podcast that, uh, it seems very beneficial all the way around.

Ken Crippen
Yeah, I mean, if you take a look at some of the classes, I mean, we've got an interview with coach Don Shula that I did, uh, obviously prior to his passing, um, Ken Riley, same thing. Uh, we have an interview with him, uh, legendary broadcaster, Leslie Visser. Uh, we've got classes with exclusive interviews with Marlon Brisco and Dan Rooney. Uh, you move over to the podcast, several hall of famers, John Hannah, you've got Brian Erlocker, Ron mix was released this week. Uh, you've got other well -known people, Michael Lombardi, former NFL scout and executive, um, Amy Trask, former NFL CEO, head coach Mark Trestman, uh, offensive lineman, Richard, uh, Richmond web. Uh, and then coming up, we've got an episode with ESPN's Chris Berman. So there's a lot of, uh, a lot of fascinating stuff there.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. You got the whole gambit there. You've got the, the TV talking head celebrities like Berman and, and Visser and you're going to, you know, coach Shula and John Hannah and Dan Rooney, you know, some of the executives and Michael Lombardi, that is really a well -rounded thing with all the players and coaches and a broadcaster. So very well done. And if you can't get some great insight from those folks, I don't know who you can. So great job. A lot of knowledge there. Yeah. Most definitely. But you approached me here not too long ago and you have something really exciting going on, some new classes that you have going on that you wanted to talk about today. So why don't you fill us in on that.

Ken Crippen
All right. The most recent class that we released is on historical pro football, scattering reports. So a colleague of mine, Matt Rieser and I, we went back and we studied film. This is something we started years ago. And what we would do is grade some of these players in each game and then all, you know, giving them an overall grade. So what we wanted to do is focus on some of the older players, especially ones where their names were coming up for the pro football hall of fame and the seniors. Pool. We had Mick Tinglehoff, Dick Barwegan, um, a bunch of other people. So there was a lot there that, um, we really wanted to be able to let people know about these players. A lot of people have never seen them play. Um, so anything that we can do to try to help people. And again, you know, back to our mission of educating people, we wanted to be able to do that, but then also have a resource for the senior selection committee to be able to see this information. I mean, a lot of them don't have the time to go through and, and study the film and things like that. So we're doing that work for them. So, uh, since, you know, we had some of those original scouting reports come out. I've gone through, I've added biographies, uh, the honors that they've had testimonial statistics. Um, but another thing that's interesting that I've adding, uh, been adding to this class is that I am interviewing a lot of these players and talking about the skills necessary to play their position within their particular era. So for example, Ron mix, as I'd mentioned before, Hall of Famer, he's talking about offensive line play, I've got another guy on there, Greg Thomas. He was the first African American starting quarterback for the university of Arkansas, he's talking about quarterback play. And I'm going to continue to add more scattering reports, add more videos, things like that on these particular players and how to play these positions, especially talking to players in different eras. So if you got somebody playing into fifties, somebody in the sixties, somebody in the seventies, et cetera. Now you can see how things evolved for that particular position by talking to the players that actually played that position. So it's a pretty interesting class. And, uh, I think a lot of people will be able to get something out of it.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's brilliant going to the different areas because it's almost, uh, if you look at games, like in the forties and fifties, they're a much different game. You know, the basics are there for football, but the way it's played in the strategies and blocking schemes and everything else are so much different than, uh, they are today and even, even in the seventies today. So that's great to get the perspective of the guys that were actually in the trenches and, and taking the hits to give that perspective. So you're very interesting.

Ken Crippen
Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that, you know, there's a lot that can be learned from that, especially when you're getting the firsthand accounts, because not only are you talking about the schemes, but we also go into players, you know, when I was talking with Ron mix, I was talking about playing against Deacon Jones, I mean, one of the greatest of all time. So you talk about, you know, the different techniques, the people that they struggled against, the people that they were successful against, why they were successful against them, why they struggled against them. There's a lot that you can pull out of that. And so being able to record these firsthand accounts, I think is definitely going to be beneficial, especially as we continue to progress in time.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, especially, you know, unfortunately, we're losing so many of these legends of the game seems like on a daily basis, you know, seems like every day you pick up the paper, you look on the Internet, you lose another star. So preserving the legacy of these folks and getting them recorded, even them talking about some other players that they played against or played with, like you said, is a very valuable resource. So very well done on that. Appreciate it. Yeah. Now, you can you said a little bit the you're providing information with the information that you're putting on this new project you got going on for the Senior Selection Committee. Now, on on average, what's the Hall of Fame? How many of the seniors are they trying to get in each year? Is there a certain numbers that sort of hit or miss?

Ken Crippen
It's been changing right now. You could have a maximum of three, but that's only been in place for a couple of years now. I think that expires maybe next year where they evaluate and see if they're going to still try to have a maximum of three every year or whether it's going to be going backwards or maybe it goes only two or one per year. So as of right now, it's three.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. Cause it seems like there's a tremendous amount, especially the early players, the first, uh, 20, 30 years of the NFL that probably are deserving to be in there, uh, but didn't really have the opportunity because the NFL or the pro football hall of fam, sorry, didn't start until the early 1960s. So some of these guys were long forgotten. Uh, and now with the resurgence of their information because of the internet, uh, football learning academy, PFRA and, and others, you know, and all the books that are coming out now, we have a lot more information, probably a better view of these folks now, uh, some 60 years later than they did in the early 60s. So I think it's invaluable that I'm glad that they're trying to put some more in, and I know they had sort of a bigger number, a hundredth anniversary, uh, of, uh, the NFL and then 2020, uh, but I, I know it's sort of dwindled down from, so, so three is sort of the targets still.

Ken Crippen
As of right now, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, they're don't see, it doesn't seem to be much interest in the older players. It's more of the more recent players within the senior pool that they're focusing on. So we may have trouble getting in some of those deserving people from the earlier days. It really comes down to the selection committee. If they're showing no interest in doing that, then you're not going to get any of those players in. Thanks for watching!

Darin Hayes
Now the selection committee, as far as I know, the folks that are in are mostly journalists. Is that true? Or is there still some executives? I think there

Ken Crippen
There are still a few executives, there may be a few former players, but that's on the overall committee itself. The actual seniors committee, I think is pretty much made up of strictly media members. So whether they're journalists, whether they're TV, whatever, it's mainly going to be journalists. And if you look at the overall committee, the bulk of them are going to be journalists.

Darin Hayes
And probably just human nature, the people that they know the most about are the people that they saw play, just like you or I or any of the listeners or viewers would say, you know, you know, you saw, you know, players, you know, like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady play, but that was some outstanding play by this player. So very difficult journey for these guys, especially in early football.

Ken Crippen
But I think, you know, you can also look at it too is that, you know, the media members of today saying we're the most qualified to be able to determine who's in the hall of fame, who was the best because we watched them play. But yet you bring up the media members of the day who watched those players and the hall of famers that have testimonials for those players and things like that. Why aren't they listening to them? I mean, wouldn't their opinions be just as valid. So if you've got somebody that is consistently making all pros who's consistently getting honors who's consistently. You get testimonials saying that they're the best player that they played against and these are hall of famers that are saying this to me you should be listening to that and not just saying well you know I know more because I saw these most recent players play. Listen to what the media members of the day said about those players, because if the media is the one that is the best judge of who's a Hall of Famer and who isn't. How about we listen to those media members.

Darin Hayes
Great, great point, but it's hard to have a voice for those folks that aren't around anymore, but we, but we have their word in print and it's, uh, I guess it's a tough methodology for folks like us as frustrating for us historians to sit there and say, where we don't really don't have a voice into it in the media does. So I understand the frustration, uh, but I also understand the dilemma that the NFL and the hall of fame, uh, sort of have on their plate there. So hopefully we can come to some, uh, resolution to, to help them out here and doing things like you're doing with these, uh, having these, uh, guides for them to look at is definitely a great step.

Ken Crippen
Yeah, I think so. It's just any information that we can get out there about these players is only going to be beneficial. So, you know, we shouldn't be relying on, you know, whose kid puts together the best PR campaign for their, their parent. I mean, that shouldn't be what determines who goes into the Hall of Fame, which should be based on what did that person do on the field. And if we can get more and more information out there about that, then that's what we should be focusing on.

Darin Hayes
So what do you, what in your opinion would be the best way to, to get that information, uh, you know, is there, is there a particular voice that should be heard on, on these panels and the selection committees that, uh, you know, or a genre of people that, that aren't represented right now that would help the selection committee.

Ken Crippen
I mean, I would think historians, I mean, right now there are no historians on there outside of any media member that looks at the history of the game, but you know, how much of that is happening? You have historians that reach out to the selection committee, you know, there's varying degrees of responses. Some say, Hey, this is great information. Others like, yeah, don't care. So it really comes down to the people that are on the selection committee, making sure that they truly evaluate all of the qualified candidates and not just the ones that, you know, they covered or just the ones that were nice to them or something like that. They need to go in there and say, who is the best player that needs to go in? And that's what they should be basing it on. And whether you're going to historians, whether you're doing research on your own, whatever the case may be, something needs to be done because a lot of these guys, like you had said earlier, they deserve to be in there, but they're being ignored because they played too long ago. Committee members don't know anything about them. Whatever the case may be, something needs to change.

Darin Hayes
Now, I think and maybe this is just a biased look at it from my aspect and folks like yourself because, you know, us being PFRA members in the Hall of the Very Good. But it seems recently, you know, I'm sitting here thinking of the Ken Riley seniors of the world that are getting in recently and some others that the Hall of the Very Good seems to be almost like a stepping stone for some of these senior players to get elevated to, you know, be a pro football Hall of Famer. And I think there, you know, maybe like I said, it's a biased opinion of mine to say that there's the influence of that, but there's definitely a correlation if you look at, especially the last five or six years, players that have been elected in the Hall of the Very Good of the PFRA sort of in the next couple of years seem to be elevated, at least a certain number of them.

Ken Crippen
Yeah, I mean, you know, they definitely, you know, gain more attention. When you have a group of historians like the BFRA and they put out something saying, hey, you know, these players are deserving of recognition, then maybe people will go back and take a look at their careers. And I'm doing something similar at the FLA, where I'm putting together these scouting reports so that people can get information on these players. And with everything going on, the BFRA, the FLA, any other historian that's out there, if you talk about these players and you show the cases of why they belong, you would hope that at that point, the committee is going to take a look at it and say, hey, you know, I guess they're right. Maybe this person does deserve to be considered.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, it's, I think that's a great point. That's sort of where I was going to, you know, you, you, your, your organization, the PFRA, uh, some of the multiple books that are, are coming out, you know, some great books like Chris Willis, just putting out a book on the 60 minute men of the NFL, where, like you said, there's a lot of player, uh, in his thing, he goes and views, uh, I think it's 40 some players, uh, that were pre -world war two and some, some of them are already in a hall of fame, but all of them have, um, sort of passages from players and coaches of that era that would say, Hey, this guy was outstanding as a pun or, you know, Hey, I couldn't block this guy. You get exactly what you're saying in your interviews that you've done with players recently and over the years, uh, and what you're doing in the FLA. Uh, but so these books and the PFRA and the FLA sort of, you know, bringing attention to these players is such a great thing and, uh, you know, that maybe it'll help some of these selectors to have a better opinion of them to, to get some of these guys in, it's definitely deserve it.

Ken Crippen
Yeah. And you take a look, I mean, I put together a couple of articles, reimagining some of the old decade teams, because you look at like the 1920s, 1930s, especially, but even some of the other old decade teams. And you're kind of scratching your head as far as how some of these players actually made the old decade team, but yet they're being used as reasons why they should be in the hall of fame. I mean, Cecil Isbell is a perfect example. He's on the 1930s old decade team. He played two years in the 1930s and those years were average. He was, he excelled 40, 41, 42, but in the thirties, he wasn't that great. He was an average quarterback at that time. But because the 1940s team was so stacked, there was no way he was going to be able to make it. So they toss him on the 1930s team. Why he didn't earn it. And so, you know, all of this type of information, yeah, somebody makes an old decade team, but really when you take a look at it, should they be on that old decade team, if you're going to use it as part of their case, make sure that it was actually deserving. And, you know, that's something else that I want to be able to do too, is to, to really talk about this. I know, you know, some people discount all decade teams just because, oh, it's a random time. Well, if their career doesn't naturally fit within the 1920 to 1929 timeframe, for example, if their career was 1925 to 1935, you know, they may not make either of the old decade teams, but they had an excellent career. Yeah, it's something, but it's a data point and all data points, as long as they're legitimate data, then that should all be considered. And if they didn't make it, then you can say, okay, well, why didn't they make one of those old decade teams? Because their career spanned a different time period, but still, I think you can go in there and you can take a look. If somebody had an extended career, they should have enough time within one of these old decade teams to have made a difference and to have made, you know, a spot on one of those teams. So regardless of when your career started, when your career ended, I would think that if you were Hall of Fame caliber, you would be on one of those old decade teams, at least, you know, at some point within your career.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, no, I mean, the all decade teams are definitely something that's fairly consistent and some of them are retroactive, but, uh, I mean, all pro selections and pro bowl or all star selections, you know, they're called all star before they were pro bowls, uh, and in the AFL and that, but are those some of the other data points that you think are considerations? Cause it's definitely, it's data that, uh, can drive, uh, to prove a point that, you know, players were beyond the average player. You know, in the league at their, their particular point in time.

Ken Crippen
Yeah. And again, you know, it goes into context. Somebody can make a Pro Bowl, but were they selected first for the Pro Bowl? Or is it that the five guys ahead of them bowed out of it because of injuries or whatever else they couldn't make it? And so now they made the Pro Bowl. Well, that should be part of the data that goes along with it. Were they the first person selected, second person selected or the sixth or seventh person selected that needs to go into it? And, you know, it also can't be that you use all pros and Pro Bowls for one player saying that, OK, this is the reason why they belong in there and then completely ignore it for another player because they don't have all of those honors. If it's something that's important, then it should be consistent across the board. I mean, you know, you brought up Ken Riley earlier. He wasn't making the Pro Bowls. He wasn't making all pros, things like that. It honors didn't matter. They strictly went off of the number of interceptions that he accumulated over his career. And that's how he got inducted. But yet you have somebody else and, you know, they'll say, well, I'm going to pick player X over player Y because they have more Pro Bowls. Well, now, if you've got somebody else that doesn't have any Pro Bowls, then why are you now suddenly saying, well, this person is a Hall of Famer, even though nobody else picked him for any of these these teams? I just want to see more consistency in those types of things. Don't say this is important for one player, but it's irrelevant for another player. Be consistent.

Darin Hayes
Okay, great points. So let's get into maybe if you could tell us what's some of the data that you're putting into your player profiles that you're, to represent these players to give the selection clemity some some information to use.

Ken Crippen
Well, each position has different skills associated with that particular position. Like, you know, say you're looking at a quarterback, you're going to, obviously leadership is something that's hard to quantify. That's something that, you know, you're talking to teammates, you're talking to coaches, you're talking to opposition, things like that, but there's still quantifiable things that you can look at. You know, you look at, you know, well, how quick was their release? What's their arm speed? You know, how tight is the spiral on the ball? How much ball spin that they have? What's the footwork look like? Same with other positions. So you go to a wide receiver position. You want to see how well do they run their routes? How well, well, are they able to break away from defenders and get separation? What kind of speed are they showing? You know, is it straight ahead speed or are they able to, to make those cuts? How well do they make those cuts? You know, planning that foot and moving in a different direction. There's a lot of those things that you can quantify. And as you're going through and watching this film, you can see exactly how well they're performing and be able to grade it accordingly. But then also you have to take into account what error they're in different errors, things were done differently. So you have to make sure that you're taking that into account when you're going through and evaluating these players, you want to make sure that you're grading them according to the way the game was played at that particular time. And that adds another wrinkle to obviously how you put together these reports, but it's something that is important that when you're giving somebody a grade for their particular position, for their particular era, you got to make sure that you're going to be able to consistently be able to look at that grade versus the grade of somebody else at that same position that may have played in a different era. So those are the types of things that we look at. Like I said, each one has different sets of criteria. All of that is spelled out within the reports that we have. You have grades, overall grades for each of those skill sets and then overall performance grades that they have for each game, as well as for their entire career. And then when we're looking at it to the score that we come up with the overall grade, that's going to get stronger the more games we watch. So say, for example, you've got somebody where you watch 30 games, another one where you watch 40 games. If they both have the same score, I'm always going to skew toward the person where we watched more game film, because that means they kept it at that level for a longer period of time. And so when you're looking at our rankings by scores, anything that's tied as far as the score is concerned, we always skew it toward the one where we've watched more game film than the other players.

Darin Hayes
outstanding. I like that the volume of work sort of skews the score to their favor. So that's, it's a great, great thing. Now, if I would, let's say we have some folks watching right now that are on the selection committee, and we could, and who would if they came to you and said, Hey, Ken, you know, we want to come and look at some of these scores, we're trying to look for some seniors to be selected for the next round of ballots here. Who would you recommend that they look at some maybe some folks that aren't getting the attention in the media? That do you think that have some great scores that these folks ought to be looking at considering?

Ken Crippen
I mean, to me, you know, I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I picked Lavvie Dilweg and Al Wister is my top two players, especially of the older players. We've got more game film of Wister than we do of Dilweg, but we're still able to go through and see how Dilweg played. But then, as I was mentioning before, we're talking about, okay, what are the testimonials? What are the other media members saying about them? What are historians saying about them? People that watch them play. People were there at the time. And you look at someone like a Laverne Dilweg and it's just inexplicable to me how he can't become a finalist, you know, he, you'll see them in the, in the, um, centennial class where he was part of the top 20, but then never made it beyond that. And then, you know, it was never really been touched since then Al Wister, he's getting close, but he's not making it. These are guys who dominated their position. I mean, Dilweg was the second-best end in the pre-modern era. If you're number two behind one of the greatest of all time in Don Hudson, how can you not be considered? You have somebody that, you know, Ken Riley, you know, we brought his name up earlier, so I don't want to keep picking on him, but doesn't have the all pros, doesn't have the Pro Bowls or anything like that. They used interceptions while he had 64 interceptions in his career. He never led the league in interceptions. He was top five once in interceptions. If you're a Hall of Famer, you only make top five and interceptions once in a 16 year career. There are times he didn't even lead his own team in interceptions, but yet that was the criteria for him getting in. Laverne Dilweg had 27 interceptions from a defensive end position. You look at the other pre -modern era ends that are in the Hall of Fame. They all have single digits in interceptions. Dilweg had 27. The only other end that had more was Hutson, but he played safety. So you're going to have more opportunities. You're going to be able to have more interceptions, and it's only three more than Dilweg had. He led, you know, Dilweg led the league in yards, touchdowns. That's what an end does, but you look at it and you know, eight -time All -Pro, six -time consecutive consensus All -Pro, four -time consecutive unanimous All -Pro, all -decade team. The media members of the day said he was by far the best end of his time, but yet you look at the media members today and they're like, yeah, it doesn't matter.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. Amazing. Especially when you're playing at the same time as Hutson.

Ken Crippen
So basically the reason why people don't know Dilweg's name as much is because Hutson came after him.

Darin Hayes
Oh, okay, they weren't contemporaries of each other.

Ken Crippen
No, it was basically as soon as Dilweg's career ended, that's when Hutson started. So they didn't even overlap by one year.

Darin Hayes
Oh geez. Well, I'm glad that, uh, you know, but it's shining some light on, on players like Dilweg and Wistert and some of the others to maybe, you know, bring more attention to them and hopefully some, some, uh, you know, random parts like we're doing now. And, uh, some of the books that are out PFRA and some of the other organizations we talked about, uh, maybe we get, uh, things go in here, get some momentum on social media and that and, uh, get it out into public perception. And that always helps too, with, uh, helping the selectors to, to be influenced a little bit. So, so we keep up that great work on that. Now, so what are, uh, some of the other, uh, now you're, you're looking at all different eras, I assume when you're, you're putting these things together. So it's not just these, these early, you know, single platoon players, but you're looking at some of the more modern players, like from the last 60, 70 years as well.

Ken Crippen
I mean, I've done some research on that, um, essentially what it is is when Matt Rieser and I started working on this, we said, okay, we want people have had the bulk of their careers prior to 1970. And that's what our focus was now, because, you know, it's been a few years since then I'm going to extend it out beyond that. So people playing in the seventies as well. Um, but my focus is I want people to know about these older players. That's what's important to me. And that's the information I want to get out there.

Darin Hayes
Awesome. I love the, uh, the, what you're doing. I love the, the, uh, line that you're taking to do that because it's, there's a lot of information out there with, like we said, the video and everything of the more modern players, you know, since the seventies, but some of these older guys, they just didn't, there wasn't the ESPNs and the internet that, that we have in this era to look at them. So it's great to get that perception from them. So what else do you have going on at the FLA that, uh, you know, what are some of the other courses you have? I know you glanced upon a couple of them, but, uh, but if somebody wants to come in and get an education at the FLA, what can they expect?

Ken Crippen
Well, there's a bunch of different courses that we have. So you can either look at interviews that we have with individual people. But if you're looking for classes themselves, the scattering reports class that we were talking about, but, you know, we've got classes on the first pro players, excuse me, first pro players, first, uh, forward pass and pro football history, you know, try to trace down the lineage of that, um, talking about new class that I'm working on now is on the Buffalo bills of the all America football conference. So we try to have varying degrees of things that we talk about in various eras, but also got some other instructors that are there. Josie Imba, who, you know, a very noted historian and author, um, does a lot of work on old Chicago Cardinals. Uh, so he's got classes there. Jeff Miller, a Buffalo bills historian, a Buffalo football historian. So he's got a class on the Buffalo Americans of the 1920s. So there's a lot of stuff that's there. Um, so it really depends on what you're interested in. Chances are you're going to find something there that, you know, peaks your interest and makes you want to watch.

Darin Hayes
All right, and what's the best place to go if you want to if you want to give maybe the the URL of of it and we'll repeat it in the show notes of this but go ahead and call out in your in your social media.

Ken Crippen
Yeah. I mean, any of the classes, any of the podcasts that we have, we have links on our website. You've got all our social media channels. So I would say the best place to go is www .football -learning -academy .com. And you'll pretty much find everything right at that location.

Darin Hayes
Okay. And you folks that are looking at this on YouTube, you just look over Ken's shoulder there and he's got all the information spelled out right on his, uh, virtual back screen there too. So, but we'll, we, for you folks that are on the podcast, we will put it into show notes, uh, get you hooked up to Ken and, uh, get educated and learn about these great players, these great teams from the past at the FLA. Ken, we really appreciate you coming on and doing this and really appreciate you preserving these greats of football and both the players, the coaches, the, the people associated with it, the broadcasters and, uh, you know, everybody that's contributed to football and the teams and the games themselves. So thank you for doing that.

Ken Crippen
Well, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Washington D.C. area Journalist and Author Mike Richman shares the story of Pro Football Hall of Fame Coach George Allen in a book titled George Allen: A Football Life.

-Transcribed Mike Richman on George Allen

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another edition where we get to talk about a great legend of the game of football.

And this is coming from the professional level, pretty much. And we have our friend Mike Richmond here. He has a book on George Allen called George Allen, A Football Life.

Mike, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Great to be here, Darren. Yeah, Mike, George Allen, a very interesting figure indeed.

You know, back in the '60s and '70s was his era. And just just an interesting guy all around. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about George's background before he got to what we know him as, you know, with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins, maybe how he got up through the ranks of professional football.

Sure. Well, I can start with his college coaching. His very, very first coaching job was at the University of Michigan.

He was a graduate student at Michigan, has both his bachelor's and graduate degrees from Michigan. And he got a job as an assistant coach on the 150-pound midget team, which started for the first time in 1948. It was a four-team league in the Midwest, Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Indiana, I believe.

Those were the four schools. And so he was an assistant coach for that one season, and he was in 1947, he was an assistant coach on that team. Then, in 1948, the following year, he got his first true head coaching job at Morningside College in Iowa.

That's how he broke into the head coaching ranks. He coached in college through 1956. He was three years at Morningside, and then he coached for six years at Whittier in the Los Angeles area.

And he had a plus 500 record over that nine-year period, but he left after the 1956 season. Some of the players were kind of disenchanted with him, his conservative style offense, they didn't really appreciate. Also, the school administration didn't really appreciate some of the approaches that he took with his coaching, his recruiting, his scholarships that he was handing out, he was spending too much money, they thought.

So basically, as I wrote in the book, he was forced to resign after the 56 season. 57, he was an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Rams, interestingly, as an offensive ends coach. Sid Gillman was the head coach at the time, and I wondered why they hired him as an offensive ends coach, because he was a defensive oriented coach.

And I believe it was, and actually, I got to interview his daughter about this, and it's because he knew the tendencies of the opposing defense. So that's why they hired him as the offensive ends coach. But again, he was basically forced out after the 57 season.

He was out of coaching for almost the entire 58 seasons. But the Bears brought him in as a spy toward the end of the season. They had two games against the Los Angeles Rams toward the end of the season.

So George Hallis brought him in as a spy. And then Hallis became, to admire him, the head talent scout for the Bears at the time passed away. So Hallis hired him as the Bears head talent scout in 1959.

That's how he got in with the Bears. He was with the Bears through the 65 season. It was a very memorable period because he was, he drafted, he was leading the draft at the time.

He drafted three future Hall of Fame players, Mike Ditka, in 1961. The 1965 draft has to go down as one of the greatest drafts in NFL history. He drafted Butkus with the number three pick in the first round.

Sayers, the following pick, number four. In that top 10 of picks, he drafted Steve DeLong with number eight in offensive tackle. DeLong didn't play for the Bears.

He went to play for the San Diego, San Diego Chargers in the AFL. And he was a single one-time pro bowler with the Chargers. In the fourth round, the Bears drafted a running back named Jim Nance, who went on to play for the Boston Patriots in the AFL.

He was a two-time pro bowler and a two-time All-Pro in the AFL. If DeLong and Nance actually had come to play for the Bears, I mean, that would have made that draft like, you would have had to put it up against the 74 Steelers draft. You could probably still put it up there with Butkus and Sayers and so forth.

But yes, so he was the head talent scout for that whole period. He was elevated to the head defensive coach in 1960. Well, in 1962, he replaced Clark Shaughnessy toward the end of the season.

Shaughnessy was on the outs with Hallis as the defensive coach, and Shaughnessy held a few other roles. And so Allen took over as the head defensive coach at that time. And then heading into the 1963 season, he was elevated to the head defensive coach for the Bears.

And that season, the Bears won the NFL championship. They won it with one of the most ferocious defenses in NFL history. And Allen was the key architect of that win.

I mean, they yielded only about 144 points through the regular season. And so Allen was carried off the field after the game, by the way. Hallis was not carried off the field.

Allen was also, they were both given game balls. But in the postgame locker room, they also chanted in, and this had been initiated several years prior by another Bears player. Hooray for George.

He's a horse's ass. That song the Redskins also sang it in later years when Allen became the coach there. But I want to read you a quote by Ed Obradovich, who was a great Bears defensive tackle at the time, in terms of how he credited George Allen with that championship win.

And Obradovich has no doubt who engineered the victory in that championship game was a 14 to 10 win over the Giants. Obradovich says, in my mind, everything goes to George Allen. We scored two touchdowns, both on quarterback sneaks.

Our offense didn't move that well. That defense proved without a doubt that you can win a world championship with defense. So Allen was the key architect of that win.

And not only in the mind of Obradovich, but many of the other Bears players thought the same thing. But Hallis never, Halas refused to promote him to head coach. Hallis, you know, he had been around for so many years.

As you know, he was part of the initial meeting in Canton that formed the NFL in 1920. So he had been there for so many years. He refused to step down after the 1963 season.

A few years went by, 1965, Allen was getting antsy. He wanted that head coaching job. So he got the offer from the Los Angeles Rams.

Dan Reeves, the Rams owner, offered him the job. Hallis still refused to step down. Instead, he took George Allen to court at the Cook County Circuit Court in the Chicago area.

He sued him for breach of contract. He said that Allen had this proprietary information that he would be taking to the Rams and that Halas didn't; he refused to let him go. So, the judge eventually ruled for Hallis in the case.

Hallis, though, said at that point, I've made my point. I've won on principle. George Allen, you're free to go to any team you want.

So Allen chose the Los Angeles Rams. But Hallis made himself look like a petulant child in that whole case. And, you know, having taken him to court.

I mean, when an assistant coach, despite what's written in a contract, wants a job as a head coach with another team, you've got to let him go. I mean, Hallis was just, I think he was jealous of George Allen, and he may have had it in his mind that he would promote him in future years, but he refused to do it at that point. But anyway, he let Allen go on to become the head coach of the Los Angeles Rams starting in the 1966 season.

Wow, that's a lot. I didn't realize he had that much involvement with the Bears. I knew he was there, but I didn't realize, you know, he was orchestrated, you know, that great defense and, you know, help with those great draft picks.

You know, I always find it interesting, you know, that Gail Sayers and Dick Butkis's draft. I think, isn't it the saying that the two of them on the same team, the Bears, never won a playoff game or never made a playoff game? That's correct. They never made a playoff game with either one of those guys on the same team.

And both of them, their careers were short and considerably, you would think they could have played longer, but they had terrible injuries. So both of them were pretty much in their prime when they retired, but they were also both first-ballot Hall of Fame inductees and were drafted with back-to-back picks in the first round in 1965. And then they were first-ballot Hall of Famers.

And so just that in itself makes that draft so amazing. But then you add DeLong and Nance, those two other guys that I mentioned in that draft, you add those two in. Another signing that George Allen orchestrated that year was a free agent signing of a guy named Brian Piccolo, the leading rusher in the country out of Wake Forest.

And Piccolo, sort of what he was portrayed as in the movie, had a couple of good seasons with the Bears. In fact, 1968 was his best season rushing. I think he rushed for more than 400 yards that year.

He was tapped, heading into the 1969 season, to be the starter in the backfield with Sayers. I remember that in the movie Sayers and Piccolo, they exchanged high fives. And, you know, I say, hey, you know, we're going to start in the backfield together.

But it was that year that Piccolo took himself out of a game because he wasn't feeling right. And, you know, so I guess the cancer was starting to spread at that point. Yeah, I had the; when I was in high school in the 80s, I read the book I Am Third, you know, which the Brian Piccolo movie was adapted from Gail Sayers's book, I Am Third.

And probably probably within a month or two after me reading it, and I had no idea it was going to happen. I was working at a restaurant here where I live in Erie as a busboy. And lo and behold, I go to the table to clean it up.

I look up, and I see a familiar face. Gail Sayers is sitting there with some dignitaries from all over Erie, Pennsylvania. He had come in for a sports banquet, which I didn't know. I wasn't aware that he was coming in.

I got to have a conversation about it. I told him, I said, hey, I just got done reading your book. I did a book report on it.

And he was the kindest man. He sat down, you know, some busboy at a restaurant in a strange town. He sat with me for five minutes, had a conversation, and gave me some, you know, worldly advice, as you'd expect from an older Gail Sayers.

And it's when a great, great guy. So I'm a big Gail Sayers fan just because of the person he is. I never got to watch him play, but, you know, other than film.

But yeah, he's tremendous. I can't imagine you got his autograph, right? Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

You know, Butkus, as a kid for me. Butkus was my, the player that I really, really looked up to. I saw I saw myself in him.

I didn't play anything past high school football. But I just saw his ferociousness and, you know, that other players were so scared of him and just, you know, his stature on the field. I just loved him.

And I wrote to the Bears, I remember. It must have been like the early 70s. And he sent me a baseball card.

Nice. I signed it; I signed it to Dick Butkus. There are just two great iconic figures of NFL history that, you know, from 60 to some years ago in the draft and playing, and we're still talking about, they're still relevant to even the modern fan.

That tells you, in shortened careers, that just tells you how legendary they were, just to emphasize how good that draft was for the Bears. So, yeah, it's pretty amazing that George Allen was able to see the talent in those two and help get those two players on the Bears. I'll tell you one other Butkus story.

So in 1974, Allen wanted to get him for the Redskins. Butkus had his contract expire with the Bears, or I think they either released him or he walked after the 73 season. But so Allen tried to acquire him for the Redskins, but his knees were in such bad shape that he could never, he couldn't play football after that.

73 was his last year in the NFL. He went to see a doctor in the Midwest, I think in Oklahoma, who said, hey, you know, if you want to have your knees fused, then maybe you'll be able to get on the field. But he could not play football anymore.

And Sears had to step down. He was pretty much in his prime as well. But you, I mean, I'm sure you've seen tapes of him and how elusive and fast he was.

Oh, yeah. So, yeah, most definitely. Yeah, YouTube's an amazing thing.

So it's good to go see anything you have film on anybody. You can go back and watch them. That's awesome.

Okay, so George Allen takes over the reins of the Rams program. So tell us a little bit about what he did to the Rams, what he instilled in their program. Sure.

Well, when he came in 1966, the Rams in previous years, like over the past, I'd say eight seasons, they were about bad to mediocre. I mean, they were really a struggling team. And so they needed a lot of rebuilding when he came.

And he, what he did is he, his practices were much longer than the previous coaches. They had also this kind of arty image as a team, you know, being in Los Angeles, lots of stuff to do. They loved the nightlife there and they ran the streets really well.

So he, George Allen got rid of all that. I mean, he was a disciplinarian, long practices in the Southern California heat. So he instilled that hard work ethic in them and they started winning right away.

They had eight and six seasons in 1966. 1967, in my opinion, was his best season as an NFL coach. They finished 11-2-1 in the regular season.

They lost to the Packers in the first round of the playoffs that year, and the week after that was the Ice Bowl. Those were also the years when the teams rotated as host cities. So even though the Packers finished 9-4-1 that year in their division and the Rams 11-2-1, the Rams had to go to Green Bay and play.

Now, I'm not saying that the Rams had gone to Green Bay to play them. They would have won that game. I mean, they were coming off two emotionally draining games at the end of that 67 season.

They beat the Packers in the final seconds in the Los Angeles Coliseum. A player named Tony Guillory blocked a punt with about a minute left in that game and the Rams recovered and ran down the five-yard line and then Roman Gabriel threw a touchdown pass to a receiver named Bernie Casey, later the actor. And so the Rams won that game.

Allen was carried off the field after that one. The following week, they demolished the Baltimore Colts, and Unitas was sacked about seven times during that game. The Rams were so sky-high to play the Colts.

That was in the LA Coliseum as well. They beat the Colts and that got them into the playoffs. They won the Coastal Division.

Interestingly, the Colts were also in that Coastal Division. But one thing I want to note about that Colts team. They also finished 11-1-2 that year.

The Rams were 11-1-2. The Colts also were 11-1-2 that year. That Colts team didn't go to the playoffs.

That's unfathomable today. That just would not happen. We have losing teams going to the playoffs, seven teams per conference.

Just back then, there were four total teams in the NFL that went to the postseason, and one from each division. So that Colts team didn't go. So you can imagine how good they really were.

But that Rams team lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Packers. They were knocked out. The following year was a 10-3-1 season.

The Rams didn't go to the playoffs. After that season, which was 1968, after the season, Dan Reeves fired George Allen. He had a phenomenal record in those first three years.

Reeves fired him. Reeves didn't like, number one, his spending habits. His spending habits came into play again.

He was spending a lot of money for the veteran players. He was on the phone a lot. Back in those days, you know, he was driving up telephone costs.

And the two just, they had like such differing personalities. Reeves was this partying guy. I mentioned the partying aspect of the Rams in years past.

Reeves was leading the charge. Everyone knew he was an alcoholic, and there were coaches who loved to drink as well. And so Reeves was leading that.

George Allen was not. He didn't drink alcoholic beverages. His favorite beverage was milk.

That's what he consumed. So he and Reeves didn't socialize, and they rarely spoke to each other. Reeves didn't like him.

I thought it was another case of jealousy, too. Reeves fired him after the 68 season. Allen, though, staged a press conference at a ritzy Los Angeles Hotel, and about 20 veteran Ram players showed up.

Merlin Olson, Deacon Jones, Ed Meador. Let's see. I think Rosie Greer was there.

So at this press conference, these veteran Ram players said, and you know, they had experienced, they had been a winner under Allen in those first three seasons. They said, you know, if Dan Reeves if you don't rehire George Allen, we're quitting. So several weeks later, Reeves rehired Allen.

Now, he said that it had nothing to do with what the player said at that point. But I think what the player said had a lot to do with it. I mean, you read between the lines.

I mean, if he was going to lose those veteran players, they weren't going to have much of a team. If you have the fearsome foursome on your side coming in to speak on your behalf, people are going to listen to those guys. I think Lamar Lundy was another one of those players.

No, I don't think Greer was there. I think he had already retired, but Lundy was there. And they were like a total of 20 veteran Rams.

And yeah, they basically said, we're going to retire if you don't rehire George Allen. So, this had to be an unprecedented situation in NFL history at the time. So yeah, Reeves rehired him after the 68 season.

69 and 70, which those were Allen's last two years. 69, they went 11-3. Again, they were knocked out in the first round of the playoffs to a really good Vikings team that later played in Super Bowl 4, losing to the Chiefs.

And then in 1970, they finished 9-4-1. And Reeves fired him for the second time. I want to say about that 69 team.

So the Rams started 11-0, 11-0 that year. And they lost their last three regular season games and then went into the playoffs and lost to the Vikings. They gave the Vikings a fight in that first round playoff game.

They lost 23-20 in Minnesota. But one of the knocks on George Allen over the years is that he worked his players so hard during the regular season, and he was such a great motivator getting them up for games, and you know, with his rah-rah personality that they were basically burned out toward the end of that 69 seasons and they lost their last three regular-season games because I don't remember him sitting too many of his veteran players in that first loss, which I think was to the Bears, if I'm correct, or to either the Bears or the Vikings. I don't remember him really sitting his players, you know, basically rolling over.

I don't recall him doing that early in that losing streak, but they lost those last three games and then went into the playoffs on that losing streak with an 11-3 record. It's 1970. Pretty much everyone knew that if Allen didn't make the Super Bowl that year that he was going to be fired, and certainly Reeves fired him after that season, and that's when he was hired by the Redskins a few weeks later.

So it was sort of, it happened more than once where he had some great starts, you know, great out of the gate, but the team was just worn down by the end of the season, sort of collapsed at the end of the season in the playoffs. Yes, pretty much. So, I mean that the 11-1-2 team in 1967, they were just, even I quoted Merlin Olsen in the book as saying that they were just emotionally drained by the time they got to the playoffs, and even Allen said that in a quote that I found from the past that there's no way that we would have beaten Green Bay in that playoff game.

They actually took a 7-0 lead in that game, but Green Bay Lombardi had kind of disguised his plans before the game. He said we're not going to be able to run the ball. You know, several of our running backs are out injured, but certainly, they rammed it down the Rams' throats in that playoff game.

I mean, they really ran the ball well. So, and then in that 69 season, like I said, they started at 11-0, and they lost their last three games. That was one of the knocks on George Allen over the years; he got his players motivated for most of the regular season, and then they just ran out of steam toward the end.

Yeah, that's just amazing. You would think in this day and age, you know, if a coach has tremendous records like that, even if he's not winning, you know, except for maybe somebody, you know, like Marty Schottenheimer, who sort of had a similar situation happen to Allen, but you would never let that coach go if they were winning year after year, you know, they're hard to find to get coaches that can keep teams like that. But, you know, I guess that's a different era, you know.

Right. Well, I think if Allen were coaching today, the owners would keep him on. I think that it was more of a personality conflict unless he didn't get along with the owners today, but I think it was with Reeves.

It was very much a personality conflict. I mean, the two just didn't see eye to eye. One thing that really bothered Reeves is that Reeves controlled the draft.

Reeves was known as this expert on scouting in the NFL, and actually George Allen did inherit a few really good players that Reeves and his scouting team had found before he arrived, Merlin Olson, Deacon Jones, Roman Gabriel. There were other players, Ed Meador. I mean, there were some pretty good talent on that Rams team when Allen arrived.

But as you clearly know, I mean, you need a coach to get that chemistry together and organize everything and, you know, nail down the right X's and O's that a team must be following. It is just that you need the right coach to lead at that point. They just didn't have the right coaches beforehand.

So, but yeah, he and Reeves just had this personality conflict. So Reeves controlled the draft. Allen had control of the active player roster.

One thing that bothered Reeves was that he really liked a quarterback named Bill Munson. He was Roman Gabriel's backup, but Allen got rid of him.

Okay, Allen traded him, but Reeves really liked him. Allen traded him. Allen also traded the Heisman Trophy winner out of UCLA, Gary Beibin. Allen didn't think Beibin was going to be much of anything.

I mean, Allen knew he was pretty much a hybrid quarterback at UCLA. He ran the ball a lot. So Allen didn't think he was going to be much of an NFL quarterback.

He traded him to the Redskins, and the Rams picked up some pretty good draft picks in that trade. Well, Reeves didn't like that trade at all. Okay, so that's, you know, one time where they really disagreed, and Reeves didn't appreciate that.

That Allen had let Beibin go, but Beibin didn't have much of a career in DC at all. I mean, he was with the Redskins for two seasons. Well, one, maybe one, two seasons, 68 and 69 probably, and then he was cut by the Redskins.

So, he didn't have much of a career at all. So Allen was right about that. So, it was very much a personality conflict between Allen and Reeves.

He's out in LA. How long is he out of a job before somebody becomes interested in his services? Just a few days. The Redskins had actually been interested in him after the 68 season.

Alan knew Jack Kent Cooke. Cooke owned the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings, and he was based in Los Angeles. So Alan knew him and Cooke, they became friends.

Cooke would invite him to his ranch in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Alan also came to know Edward Bennett Williams, who ran the daily operations of the Redskins. I should say that Cooke was inching toward becoming the majority owner of the Redskins at the time.

He held the largest percentage, and he would soon become the majority owner. So he had a lot of power on the team. Williams also liked Alan.

They had met at a league meeting in Hawaii, I believe, after the 66 season. So Williams came to really admire him. He loved his work ethic and everything.

So, pretty much Cooke went hard after George Allen after the 68 season. But Alan wanted to fulfill his five-year contract with the Rams. He said, Jack, I know I'm probably going to get fired after the 1970 season, but I want to fulfill my contract.

So, he stayed with LA through the five-year period of his contract. Cooke and Williams brought him to Washington just a few days after Reeves fired him for the second time. It was like Reeves fired him right after the 1970 season.

And the first week in January, Alan was hired as the Redskins coach. Okay. So now Alan would be, would have been Vince Lombardi's replacement, correct? Is that Lombardi or somebody in between? There was somebody in between.

Alan, I mean Lombardi coached in 69. Okay. And then he passed away right before the 1970 season.

Okay. So then there was an interim coach for the Redskins in 1970. Okay.

So he would have been the first permanent assigned coach after Vince Lombardi. Correct. He would have been the first permanent coach post Lombardi.

But Lombardi only coached one year, 69. So he has sort of adopted Beebin, who he traded then. No, Beebin was not on the team anymore.

Oh, okay. So Beeben was gone, too. Okay.

Beebin had been cut prior to the 1970 season. Yeah, the Redskins, they quickly got rid of him. He was history.

Yeah. So, no, Alan did not adopt him, but I don't think Alan would have had much of him anyway. So, Alan did inherit some pretty good players with the Redskins, too, mostly on offense.

The Redskins had a very good offense in the 1960s, led by Sonny Jurgensen, who had his best passing years with the Redskins during that time from the mid to late 60s. He also had some amazing receivers, such as Charlie Taylor, Bobby Mitchell, and Jerry Smith. One year, 1967, Jurgensen led the league in passing.

Taylor was number one in receiving in total catches. Smith was number two. And then Mitchell was number four.

And actually, Jerry Smith was a great receiving tight end. Yeah. So that was- Okay.

They had the number one, two, and four receivers in the NFL in one season. One, two, and four in total. Yes.

There were one, two, and four catches in the NFL in the same season. He had a smorgasbord of receivers to throw to. They were a very exciting team.

And it was a major reason that RFK Stadium started selling out in 1966. They were a very entertaining offensive team, but they had no defense. I mean, the defense was basically mediocre.

I mean, you could step all over that defense. They were relinquishing so many points. So, Alan inherited all of those except for Mitchell.

Mitchell retired before the 1969 season. But Alan inherited Jurgensen, Taylor, Jerry Smith. On defense, he had Chris Hamburger, who's in the Hall of Fame today.

Brigg Owens, who is very high on the list of career interception leaders today for the Redskins with 36. Very good defensive back. Bill Brundage is a really good defensive lineman.

Larry Brown is a Pittsburgh native, by the way. He was a 1,000-yard rusher in 1970. Alan inherited him.

So, again, it was a situation where the head coach had to find a way to make all that talent work and get that chemistry flowing on the team. Yeah, definitely. They're the spoon that stirs a drink there, aren't they? So, would you consider Alan, a player's coach? I know he sort of runs the hard line, but sometimes those can be somewhat of a player's coach.

So, I'm just trying to get a feel for insider information. What was he like as a head man on the sideline? I would consider him a player's coach in the sense that there were many players that liked him and appreciated his practices. Like, the players that really liked him were the players that he saved from other teams.

He traded for a lot of veteran players. They could have been on the outs with their previous teams, like Roy Jefferson was on the outs with Carroll Rosenblum, the owner of the Baltimore Colts, even though they had won a Super Bowl in 1970, Super Bowl V. Alan traded for him. Ron McDowell was on the outs with the Buffalo Bills.

Alan traded for him. Billy Kilmer, Alan resuscitated his career. Kilmer was basically a mid-range quarterback for the Saints.

He was pretty good, but, you know, he was nowhere near elite. Alan rescued his career, brought him to Washington. Alan saw something in him.

The Rams played the Saints a few times when Alan was in LA, and he really liked Kilmer. So, he resuscitated the careers of a lot of players. And even a lot of the veteran players that were here, Pat Fisher being one.

Pat Fisher really liked George Allen. Brigg Owens liked him. Owens was considered one of Alan's lieutenants on the field.

Fisher and Chris Hamburger, as well, really liked him. So, then there were other players that they didn't so much like George Allen. They felt that you know, he was a little sleazy in the way he handled personnel matters.

He didn't always tell people exactly the moves he was going to make. So, yeah, not every player loved him, but I would say a lot of the players that he, where he resuscitated their careers, would sing his praises all day. Yeah.

I guess if you go back and think about it, the LA Rams if they had 20 people showing up at his, you know, departure or what he thought was his final swan song there in LA as a press conference, and they came in support, they had to like him. So, very interesting. Okay.

So, how did his Washington teams fare? You know, he's bringing, he has this talent he inherited. He's bringing this veteran presence and talent in. So, how was he doing as a Redskins head coach? So, in 1971, his first season in Washington, the Redskins finished 9-4-1.

They went to the postseason for the first time since 1945. First time in a quarter century they went to the playoffs. It was only their fourth; let's see, they had four; I'm sorry, they had four previous winning seasons prior to Allen's arrival in 1971.

So, 1971, 9-4-1. They lost again in the first round of the playoffs to the San Francisco 49ers. They played in San Francisco the year.

The Redskins were actually up in that game. They were leading at halftime 10-3, but then they wilted in the second half. And that actually is the game of Nixon's play call.

Allen and Richard Nixon had a friendship. They originally met when Allen was the college coach at Whittier in the early 50s. They met at an NCAA banquet.

Nixon's alma mater was Whittier. So, that's when they first met. So, when they intersected in the nation's capital in 1971, Nixon was in his third year in the White House and Allen's first-year coach of the Redskins.

And actually, that season, Allen Nixon came out to Redskins Park, the Redskins training facility, and he gave the Redskins a pep talk. He wanted to come out. The Redskins were struggling a little bit that year.

They, in their previous three games, they had a tie and two losses. So, he came out to Redskins Park, he gave them a pep talk. And then, by the time they played the 49ers in the first round of the playoffs that year, the Redskins used a play that Nixon had suggested he would like to see them running.

It was an end-around play to Roy Jefferson. He unfortunately got caught for a 10-yard loss on the play, knocked the Redskins back. They missed the field goal attempt, and they went into halftime at 10-3.

They could have been up 17-3 or at least 13-3, but they went up 10-3; they were demoralized. They relinquished the lead in the second half and lost that game. The following year, 1972, Allen took the Redskins to their first Super Bowl, Super Bowl VII.

They lost in that game to the Miami Dolphins, who finished that season undefeated at 17-0. They lost 14-7 in that game. In the two playoff games that the Redskins were in prior to the Super Bowl, they beat the Green Bay Packers in the first round, and they beat the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC Championship game.

I was at both games, both of those games at RFK Stadium. The win over the Cowboys, 26-3 in the NFC Championship game that year, was just a total demolition job by the Redskins. I mean, that was Allen's crowning moment as head coach in the NFL.

The fact that he didn't win the Super Bowl the next week and then never got past the first round of the playoffs again, that NFC Championship game was his crowning moment. He not only won the NFC Championship and punched his ticket to Super Bowl VII, but he beat the Cowboys. The stakes were really high.

I mean, Allen despised the Cowboys. I mean, he intensified the Redskins-Cowboys rivalry. They had a little bit of a rivalry in the 60s when Sonny Jergensen was the Redskins quarterback.

Don Meredith was the Cowboys quarterback. They played some really high-scoring games, very exciting. But the rivalry escalated to a new level when Allen came to coach here in 1971.

He didn't like the Cowboys because he didn't like Tech Schramm, who had a friendly relationship with Dan Reeves. Tech Schramm was one of the Cowboys executives and Dan Reeves, NFL commissioner. The two had previously spent time together on the staff of the Los Angeles Rams in the 1950s.

Also, Dan Reeves was friends with Rozelle. So Reeves was previously the Rams owner. So I'm sure Reeves didn't say the most flattering things to Rozelle about- Well, Rozelle was a Los Angeles guy, right? Didn't he come out of Los Angeles? I believe he came from San Francisco.

Oh, okay. Okay. I believe, yeah, I believe he was from San Francisco, but he was the public relations director for the Rams for part of the 1950s.

Maybe that's what I'm thinking. Okay. Right, right.

That's how he became aligned with that organization, and he came to know Tech Schramm. So Allen thought there was some conspiracy on the part of the Cowboys and NFL commissioner Pete Roselle in terms of the decision-making. And sure enough, the first three regular-season games in 1971 were NFC East games on the road for the Redskins.

Now, that would be unfathomable today. I don't think that would ever happen. But the way the scheduling was set up, the Redskins played their first three games against NFC East opponents on the road.

They won all three games. They beat the Cardinals, Giants, and Cowboys in Dallas. They won their first five games that season.

And like I said, they finished 9-4-1. And also, when they beat the Cowboys, when the plane got back from Dallas and landed at Dulles Airport, there were about 10,000 fans that stormed Dulles Airport to greet the Redskins players coming back and to congratulate Allen and the players. I mean, they were longing for a winner.

It had been 1945 since the Redskins had gone to an NFL championship game and 42 since they had won one. So nothing had happened in this town in terms of a winner. The Senators and the baseball team were nothing.

They actually moved out. They moved to Arlington, Texas, at the beginning of that 71 season. So, there was no baseball team or Major League Baseball team in Washington.

There was no NBA team. The Washington Bullets hadn't moved here yet, or the Baltimore Bullets, I should say. They hadn't moved here yet.

And there was no hockey team. The Washington Capitals didn't start here until 1974. The Redskins were the only game in town.

And Allen really seized that opportunity. Okay. Very interesting.

So what was sort of, how did his career end with Washington? What happened there with him leaving the Redskins? So after the 72 seasons, he went to the playoffs three more times, losing in the first round each time, 73, 74, and 76. And before the 1977 season, in the offseason, Edward Bennett Williams offered him a contract extension, but he never signed it. And this just dragged on through the 77 season.

It was a four-year extension. It just dragged on. And by the end of the 77 season, Allen still didn't sign that extension.

At the same time, the Los Angeles Ram's job opened up. Chuck Knox, the Rams coach, he left that Rams job, and he went to Buffalo to become the head coach of the Buffalo Bills. So that job was open.

Allen, as I write in the book, a really strong theory is that he wanted to return to Los Angeles. He and his wife wanted to go back to LA. They still had their home in Palos Verdes Estates, that's a Los Angeles suburb.

They still had their home there. So they wanted to go back there. So Allen never signed the extension, and Williams just let him walk at a certain point.

He said, I've given George Allen unlimited patience, and he has exceeded it. It was actually a play on words that were similar to what Williams said in 1971. Allen built Redskins Park for $500,000.

Williams said at the time, I gave him an unlimited budget, and he exceeded it. So that was another thing. The money part, Williams didn't appreciate a lot of the things that Allen was doing, a lot of the decision-making on his part.

Allen had full control. He had control of the draft. He had control of the active player roster.

He had control of all the money spent. Williams didn't appreciate it, and they were also at each other's throats. But Williams still offered him that contract extension heading into the 77 season, which Allen never signed.

Interesting. So, if we look back at George Allen and his professional coaching career, what's his legacy as a coach in the NFL? Well, record-wise, I mean, he never had a losing season in 12 years of coaching in the NFL and 14 seasons overall. He coached for two years in the NFL.

He's the only coach in NFL history not to have suffered a losing season in more than ten years of coaching. Today, he's number three all-time in regular season winning percentage for coaches with at least 100 career victories, a 7-21 winning percentage. That's phenomenal.

I mean, he's third. John Madden is number one, and Lombardi is number two. So, in 21 years of pro football overall, he was only associated with two losing teams, the 1960 and 1964 Bears.

Aside from that, I mean, he was an amazing, tremendous innovator. He was a pioneer on special teams and defense. On defense, he introduced schemes like the nickelback, the five defensive backs, and the dime defense, six defensive backs.

Those are very innovative for their time. He had these really creative blitz packages. On special teams, he hired one of the first true special teams coaches.

He hired Dick Vermeule as the Rams special teams coach in 1969. The Eagles hired Marv Levy the same year to coach their special teams in 1969. So he hired one of the first special teams coaches, but he put emphasis on special teams that no other coach or head coach had ever done.

I mentioned that Block Funt in the Packers game. There were other really pivotal plays that his teams made in plays on special teams that decided the games. He would count on his special teams for one or two wins per season.

So he was really, really an innovator in the area of special teams. One year, 1976, he asked a former Redskins player named Bill Malinchuk, who was a master punt blocker from 1971 through 74. Malinchuk blocked four punts, but he retired after that 74 season.

So, by 1976, Malinchuk was a commodities broker on Wall Street. So Alan asked him to come back toward the end of the 76 season. He said, Bill, you only have to make one great play on special teams.

I know you can do it. So Malinchuk left his job on Wall Street. He came back to play for the Redskins in the last three regular-season games that year.

I mean, he was obviously making a lot of money on Wall Street, making much less when he came back to play for the Redskins. So I asked him, why would you do that? He said I would do anything for George Allen. I'll come back.

If George called me, I'd be there. Sure enough, in the final regular season game that year, 1976, Malinchuk blocked a punt. He blocked Danny White's punt.

Danny White was the Cowboy's punter and backup quarterback at the time. He blocked Danny White's punt in the season-ending regular season game against the Cowboys that year. The Redskins won that game and then lost in the first round of the playoffs that year.

That win qualified them for the playoffs. They lost in the first round of the playoffs that year. Amazing story.

Why don't we give listeners, give them the name of the book and places where they can purchase it. Sure. The name of the book is George Allen, A Football Life.

Anyone can get an author autographed copy by going to my website, mikerichmondjournalist.com forward slash books, mikerichmondjournalist.com forward slash books. And Richmond is R-I-C-H-M-A-N. My Twitter handle is MSR underscore journalist.

But anyone can get an author-autographed copy by going to my website. The book is also available through Amazon and also through Nebraska Press, which is my publisher. Okay.

And folks, if you're driving or don't have a pen and pencil, we'll put that link in the podcast show notes. You can get hooked right into Mike's website and take them up on that offer, getting the autograph book. That's always a great thing to have the author sign the book, too.

That's very personalized. So it's a great thing you're doing. So we have a few minutes here.

You have any final thoughts on George Allen? Sure. Well, I failed to mention, and I have to, you asked me about his legacy. He's in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

He was inducted in 2002. And he's certainly deserving of it. I mean, I've gotten the question: why not Marty Schottenheimer today? Wasn't Schottenheimer sort of like the George Allen of yesteryear? Schottenheimer had an amazing regular season record, and he made many more playoff games than George Allen did, but he's not in the Hall of Fame.

I think Marty Schottenheimer should eventually get into the Hall of Fame. But I think what pushed George Allen over the hill and into Canton was his innovations. It wasn't only his record, but his innovations, like I was explaining on defense and special teams, that really put him a step above many other coaches of his time.

Also, for that era when he coached, he was one of the elite coaches at the time. He was with Lombardi and Shula. He was on par with them as one of the elite coaches in that era.

So he was known as one of the best at that time. Yeah. If you think about it, I mean, the diamond and nickel are probably, what, 40, 50% of defensive packages in today's modern game.

That's quite common, especially with the way the offenses are throwing their personnel out on the field. So that is a major innovation. Is that the comparison between him and Schottenheimer because they're winning coaches that weren't championship-winning coaches? Basically, yeah.

Why George Allen and not Marty Schottenheimer? I've gotten that question. I think it's a legitimate question. I think Schottenheimer was a phenomenal coach.

Like I said, I think he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and I hope he will be inducted someday. I think what separates Allen from Schottenheimer is the innovations, the things that he introduced to the game. And like you said, those nickel and dime packages and even special teams themselves are so integral to the game of football today.

I mean, Bill Belichick wasn't a disciple of George Allen, but he adopted a lot of Allen's special teams ploys. In fact, he read Allen's book on special teams. In fact, toward the end of the book, I mentioned that Belichick learned a lot from George Allen in terms of special teams.

So that area of the game, which is soaking in when we see it today, it decides so many games, you know, returns and block kicks and whatever. George Allen was really the first coach that put, he put the most emphasis on that facet of football. And I think it really shows today.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Mike, it sounds like an excellent book. I hope people are going to take you up on your offer and you'll get that signed copy.

If not, you know, they have the other avenues that they can get it also. And enjoy this great story of this coach from yesteryear who had so much success and is still influential in today's game. And that's always a good thing too.

So Mike, thanks for writing the book and telling us the story of George Allen and coming on today and sharing it with us, with the listeners. So thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Darin.

I just want to say that, you know, it's our job to uphold the history of the game. And so I'm very happy to do it. And I thought that it was my responsibility, having grown up with George Allen Redskins to really relive his full life and focus on his coaching so much.

So, I was very, very happy to take on the project.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

Football historian, author, and founder of the Football Learning Academy LLC, Ken Crippen is definitely a great resource of knowledge on the gridiron game.

Mr. Crippen is the former executive director of the Professional Football Researchers Association and has been researching and writing about pro football history for decades!

You can enjoy his football knowledge on the Football Learning Academy website and the Sports History Network by the same name hosted by Ken.

The Oregon Ducks football program boasts a rich history dating back to 1894. Initially known as the "Webfoots," the team has evolved into a national powerhouse
synonymous with innovation and high-flying offense.  

Above is an excellent video on the football program at Oregon.

The program's early years were marked by inconsistency, but the arrival of legendary coach Hugo Bezdek in 1913 signaled a turning point. Under his guidance, Oregon claimed its first Rose Bowl victory in 1917. However, sustained success remained elusive for much of the 20th century.  

A resurgence began in the early 2000s under coach Mike Bellotti. Oregon's offensive prowess became a hallmark, culminating in a BCS National Championship appearance in 2011. The subsequent era under Chip Kelly further solidified the Ducks as a national force, characterized by fast-paced, high-scoring football.  

In recent years, Oregon has maintained its status as a Pac-12 contender while experiencing some fluctuations in success. Despite these challenges, the program's history and tradition continue to inspire a passionate fanbase and drive the team towards future triumphs.

---

Have you ever wondered how the game of football shapes the American presidency? Today, we delve into the fascinating intersection of sports and politics with author Chris Calizza, whose book, Power Players: Sports, Politics, & the American Presidency, explores the surprising connections between the gridiron and the Oval Office.

Chris Calizza joins us to unpack the ways presidents have used sports to connect with voters, build their image, and even find inspiration for leadership. We'll discuss iconic sports figures who have interacted with presidents, the evolution of sports fandom in American politics, and the lasting impact athletes can have on the national conversation.

Whether you're a sports fanatic, a political junkie, or simply curious about the unexpected links between these two seemingly disparate worlds, this episode promises a captivating conversation. So, grab your favorite jersey (or political hat!), settle in, and get ready to explore the fascinating world of Power Players with Chris Calizza!

-Transcript of Power Players Interview with Chris Calizza

Darin Hayes
Sports history friends, this is Darin Hayes of the Sports Jersey Dispatch Podcast. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to all things great in sports history. And welcome to another edition where we are going to bring on a very interesting author of a recent book that he has released. He is a person who has been a lot in journalism and politics and is now writing a little bit of books on sports. His name is Chris Calizza, and he has written a book, Power Players, Sports Politics and the American Presidency. Chris, welcome to the Pigpen.

Chris Calizza
Thank you for having me.

Darin Hayes
Now, Chris, you have a very well -known career, you've worked for CNN, the Washington Post, and we know how you've reported on politics and things like that, and what brings you into crossing over a little bit into the sports world?

Chris Calizza
Totally. Great question. Well, so I would say that once I gave up my dreams of being in the NBA at about 13 or 14, I had to look for another career. And what always interested me was journalism. Honestly, sports journalism was what interested me most; I wound up going into politics, and I got jobs in college that were sort of in political journalism, and I wound up going into that space. But I always sort of kept my interest in and love of sports there. So when my editor and the publishing house came to me and said, Hey, you want to write another book, I knew that that was the space I wanted to be in because I've always been so passionate about sports and politics. Now, the question was, how do we get into a space where we touch both of those fan bases? You know, how do you write about sports and politics smartly? And honestly, it took a long time to sort the seed to germinate and think of the right way to do it. And you know, we eventually came up with this idea that what we would do is we would look at the sports that presidents played both as kids, and then also as they age, sports, they love sports, they watched on television or listened to on the radio, and what that could tell us about who they are and how they governed when in office. Now, that was the idea. And I think anytime you launch a book, you're like, here, here's my idea. Let's do some research, editing, and writing and see if that bears itself out. If it doesn't, we'll scrap it and try something else. Lucky for me, that first idea came true, and it worked in a way that made me really happy with the final product.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I mean, it's really very clever that you married the two. These are, you know, the things that you see on the headlines of the front page of newspapers, you know, anything that the President does, anything big in sports that happens, you combine the two into one, uh, segment and put it in this book, it's just very interesting, and I guess it almost models what you did in the book with the presidents to your enjoyment. You, you, love politics. You combine sports in it and, uh, sort of marries up very well.

Chris Calizza
Yeah, no, it was entirely a selfish idea on my part because I wanted to write I wanted to write something I was interested in. I mean, I think the best books, in my experience, and the best journalism, generally speaking, come from a place of people who are passionate about it. I always say that if you're not passionate about what you're writing about, it's hard to get somebody to pay, you know, whatever $25 for a hardcover copy of a book. So, I really wanted to make sure it was a topic I felt passionate about and that I could bring that passion to the writing. So yes, no question. This was a reflection of my own interests, and then thinking hard about, you know, are there enough people who have those two similar interests? And then what can we say that is interesting about sports and politics? I just didn't want to write a book that was like, there's sports, and there's politics; I wanted to say something interesting about the connection between the two. That was the focus and the goal.

Darin Hayes
Well, you did very well at both of those. And I think just to give the listeners a little idea about the general dynamic of the book, you're covering the last 12 or 13 presidents. I think you have them all included, from Ike all the way to Joe Biden.

Chris Calizza
13 presidents. There are great stories about presidents before the modern era, basically since World War II. George Washington has great stories about how he bent an iron bar in half. He threw a ball over the Potomac River. There's some really good stuff in there, but ultimately, I thought I wanted to have something that was not a thousand pages long. That was my one thing. I don't think I could, and I didn't want to write a book that was that long. I wanted it to feel manageable. I wanted it to feel like, even though some people, I'm 47, I don't remember Dwight Eisenhower's time in office, it was like post-World War II was a manageable and digestible group of presidents, 13 presidents, all of whom had some connection or other two sports that we could tell those stories about.

Darin Hayes
You get into some details. Uh, you know, I don't remember Dwight Eisenhower, other than the history books myself, but I, I'm a little bit older. I can remember Nixon, uh, being present. That's sort of the first one I have, but you touch base and, uh, their connection to sports, whether they were a great fan or participated in, uh, some amateur activity or maybe played major college football as some of the presidents did. And I found that really very entertaining.

Chris Calizza
Yeah, you know, one thing that was cool about doing the research and that encouraged me was, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson, all of the other presidents played or spectated or loved sports in some way, shape, or form. So, you know, Eisenhower loved golf. He played more golf than any president before Orson. Nixon loved to bowl, which is a little bit weird, but that was Nixon. He was a little bit of a loner. You know, one of my favorite stories is Nixon told the White House press corps that when he felt stressed out, he would often at night go and bowl at ten o ''o'clock or not at night go and bowl that he had lanes put in the White House and he would bowl between seven and 12 games a night, which is remarkable. This idea of the President of the United States just kind of rolling frame after frame after frame. I found it pretty compelling, particularly because I think it's revealing about who Nixon was. Nixon was a little bit of a loner. He was socially awkward. He was not good at small talk. And this idea of him bowling literally alone, I thought, was a powerful image.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, it wasn't speaking of image. You have an image of Nixon bowling a game. And when you said, you know, he's bowling like a dozen games. And I have family that owns bowling lanes here in Western Pennsylvania. So I do quite a bit of bowling. And I know how tiring it is after three games where you're bowling in a league. It's not ball after ball after ball. And you have an image of Nixon wearing a white button-down shirt with a tie all the way hooked up. And I'm like, my goodness gracious, that's that's quite a workout.

Chris Calizza
He was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was always sort of formal, I think Nixon. And yeah, you know, one thing that's interesting is he, as kind of makes sense, he actually got pretty good at bowling, uh, over time, uh, he bolded 229 at one point, seven strikes, including four in a row. That was his best game ever. But I mean, that's pretty good for an amateur. He's not a professional bowler, right? But for an amateur bowler, that's not bad. But again, he bolded a lot.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, he definitely got a lot of practice with us. So, can you talk to me and mention a little bit about what you have? We have quite a few of these 13 presidents who love to golf. You know, you talked about Ike, who is probably one of the better golfers. You talked about some guys that maybe weren't so good but still enjoyed the support. I guess, um, you know, no, having the knowledge that you have of these guys golfing and sharing that with the audience, if you had to pick up three guys to be in a foursome, you know, these presidents that they're all in your prime and could golf, who would be the three presidents that you would want to golf with from this group?

Chris Calizza
definitely, Eisenhower, not because he was particularly good. He was fine, you know, he played a lot, but the reason I would want Eisenhower is that he was a member in Augusta, and I would. I'm not getting on Augusta otherwise, so that's what gets me on Augusta. We're playing a foursome in Augusta, and you have a place to stay.

Darin Hayes
There, too, with the cabin built for him

Chris Calizza
how we're having them build it for him. And there's a bunch of that in the book, too, about how that came about. But yes. And then I think Trump would probably be interesting to play with. He's quite a good golfer. He's not as good as he says he is, but he's probably a five or six handicap. I mean, for someone his age, he's pretty good. The last one, I would say, is John Kennedy. John Kennedy is probably the best natural golfer of the 13 I looked at. He really downplayed how much golf he played and how good he was at it because he was concerned that this sort of idea of golf is an elitist sport. He already had that image of his father, being from a wealthy family and sort of patrician and blue blood. He didn't want to play into that, but he was quite a good golfer. So I would like to see Kennedy. I think that would also be hilarious for some of the military heroes, the guy from Camelot and the pro wrestling President, Donald Trump.

Darin Hayes
have indeed been very interesting. And I found that you know, you're, what you did with Dwight Eisenhower, you know, I knew about the Eisenhower tree, at least the basic story, but you did tell you went on about that and about the cabin, Augusta building it because he attended so much and like the played house.

Chris Calizza
all the time. Yeah, he was literally there all the time. So they built the house for him. I mean, it's nice. And it was, interestingly, made to look like a replica of the White House. He painted there pretty regularly. I mean, he sort of made, in a lot of ways, Augusta Augusta, right? The way that we think of it now is that it is probably the most exclusive golf club in the world, right? But you know, back in the 50s, it was a little bit actually 40s; it was a little bit different than that. Eisenhower brought a sort of fame to it and a level of attention to it that it didn't already have. And I think Augusta recognizes that that's why they built him the Eisenhower cabin, right? They loved having a president or a former president and a former military hero on the grounds, playing and talking about Augusta and being a member.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. And, you know, Eisenhower was a much deeper athlete than just golf in his older years. You know, we know from our website, Pigskin Dispatch, and you've mentioned in the book quite a bit that he was quite the football player back in his days at the Academy.

Chris Calizza
He was, and you know, it's so funny you think of it. I always think of this in relation to Bo Jackson, who was not a president of the United States, but like Bo Jackson had, Bo Jackson injured himself. Bo Jackson was a hero of my, you know, I'm 47. So right in my wheelhouse, you know, with the Raiders and the Royals. And if Bo Jackson had injured himself the way he injured himself and basically ended his career now, you know, he's probably out for a year, and then he comes back, you know, medical technology being what it is. Well, go back another 35 or 40 years; Eisenhower hurt his knee playing football, and that's it. I mean, he no longer plays football, even though that was sort of one of the reasons he was at the Naval Academy in the first place. So it's, you know, talking about being blessed to live at certain times. I always tell my kids that they're lucky to be living right now, as opposed to 100 years ago, and that is the perfect example of that.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, absolutely. He wasn't the only football player who had some success at the collegiate level. You had another president that had quite a career in college.

Chris Calizza
Yes, so I would say, you know, people always ask me when they find out you've written a book about sports and presidents. Well, who is the best athlete of all the presidents? That's one of the first questions people usually ask. And I always say the answer to that's pretty clear, and I think inarguable, and it's Gerald Ford. So Gerald Ford played offensive line and a little bit of defense at the University of Michigan. He was an All-American. When he graduated, he had offers from both the Bears and the Lions to play professionally; he turned those offers down to go to law school, which, by the way, talks about how things were different back then. It very rarely, I think, would you see a college athlete have an offer to play professional sports and turn it down to go to law school, at least immediately. But that's what Ford did. One thing that's really interesting about Ford is, without question, our best athlete as President; at the same time, he didn't like to talk about his athletic accomplishments during his political career because he was afraid of being categorized as just a dumb job. So Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States, often referred to Ford; when he referred to Ford, he said, oh, Gerald Ford, he got tackled one man too many times without a helmet on. So, he would play into the idea that Ford was just an athlete. And I think Ford really overcompensated in a lot of ways and didn't talk about his significant athletic achievements. I mean, without question, the most athletically accomplished President that we've ever had, Ford, and that is the reason that he wanted not to be typecast. He wanted to be more than just an all-American football player at the University of Michigan.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's definitely true. And you know, many people are aware that he played, but I don't think they realize how good he was and being the captain of that team.

Chris Calizza
I mean, he was, I always wonder, I mean, you know, these debates, I think, are fascinating, like, could Gerald Ford play on the University of Michigan offensive line now? No, probably not, given what his build was and what his stature was. But at the time, he was a standout.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, most definitely. Now, you know, staying on the football theme, I think maybe the biggest surprise to me by reading this book is, you know, Joe Biden in his football career. I never realized that you know, he had been successful as an athlete at the high school level, but maybe you could talk about it.

Chris Calizza
Yes. Absolutely. He goes to Archmere Academy, a private school in Delaware, and his senior year, he's a wide receiver, and his senior year, they're very, very good. They go undefeated. He goes, at least in part, to the University of Delaware to play football. His freshman year, and I think a lot of people who have either been kids or have kids can relate to this. During his freshman year, his grades were pretty poor. It's my freshman year of college. So, excuse me, his parents say, you're not playing football. But by the summer after his sophomore year, he's played spring football, and he's sort of set to be on the team the following year; what happens? Well, he goes on spring break that summer spring of his sophomore year, and he meets a woman named a girl at the time; she's 19, I think, named Nellie. Now, people who are familiar with Joe Biden's background will know that his first wife was Nellie. So he met his first wife on spring break, the summer of the spring of his sophomore year. So he's forced with a choice. She goes to Syracuse University. He wants to play football at the University of Delaware. If he plays football, he doesn't have his weekends free to go visit her. If he goes and visits her, he can't play football; he chooses her as a good choice. They got married. But yeah, Biden was a pretty good wideout from everything I could read about was written about him when he was in high school. He's actually a pretty good golfer, as well. He's not a bad overall athlete. He doesn't play nearly as much golf as Obama or Trump is, you know, his predecessors in office. But he is a pretty natural, good athlete. Overall, though, you know, at this point, we're talking about his age, you know, he's 80. We're probably not talking about Joe Biden going out and, you know, playing football anymore. But at one time, he was a pretty good athlete.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that really, really surprised me. Now, another part of the book that I really loved was the aspect where you sort of sneak up and surprise me. I would get in the rhythm of the reading on it. And all of a sudden, there's a pop culture reference, you know, like a Ron Burgundy quote, or, you know, I try. It was great. It was very entertaining. And I love being kept up a little bit pertinent to the story. So, what was your strategy when you were writing the book? You want to have a little bit of that pop culture come in.

Chris Calizza
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's sort of how I write generally, you know, is I've always written, I've written mostly, I should say, for the internet my whole life, whether it's at CNN or the Washington Post, most of my stuff has appeared online first. And yeah, I wanted it; I think what I didn't want is for the book to feel like required reading, that it was something that, you know, well, I better read this book. I wanted people to be excited about reading it and have fun while they were reading it. So I tried to make the writing, the anecdotes, and the stories there as fun as possible. One thing that I was really lucky with with the book was that there was so much raw material. Honestly, I was surprised by this; not that much has been written about it. So, there have been books written about presidents in golf. Rick Riley wrote a famous book, Commander in Cheat, about Donald Trump, and he always cheats at golf. But there hasn't really been a broad look at the sports the presidents played, what they loved, and what it tells us about them. And so I was mining a lot of ground that hadn't really been mined before. So, it made for fun research and a fun writing process. And I hope it makes for a fun read.

Darin Hayes
Well, it most definitely does. Okay, now I shared with you what I found to be the most surprising element as a reader. What was the most surprising thing to you during your research that you wrote in a book?

Chris Calizza
Well, you know, I spent the last five years at CNN covering Donald Trump every single day, writing about him most days. I did not think that going into the book, the thing I would have been surprised to learn would be something about Donald Trump. I thought maybe it'd be about Eisenhower or Ford or, you know, someone from a time past when I was less familiar with it, but it wound up being Trump, and I'll tell you what it was. So, Donald Trump actually played sports in college. It wasn't baseball. It wasn't golf. It was squash. So he played squash for one year at Fordham. And I talked to his biographer, a guy named, well, a guy at the Washington Post who was wonderful and a former colleague of mine. He told me a great story about Trump as a squash player. And he essentially said Trump wasn't a great squash player, not because he wasn't athletic, but because he didn't have the patience to sort of pound out points. He would get frustrated and just wail the ball as hard as he could. And, you know, that often would lead to an error, and he would lose the point. One other fun story about Trump and squash. He didn't like to take the team bus to and from games. So he would drive his sports car with his friends from the team with it. Now, the coach gave him transportation money for that, but he also charged his friends tolls and gas. So he pocketed that money, too. On one trip, they had just lost at the Naval Academy in Maryland. On the way back, Trump pulls into a department store. I think it was a Montgomery Wards. This will date him a little bit, but generally, in the department store, he emerges from the department store with a brand-new set of golf clubs, teas, and balls. They proceed to drive to this bluff overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. He and his friends just blast ball after ball into the water until they get bored, leave the golf clubs by brand-new golf clubs by the side of the road, and drive off back to Fordham. So I felt that I just, I didn't know that about him. I love that anecdote, and Mark Fisher is sorry; it is the name of the Washington Post reporter whom I talked to about this. I love the idea of Trump not being patient enough to succeed at squash despite his athletic ability. I think it's an interesting metaphor for how he approached politics, too.

Darin Hayes
Uh, yeah, I think a lot of maybe some of his business dealings, too. He sort of has television programs, which seems to be part of his personality. So yeah, very, very interesting. Well, Chris, why don't we take this opportunity to give the listeners, let's once again, the name of the book and where folks may get a copy of it?

Chris Calizza
So it's called Power Players Sports Politics in the American Presidency. If you type Power Players, you should be able to find it. It is on Amazon. It is on Barnes and Noble. It's on bookshop .org. There's an audiobook that I read. So, if you like my voice, buy the audiobook because it's me reading it. It's on Kindle. You also can go to, in real life, brick-and-mortar stores, any brick-and-mortar store that sells books; it should be there by now. If not, ask for it, and it will be there within a few days.

Darin Hayes
Well, Chris, we really appreciate you coming on and sharing the stories from this book and, and sharing this book for the world to, you know, not only capture, uh, you know, sports history but capture American history and world history in the process. And I love the mix of all the elements: the entertainment of pop culture, the history of the presidents, and, of course, sports. So it was a great book, and I highly recommend it. Thank you, sir, for joining us today.

Chris Calizza
Thanks for the kind words. It was really fun to write. I hope it's as fun.

George Bozeka is a prominent figure in the world of football history. He serves as the Executive Director of the Professional Football Researchers Association (PFRA), an organization dedicated to meticulously documenting and preserving the history of professional American football. Bozeka's passion for the sport translates into his work as a writer, researcher, and advocate for historical accuracy in football.

Early Life and Football Enthusiasm:

Through interviews on the Pigskin Dispatch Podcast it's evident that George's passion for football began at a young age. Growing up near the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, he likely witnessed firsthand the reverence for the sport's history. A specific moment that fueled his passion might have been attending the 1964 Hall of Fame game, where he witnessed the legendary Johnny Unitas play.

Leadership Role in the PFRA:

-Bozeka's dedication to preserving football history led him to the PFRA. This organization, founded in 1979, boasts a membership of renowned historians and authors. As Executive Director,

-George plays a crucial role in leading research initiatives, promoting historical awareness, and ensuring the organization's resources are accessible to researchers and fans alike.

Contributions to Football History:

-Beyond his leadership role in the PFRA, Bozeka actively contributes to the field through various endeavors:

-Authorship: He has authored books that delve into specific historical periods or teams, such as "The 1951 Los Angeles Rams: Profiles of the NFL's First West Coast Champions" and "The 1966 Green Bay Packers: Profiles of Vince Lombardi's Super Bowl I Champions."

-Public Speaker: Bozeka participates in interviews, podcasts, and events, sharing his knowledge and insights on various historical topics related to football.

-Advocacy: He actively advocates for the importance of historical preservation within the sport, ensuring that the stories of past players, coaches, and teams are not forgotten.

George Bozeka's dedication to documenting and promoting football history is invaluable. Through his leadership in the PFRA, his insightful publications, and his public engagement, he ensures that the rich tapestry of the sport is preserved for future generations of fans and researchers alike.

Chris Willis is a renowned author specializing in the rich history of professional football. Here's a breakdown of his career and background:

The Football Historian:

Head Librarian at NFL Films: Since 1996, Willis has held the position of Head Librarian at NFL Films, the production company responsible for iconic NFL highlight reels and documentaries. This role grants him unparalleled access to historical archives and resources, fueling his passion for chronicling the sport's past.

A Prolific Author:

-Multiple Books: Willis has authored numerous books delving into various aspects of professional football history. Some notable titles include:

-The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F. Carr (2010): This biography explores the life and impact of Joe Carr, a pivotal figure in shaping the early NFL.

-Dutch Clark: The Life of an NFL Legend and the Birth of the Detroit Lions (2012): This book sheds light on Dutch Clark, a player and coach who helped establish the Detroit Lions franchise.

-Red Grange: The Life and Legacy of the NFL's First Superstar (2019): This biography details the life and career of Red Grange, a legendary player who helped propel the NFL's popularity in the early 1920s.

-Walter Lingo, Jim Thorpe, and the Oorang Indians: How a Dog Kennel Owner Created the NFL's Most Famous Traveling Team (2017): This unique book explores the story of the Oorang Indians, a Native American exhibition team that left its mark on professional football's early years.

Beyond Books:

-Emmy Nomination: Willis's work extends beyond books. He received an Emmy nomination for his contributions to the HBO documentary "The Game of Their Lives: Pro Football in the 1950s."

-Professional Football Researchers Association: Willis has been a member of the Professional Football Researchers Association (PFRA) since 1993. This organization is dedicated to preserving and promoting the history of professional football, and Willis's involvement highlights his commitment to the field.

-Contributions to the Sport's Legacy: Through his research, writing, and contributions to documentaries, Chris Willis plays a vital role in preserving and sharing the stories that shaped professional football into the sport it is today.

The legendary founder of the Professional Football Researchers Association and he ended up writing a road map for people to preserve pro football history forever as a legacy.

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Born May 12, 1934, in Youngstown, Ohio, was Harold Davis the quarterback from 1953 to 1956 at Westminster College in Pennsylvania. What a stud player Davis was for the Westminster Titans as he led the program to the great success of undefeated seasons in 1953, 1955 and 1956 to post an overall record of 27-1-1 per the National Football Foundation.

Davis was a three-time NAIA All-America, who was a multi-threat quarterback who could run and throw. He was a first team selection in 1954 and 1955 and was a second team choice his senior year. The great athlete was also the star on the hardwoods as he scored over 1,200 career points and ranked 17th on the all-time Westminster scoring list. Harold Davis was honored to be selected for inclusion into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2004 .

Being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame is a mark of unparalleled prestige and accomplishment. It signifies that a player has not only excelled on the field but has also left a lasting legacy that transcends generations. This honor is reserved for those who have demonstrated exceptional skill, leadership, and impact in collegiate football, shaping the sport’s history and inspiring future players. Remembering these inductees is not just a tribute to their remarkable careers but also a celebration of their enduring influence on the game. Their stories and achievements serve as a beacon of excellence and a testament to the profound role they’ve played in elevating college football to new heights.

Born April 30, 1941, in West Monroe, Louisiana, was the LSU Tigers two-way halfback and defensive back from 1960 to 1962, Jerry Stovall.

The FootballFoundation.org sings the praises of Stovall indicating that he was unanimous All-America selection in 1962, Jerry Stovall was a literal "Mr. Everything" for LSU, playing halfback, leading his team in rushing and receiving and handling punting duties during his three years in Baton Rouge. What a player this guy was, he finished at LSU with 1,071 yards and 13 touchdowns on the ground, adding 462 yards and one touchdown receiving.

Jerry also held the LSU record for highest punting average (42.1) in a season, amassing 165 attempts for 6,477 yards by career's end. Stovall gained nearly 700 return yards on special teams and recorded seven interceptions as a defensive standout. Jerry Stovall was honored with induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008 after the National Football Foundation tallied their votes. He wore the Number 21 Jersey with LSU.