Football History

Born May 16, 1943, in Borger, Texas, was Donny Anderson who was the 1963 to 1965 starting halfback of Texas Tech. Donny’s NFF bio lists that he was known as "The Golden Palomino" as a two-time All-America halfback in 1964 and 1965.

He had some splash plays almost from the get-go, for as a sophomore at Tech, he intercepted a pass and ran 43 yards against Washington State. As a junior, his stat-line included a 90-yard run from scrimmage against Texas Christian and a 68-yard punt against Southern Methodist. The more he played, the better he got. In his Senior season, Donny was off the charts.

That 1965 season, Anderson ran a kickoff back 100 yards against Oklahoma State, caught ten passes against Arkansas, and scored 17 touchdowns in the season. The Sporting News named him co-winner (with Jim Grabowski of Illinois) of its Player of the Year Award. His 5111 yards on all-purpose running was a Texas Tech record. This includes his career yardage by rushing, receiving, kick returns, and interception returns. The National Football Foundation selected Donny Anderson for entrance into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1989. Donny enjoyed nine seasons at the professional level as a player too. The Pro Football Reference website shares that he spent 6 seasons as a Green Bay Packer winning two Super Bowls and two NFL Championships and three more years as a St Louis Cardinal. During his NFL stint he tallied almost 4700 yards with a 3.9 yards per carry average.

Born May 2, 1955, in Mineral Wells, Texas, was Richard Ritchie the Texas A&I Quarterback from 1973 to 1976. After 9 games Texas A&I had a 1-8 record going into the last game of the 1973 season.

A freshman, Richard Ritchie, moved up the depth chart to get the nod as the starting quarterback position according to the NFF's Bio on Ritchie. The Javelinas won that game and that propelled Ritchie to continue as the A&I signal caller quarterback for the next three full seasons. Texas A&I, now known as Texas A&M-Kingsville, in those seasons with Ritchie under center sported records of 13-0, 12-0, 13-0 enroute to winning NAIA Division I championships those three years. He passed for 40 touchdowns and rushed for 19. For his collegiate career Ritchie passed a total of 5,131 yards and he rushed for 1492. He also kicked 137 extra points and nine field goals. The National Football Foundation selected Richard Ritchie for entrance into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1998. Richard served as assistant football coach at Texas 1977-79, North Texas 1980, and Texas Tech 1981-84.

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.

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The Washington Commanders are a centerpiece of professional sports in the Nation's Capitol. Known previously as the Football Team, and the Redskins, the franchise has experienced both highs and lows in the League.

In this edition we explore the rise of the Redskins in the 1960s with historian Jim Johnson.

-Transcript of Washington Football in the 1960s with Jim Johnson


Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of pigskindispatch.com. Welcome back to the pig pen. We have another great episode where we're gonna talk about some great NFL history. And we're gonna talk a little bit about the East Coast teams and, in particular, the Washington Redskins. Now the last couple of years, they have been the Washington football team, but prior to 2020, they have been the Washington Redskins ever since 1939, I'm sorry, 1937. Today, our guest, Jim Johnson, hails from that area. Jim Johnson, welcome to the pig pen.

Jim Johnson
Thanks a lot for having me.

Darin Hayes
Jim, you have an interesting aspect. You have a nice website. If you could give us the address of your website so people can find it.

Jim Johnson
is Don'tWaveFootballHistory.com.

Darin Hayes
OK, and the Beltway history, from what I'm gathering, is basically the Baltimore and Washington franchises that you're covering the Colts, the Ravens, and the Redskins, Washington football teams. Is that correct? That's correct. OK, so that's that's some great football. There are, you know, a lot of championships between those three teams. That's for sure.

Jim Johnson
There really is. The history of that area is just fantastic. And, you know, we go all the way back. The Redskins won the championship in their first year in Washington at 37. They had this rookie quarterback named Sandy Ball, and that turned out fairly well. And they had, I think, a couple of other ones. And, of course, Joe Gibbs had three championships. And then you look over Baltimore, and the Colts had three championships. The Ravens had two. Just a rich history. But it's interesting because all three franchises also have had their downs. And, you know, obviously, the Washington franchise has been stuck in that cycle for some time. So I think what really makes it interesting is that you look at the ups and downs, what built the team up, and then what took them down. And usually, they get old. But then, you know, how quickly do they rebuild? So, there are some very interesting stories to tell just between those three franchises and 30 miles apart from each other.

Darin Hayes
OK. We're going to put the address of your website in the podcast show notes. Listeners, you can click a link there and go over and check out Jim's work on these three great teams. Now we're going to sort of focus in though on the Washington franchise, and sort of 1964, you pointed out before we started recording here, was sort of a pivotal year for the Redskins. And perhaps you could share with us why that was.

Jim Johnson
Well, yeah, they really had floundered miserably. Since they won the last championship, they played for the NFL championship in 1945 against the Cleveland brand, which I'll tell you how long it would have been, right? Right. And they had to the 50s and pretty much been horrible in the 60s didn't start out any better. Although they didn't get the new stadium in 1961, the state-of-the-art DC Stadium was one of the first circular, geek-cutter, multipurpose stands. But back then, it was an enormous upgrade from Griffith Stadium, where the old senators have played. That park was 57 years old. So they continued to flounder. But in 1964, they made two crucial trades. They picked up Sam Huff, the great New York Giants Hall of Fame linebacker. And he picked up Sonny Jurgensen from the Philadelphia Eagles straight up for Norm Snead. Norm Snead had been the Redskins number one draft pick; I think it was in 61, maybe 62. Exactly. And he struggled. But you know, what was around? Yeah. So both teams were just trying to take quarterbacks who had struggled with the other team, hoping that the new scenery would help them. Jurgensen wound up in the Hall of Fame, but Snead didn't. So you'd see who won that trade. Jurgensen had taken over in Philadelphia in 1961 from Norm Van Brocklin after they won the championship with them in 1960. And he had a good year in 61, and they finished second. But then he had a shoulder injury that lingered. The team fell apart; they kind of got old all at once. It happens so often. And 62, 63, and 64, they were struggling. And you know how well Philadelphia fans do with the team struggling, right? Sonny couldn't get out of there quick enough. He was really happy about the change of cigarette, which is interesting because, by contrast, Sam Huff is still bitter about getting traded by the Giants. And he never left the Washington area. He settled in; he's got business interests. He was a Redskins radio broadcaster for over 30 years. But he still says he will never forgive Ali Sherman, the Giants coach who traded him. Just because he was so settled in and still loves, I don't know if he does it anymore. But for many, many years, he loved to go back to New York, and he still traded him, as you know, one of the guys, one of the parts of the giant franchise. So it was interesting; they came in with such different perspectives, yet they both became people that the team was able to build around. And also, in 64, the Redskins drafted Charlie Taylor. Now, they drafted him as a running back. He was a running back in college at Arizona State. He is not so much a good pro running back, but they saw that he had the ability to run patterns, and they threw to him some sunny love run in front of running backs. And then in 66, when Otto Graham became the coach, he became a full-time flanger at that time, a wide receiver, as we know it now. And he wound up in the Hall of Fame. So, in 1964, they accumulated three Hall of Fame players who finished their careers there and had long careers. And over time, they were able to fill in players around them so that they became competitive, even though it still took them several years to make the playoffs.

Darin Hayes
OK, now that's interesting that Otto Graham, you know, of course, the great Cleveland Browns quarterback got into coaching and coached in Redskins. Do you feel that maybe having Otto Graham as your coach helped Jurgensen's career to some extent, too?

Jim Johnson
It's hard to tell. I think it probably did. And what also helped it in some ways was not having a running game. In 67, they had the two wide receivers for Charlie Taylor and Bobby Mitchell, who they got from Cleveland in 62. And, of course, Mitchell's in the Hall of Fame. So you've got those guys to throw to an extremely underrated tight end, as well as Jerry Smith. And in 67, Sonny threw the ball more frequently than any quarterback had in NFL history, and he threw for more yardage. I think he had about 3800 yards, which was an astronomic figure in the '60s. His receivers were numbers one, two, and four in the league in receptions. So that's when you know Sonny obviously had good years up to that point. But Graham is pretty well cutting loops with the air game. Now, part of it was as a choice; they had a running back, and they've got even 500 yards in a season. And some people throw the ball. He wasn't a man bomber by any stretch. He was a very surgical thrower and had one of the greatest arms in history. But you know, like a quarterback, Elway and Bradshaw are known for their bombs. Sonny is known for just throwing the ball on a dime in traffic. And he had guys, if it's some kind of catch it, then do something with balls with Bobby Mitchell, who was a converted running back. So he had guys that could; even though they were at the bottom of Mitch, he was a pretty good runner and was much better than Charlie Taylor. But once both of those guys got the ball out there and were in traffic, they could run with it. And a lot of receivers were not at that level, as those two guys were running after the catch or YAC, as they like to call it now, yards after right. They got a lot of them during their career. So yeah, great. I'm obviously let him go. And he was smart enough not to make them. Well, you call it now a mistake, maybe that auto grant or that Paul Brown made when he was coaching on a brand not letting him call the place. You know, I was smart enough not to try to call a place for Sonny Germans, and Sonny did a pretty good job on his own.

Darin Hayes
OK. Now, the 3,800 yards back in that era, they were only playing 12, 14 game seasons. And so you think that in comparison today, now we consider, Hey, 4,000 yards for a quarterback and a 16-game season now 17. That's a pretty good year for him. He's only 200 yards away from that, with fewer games. So that's pretty monumental to have 3,800 yards in a season.

Jim Johnson
Yeah, he had shattered the NFL record at that time. Now, at the same time, Joe Namath, I think it was the same season through before 1000 in the AFL. Now, the AFL had a much more wide-open game. So I would not equate that to Jurgis, and even though Jurgis and through less, you know, the NFL was very, very much a run-oriented league in the 60s and well into the 70s. So I think that was probably one of the greatest passing seasons anybody had, maybe until the marina came along in 84.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. And while the AFL at least at first had the advantage, their ball was a little bit shaped more like our more modern ball where it had the points a little bit less girth. So it was more apt to the spiral and the passing game where the NFL at that time, when the AFL first came out, had a little bit bigger ball, you know, wasn't as pass or friendly. So that's even more of a feat for Jurgensen to do, you know, be pretty close to what NamUs numbers were in the same year. So you have to put your hats off to him for that. That's for sure.

Jim Johnson
And he got him competitive. You know, he had a belief, and he was the quarterback when they started selling out the games. Now, of course, for many, many years, it was a given that you couldn't buy a ticket at the game. They were all season tickets. But that didn't start until, I think, 1965. They weren't winners yet, but they were winning. And that's when their rivalry started with the Cowboys because the Cowboys got good, and the Redskins were able most days to play with them and sometimes beat them. And they had the early games they had in that rivalry, Sonny against Don Meredith. They had some incredible games, which were, again, kind of unusual, you know, both teams in the 30s. You didn't get a lot of those games back in the day. And just the fact that the Redskins matched up well with them and kind of punching above their weight were the early seeds of the, you know, the Cowboy Redskins rivalry. Let me throw in a story you may be aware of. Well, I ran across it recently, and that just tickled me. The first volley in the Redskins Cowboys rivalry was before the Cowboys even had a team. George Preston Marshall was the owner of the Redskins up until he passed away in 69, 68, 69. He had his; he was the first one to get the band at the games. And his wife wrote the lyrics to Hail to the Redskins. Well, apparently, they had a bitter divorce because he liked to play around. After the divorce, she still had the right to the song. So Clint Murchison, who was the original owner of the Cowboys, was lobbying for expansion at that time. This was 1958, 59. George Preston Marshall was a visionary in many areas, but he was dead set against expansion because he had just seen the pie getting cut into smaller slices. He was not envisioning the bigger pie. So, he and the vote at that time had to be unanimous. So you could not even get one no-run. So what happened was Murchison saw a weakness, and he approached a fairly bitter ex-wife and blocked the rights to Hail to the Redskins.

Darin Hayes
No kidding.

Jim Johnson
And he leveraged Marshall's vote because he said, I own a song, and you can't play it unless you change your mind about that expansion.

Darin Hayes
Wow. So, there is a little bit of blackmail to get big D in the NFL.

Jim Johnson
Black male, legal black male.

Darin Hayes
Right, right. That's kind of brilliant. We just had a nice discussion on that. We had an author of Ten Gallon Wars, which is the sort of story of Dallas football. You know, the second version of the Dallas Texans, which turned into Kansas City Chiefs and the Dallas Cowboys, sort of coming up at the same time. You know, one in the NFL, one in the AFL. And that was an interesting book. I had not heard that story, though, about the Redskins and George Preston Marshall.

Jim Johnson
follows that one away. That is one of the classics.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, thank you for sharing. That's that's great. Now, if I got a question, OK, you said, like in the mid-60s, the Redskins got their stadium; I believe you called it the Washington, the D .C. Stadium or D .C. Stadium. Now, is that what evolved into RFK, or was that a different stadium?

Jim Johnson
same stadium. They re-named it shortly after Senator Kennedy was assassinated.

Darin Hayes
OK.

Jim Johnson
So, for the 1969 season, we became known as the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium War, as everybody called it, an RFJ.

Darin Hayes
OK. So it's the same stadium that I sort of grew up watching Washington play in during those years of the seventies and early eighties, OK?

Jim Johnson
And it still stands, although nobody plays there now. The last team was a soccer team, and they got their own stadium probably about three, four years ago. So it's just a matter of, like, they're probably waiting for it to fall down because that stadium is now over 60 years old.

Darin Hayes
Wow. That's got to be a prime piece of real estate there, too. Do you think somebody would be trying to grab that?

Jim Johnson
It is federally owned. And that's what the leverage is; you may be familiar with the story of how George Preston Marshall was finally forced to integrate. He was the last team, the last major sports team to integrate, not just in the NFL. And he was just steadfast, hey, you know, we like, I'm not gonna say exactly what he said, but you know, they let black players play against it. So what does it matter? I'm not telling anybody they can't play or they can't come to the games. But then, when the Kennedy administration was in place in 61, which is when the stadium was getting ready to open, in order to sign the lease with the Department of Interior, which had, and I believe still has, domain over that land, he had to sign a nondiscrimination clause, which had just been made standard in federal contracts. And he got leveraged, threatened, whatever, that they would void his lease. If he was in breach of contract, then you would have nowhere to play. So he never admitted that's why he did that. But in 61, the draft was in December back then. He drafted his first black player and made the trade for Bobby Mitchell, who came over in 62. And because of that clause and what we were finally pushing over without that, who knows,

Darin Hayes
Hmm. Now, I guess the perception I always get of George Preston Marshall, even going back to the thirties when he started the Boston Braves and changed that name to the Redskins in Boston and moved the team. And in some stories like this, I always get he's somewhat of a villainous character. Is that the way he was perceived in the Beltway area?

Jim Johnson
Well, he was a complicated guy because he, by every count, was an absolute racist man. That doesn't mean that he didn't do good things for the league. You know, he was very much a promoter. He built a network basically, and this was all connected. They were the southernmost team in the NFL until the Atlanta Falcons came in in 1966. So before they had the national TV contracts, he had his own little syndicated network all the way through the south. So North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and all that was Redskin territory. OK, and at one point in the late 50s, he had even he didn't have the copyright law to do this, but he had even changed the words in Hail to the Redskins. Instead of fighting for old DC, he changed the fight for Dixie.

Darin Hayes
Really?

Jim Johnson
really was kind of pandering to his southern fans, his southern base, as it were. And I read that in his last will and testament, he had bequeathed money for charity but no charity that practiced integration.

Darin Hayes
Hoorah!

Jim Johnson
His family challenged it, and they got that clause thrown out in court. So, his money was widespread. If you could imagine it in D. C., that would have been very challenging.

Darin Hayes
Great, yeah, that's...

Jim Johnson
right? So they were able to get that thrown out of court, but that was like his last; his last will was still. So, so he was, he was kind of complicated because he was, he was very gregarious. There were people who really liked him, even though they knew he was a bigot because he was one of those guys. When you're around him, of course, you're a white guy; you're around him. It was hard not to like him. And he did, you know, a lot; he was very much an innovator in the marketing and entertainment aspect of football; he's way ahead of his time. But yeah, at the core, he really had some bitter issues. And they never went away; he wasn't going to fight.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's that's sad. That's sad, huh? Well, let's go. Let's go back into the team, I guess. So the 1960s, you know, Jurgensen Taylor and Mitchell, you know, are sort of the core players that are bringing this franchise along. You know, they're winning some games, having some good seasons, thirty-eight hundred yards by Jurgensen. How does that take them through the rest of that decade? How do they do?

Jim Johnson
Well, they were floating with 500, but they couldn't get over 500 because they didn't have a running game and their defense, even with Sam Huff, but Sam Huff was at the back end of his career; the defense wasn't very good either. So, you know, Sonny was put on a good show and kept it competitive, but, you know, we didn't have the help around it. So, Autogram only lasted three years as coach. And then, in '68, Sonny missed some time, injured. And of course, you know, the back of, he had a better backup gym than now, so he came in, but he wasn't such a jerk, without such a jerk as a butt kick. So that opened up the job. In 69, Edward Bennett Williams had taken over as president of the team as George Preston Marshall had been incapacitated, although Edward Bennett Williams only owned about five percent of the team. But he was voted in as president. Jack Kent Cook had not arrived on the scene. He was still out on the West Coast with the Lakers. So he had voted his shares, his voting rights to his shares, to Edward Bennett Williams. So Edward Bennett Williams made the coup by hiring Vince Lombardi. In the city of Washington in 1969, Vince Lombardi was the head football coach, and Ted Williams was the manager of the Washington Sanders.

Darin Hayes
How do you

Jim Johnson
10-year-old kid, seeing those guys on the cover of Sports Illustrated, which was like the number one honor we did sports at that time, right? Right. And within a few months of each other, like, oh my gosh, because I, you know, I hadn't been watching sports at all. But I had already learned that, you know, teams of Washington lost; that's what they did. And then, you know, the senators get a winning record. And then the Redskins got a winning record; they were seven, five, and two; I think it was in Lombardi's first year. And you could tell they still needed more players. But Lombardi took basically the same team they had in 68 and served a few guys here or there. But they were; they got outclassed three or four times. But in every game, they had a chance to win, and they pretty much won. And you just see that this, I don't want to say the sky was a limit. But everybody figured the next year, it was the same thing he did in Green Bay. In his first year in Green Bay, they were competitive. The next year, they played in the championship game, and the third year, they won the championship, and you know, you know, the rest of that story. So he was on the same projector when, of course, tragically, he died because he hadn't taken care of himself. You know, he was the way he is as much reason as any one person that you get a colonoscopy.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's true. He was only he was only like 58 years old, I believe when when he passed.

Jim Johnson
that. Yeah, he was still a very young man, but he had just he had felt horrible for months. And finally, people around him and nag him and nag him. Just imagine a nagging mental body, right? But eventually, he felt bad enough that he gave in. And by then, it was way too late. So they did what they couldn't with medicine, which was not the same 50 years ago as it is now. And they have the physical body way that Georgetown Medical Center, the cancer way, we did a lot of development, he did a lot of fundraising in his name. So, you know, even in passing, you know, he did good things. And he was always very community-oriented; of course, unfortunately, that was a memorial. But that set them back a year; they were six and eight the year after that, and they played several games; they could have won, but they didn't; it was not a huge difference, but it was enough for the difference.

Darin Hayes
Now, who took over after coach Lombardi had passed? Who took over the Redskins as the coach.

Jim Johnson
It was an unsuccessful tenure with the Steelers, as everybody else did back in those days. He was an assistant with Lombardi in Green Bay when he got the Steelers job. And Lombardi hired him in Washington; I think he was on the offensive line on it. The main thing he coached, I'm not sure when he coached in 69. So, with him passing away in August before the season started, it wasn't like they could do a search. So, he basically worked the interim for the year. Yeah. So it was just...

Darin Hayes
just a couple of weeks before the next season was starting.

Jim Johnson
I think he had coached a little bit in camp. He had had surgery, and he got out, and he coached a little bit, and he watched one of the exhibition games, but then they did a recheck, and they found more cancer, and he did not last very long after that. So yeah, it was, I think, late August before he passed away, and I see it started later back then, but still, it was less than a month before kickoff.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. How could any team recover from that? If you lose your leader like that. Wow.

Jim Johnson
And especially that region. And I know, in particular, Sonny Jurgensen got a lot of sympathy from him. So, he had a taste of success. Sonny Jurgensen was like, smelt. He was in great shape. And you know, it's not what he was known for in his career. He had a belly he carried around, but he was already literally whipped in the shape, and he loved it. He loved being coached by LaBarge. So yeah, it was like the air just got let out of the plant. And it's a credit to what he had built. They managed to win six games after and did not completely fall apart because they were a competitive team. But then, you know, less than two years after getting LaBarge, Edward Bennett, Edward Bennett Williams struck again and got George out. And he was able to, you know, be a wheeler-dealer. In 1971, they called his first team the Rams teams because he got, I think, somewhere between 10 to 12 players from the Rams team that he had just gotten fired from.

Darin Hayes
Hmph.

Jim Johnson
And he never met a draft choice he liked. So, he was always trading draft choices. In fact, they caught him trading the same graph choice a couple of times. And I think they got a penalty, but I think the penalty was that they lost with a draft choice, so they didn't want to bother him, so they probably got fined. And he largely remade that team in his image. But I think what also remade his image was Sonny Jerns getting injured in exhibition season 71. And, of course, he was going to be starting a quarterback. But they had traded for Billy Kellner, backup quarterback, which is like, hey, that's a great idea. You never know, right? Sonny was getting up there. He was in his mid-thirties. And then I think it was the last exhibition game or next to last; I remember they played six exhibition games. I know, can you believe that? And in the starters,

Darin Hayes
The starters actually played all six of those, too. Oh, they don't really play. Yeah.

Jim Johnson
games. Yeah, it wasn't just a dress rehearsal. He studied through an interception, and he made an attack when he broke his left arm. But he was still out for weeks. Billy goes in, and they win their first five games. And the town goes nuts. Even in the sixth game, they lost, which really turned around their season because not only did they lose, they lost Charlie Taylor, who broke his ankle. By that time, Bobby Mitchell was retired. So their wide receiver court was kind of thin. I think they had Roy Jefferson at that point. But beyond that, they were they were really kind of thinner. So they'll never forget that when we came home from that game, 1000s greeted them at the National Airport. They were just outgoing, and the town was berserk with red-skin fever. It's like, my god, five, and oh, we got to make the playoffs, and they did. Although they had to get the wild card because the rest of the season they kind of staggered, you know, they beat Dallas in Dallas. In that five-game stretch, Dallas came into our pain and beat the Reds because 13 to not just couldn't generate. Even though, you know, Larry Brown was starting to emerge as a big running back, he had his big year the next year. However, for the defense and special teams that George Allen kept, he had the first full-time special teams coach, Marv Levy. I'm sure you've heard of him. Right? That's where he got his. I don't know if it was his start, but that's where he got some attention as a special teams coach. And, you know, they had good return teams, and they had great kick-blocking teams. You return multiple games around, of course; the only touchdown he scored in the Super Bowl against Miami was on a black kick. And, you know, thanks to Gary, doing whatever he was doing. Almost got back

Darin Hayes
They almost got back in that game, too, after they got the ball back, right?

Jim Johnson
back down seven, of course, each day has had no chance against Miami's defense, but yeah, it's like, you know, 14, nothing here. They're going to kick the field; we're going to be 17, nothing turns off the TV right then they block it ball goes up near Mike Bass catches it runs like hell down the field 14 seven defense holds gets the ball right back, and then he just continued to knock this down that ability color, and Larry Brown and that was that.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. I don't, I don't think a lot of people realize that, that that undefeated season for the dolphins, even though they, they dominated the statistics at Superbowl. Yeah. It was, it was a one score game late in the game in Washington, Washington gets a break. They, they could pull it off at least get to the tie.

Jim Johnson
Well, and here's another thing people get. The Redskins were favored going into that game by a couple of points.

Darin Hayes
Oh, they were. I didn't realize that.

Jim Johnson
Yeah, because they had gone 11 and one and then clinched the division. So they just kind of threw it in the neutral. They lost down in Dallas, and then they lost the last game; I think it was the Buffalo. But they were considered, you know, the dolphins really weren't much to look at that year. They just beat you, you know, they had a stifling defense, and they ran the ball and greasy through it every now and then just to stay away. And, you know, what a waste of them. Hall of Fame wide receiver Paul Warfield, right? He's out there doing, I don't know, playing with his neighbor or something. You know, he's, but they never threw them all. During several games Miami had that year, they threw fewer than ten passes.

Darin Hayes
Well, with the three running backs that they had, they probably didn't have to throw the ball that much.

Jim Johnson
And, of course, the defense was, no name defense was nasty.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. They were pretty good. Pretty good. That's what builds an undefeated team, an undefeated championship team, I guess. Yeah. That's for sure. All right. So, OK. So the Redskins, you know, they have George Allen; they're a veteran team because Allen doesn't really like the, the Rooks and a, you know, have a tight, tight game, but, you know, just miss out on, on winning a Superbowl, their first Superbowl appearance. What will the team do next season?

Jim Johnson
Uh, the next, actually the next three seasons, they won the wild card.

Darin Hayes
OK

Jim Johnson
They never won the division, and they never won another playoff game because they were always playing the wild card game on the road. There were four playoff games in each conference at that time, so the Wild Card team never got a home game, and they got beat by the Vikings pretty well a couple of times and got a good speed on, but you know Dallas was near the height of their powers. The Redskins have the advantage over them in 72, but the Cowboys were just a little more consistent over time, and actually, in that stretch, the St. Louis Cardinals had a bit of a run, and they won the division one year. They were, you know, in the Redskins and had some great games. Jim Hart, Mel Gray, and Terry Metcalf had very explosive Don Coryell teams, the birth of Air Coryell before he got to San Diego. So that was a really tough division. The Giants were legal for much, but those three teams really knocked heads pretty hard, and 75 was the first year that the Redskins missed the playoffs and won 86. They got back in the next year, we missed it in 77, and everybody wins done, but then we said, OK, you know George, this is as good as we're going to get, and now all of a sudden, nine and five, ten and four wasn't quite good enough. The bar had been raised thoracically where. He was like a hero the year that they went nine, four, and one and got in the wild card in 71. They didn't quite have a parade, you know, it was just the excitement, all you know, crowd at the airport and all that, and now it was in 77 they finished nine and five a year before they finished ten and four, and it was like, well, you know we're kind of in we need to make a coaching time. So that's one thing that George did during his seven years. He raised the bar drastically, and the bar stayed up there for a good while. So, I don't want to say that the culture was totally changed because George Allen built a unique, non-applicable culture of guys who were really old but still had nothing in the tank, and George used them. He knew how to use them, at least on defense. He didn't really pull much off that. He's often the coordinator most of that time Ted Marchebroa, who later had great success with the cults rebuilding the cults from the mid-seventies. But yeah, he was, you know, just a very conservative who ran the ball, which runs the ball, and you can imagine George Allen's son of Jordan's son really never quite hit it off. But one of the great stories about those Redskins is that Sonny and Billy Kilmer became the best of friends and still are. I saw a picture of him recently. I think it was a game this year. Billy came up to town, and they hung out. They were playing a nationalist game and having a beer.

Darin Hayes
No kidding. I mean, that's amazing when you have two guys who are vying for the same position and a gigantic payday. I mean, it's not as big back then, but it was still substantial back then to be the starting quarterback over being the backup. And you see here that a lot of them become such close friends and lifelong friends. That's kind of a great thing about football.

Jim Johnson
Well, I think one of the ways they say it now is to game those games. The two of them have a very strong mutual respect for each other. You know, they like hanging out. You know, they said they really enjoyed the new Redskins weight room. It was a nice weight bench, a nice place for them to sit quietly and have lunch. You know, and but just they, and then when five of them showed up in 74, I think it was a very rookie; after he played sometimes in Canada, the two of them had the common cause of one of them staying healthy enough to play. So Tyson got to play a whole lot of him early on. I know Sonny made amends with them later on. And they got to be, I don't know if they got to be real friends, but they definitely were cordial instead of Sonny calling broadcast. But yeah, that's one of my favorite stories. And they were marketing, actually the competition between the two of them. I'll never forget; I think this was 72. They were selling bumper stickers, and I had one of the bumper stickers. I'm a Skins fan. And I like Billy. I'm a Skins fan. And I like Sunday. Do one of the worst things you can. It was always Sunday. He was my favorite race game of all time. I just love sunny germs. I don't think he was good as a Unitas. But, you know, he was a great, great quarterback. But he and Kilmer were able to plow through that and just turn out the noise. They focused on playing football, supporting each other, and encouraging each other even when something was so frustrating with injuries. You know, 72 got the starting quarterback job back and played a couple of great games; what a great win against Dallas. And then he tore his Achilles. And that famous picture of him walking off the field, Billy walking on looking at his foot like, you know, what's wrong, and probably want to give her a hug, but he had to get in. Somebody had a quarterback. So he had to get in and call the next play. But yeah, that's one of my favorite stories. And that's the kind of guy that George got, you know, give him credit for that. He got team-oriented guys that you like being around, and all of them were out in the community. You know, I was becoming a teenager and would go to all the events. I remember sitting with Dancing Bear, Robin Dole; he was doing a thing at a tire dealership. He was just sitting and shooting the bowl for an hour and telling a story. He was great. You know, I met Ken Houston signing an autograph and said something nice to him. And he looked up and like, gee, thanks. I can really mean something that this dumb kid said. It gave him a compliment. That's the sky. I love that team. I love the over-the-hill guy. They were, I think, very level. They weren't white championships. I wish they had. We love it. Seeing that, you know, most of those guys ever won a championship. This is their last shot, especially the ones that came to the Rams; they never won one back in those days. I would love to have seen them get one. But boy, they were just so much fun to root for in my four years of, you know, picking a team, and, you know, it was the local team; I always gravitate to the local team. But boy, they were just so much fun.

Darin Hayes
You know, that's what's interesting that you say that because I've heard so many people say that about, you know, the other team that you supported as a kid, the Baltimore Colts of the '60s, in the same way that they were out in the community. The fans loved them. They loved each other. We've had Upton Bell on, who was the player personnel at the time during the 60s with those great runs as a Super Bowl three and Super Bowl five. And he just adored those Colts teams. And so, you know, being from the Beltway, writing about the Beltway teams, who, who as a teenager, you're really impressionable years where you're really getting into watching these pro players. What happened when the Baltimore Colts of that era were playing the Washington Redskins in your household?

Jim Johnson
My household at that time was a redskin household.

Darin Hayes
Was it? OK.

Jim Johnson
And I remember one of the greatest games I ever went to see was a Monday night game in 1978 in Baltimore when the Redskins were playing. And it was probably Burke Jones's last great moment as a Colt quarterback. 78 was the year Burke got hurt. He tried a couple of times to come in and play but wasn't able to get very far. And he kept going in and out. He was holding his shoulder and limp a couple of times, and he didn't really touch down pass. And the Colts wound up winning that game late, 21 -17. And it turned out it was the last game Billy Kilmer ever started. And he was awful. Just terrible. I think it was like 2 for 11. I just couldn't hit anything. And Fisman came in and always pulled the game out. And I was sitting next to a Fisman fan. It really took me a long time to warm up to him. And that hadn't happened yet. And I had my best friend, who was a diehard Colts fan on the other side. I'm like, I got nowhere to go. But it was a great game. I always respected the Colts. Even before, you know, he was a Redskins fan. And, you know, in Washington and Baltimore, some people try to lump them into one area. Don't. The two areas really, in most ways, have very little interest in anything to do with each other. Baltimore folks think Washington looks down their nose at them. There's some truth to that. And Washington people think I couldn't, which is why I looked down the nose at them. But I've always been drawn to Baltimore because Baltimore, in my finding fault with Washington, Baltimore always had that greater sense of community. Washington, at least, you know, back in the day, Washington was very much more of a transient area. In fact, I remember going back to Sports Illustrated, again, an article, sometime in the 70s, calling something about the problem of being the home team and nobody's hometown, talking about Washington sports. OK, whereas, you know, Baltimore grew up, your Orioles fan, your Colts fan, and if you're not here, keep your mouth shut. Whereas in DC, sure, DC was not a sports town back then, as it was a great skin town. Even when the bullets moved over, they had a capital center. They got more support for a lot of years, even after they won the championship. And the capitals were kind of the same way. It took many, many years for them. But the Redskins were, and I hate saying that in the past tense, but they were the passion of that town. It was incredible. Even when they were terrible, they were supported at a reasonable level. But, you know, as I said, it took them in the start again, 50 - 55,000 a week. So yeah, they're just two completely different areas.

Darin Hayes
What's the distance between the two cities?

Jim Johnson
I think from downtown to downtown is about 35 miles.

Darin Hayes
OK.

Jim Johnson
And there's a Baltimore, Washington Parkway that connects them. So you can get there in a reasonable amount of time. It's like a federal National Park Service route or something like that. And there's, you know, a lot of back and forth between the cities, but when it gets down to the sports teams, currently, Baltimore is gravitating a little bit toward the Capitals and hockey because they don't have hockey. But one of the things when after the Colts lap, and it was never public, but a lot of suspicion that Jack Kent Cook, who had taken charge of the Redskins, was fighting against Baltimore getting a team back because he was thinking, I'll just get the Baltimore market. And that was never going to happen. In fact, my best friend, the Colts fan, never became a Red Skin fan, never was interesting, as big a Red Skin fan as I was. I'm like, come on, come on. We watched the 82 Super Bowl together. He was rooting against Miami. I still have scars from the Colts in Miami. And, you know, I'm just, I'm rooting for the Red Skins. He couldn't make it something for the Red Skins. So that, you know, that's pretty deeply ingrained. So Washington was never going to get that market. Now, the Orioles were able to get a lot of the Washington market after the Senators left. But Washington is never going to get the Baltimore market. It's just not going to happen. That's just the way they're wired. Baltimore's got a team, that's their team, but they're not going to pay any part of Washington's business. So when Jack Kent Cook tried to build a stadium out in Laurel, Maryland, which is about halfway, thinking he was going to get the, you know, get more of the Baltimore traffic, that's going nowhere fast. And the state of Maryland did not support that. They eventually supported it because they do play in Maryland now. The FedEx field is in Prince George's County, Maryland. The Maryland technically has two teams, but it's only just a hop, skip, and a jump from the DC line. So it's very much a DC area.

Darin Hayes
I guess I never really thought about it like that. So, Maryland actually has the same amount of professional NFL teams playing at the Pennsylvania desk. Yes. And you wouldn't think of that.

Jim Johnson
But Maryland only claims one.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I understand that. Very interesting. OK, well, I definitely appreciate you coming on sharing stories of growing up with the Redskins, their 1960s 1970s era teams. And we're going to have to have you on again to talk maybe about the Colts or some more of the Redskins. But we appreciate your time, sir, in your knowledge and the stories that you shared.

Jim Johnson
Oh, it's a lot of fun talking to you. You know, I could go all night. So, yeah, anytime you want to do it, let's let's do it again.

Darin Hayes
OK, and once again, maybe you could give us the website address and we'll also have it in the show notes.

Jim Johnson
you insist. Don't wait .footballhistory .com is still building it up. Most of what I have up there is the Baltimore writing. I'm just now getting into the Asheville, Washington writing, but you know, if you bookmark it, you'll see more and more and more stuff coming up about all three teams. Baltimore Colts, or we see Baltimore Colts, the Ravens, and the Redskins.

Darin Hayes
OK, well, be sure to check that out. Thank you once again, sir. Thank you.

Jim Johnson
Thanks.

---

There are a handful of early coaches who have had such a resounding impact on the game of football that they actually changed the game, and took players to the upmost sides of their God Given talents. Percy Haughton, not a household name by any means, is one of these rare individuals in gridiron lore, whose story needs to be told.

Author Dick Friedman joined us to chat about his book on the Harvard coaching legend.


Percy_Haughton_D_Friedman_1

⏰Sat, 06/01 05:45AM · 48mins

Transcript

Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes at pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal into positive football history. And we're gonna stare down that portal today and go way back, probably 125 years or so back into the East Coast of football, where football started. And we have a gentleman who's written a book called The Coach Who Strangled a Bulldog, How Harvard's Percy Haughton Beat Yale and Helped Reinvent Football. That's, of course, author Dick Friedman. Dick Friedman, welcome to the program.

Dick Friedman
Thank you very much, Darin. It's great to be here.

Darin Hayes
It's very interesting to have this talking about Coach Percy Haughton because we have not covered him in our program and we have, you know, probably about 1000 different podcasts and I can't believe I've never had anybody talk about him before so I'm really excited to hear a little bit more about coach.

Dick Friedman
Well, I gotta say, I think I won't say he's totally lost to history. He is, of course, in the College Football Hall of Fame. So if you're in the College Football Hall of Fame, you're out there, you know, you're a figure. But he's, because he did most of his coaching before World War I, before the age of the newsreels, I think to some degree he is lost to history. You know, for instance, he's not nearly as famous as Newt Rockne, who followed him along and is now the most important coach in American College Football, arguably. I mean, I guess you could also, you know, invoke Bear Bryant and maybe even Nick Saban at this point. But in any event, Percy Horton was a figure who did his greatest work really by 1915. And, you know, and then the United States went to World War I, and after that, things changed. And then Percy, except for a very brief stint in Columbia, was out of the game. So, in any event, he is kind of a distant figure, maybe more distant than he should be.

Darin Hayes
OK, yeah, that's very interesting. I think, and I can see, that your passion, and you're talking about the passion of Coach Haughton. And I'd like maybe to get some of your background to tell us why Percy Haughton is a person of interest that you would write a book about.

Dick Friedman
Well, it's very interesting, Darin, because I grew up eight miles from Harvard Stadium in Newton, Massachusetts. I started going to Harvard games when I was seven years old in 1958. And then I actually went to Harvard and graduated in 73 and, of course, went back most seasons to see games, either at the stadium or when they were on the road. But interestingly enough, it took an assignment when I was working for Sports Illustrated, which I did for 18 years. I was working on the college football coffee table book that Sports Illustrated did about 12 or 13 years ago. A piece of copy came in front of me written by my colleague, David Sabino, and it was Harvard's Percy Haughton, who was 71, 7, and 5 in Cambridge from 1908 through 1915. And I looked at it and I went, holy. And then I won't say the next word that I said, holy blank. I've known this my whole life. Has anybody ever written a book about this guy? And I did a little investigating. And the answer was no. Nobody had written a book about him, although he had been part of a few other books. And I said, wow. I said this has got to be worth something. This particular era, especially of Harvard football that he coached, was an amazing era with some amazing players. So there's got to be something there. A lot of people that I talked to didn't really think there was anything there, and they were sick and tired of hearing about Harvard. And there was a lot going on. Nevertheless, when I did a little more investigating, the thing that I found was, aside from the Outnet record, which is amazing, there was really a great story about this guy and about the players that played for him. He turned out to be an absolutely seminal figure in the beginnings of what I call modern football. And the more I got into it, the more fascinated I got. And then I discovered that he had written a book which is now a hundred years old, exactly this year, called Football and How to Watch It. I read the book, and it's actually available on Google Books. And I recommend that anybody read it because it's fascinating. And basically, the book holds up amazingly well a hundred years later. I mean, the one thing that is not as big a part of it as it is now in the game is passing. That was not nearly as big a part of the game. It was just coming in in the twenties and certainly was not as well developed as it became even 10 to 15 years later. But the rest of it, it's as if he could write it as if he had written it last week. And so the more I looked, the more I looked, and the more research I did, the more I was convinced that there was something there. Then, I found one of his great assistant coaches, who was actually his backup fullback at Harvard. He was a guy named Reggie Brown, who was his advanced scout and did notebooks. And these notebooks were suddenly hiding in plain sight of all places Notre Dame. I got in contact with the librarians at Notre Dame, and they sent them to me on loan. And again, reading, what he did was he had all sorts of diagrams and plays, like if he would be scouting Yale for the game and he would be scouting and he'd go to Yale practices and he put their formations down and everything. And again, the more you look at it, the more I am going, wow, what a treasure trove this is.

Darin Hayes
There's got to be there's got to be a story behind it. How did the assistant coach at Harvard's notebooks and playbooks basically end up at Notre Dame? There has to be a Knute Rockne who had to do something about this.

Dick Friedman
Well, it's possible the other thing that's that's, and I asked I asked he actually asked that question of a few people. And what they said is that often things go are sold to collections, various collections and then the schools will buy the collection. And that's probably what happened.

Darin Hayes
That makes perfect sense, though.

Dick Friedman
Yeah, yeah. But anyway, you look at these things, and these things are, you know, 110 years old now. And you're amazed at the sophistication of the game already. Right. I mean, that, that, that, in fact, every, everything as I as I kept researching, that was one of the main things that, that, that came through to me was how even back in 1910 1915 the game, the scouting, the media, of course, called the press then was already amazingly sophisticated. And, you know, again, I said, there's a lot going on here that, that, that's plenty for me to write about. And sure enough, you know, I almost got lost in the research; as you well know, that happens to all of us. We go down the rabbit hole and, and the next thing you know, you know, we forget to write the book. But luckily, that didn't happen. And, and, you know, that's how the coach who strangled the bulldog came to be. So, anyway, it was a great, great experience for me. And, you know, the other thing is that it got me some cred among the Harvard Athletic Department. And I ended up being, I now, for the last, since 2014, I've been the Harvard Magazine football correspondent. Really nice. Yeah, I mean, I've been, I, when I was on the East Coast, I would go to as many games as I could. Now that I've been on the West Coast, I've been streaming the games on ESPN Plus. I have to say it's not a bad way to be a correspondent. You know, I mean, you get it, but you get it almost as much as you need. Almost better than being there. And, you know, I write up a little report every, after every game and, and, you know, it's been a lot of fun, and it's also, you know, kept me in touch with a lot of people back at the school, which is wonderful.

Darin Hayes
And that's going to be fantastic to be in your alma mater, too. That's really special.

Dick Friedman
Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's been great. And, you know, the other thing is, I've gotten to meet and talk with the coach at Harvard. Now, Tim Murphy is a tremendous coach, and I have judged him as the greatest coach in Harvard football history, even greater than Percy Haughton. And I give him the nod, partly because Murph has been added for 28 seasons now, whereas Percy only did it for nine, you know, or eight. So no, I guess it's nine. So, you know, Murph has won like nine Ivy League championships and is a tremendous football coach. But anyway, so between one thing and another, it's been a tremendous experience for me.

Darin Hayes
Well, yeah, congratulations. That's a great honor. And, uh, something, you know, especially to be staying in touch with your Alma water and, uh, stay in touch with football, even though you're on the other coast. The Dick, let's get it a little bit into the Percy Haughton's background. How did he get involved in football?

Dick Friedman
Percy went to Groton, the fabled prep school. Percy was a member of the class of 95, that's 1895, at Groton, and then went on to Harvard, where he was in the class of 1899. Percy was a star athlete at Groton, one of the greatest athletes; even today is still ranked one of the greatest athletes that Groton ever had. He was a big, tall guy, very lean, very limber. He was a tremendous punter, but his actual favorite sport remained, and so was baseball, where he was a great center fielder for both Groton and the Crimson. And he loved baseball players for his football team. That's what they always said, that as soon as he saw a great baseball player, a lot of them already were great football players, but he would try to convert them into football players. Anyway, he went on to Harvard and played fullback for the Crimson. This was a time when Yale was totally dominant in football in the 1890s and early 1900s, a really great golden age for Yale. They were the Alabama of their day, really. He was involved in one game in 1898 when his punting helped Harvard win a rare victory. But again, when you have a rare victory in these series, people really do remember it. And then he went on after college, after Harvard, he went on and coached at Cornell for a couple of years. And he actually succeeded a coach that you may have heard of named Pop Warner. And then Percy went back to Boston, coaching not being a well-paid profession at that time. Percy went on back to Boston and worked in the bond business. And at the time, Harvard was kind of struggling, losing to Yale and finally people in Cambridge got fed up and they went after Percy and they said, how would you like to take over? He said he would with one condition, and that condition was that he had total control. He was not gonna take it if people were gonna be kibitzing over his shoulder. And sure enough, they were so desperate that they grabbed him. In the first year, he beat Yale in some polls back then, and some newspapers named him the national champion, Harvard national champion. There were seven, oh, and one; they were undefeated, and Percy had achieved his cred. From there on, he had a successful run. But again, it was his way or the highway. And he really systematized football. He really broke the game down and kind of modernized it. A lot of the things he innovated or made popular, at least, are things that we see coaches still doing today.

Darin Hayes
OK. Now, now with that story there with him, uh, you know, beating Yale sort of right out of the shoot with the coaching, is that where the title to your book came from, strangling the Bulldog?

Dick Friedman
Yes, it was that particular game that Yale game in 1908 when Percy, they went to Yale, they traveled to Yale the game was at Yale Field back then, there was the Yale ball was still a few years away from being built, and Percy, always a great motivator, he decided that he would strangle a bulldog, of course, that being Yale's mascot. What he did was though he had a bulldog being towed by I think back of a car and this, however was to allay the PETA fans who might be listening right now, this was not a live bulldog, this was a paper mache bulldog; and Percy grabbed it by the neck, said this is what we're gonna do to Yale and the team laughed like crazy but the legend grew that Percy strangled the bulldog and of course then he did so metaphorically three days later when they upset Yale with the mighty score of four to nothing thanks to a field goal by a guy named Vic Canard. So that was the whole birth of it, but whenever I would tell people that I was working on this, people would say, oh, isn't that the guy that strangled the bulldog? So after a while, I began to think, you know, maybe I should make more of this than my working title was things like Crimson Autumns and whatever, and I went, you know something, this strangled the bulldog thing, we got to get it right out there, you know front and center and sure enough that's what we did.

Darin Hayes
catchy title, and it's one that's unique and different from anything else you read, especially in a football book. So that's great, though. It really caught my eye when I saw the title.

Dick Friedman
Well, you know, that was the editors were happy that I came up with it, the editors of the book, you know, because they were starting to worry that this thing was going to sound very, very plain vanilla, you know, so, you know, I understood what they said being an editor myself for many years. You know, you got to you got to get something to grab the reader in, you know, pull the reader in.

Darin Hayes
1 .8 seconds to grab their attention. And once you do, you got them, right?

Dick Friedman
That's right. That's it. Exactly. That's it. Exactly.

Darin Hayes
Now I find it, it's a real interesting going back and looking at some of these, uh, records of some of these teams, especially the Eastern teams. And you see, you know, Yale and Harvard and Princeton and Penn, especially Yale and Harvard always being that last game, you know, sort of right around Thanksgiving last game of the season. And usually, you know, everything was hinging on on who was going to be, you know, the top team in the land, especially when they, you know, people like, uh, Park H Davis and the Billings report and Helms report and the rest of them went back retroactively and looked at these teams that sort of came down to that game would, uh, determine who would be the national champion or co-national champion at the time. And is, uh, Harvard and Yale, still like the last game of the season on their, OK?

Dick Friedman
Yes, that is called, still called the game, right? You don't even need the big game, which is what Cal and Stanford have out here. But no, the game is the last game of the season. And a lot of years, one or the other of the teams has a mediocre record or worse. And if they can upset the other, the hated rival, then the season is a relative success. And it's still the one that really counts. And for many years, you're right. It did have implications, either in the early days or national championship implications. Nowadays, since 1956, since the formation of the Ivy League, often it has had Ivy League championship implications of one or both teams involved with the chance for the title. So there's a lot at stake. I know the coaches feel it tremendously, the pressure tremendously. They think about it. They probably worry about it because they know that's the one the alumni think about. And it's a yardstick for the alumni. And it's also the biggest attendance in the Ivy League almost every year. It's the biggest attendance when it's at Yale especially. Because at Yale, you might have as many as 55 or 60 ,000 people at the game. Harvard's a much smaller stadium, but usually is sold out nevertheless. So it's quite a rivalry. I will say this though. Princeton and Dartmouth lately have been terrific. And before that, Penn had quite a run. And so in fact, a lot of years Penn and Harvard was the game for the Ivy League championship, which is the next to last game of the season. A lot of years like in the 80s and 90s. So it goes back and forth. The Ivy League fans, there aren't that many of us, but we're intense. That much I'll say.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's it's a tremendously is very interesting. I had a great opportunity probably about 10 years ago to go and tour the Yale Bowl and some of Yale's campus with a former player and a former coach that my wife's related to. And we got to get to experience. I got to talk to the former player and I told myself, you know, what was that? Like the biggest day, you know, of your career, you know, coming out of this Yale tunnel, what was what was the game that you remember the most coming out of there? It was all the two times that we played Harvard here. That was the thing. So they feel the same way up at Yale. I'm sure that you folks at Harvard do, too. So it's an interesting rivalry.

Dick Friedman
Well, you know, we consider Yale our safety school. What can I tell you? You know, only kidding, only kidding. Yeah. No, I mean, that one. I must say the other great thing is that I've had a real good chance to observe and, in some cases, to meet the other Ivy, some of the other Ivy coaches. And, you know, it's a it's a terrific group right now. I mean, they're the same same as the same group as last season, which is really rare, right, to have nobody in a conference lose their jobs. And but I think it's merited because they're they're it's a very impressive group of individuals and they're really good teachers. That's the other thing that I like about all of them, you know, very, very, you know, when you when you hear them talk, you know, you feel like you're learning something from all of them, which is great. So, you know, all of this has been very fascinating to me in my old age, you know, getting to, as you know, getting to meet and briefly sit in the press box with with 22 year olds or 19-year olds who could be my grandchildren. You know, it's great. It's a lot of fun.

Darin Hayes
Interesting. But let's get back to Coach Haughton. I'm sorry, I took you down a couple rabbit holes there. Coach Haughton had the big game beaten Yale early on in his career. Was that sort of the biggest game of his career or was there some other games that maybe are equal to that or maybe even surpassed it?

Dick Friedman
There were a couple of Yale games later on that Harvard won in big fashion, in convincing fashion. They won in 1914, I believe, was a 39 to six. And the following year, in 15, they also won by a very big score. And when you won, when you scored 39 points in a game back then, that was like scoring 75 points today. That was just, it was a low scoring era. So for you to pile up that many touchdowns in a major game was awesome. And a lot of it was just that he had a well-drilled group that executed brilliantly, especially in their blocking. And they were just unstoppable. They were unstoppable. So, they also won a major game in 1913 at the stadium, again against Yale, in which one of the most famous players, a fellow named Charlie Brickley, kicked five field goals. Now this had been done before, but never in as major a game with this kind of a spotlight. And Brickley, who might call the da Vinci of the drop kick, is still one of the greatest, if not the greatest drop kickers in football history. I mean, we talked earlier about, you know, Percy Haughton being a lost figure in a way, drop kicking certainly is a lost art in football. But Brickley, who also could place kick as well, drop kicking was a crucial element in a team's attack back then. And Brickley was the greatest drop kicker. And he was from nearby Everett, Massachusetts, but he kicked five field goals at the stadium. And this received totally national coverage. It was almost like the Super Bowl, you know, if somebody had done something great in the Super Bowl. And, you know, so all these games were receiving total saturation coverage. And again, the whole Haughton legend got burnished with every year that he achieved this kind of result. And, you know, but those were some of the results that happened and they did stick around one extra year in 1916 and Yale did win 63. So, you know, it wasn't foolproof, you know, that's the nature of the beast. But anyway, that was when you read about the coverage about, you know, Brickley, you know, Brickley was a God at that point, you know, Brickley was like, you know, any great athlete, you know, Joe Namath or, you know, Tom Brady or you name it. That's the level of celebrity that he had achieved.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. Isn't it interesting that, you know, back in that era, you know, that the kickers and punters were sort of the stars of the teams, of the great teams. And, you know, like you say, like Brickley and, you know, hot and hot and before him and, you know, Thorpe and it was all these, all these players, because the kicking game and the punting game was so important to the offensive before, you know, the forward pass was really prevalent. So it's fascinating.

Dick Friedman
Yeah, and Haughton, you know, was having been a great punter himself, really paid tremendous attention to it. What we today call the measurables, you know, he was already onto it. He would put a stopwatch on his on his kickers to see how fast they would get the punt off, you know, after the after the snap of the ball and, you know, that he drilled them to try to get it off, you know, no less than like one one in five, seven seconds or something like that. I could be misquoting. The other the other thing that he was a fiend about was back back then, you know, covering kicks was very, very, a very big part of the game. And what he said to his kickers was, you know, I want the ball kicked 40 yards. I'm not talking 41 yards and I'm not talking 39 yards. When I say 40, I mean 40. And one of his greatest players, besides Brickley, a guy named Eddie Mahan, kicked one 60 yards and Brickley yanked him from I mean, Haughton yanked him from the game and said, that 60 yard punt does us no good at all, because we can't cover 60 yards. You know, that's the kind of guy he was. He was a nut. Look, he was a bit of a nut. There's just no way around it.

Darin Hayes
You hear about it all the time. Even today that punters out kicking their coverage. So maybe he was on to something back then.

Dick Friedman
Oh, he definitely was, I mean, and he he had, you know, he wanted football played played a certain way. And, you know, a big part of the game was was exchange of punts to gain territory gain yardage. And the other thing is, he loved exchange of punts and and playing for the breaks. You know, back then, let the other team could fumble. They might throw an interception if the rare forward pass you know Harvard guy could intercept it, and they would gain territory that way and then they had Berkeley to kick a field goal. Three to nothing win that was fine by him, you know, but they had so much better material by that point than the than most of the other teams that they were winning by reasonably big store big scores. And they won. They were 33 they had a 33 game unbeaten streak from 1911 to 1915. Wow. And then a couple of ties in there but you know they just outclassed other teams, you know, so much better. And the team that beat them before the end of the, the beginning of the streak was Carlisle with Jim Thorpe. And Jim Thorpe put on a day for the ages back at the, you know, at Harvard Stadium, and Haughton said, you know, I've now seen the Superman in the flesh, you know, he was convinced so you know, and Berkeley and Haughton became good friends great kickers you know they do kicking contests and stuff. So, you know, if there had been more of an organized pro football in the in the late teens and early 20s, there'd be a lot more have been a lot more money for those guys.

Darin Hayes
Hmm. Interesting. Now, OK, besides the contributions that Coach Haughton did, you know, for just his record at Harvard and, you know, winning some national championships in there in the kicking game, what are some other contributions that you can sort of look back and say, you know, Percy Haughton, he's a guy that started that or has a lot of responsibility for that. Some things that maybe in modern football that we should be thankful for to him.

Dick Friedman
Sure, I mean, I don't know about being thankful for, but the whole organization of practice, you know, I mean, the way practices today are scripted to the minute, you know, he started, I don't know whether he started it, but he certainly popularized it. He had the players helmets lined up, you know, in front of, at the field, right? Didn't want to waste a second. He gave out the players knew exactly what was going to be worked on that particular day. You know, he'd had at three o 'clock, they were going to do such and such. At 3.15, they were going to do such and such. At 3 .30, such and such. He broke the team down into four segments. He had the varsity, then an A, B and C team. And it was a bit of a ladder in the sense that you could work your way up or work your way down depending as the year went on. Very big on drill and execution. You know, we've heard a lot about Vince Lombardi telling his team to run the power sweep 11 times or until they got it right. Well, that was, Percy Haughton did the same thing. He didn't have a big playbook. He had only 25 plays, but he could run them from five different formations. So he really had 125 plays. The other thing that he did was, I think was very, very important. He decided at a certain stage that the future of football was not to the heavy, to the weight, to the heavy guy. It was to the athletic guy. And that really, he figured that out early on. You know, that again, he loved baseball players, but what he wanted was really the athletic guy, not that, or as what they called it back then, the 200 -pound fat boy, you know, which now we would call the 400 -pound fat boy. But that was really important to the Harvard system, was to have really kind of raw boned great athletes who were fast, quick, as well as strong, not a big guy on weight, you know, working with the weights. Instead, he would rather guys be eased off and come in rested and, you know, be keen rather than work them and scrimmage them to death and practice. So all these things that have become common and standard and most coaches, you know, quivers today, you know, are what are a big part of the Haughton system. And because of Harvard's prominence, you know, they got a lot of publicity. And then he wrote the book and even more of his stuff. And then the one other thing I should talk about, which I think is very important, was that he decided also that deception was gonna be a very big feature of the game. And his teams were very, very skilled in deceiving the opponent. He really wanted the opponent to sweat hard and worry about what the next play is. He loved it when passing came in because he would pitch out to one of the triple threat backs that they had and the triple threat back would hold the ball up. And, you know, the defensive backs were wondering, what's gonna happen here? Is it gonna be a run? Is it gonna be a pass? You know, what's gonna go on? And he loved that, you know, he wanted that guy on an island just worrying and letting the Harvard guys get the jump on them. And again, this was all not totally new, but again, became much more standard with what he did.

Darin Hayes
Uh, very interesting. Uh, and you know, when you say we should be thankful to, I think, uh, us as fans and the players themselves should be thankful for having the organized practices and I'm sure coaches today sort of take it for granted, but somebody had to start doing that and organize those and having the drills and everything. And, you know, I, I think that's definitely something that you can hang, uh, Percy Haughton's hat on, uh, to, to, uh, you know, credit him for that. So I think that is something to be thankful for.

Dick Friedman
So yeah, yeah. And you know, and he even had like each week, you know, was given a name, you know, like, like, would be like, joy week, you know, break before the Yale game, he wanted the team really loose before the Yale game, he wanted them to have fun that week, you know, not to be have the entire season planned out. And, again, this was, you know, very contrary to what the image of football was of a bunch of guys in a scrum, you know, and it's fascinating for me to read it was fascinating for me to read about it, because, you know, again, I had a total image of guys in a scrum, you know, guys with a lot of hair and a scrum. And then you read about it, and you see, well, you know, what a method that this guy had, you know, he called it human chess. Right. And it's just the whole cerebral aspect of the game was brought to the fore by person.

Darin Hayes
Uh, I'm sure if he could see the game being played today, he would, he would really be excited, you know, being, having all the other formations in the passing game, be more prevalent and what it, what a chess chess match it is today. That's for sure.

Dick Friedman
can't make the case that he's any better than Rockme or Frank Leahy or, you know, Bud Wilkinson. You know, you just go down the line of all the tremendous coaches in college football. But I do think that he's lost to history in a way. And again, I think this is a big part of it is because he was early. He was too early, right? If there had been newsreel footage of him, he would have a better chance of being really famous. Now, I would say that he went to Columbia in the 20s. He took the job there and was starting to build that program. And one day after practice, he said he wasn't feeling too well. He laid down and he died of a heart attack. He was 48 years old.

Darin Hayes
Oh, well.

Dick Friedman
he had been in New York, in New York, where he was, if he had been able to continue in New York through the, you know, the war in 20s and into the 30s with all the celebrity of the of the New York Press, you know, then then maybe we would all be talking a lot more about it. You know, so that I think I think that's that's kind of what happened. But I but I do think given his record and given the various innovations that I've talked about, that he should be better known and should be given more, more credit than he has. Again, he's in the Hall of Fame. You know, you're in the Hall of Fame can't really get much more credit than that. But as I say, in terms of like the average fan, knowing who he is, very, very few would know today. And, you know, it's a shame. It's a shame, because I do think he was very important figure in football.

Darin Hayes
Well, I, that's why I'm glad that there, there's people out there like you that are preserving the football history. And we thank you for that and preserving, you know, coach Percy Haughton and some of his great contributions, his history, uh, you know, everything that he did for the game and for, for Harvard football and, uh, make, make some a legend. And we're glad that, uh, somebody recorded that in a person's user. And we thank you for that.

Dick Friedman
Well, the labor of love for me, going back through the archives was wonderful. I should, one more thing to add, I was able to get back into the archives and after a certain amount of time, you go back into the student folders and I was able to see various things about the players, including Percy who had been a player, of course, including their grades, which was fascinating as a former student myself. And the other thing that I saw of a very sobering aspect was that I think that we had one of the earliest cases, not recorded, but the earliest cases of CTE with one of the players, a guy named Percy Wendell, who was a terrific fullback for Harvard in the 1911, 1910, 11 seasons. He was known as the human bullet for his headfirst running style. And as time went on, Percy Wendell started to falter. And finally, in the late 20s, and he had served in World War I, and so they ascribed some of his problems to the war, but in the late 20s, he was described as being not the man he used to be, kind of a euphemism, and he died at age 42. And reading between the lines, it sure sounds like CTE, right? And we don't know for sure, but boy, every single symptom was there. And very sobering about the game and I'm sure that he was not the only one suffering from that illness back then, especially given that they were not wearing the, either not wearing helmets or wearing the leather helmets. And you run into that, and so that takes you aback when you're seeing it in the files. I also saw in the files, players who almost all of them from that era went on to World War I and served in World War I. And one of the players who was Brickley's backup got killed in action. And when you read this stuff, you feel like you know these guys, you've been on the football team with these guys, and then you see that they're gone. And at age 23, you see photos of them and it's heartbreaking, it really is.

Darin Hayes
And we thank him for the service like we do everybody else that's fought for our country over the years. But yeah, true. It had to be a scary war.

Dick Friedman
Oh, that was terrible, terrible. I mean, and pointless. But anyway, that's a whole nother topic that we could get on someday. But yeah, but anyway, the whole aspect of the game back then, so many things that pull you into the present. And you know, again, that was, to me, I keep using the word fascinating, but it was fascinating to be mesmerizing, really. It's a good thing that the library closed five o 'clock, or I just would have stayed there all night, you know, because it is, I mean, I'm sure everybody who has, who has done this kind of research, you know, can, can relate. So but again, just, just fascinating.

Darin Hayes
I fully understand it, I tell you that. So why don't you tell us again the name of your book and where folks can get a copy of it.

Dick Friedman
OK, the name again is the coach who strangled the bulldog, how Harvard's Percy Haughton beat Yale and reinvented football. The publisher is Roman and Littlefield. Roman spelled R -O -W -M -A -N. It's on Amazon, very, very available on Amazon, and it's available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle. So no excuse for people not to buy it and read it, and there will be a test. Now, only kidding. So yeah, but it's readily available on Amazon.

Darin Hayes
OK, great. And folks, if you're driving a car or something, don't can't write down the information right now. We will put it in the show notes of this podcast. Just look at the notes. It'll also be on pigskin dispatch for this article that's going to accompany the podcast. So you can find it either place and get you connected to Dick Friedman and his wonderful book. Sir, do you have any social media or anything you'd like to share where people can keep up on what you're doing? If you're writing anything new.

Dick Friedman
my website is being is is under reconstruction right now and when I when it is ready I am going to send you a note and you can put it in the in the show notes absolutely but yeah we have one of the many things that's fallen by the wayside during these last couple of years has been reconstruction of the website so it will happen and you know I am noodling with other book ideas and I can guarantee you that it will not be about Harvard football if I write another book enough already you know I've written enough about Harvard football in my lifetime so but you know but I've thought about other things too now that I'm on the west coast you know there might be a west coast oriented story about the early days of football and um you know we'll see could be something else you never know you never know but it but as I say it's been a tremendous um you know a tremendous uh project for me um this the book and um I like a lot of people I was kind of wondering what the heck I was going to do after I retired and it turned out I never really retire you know and so it's been you know so that's where I am but it's been it's been fascinating and much very enjoyable to meet people like yourself and and other people um you know who are who are in the uh world of college football history which is a you know a great history and um you know my dad went my dad went to Michigan so you know I I had heard a lot about that and uh he played um freshman football and he's a little guy like myself and the freshmen back then at Michigan were pretty much just cannon fodder and he was very proud though that he got knocked on his rear end by a fellow named Gerald R. Ford Jr and uh he said Jerry Ford was a tremendous football player and uh and and for my father to say that my father was a staunch liberal democrat so Jerry Ford must have really been great so

Darin Hayes
Yeah, he definitely was a great football player as well as, you know, in politics, as we know now, did, uh, did your father play for, uh, Fritz Crisler then? Is that.

Dick Friedman
No, the year that he that he played freshman ball was under a guy named Harry Kipke, K -I -P -K -E. Yeah, OK. Yeah, had to be.

Darin Hayes
pretty close, so I'll bet.

Dick Friedman
Yeah, yeah. And he and he was in the they played they were great. And when my father was a freshman, then they had several down seasons. And then my my father graduated. And then Tommy Harmon came in, in the late 30s. And they were great again. So my father would tell me about the great Tommy Harmon runs against Penn and schools like that. So he got me he got me very interested in an early age.

Darin Hayes
And the Harmon was definitely a great player too. So that's very interesting. Well, sir, we appreciate your time. We appreciate you coming on and preserving the football history and sharing it with us folks. Like we said, you can find a Dick Friedman's books where have the information, the show notes and on pigskin dispatch .com. And soon we'll have information on a Dick's website too, that you can go and see what he's got going on here in the near future. So Dick Friedman, thank you very much for joining us in the Pig Pen on Percy Haughton.

Dick Friedman
My pleasure. Thank you very much, Darin.

---

Howard Schnellenberger wasn't your average football coach. He was a firebrand, an innovator, and a man who left an indelible mark on the programs he touched. This essay explores his multifaceted career, from his early days as an assistant to his role in building Miami's dynasty.

Schnellenberger's journey began under the legendary Bear Bryant at Alabama, where he learned the fundamentals of winning football. He quickly rose through the coaching ranks, displaying a keen tactical mind and an ability to motivate players. His early success culminated in a head coaching position with the Baltimore Colts, but his tenure there was short-lived.

In 1979, Schnellenberger made a move that would forever change college football. He took the reins of a struggling Miami Hurricanes program. Recognizing the untapped potential in South Florida, he envisioned a team that would not only win, but also captivate. He implemented his "Miami Vice" defense - a ferocious, attacking unit designed to stifle opposing offenses.

However, Schnellenberger's greatest contribution to Miami might not have been his defensive scheme. He recognized the importance of recruiting elite athletes, particularly African-American players from the South. This innovative approach, combined with his charismatic personality, laid the foundation for Miami's future dominance.

---

John McKay was an important man in the coaching ranks of football in the 1960s and 70s. He turned programs around with his wit and gridiron knowledge in both the pro and college games.

Historian and author Rich Shmelter sat down with us recently to recant the brilliance of this icon of football.

Fielding Yost coached at Ohio Wesleyan, Nebraska, Kansas, and Stanford in consecutive seasons before he was hired as the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines. He had great teams at those other schools, but his best coaching work was yet to come. He used everything he learned from his playing days and tenure as the field boss to mold his squads into the top tier of gridiron squads.

Fielding Yost's impact was immediate as the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines. In his first five years, his high-powered teams were virtually unstoppable, compiling a record of 55–1–1. They played with a stifling defense and a fast-paced offense, always on the lookout for any weaknesses in their opponent's defense. The results were staggering, with these Michigan teams outscoring their opponents by a massive margin of 2,821 to 42.

The teams from 1900 to 1905 became known as Yost's "Point-a-Minute" teams because their offensive production resulted in an average of at least one point being scored for every minute of play.

Our guest in the podcast above is Dr. John Behee and he is the author not one but two biographies on Coach Fielding Yost. His latest, after over 50 years of research is titled Coach Yost: Michigan's Tradition Maker. Dr. Behee achieved a degree in History and then furthered his education at the University of Michigan and even got to spend some time as a graduate assistant coach for the Wolverines during his stay there. This kindled his passion for the football program's history and traditions and when he looked into them, the name Fielding H. Yost jumped off the pages, and the campus. Behee wrote his dissertation for his PhD on Coach Yost. Some 50 years later after that original published work, he recollected his notes dug a bit deeper and found even more revelations about this amazing coach from the early 20th century.

The 1936 NFL season unfolded like a gritty underdog story. For the first time, all ten teams played an equal schedule, setting the stage for an unpredictable scramble to the top.

Green Bay, fueled by Arnie Herber's passing and Don Hutson's receiving magic, claimed their third consecutive title, cementing a dynasty against all odds. Meanwhile, Boston's "Redskins" (now named Washington Commanders) traded home-field advantage for a neutral site in New York, fearing low attendance in Fenway Park – a sad testament to the league's struggles.

But there were glimmers of hope. The draft's first pick, Heisman winner Jay Berwanger, refused to play, challenging the game's semi-professional status. And in the newly formed AFL, the Boston Shamrocks and Cleveland Rams hinted at a brewing challenge to the NFL's dominance.

So, while 1936 wasn't a season of fireworks, it was a turning point. It laid the foundation for future parity, sowed seeds of player power, and hinted at the rivalries that would soon reshape the gridiron landscape.

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Football fans, history buffs, and anyone who appreciates a story that breaks boundaries – this episode is for you! Today, we delve into the life and legacy of a true pioneer, Duke Slater, with the author who meticulously documented his remarkable journey: Neal Rosendaal.

Neal Rosendaal, a Hawkeye fanatic and renowned sports historian, has penned a fascinating biography titled "Duke Slater: Pioneering Black NFL Player and Judge." This book doesn't just chronicle Slater's athletic achievements, but also sheds light on his groundbreaking role as the first African-American lineman in the NFL.

Get ready to be transported back to a time when racial barriers were high, but Duke Slater's talent and determination soared even higher. We'll discuss Slater's rise to football stardom at the University of Iowa, his trailblazing stint in the fledgling NFL, and his remarkable post-football career as a lawyer and judge.

Neal Rosendaal will join us to share his insights into researching this legendary figure. We'll uncover the challenges Slater faced, the impact he had on the sport, and the lasting legacy he left behind. So, buckle up and prepare to be inspired by the story of Duke Slater – a gridiron giant and a true social justice pioneer.

You must check out Neal's webpages dedicated to Slater and other subjects the author has written about on Neal Rosendaal's DukeSlater.com.

-Transcript on Duke Slater book with Author Neal Rosendaal

Darin Hayes
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 we have a great episode in store for you. We have a great topic: the player Duke Slater, a very, very interesting figure in football history. And we have an author who's writing a book about him; Neal Rozendaal is his name. And we'll welcome you into the pig pen right now. Neil Rosenthal, welcome to the pig pen.

Neal Rozendaal
Hey, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Darin Hayes
We really appreciate you taking the time to talk about some great football history, especially one man named Duke Slater, who was very important to that football history. But before we do that, I'd like to learn a little bit about you. What got you particularly interested in football and maybe in particular about Duke Slater?

Neal Rozendaal
Yeah, well, I'm a Hawkeye fan. I grew up in the state of Iowa and attended the University of Iowa. So, I've always loved the Hawkeyes. And I've loved sports history. That's something that has always sort of appealed to me. And that's why I love podcasts like this, because I really love delving into the history of the sport and kind of making it, especially for current fans, to kind of bring it to life, especially stories of people that they may not remember. Or it may have been before their time. And it's kind of interesting because I know you guys here do a lot of things. You're connected with this sports dispatch, and you do a lot with jersey numbers. Actually, the first book that I ever wrote, I co-authored a book called Hawkeye Greats by the Numbers. And basically, it mentioned the greatest Hawkeye football or men's basketball player by the jersey numbers they wore. So we picked the greatest Hawkeye football or men's basketball player that wore jersey number one, jersey number two, all the way up through jersey number 50. We selected what we considered to be the greatest Hawkeye football or men's basketball player to wear each specific jersey. And then, for that player, we wrote a short chapter about them. And that was the book. And Chapter 15 came along. The greatest Hawkeye player, a football player who wore jersey number 15 in our estimation, was Duke Slater. and I had been interested in Duke Slater for a while. I had heard about his story, and Duke Slater is one of these stories. When you hear a little bit about him, you just hear more and more and more stories. And I just became increasingly fascinated by this guy. And I was fortunate enough to write the chapter on Duke Slater for that book, Hawkeye Greats by the Numbers, but it was, he had one of these stories where I just said, you know what, I could write a whole book just about him. And as someone who's a writer, that's kind of a dangerous thing to say because it sort of becomes destiny in some sense. So, I wound up deciding to write a book about him. And I published his biography back in 2012. And, you know, one of the things about writing the book was he'd kind of been forgotten, he'd kind of been overlooked. And I wanted to get him more recognition; I wanted to kind of bring him back into the public eye. And I'm so thankful and grateful to be able to say that over the last decade, we have really elevated Duke Slater's legacy in the public consciousness. He's been honored in a number of ways, which have been really outstanding. And it's been great to see because I think more and more people have heard this story and learned about Duke Slater. And it's just an incredible story. So it was really an honor for me to tell.

Darin Hayes
Well, he is definitely a great player, and I had the honor and the privilege last year to be at the Pro Football Hall of Fame for the induction ceremonies I'm I'm from Western Pennsylvania, so there was, you know, a bunch of Steelers going in and you had two different years you had the covert your 2020 going in, and the year 2021 class going in, and Duke Slater I believe was part of that 2020 class going in at that time for the pro football fame so it was quite an honor to sit there, even though he wasn't present. You know, it was, it was a great honor to just have the legacy and have a chat and some of the things popping up on the screen, some scenes and pictures of him, and you know his presenter, so it was a great feeling there.

Neal Rozendaal
Yeah, it was actually one of the the best weekends I've had, honestly, because I actually and you know this because you were there, but because because of the way it was set up. So when I wrote the book on Duke Slater, one of my main goals was to try to lobby for him to get into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And, of course, it's a lobby for someone to get into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It is the competition is so stiff that everybody wants to be in the Hall of Fame. And there are so many worthy people. And I just was lobbying for years to hopefully get that done. He was finally elected as part of that centennial class in 2020. And so here we were; he was going to get his long-awaited induction, and then COVID hit. And it came in or postponed it at least for a year. And what wound up happening was, and again, you know, this because you were there, as they had so many people being recognized in 2021 because they had the supersized centennial class, plus the 2021 class, two classes coming together, and one of them being particularly large, the way that they handled that was they had sort of induction ceremony, before the main induction ceremony, just for the guys who were going in posthumously. People like Duke Slater, who was deceased, were going in. They sort of had a special ceremony for them earlier, just so they could kind of, I guess, control the numbers in a lot of ways. So I was actually invited to that Hall of Fame ceremony that recognized the players who were going in posthumously, like Duke Slater. After writing the book, I was able to connect with Sandra Wilkins, who is Duke Slater's niece. She's still alive; she's still around. She also invited me to be a guest for the family for this Hall of Fame induction. And it was an incredible weekend. It was amazing to see him be honored in that way and to get his bust in Canton, Ohio, where he belongs, so that he can be there for all time. It was an amazing weekend and an amazing event. And it was really thrilling to be there, as it was sort of the culmination of almost a decade-long campaign that I had tried to put together to get him recognized in Canton. And to see it come to fruition was really, really meaningful.

Darin Hayes
Well, as the guy said, used to say on the A-Team, you got to love it when a plan comes together, and you're a great part of that, and we appreciate you preserving that football history, and I think everybody in the football community applauds you and everybody else that fought for getting Dukes later in there because he's definitely worthy of being there, that's for sure.

Neal Rozendaal
He definitely is, and you know, it's all about sort of preserving his legacy; you know, I think John Madden Uh was the one who said it in his induction speech like He always envisioned when the lights go down that all the busts sort of talk to each other, uh at night, you know Talked football and I just I always felt so strongly that duke slater needed to be part of that conversation He needed to have his voice there because what he went through is one of the greatest players In the nfl in the 1920s and to do it as as a black man and the first black lineman in the history of the nfl Um his was a voice that needed to be in that room when those lights go down, and now it is and it will be forever And I think as people come to visit Canton ohio a year from now ten years from now 50 years from now, They'll be able to see his bust there and be able to To say hey, who is he and learn more about him and discover his story? And that's an amazing thing that will be a preserve for history. I think that's just so so meaningful and wonderful

Darin Hayes
Yeah, absolutely. And I guess I apologize; I have not announced the name of the title of your book, and we're going to do it here a bunch of times. But the title of your book is Duke Slater, a Pioneering Black NFL player, and Neil Rosendaal as the author. So I'll make sure we mention that now. Why don't you let us know where that's available and where people can get it?

Neal Rozendaal
Absolutely. It was published by McFarland and company about ten years ago, so you can get it. I think there are some bookstores that carry it, but the best way to get it generally is online. Amazon, Barnes& Noble, or any online retailer can really get it for you. Or, of course, maybe the best way, from my personal viewpoint, if you want to do it this way, is to go to dukeslater.com, which is my website. And if you go to dukeslater.com, we'll take you to a page where you can order from the website directly from me and help me out a little bit more as an author. Honestly, however, you get the book; if you want to go out and get the book, however, you get the book, it is fine by me because I just want people to hear the story and learn more about this amazing guy.

Darin Hayes
But very well said. Well, why don't we go back to the beginnings of Duke Slater? We sort of jumped ahead and told everybody the outcome. He's in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And we alluded to earlier, you know, Iowa. And that's how you became associated with him and gained a lot of interest in it. So why don't you tell us how what happened before he was at Iowa and got him involved in football?

Neal Rozendaal
Well, he actually was raised in Normal, Illinois, but he grew up on the south side of Chicago. He spent his childhood years there on the south side of Chicago. And he loved the sport of football from the very beginning, from being a young kid. And the interesting thing about it was he loved the tackle. He loved being aligned. And the thing was, whenever there was a neighborhood game going up, there was always a place for Duke Slater because there were always people who wanted to be the ball carriers. They wanted to carry the ball and, you know, catch the ball, do all that stuff. But they always needed alignment. So he always had a game, the ability to find a neighborhood game. That's where he learned the game of football was on the streets, on the south side of Chicago. His father, George Slater, was a strong influence in Duke Slater's life. George Slater was a minister and an AME minister. Actually, George Slater became the pastor and the head pastor at an AME church in Clinton, Iowa, when Duke Slater was 13 years old. That's what had Duke Slater relocate from the south side of Chicago to the state of Iowa and then to Clinton, Iowa. Clinton is a Mississippi River town. It's a little city on the shores of the Mississippi River, just on the Iowa side there. And that wound up being where Duke Slater attended high school. Being in the state of Iowa wound up leading him to the University of Iowa and on to his football fame. But that was sort of his upbringing. And his life, not only from a football perspective but obviously off the field. He made a real imprint on Duke Slater and raised him right. And he became an upstanding man and, of course, an amazing person.

Darin Hayes
Okay. And just to let the listeners know the time period that we're talking about, you know, Duke Slater was born in 1898. So this is early 20th century, early football, you know, putting in perspective, you know, the NFL doesn't start as the APFA until 1920. So this is really at the grassroots of football here, where he's playing even on the sand lots.

Neal Rozendaal
Yeah, a true pioneer in terms of, you know, the time period. He played three; he actually only played three seasons at Clinton High School from 1913 to 1915. He played at the University of Iowa just after World War I, which is your time period. To our knowledge, he was the third documented black player in the history of the Hawkeye football program. And even that was fairly unusual to be the third because most football programs, even up north, a number of football programs had not even had a black player by that point. So, he really was a pioneer for black players in a very early era of football. And he wound up becoming one of the most, honestly, without exaggeration, one of the most dominant football players that college football had ever seen in his career. And he just carried that into the NFL.

Darin Hayes
And I'm assuming that this is the back of single-platoon football. So he's playing both sides of the line, offense and defense.

Neal Rozendaal
Duke Slater was actually known, well, particularly in the NFL, for playing all 60 minutes of the game. He'd play offense, defense, special teams; he would run punts down, he would, you know, he blocked for the, for the kickoff team, you know, for the kick returners, he, he would never leave the fields for his time in Rock Island. And he, I think, had played all 60 minutes, which was not unheard of in those days, but he would play all 60 minutes of every game for an entire season. And then he did that season after season for almost every game that he played in Rock Island for years and years in a row. And that was particularly unusual; it wasn't unusual to play all 60 minutes, but to do it game after game, season after season, was highly unusual. And he was a tackle. He played offensive tackle while on offense, and then on defense, he played defensive end. So he was someone who, obviously, was both an offensive tackle and a defensive end, someone who had a very strong impact on the game. Although, again, not as someone who didn't carry the ball, maybe someone who might be overlooked by some, but he had a dramatic impact on the game from those positions and was just a phenomenal two-way player.

Darin Hayes
Well, you know that, especially the era and the positions that he's playing in to play every minute of every game season upon season; I mean, that is quite a testament to the guy must have been one tough Ombre to be able to take that. It was a lot more brutal than the football that we know today. Even, you know, by today's standards, it's pretty brutal.

Neal Rozendaal
Well, and also you imagine the fact that as a black player, and there weren't a ton of documented stories about this, but you know, as a black player, that he was subject to cheap shots, late hits, you know, all those kinds of things. So yes, to be able to play and to stay in there and to do it game after game, season after season, was incredible. And it's funny because, you know, I tell this story, and I mentioned how his father had such a huge influence on him. His, Duke Slater, only played three seasons of high school football. The reason for that was his father did not want him to play football. His father thought that football was a game for rough necks, and his father was legitimately afraid that he'd be seriously hurt. And, you know, and this was an era where people were dying on the football field. So, it wasn't an ill-founded sort of fear that his father had. Well, his father eventually relented and allowed him to play, but he did so by forcing Duke Slater to promise that he would take every precaution to not get hurt. And it's interesting to, you know, hear that what happened was in his high school days, he would come home beat up, sore, whatever else. Duke Slater worked very hard to conceal his injuries. Basically, if he had a bump or a bruise or a limp or whatever else, he would hide it from his father because he didn't want his father to become so worried about the physical nature of the game that he would sort of pull Duke Slater from the sport. He didn't want his dad to essentially say, okay, you're done because you're gonna get hurt after. So Slater, you know, Duke Slater kind of became ingrained with him to, you know, hide his injuries. He continued that even through college and even at the pro level. And it almost added this sort of aura to him of being invincible, of like being impervious to pain. Like people would be like, you can't hurt him, you can't shake him, you can't rattle him. You know, it was, he was one of those guys where a lot of guys if they were shaken up, they would kind of take a time out, you know, just not an official time out, but just sort of a time out to catch their breath on the field and whatever. And it was known that the game rarely stopped because Duke Slater was hurt because it was one of these guys who, you know, almost put on this aura, like, I can't be hurt. And, you know, that was something that I think helped fuel him and kind of added this sort of, you know, mythology to almost the way that Duke Slater played the game that was really impressive, and it's interesting to look back on now, you know, that's how regarded he was in that day.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, uh, it's making me a little bit embarrassed. I get up every morning and complain about, you know, a sore elbow or something. This guy's, you know, getting a snot kicked out of him and, and, you know, pounding away at some other big, big guy for, you know, and they're playing more than one game a week, uh, sometimes, especially when he was at rock Island. And, you know, just to take that punishment and to hide it from people, especially if your father and, uh, keep on playing, that's a, wow. That's quite a testament to who he is. So amazing. Thank you for sharing that with us. Now let's go back into his Iowa, uh, team. So he's, he's, did he play all four years at Iowa?

Neal Rozendaal
He played four years at Iowa because his first season in 1918 was at the height of World War I. And eligibility rules were suspended. So he was actually allowed to play that season and then allowed to play the three seasons that players typically got during those days. He played in the 1918 season, and it was known that that wouldn't count against him. So, he was actually able to play for four years. He was a first-team All-American in, well, he was a. Actually, he was an -American in, he was a second-team All-American in 1919, his sophomore season. He was one of the first black players in the history of college football to name, to be named an All-American and to earn All-American honors. I believe he was something like the sixth black player to ever earn All-American honors behind guys like Paul Robeson, Fritz Pollard, and others like that. But then, in 1921, that was really the year that shot him to collegiate fame. He was a rock on Iowa's 1921 team, which might be the greatest team in the history of the University of Iowa football program. The Hawkeyes went undefeated, untied. In fact, they never trailed at any point in the season. They never trailed an opponent. They won the outright Big 10 championship for the first time in school history. And they have a legitimate claim for the mythical national championship of that year. Of course, national titles back then were well open to dispute, very much a mythical national championship. However, the University of Iowa has as good a claim as any school to the mythical national championship of the 1921 football season. The marquee victory for Iowa in 1921 was a victory over Notre Dame, a non-conference victory over Notre Dame. Iowa beat Notre Dame 10 to seven. It snapped a 20-game winning streak for Notre Dame that had lasted three years. Notre Dame hadn't lost a football game in three years. They lost that one. And what's fascinating about that is that Notre Dame's head coach was Newt Rockne. And Newt Rockne said later in the season, he said, we had heard about the great strength of Duke Slater, and knowing his great strength, we decided to throw three guys at him on any given play. We'd send three guys after Duke Slater. He's like, sometimes Newt Rockne said this. And of the quote, he said, sometimes we were able to slow him down, but more often than not, he just ripped wide holes in our line that allowed the fullbacks to pick up yards and eventually Iowa to pick up the 10 to seven upset over Notre Dame. It was really notable because Duke Slater was really the first black player in the history of college football to play a prominent role on a team that could be considered a mythical national championship contender. Duke Slater had an incredible legacy in football. When the College Football Hall of Fame opened in 1951, Duke Slater was the only black player in the inaugural class. He was the first black player inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. The only black player elected when it opened in 1951. And even for years after, there were people who selected an all-time college football team in 1946. They did a poll, and they polled over 200 sports writers. And they said, pick your best 11, the 11 players who would be on the all-time college football team. And they'd select players like Jim Thorpe and other players like Ernie Nevers. Duke Slater was one of the individuals selected for the all-time college football team in 1946. That's the sort of esteem and acclaim he was held in for his college career. Being obviously so successful in college was what opened the door for him to go into the NFL, which obviously was not open to very many black players at that time. However, Duke Slater's widespread fame for his collegiate career is really what helped launch his NFL career. And he went on from there.

Darin Hayes
Well, that's a great, great stories and great memories to have of a great player at Iowa. So it was his first team in the, the what's now NFL rock Island. Was that his first team?

Neal Rozendaal
Yes, it was the Rock Island Independence, and they were an NFL team that was located in Rock Island, Illinois, which is just on the other side of the Mississippi River from Iowa. So, it's fairly close to Iowa. He played five seasons with the Rock Island Independence. It's, you know, he actually, on October 1st of this year, was the 100th anniversary of Duke Slater's debut in the NFL. When Duke Slater made his debut in the NFL, he was the first black lineman in the history of the National Football League. He made his debut on October 1st, 1922. The Rock Island Independence played the Green Bay Packers in that game. And Duke helped lead Rock Island to an upset of the Packers. When he broke through on Green Bay's final drive of the game, he broke through twice and twice swatted down Green Bay passes from Packers quarterback Curly Lamba. He swatted the passes down twice, and he helped force the Packers to punt. And the Rock Island Independence held on for 1913, I believe, victory in that game. But that was when he made his debut with Rock Island and was one of the greatest players in the history of that franchise, which, of course, did not last. They, but they're, they're one of the great teams of the 1920s when you think of early era NFL. But yeah, that's how he got his start. And then he spent his final five, five-plus years of his career with the Chicago Cardinals, who, of course, are now known as the Arizona Cardinals. But that's how he started his career. And I want to mention, too, what's interesting about his time in Rock Island was you mentioned his work ethic. One of the things that's amazing about Duke Slater is his work ethic. He graduated from the University of Iowa, and then he enrolled at the University of Iowa Law School. One of the things he would do was he would attend the University of Iowa College of Law; he'd attend law classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday early in the week. And when he was done with that, then he'd make the trek out to Rock Island, which is in the Quad Cities, about an hour's drive away today, probably a little longer back in those days. But he'd go out to Rock Island, and then he practiced with the Rock Island independence for a few days, and then play an NFL game on Sunday. And on a Monday, he'd be right back in Iowa City for first law classes again. And, you know, you think about a guy like that, who's, you know, attending law classes and going to NFL games. And, you know, you mentioned it, it's like, some days that, you know, I have a hard time getting motivated to get out of bed in the morning. Here's a guy who's in the NFL and in law school. At the same time, his work ethic is incredible. And that's definitely a big part of his story and a big part of his legacy, is just that he was someone who was always working extremely hard to, you know, not only for himself, but also to, you know, to give people a good impression of his family, and to stand up for his race, and to stand up for, you know, what black athletes could do in that era, and what black athletes could be, and set a good example for the guys that followed. And yeah, again, he had some amazing days on Rock Island. And yep, that's where you got to start.

Darin Hayes
Well, that's really inspirational to hear that, and it had to be an inspiration to, to younger people, you know, not only of African-American descent but even anybody that heard his story where they had to, you know, you're working real hard, you're playing football and you're going to school and making that journey. That's a lot of, a lot to do. That's pretty good, good role model to be. So, okay. So he, uh, with Rock Island, he moved to the Cardinals, as you said. And he had some, uh, good success with the Cardinals, too.

Neal Rozendaal
Oh, absolutely. Well, he had some great moments with Rock Island. I always tell the story that his best season with Rock Island Independents was in 1924. Rock Island normally was not really much of a factor in the NFL. But in 1924, after the first month of the season, Rock Island was actually undefeated and on top of the NFL was standing. And then Rock Island had a game down in Kansas City against an expansion team called the Kansas City Blues. And because it was in Kansas City, Duke Slater was not allowed to play. They had a gentleman's agreement that black players did not play in NFL games in the state of Missouri, which was a state that was very hostile toward African Americans. And so Duke Slater sat out that game. Rock Island lost that game despite the fact that 10 of their 11 starters were in that game that had started the previous games. The only starter who had to sit that game out was Duke Slater, by rule. And Rock Island suffered an upset loss in that game. A few weeks later, Kansas City had to go to Rock Island and had a return match in Rock Island, Illinois. Duke Slater was allowed to play because the game was played on Rock Island. And he was a dominant force for them again in that game. It's a really meaningful game. And Rock Island wound up shutting Kansas City out 17 to nothing. But unfortunately, the damage was done. Rock Island ended the year with two losses, which was one more than the NFL champion Canton Bulldogs that year. So that was the one thing that kept him out. And what I tell people is, Duke Slater, in a 10-year NFL career, we talked about how durable he was. The only game he missed in a 10-year NFL career was that game. It was not due to injury. It was not because he was sidelined by rule but because of that gentleman's agreement that existed back then. And Duke Slater wound up, ironically enough, wound up playing 99 professional football games in the NFL and AFL combined. He was one game short of playing 100 football games in his pro football career. And it was because of the one game that they made him sit out. So, so yeah, he had some great moments on Rock Island. He was a perennial all-pro in Rock Island. Well, the Rock Island franchise actually folded after the 1926 season. Duke Slater was quickly signed by the Chicago Cardinals for a couple of games that season, beginning full-time in 1927. And the Chicago Cardinals, for listeners who don't know or don't remember, you know, back in the day, the Chicago Cardinals were the other NFL team in Chicago alongside the Chicago Bears. And the Bears and Cardinals had a Cubs white Sox type of hold on pro football. The Bears were on the north side. The Bears were like the Cubs. They were on the north side, kind of white collar, you know, maybe a little more affluent. And then, like the White Sox, the Chicago Cardinals were the south side, you know, they were blue-collar, a little scruffier, a little, you know, a little more hard hat. The other thing about that was the south side of Chicago; there was a huge black metropolis. And in fact, that was where Duke Slater had grown up; he'd grown up on the south side of Chicago. So, the Chicago Cardinals signed Duke Slater, and Duke was able to return to the city where he grew up, the city where he had been raised. And Chicago Cardinals loved it because now they had a box office draw, where a lot of the black football fans, a lot of those fans in that black metropolis, those black citizens on the south side of Chicago, they came to Cardinals games because they wanted to see one of their own, they wanted to see Duke Slater on the line playing for the Cardinals. And so it worked out sort of both ways. The Cardinals have a really good player, Duke Slater, who got to go to his old hometown. And the Cardinals got a box office draw that appealed to the black football fans there. So it kind of worked all around. That's where Duke Slater finished out his career in the final few years, and he had tremendous success there, too.

Darin Hayes
Wow, that's great to have a hometown hero coming in and playing for you. So I had to be a great draw, like you said, so tremendous. And it had to be good for him, too. I had to, you know, you're a little bit long in a tooth coming in there. And maybe that gives you a little bit of a burst of energy. You have some people that, you know, are in the stands and really cheering for you because they helped, uh, Develop you into the player you are. So that's great stuff. Okay. So, God is finishing up law school already when he finished that up with Rock Island, or do you still continue that when he's with the Cardinals?

Neal Rozendaal
Yeah, he still continued with when he was with the Cardinals. He actually graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1928. And I, you know, I want to mention, too, with his football playing in Chicago. What's really incredible about him is that for most of the late 1920s, he was the only black player in the entire NFL. There were several black players in the NFL in the early to mid-1920s. And then, after 1926, the owners in the NFL were kind of trying to follow baseball's lead and kind of knock black players out of the league. In 1927, every single black player in the league. There were six black players in pro football in 1926. In 1927, all of them had left pro football except for Duke Slater. Duke Slater was the only black player in the NFL in 1927. A large part of that was the fact that Duke Slater had been at Alpro for the last four years. He had been one of the best, not only black players but also one of the best players, period, and one of the best linemen in football. And, you know, he was, you know, there was a quote in the book, biography that I wrote on Duke Slater, where they said, if if if owners had blackballed Duke Slater, fans would have questioned not only the owner's integrity but also their sanity because Duke Slater was so good. He was one of those guys that they couldn't blackball. Duke actually lobbied for the Chicago Cardinals to sign another black player. The Cardinals signed another black player named Harold Bradley, who was the second black lineman in NFL history. He played two games alongside Duke Slater in 1928 before Harold Bradley was cut. However, aside from those two games by Harold Bradley in 1928, Duke Slater was the only black player in the NFL from 1927 through 1929. And so Duke Slater was the only black player in the NFL in 1927 and 1929. And yet he was in Alpro both seasons. So that tells you how good he was while he was sort of. He really held the door open. He kept a ban on black players from coming down. It would have come down in 1927 if he hadn't held the door open, but he kept the door open for other black players sent to the league. And he kept a ban from coming down. A ban on black players eventually did come down in the NFL, but not until two years after Duke Slater retired. But he had some great seasons with the Chicago Cardinals. His best-known claim to fame is probably from 1929. On Thanksgiving Day, 1929, Ernie Nevers of the Chicago Cardinals helped the Cardinals beat the Crosstown Chicago Bears 40 to six. And Ernie Nevers scored all 40 points. It is a single season, or, excuse me, a single-game scoring record in NFL history. Most points in a single game were scored by any player, and 40 points were scored by Ernie Nevers in that game. It's a record that stood for what is it, 90 years now. Duke Slater played the entire game. He's the only Cardinal lineman to play all 60 minutes of the game. And a number of the post-game accounts credited Duke Slater with being the man who kept the bare front wobbly, as they said. A lot of Nevers' games came behind Duke Slater's blocking. And that was probably maybe his single greatest game or single greatest moment in the NFL. But he played ten seasons and then retired from the NFL. He then used his law degree to start sort of the next chapter of his professional life. But he had some incredible moments. And again, he retired as a seven-time all-pro, having played ten seasons. He had one of the longest careers in NFL history at the time of his retirement and was really truly one of the great players in the 1920s NFL.

Darin Hayes
Well, that's, uh, has quite a lot of accolades and, uh, definitely deserves to be in the pro football hall.

Neal Rozendaal
One of the things, but I'll say this, one of the things that I'm really excited about is that the University of Iowa, my alma mater, which is kind of how I came into Duke Slayer's story, they've done a tremendous job recognizing him and honoring him at the University of Iowa. In 2019, they decided to put a relief of him, a carver relief of him, on the side of the stadium. And it's several feet wide, I think maybe 10 feet wide. It's a huge relief, and it depicts Duke Slater blocking three Notre Dame men in that game against Notre Dame in 1921. And then maybe his greatest honor from the University of Iowa came a couple of years later. Just last year, the University of Iowa named their field at Kinnick Stadium Duke Slater Field after Duke Slater. And now, if you watch Hawkeye football games on television, you will see emblazoned on the field at Kinnick Stadium, and you'll see Duke Slater Field on the field at Kinnick Stadium where the Hawkeyes play football. And it's just a tremendous honor, a collegiate honor for him. And so it's really, I think, given him a lot of exposure for Big 10 fans who, if you watch a Hawkeye football game at the University of Iowa, you'll see on television, you'll see Duke Slater Field on the field, and it's caused more than one person to say, who's Duke Slater, who's that? And it's been a great opportunity for people to learn his story that way, too. So again, the honors that he's been receiving over the past five or ten years have been just so exciting to me personally. And again, it was just so worthwhile for a man with his achievements.

Darin Hayes
Well, that's, that's great. And just to think you're, you're a part of that, of helping people recognize that legacy, so, uh, you know, speaking of that, let's, uh, get the opportunity to let's get and tell the name of your book and where people can pick it up at.

Neal Rozendaal
Yeah, again, you said it's Duke Slater, a pioneering black NFL player and judge, I believe. It's published by McFarland and Company. They picked the subtitle, which throws a lot in there at you, but it's obviously all worthwhile. Just search for Duke Slater, and you'll find the book. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, or my website. I'd love it if you came and visited my website and bought it off there. But it's dukeslater.com. Just type in dukeslater.com, and it'll get you there. You'll find all the information on Duke Slater and a way to purchase the book. And again, just an amazing guy. Again, I've talked with you this whole time, and I feel like I threw a lot of information in there. There are just so many facets of his life and so much you could talk about with the amazing man that he is, and it's just a thrill to tell his story. There's just so much to say about this incredible guy, and I love it when people have an opportunity to learn more about him because he's really someone who lived a life that's very much worth remembering.

Darin Hayes
Well, that is very well said, and folks, we will have the information if you're in a car and I don't have a writing utensil on you in the show notes of this podcast and on pigskin dispatch .com with the corresponding posts that we're going to have on there, we will have Neil's website to get you connected to him and to his book and again, he's, he's touched a lot of the highlights of Duke Slater's career, but there's a lot of goodies inside there that you really enjoy and appreciate this man that played football almost a hundred years ago. So, uh, Neil Rosendaal, thank you very much for joining us and spending time and sharing this great story about Duke Slater.

Neal Rozendaal
No, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it and really appreciated it.

They're blockers, they're receivers, they're touchdown machines – tight ends have become a force to be reckoned with in the NFL. But who reigns supreme in the tight end pantheon? A new book dives into the gridiron archives to unearth the all-time greats at this dynamic position. Join us on this podcast episode as we crack open the book and explore the careers of the legendary tight ends who redefined the game. We'll discuss their dominance on the field, the plays that etched their names in history, and the impact they had on the evolution of the tight end position. So, buckle up, football fans, because we're about to get tight with the greats!

Image is Courtesy of Cole Holcomb chasing Travis Kelce OCT2021 is courtesy of All-Pro Reels via Wikimedia Commons.

We were proud to have the chance to sit down and discuss a football topic on How the Tight End Is the Sport Itself Distilled to One Position with Tyler Dunne Author of the New Book THE BLOOD AND GUTS: How Tight Ends Saved Football. Tyler is a veteran NFL journalist who covered teams like the Green Bay Packers and the Buffalo Bills for some significant publications. He now has his own gig writing some fantastic long-form gridiron posts on GoLongTD.com.

You can follow Tyler Dunne on Twitter @TyDunne

-Transcript of Conversation with Author Tyler Dunne on Blood and Guts Tight Ends book

Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes at pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to positive football history. And we have a very interesting look down that portal of history today as we are going to be talking to an author who has a new book out called Blood and Guts, How Titans Save Football. His name is Tyler Dunne, and we'll welcome him right now. Tyler Dunne, welcome to the Pigpen.

Tyler Dunne
It is a pleasure to be here there. Thanks so much for having me.

Darin Hayes
The pleasure is all ours, sir. We appreciate you taking the time here to talk a little bit of football history with us here in the Pigpen, and your book is extremely fascinating. We're going to get into more detail on that in a second. But first, we could share a little bit about you with the listeners. What started your football fandom to get you to the point of writing a book on tight ends?

Tyler Dunne
Yeah, yeah. I grew up in Western New York, about an hour South of Buffalo, and played football my entire life. I guess that's part of it, right? It was an elegant bill, small school. We actually had our sectional championship right where the Bills play raffles in the stadium, so that was a ton of fun. But then, yeah, you eventually got to move on from the plane and go the journalism route. Syracuse University loved it. It was just an unreal experience working at that student newspaper, covering big-time D1 sports, and then covering the Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for about four and a half years. Just talked about a crash course on how to cover pro football, Bob McGinn, Tom Silverstein, Laurie Nichol. That was an unbelievable experience and definitely helped me get to this point in the long haul. Buffalo Bills covered that squad, Rex Ryan's first year at the Buffalo News, and then Bleach Report reached out. They were expanding their features department, so it was a really good opportunity to still live in Western New York but kind of travel the country and just do long-form takeout stories for BR. Amazing experience. It really helped me learn the game and just tell some long-form stories. That's absolutely what I love to do more than anything. So that was great, and that ran its course, and I decided to launch my own site, golongtd.com. So I just do profiles, long-form Q&A, deep dives on the inner workings of teams, and that kind of stuff, and it's part of the sub-stack platform. So far, so good. People want to read, which is great. That was the fear, right? When you branch off and start a subscription website, is this something people want to pay for? But they do. So it's been a lot of fun, and yeah, if people want to sign up, they can. Right there, there's a free option, too. You can get stories for free on a different list, and if you like that, you can always upgrade.

Darin Hayes
All right, wow, that's that's quite a background. I mean, you have some very interesting people that you get to talk to every day. You know, both at Green Bay and, you know, God Rex Ryan. He was a story a minute. I'm sure when he was at Buffalo.

Tyler Dunne
Yeah, so the 2015 season was wild. That was Rex Ryan's first in Buffalo, so to be there in that locker room for the ups and the downs and all the absolute mayhem was just... You know, honestly, that was one of the more fun seasons on the job, just because you never knew what was going to happen to your point.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, your pen would probably run out of ink just covering him, I'm sure, you know.

Tyler Dunne
Literally, you got that, everybody.

Darin Hayes
Now, he was quite the quote machine, that's for sure. So very interesting. In Green Bay, you had some great teams there. What era did you cover Green Bay?

Tyler Dunne
So that would have been 2011 through 2015, I believe. So right after they won the Super Bowl and through several seasons where they probably should have won another Super Bowl, hotel short, yeah, it's very similar to Buffalo in terms of just the town kind of embodying the team. I mean, if they win, like literally everybody at the coffee shop, the bar is in a good mood, and if they lose, everybody is in a bad mood. So there's something really cool about that where, I mean, there's something not good. So there's not, like, outside of the football team, there's not a lot to do, which is fine because I just want to, you know, drink a few beers and watch football. But when that's the number one activity for everybody in the town, they definitely take on the persona of that team in every way.

Darin Hayes
I'll bet. Now, I guess that brings you right into your football book here on tight ends and blood and guts. How did you come up with the premise of covering the tight end? That's probably a position that, other than the offensive line, sort of doesn't get the love that they probably should because these guys are doing some pretty awesome stuff.

Tyler Dunne
No doubt, I mean, they have to do it all, right? It's a little bit of everything. You do have to operate in the trenches. So, you know, I guess to answer your question, I just want to do a book on real football. Like, what is real football? It's high intensity; it's a high level of violence. It's that adrenaline rush you get, you know? And when you're back in high school, and you're playing with the lights, and everybody's in the crowd, there's just something really cool about the game. And I just wanted to try to get to the heart of it, you know, search for the soul of it. And the more you think about it, yeah, that tight end, you have to do everything. Like, literally everything. So, that's how it started. And once I really started talking to Mike Jekka, Jackie Smith, Ozzie Newsom, and then even the contemporary guys, Rob Gronkowski, George Kittle, Tony Gonzalez, you really learn that this tight end position, yeah, it's football, it's the sport itself. But I think as people read this book, it doesn't even matter if you like football or not because you're gonna learn how, like, this position, this profession, most directly reflects our own lives. I mean, our own lives, whatever our job is, I mean, it is felt through that tight-end position, which is really cool. I mean, yes, it saves football, and you'll find out why, but I think you're also gonna see how, holy cow, playing this position makes you a better person.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, wow. When you're talking to some experts about the position, I think you hit the Hall of Fame of tight ends right there with those names that you talked about. It doesn't get any better than those guys. They each brought a different perspective to the game and the history of the game. You actually had different eras of the tight end and the development of it. Going from Dicca, who's probably helped develop the position as much as anybody did in football history, right up to these contemporary guys, like you said, like Gronkowski and even Tony Kinsallis, I still consider him a contemporary. He's probably been retired for ten years now, but now those are some greats that you got to talk to.

Tyler Dunne
It was just unbelievably fortunate. I wasn't sure about embarking on this cross-country tour, and I really wanted to talk to as many of these guys in person as I could and make it as real as possible to just sit down at a bar with Jeremy Shockey and get in his environment, right? Or hanging out with Tony Gonzalez right in Austin, Texas, where he moved into town. Mike Dicka, down at his golf course with a cigar nearby. I feel like I really got to know these guys, and it was important to get on their turf and go through their lives. I mean, I think that really each of the 15 chapters is a long-form profile of the 15 people who really were uniquely qualified to preserve the sport that we love, right? I mean, this is, it's a special sport. It's, you know, you don't just pick up a football and gather on your buddies. I mean, you can't play pickup, obviously, but when it comes to the physicality and the violence in an actual football game, you know, it's harder to get a group of friends together, put on the pad, put on a helmet, and have a full-fledged game. I mean, there's attrition in football that other sports just don't have, and I get it, you know, you gotta watch the violence, and they are trying to make it safer, but it's not safe, and I think that's okay. That inherent risk that the sport has, honestly, is kind of what makes it different, and kind of going on a soapbox here, but it does kind of bother me when the league almost pretends to be something it's not and do you want guys getting maimed in the defense of secondary? No, but do you want Chris Jones to tackle, you know, a quarterback, Tom Brady, and literally just fall on top of him and get a flag bet? That's ridiculous. So I think that preservation of what the sport is, what makes it great, is unbelievably important, and these are the 15 dudes that are those modern-day gladiators who I think era to era, you know, decade to decade, year to year, making sure that, hey, you know, if things are gonna be changing all over the place, you know, quarterback play, and what you can do with strong safety, which isn't even really a position anymore, but that tight end, you can still hit, and guess what, you're gonna be very, very visible, because when it's third and eight, and everything's on the line, that quarterback's gonna be looking for you, Dallas Clark, you know, in the playoffs, or you, Tony Gonzalez in Atlanta, or you, Rod Brankowski in the Super Bowl. I think that's a differentiator from the linemen, too. If you have a good game as a lineman, nobody's talking about you in three hours.

Darin Hayes
Right, yeah, you're preaching to the choir here on some of this what's going on with the quarterback, especially this year. You know, they've talked about that in decades passive, you know, putting skirts on them. I think it might be really amplified, and it's a bad situation like what's happened with it in Miami. That's a horrible situation, And that's more of a policy that needs to be changed than what needs to be changed play on the field. I think that the guys are cognizant of this. There's a brotherhood in football, as you well know, and they want to protect each other, But they also want to do their jobs, and you know They're there to make a living and them hitting people very hard and taking to the ground That's how they make their money. So you have to respect what the defenders are doing. That's for sure.

Tyler Dunne
Oh, that's perfectly put. Yeah, I just couldn't agree more. I just wanted to tell you that.

Darin Hayes
Now, with this wide array of people that you got to interview, all tight ends, legends of the game, all well known in every household that knows professional football, was there a common thread that they all said like a certain aspect of the game that they all loved or was it a variety of different things? I'm sure there had to be some common core theme to what they each said.

Tyler Dunne
I think a common thread with these tight ends is you have to do stuff that you don't want to do. And that's the case in all of our day-to-day lives. You don't get to wake up and just have a party every day. You got to run the kids to school, you got to pay some bills, you got to do some chores around the house. That's the tight end position, and that's always been the tight end position is, yeah, there's some glitz to it, there are touchdowns, and if you're a good-looking dude like Tony Gonzalez, your life's going to be pretty sweet. Maybe you will be a little bit of a celebrity, but even Tony Gonzalez says that's why the tight end is different from the other positions. It forces you to do the stuff you don't want to do. You still have to go over to that nine-on-seven inside run drill at training camp and bash people in. You're not with the wide receivers and the cornerbacks running one-on-ones and working on your routes, but there's an element of physicality here that's inherent to being a real tight end. Now, if you're a receiver, if you're receiving tight end, maybe you're doing less of that, but if you're still a tight end, that's still going to be an element to your game that you're going to need at some point or another. I think that's why the tight-end position almost chooses you. You don't necessarily choose the position. You have a certain set of traits and characteristics as a human being. You're Jimmy Graham, and you're basically growing up an orphan because your mom doesn't want you, and you're in a group home, and you're fearing for your life, and you're getting beat up in a van, and your will is being tested to the extreme before you're finally saved by a church leader who takes you in and gets you to school. It's no coincidence that Jimmy Graham has the intestinal fortitude to play four years of basketball at Miami, play one-year college basketball, go to New Orleans, and help evolve the position themselves. He didn't go out to be a tight end. It kind of chose him. It was the same with Dallas Clark at Iowa and everything he went through; he was a linebacker, like six, seven string, just getting the space beat in and pinching pennies together to even pay his way through school. Eventually, Kirk Baron says, hey, you're a tight end, and that indomitable drive was just a perfect fit for Dallas Clark. I think that's what's special about it. It definitely taps into your innermost traits as a human being. If you're going to work hard, if you're the type that's just going to put others before yourself, there's a good chance you'd be a tight end.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you brought up that topic because so many tight ends were something else before they became tight ends. It's not something that in high school, hey, I was a tight end in high school. You never hear that. But most common, at least in past times, tight ends were former offensive tackles or maybe a running back every once in a while. But as you said, Gonzalez, Antonio Gates, and some of the others are Jimmy Graham, basketball players who were converted to be tight ends. And now you're talking like Dallas Clark being converted from another position. It's just wild. I think you're right about the money when you say a tight-end position chooses you because that's kind of cool about that position.

Tyler Dunne
It is. I mean, it really is just about the case for everybody, except for, um, you know, Rob Gronkowski, growing up here in Buffalo, New York, he's, he's fallen in love with the Jeremy Shockey. He sees, you know, he's a young teenager, and he sees this, uh, this dude in New York City with the blonde hair and the brass style, just saying whatever's on his mind, living it up, you know, in the nightlife in the big city. And he's thinking, man, I want to be that one day. I just want to party hard, play hard, and live like there's no tomorrow. And boy, it sure looks like I can do it at tight end. So I guess that's maybe what makes Rob Gronkowski the greatest tight end ever. He kind of knew all along that he was made for it. And by God, the way he grew up in Buffalo, as people will read in this book, it all prepared him, uh, to be that tight end.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, he's he's definitely a unique specimen at the position because you know Generally your tight ends you could almost put in one of two groups either They're a great pass catching tight end a threat down the field or they're just a road grader blocker And he was sort of you know, the best of both worlds, especially in his prime You know i'm a Steelers fan and you know He he on the Patriots just owned my team for you know, as long as he played they were just killing it You know, you got Brady, but he was definitely a big element of what they did And uh, you know, there's there's other instances of that too where you have a you know Great blocking tight end that can catch a lot of great passes and everything too But uh, you know, like but Gonzalez I never really think of him as you know I'm sure he had to share blocks But I think the general perception is this dude could get open and you know It was a big target when he showed his numbers to a quarterback and made some big plays that uh, Some of the others so I guess that takes a sort of the other end of my question Um, yeah, everybody had a common thread. Well, how about what was the most surprising? A unique story that one of these legends told you about the tight-end position

Tyler Dunne
Oh my goodness, there were a lot. You know, if we're gonna get, if we're gonna get heavy, I mean, I would say Jackie Smith, and it's kind of two-fold. His upbringing is remarkable. Growing up in Kentwood, Louisiana, didn't really, didn't even barely play any football. He was just like a little spinner back in their wing T. He was a track guy. And by the way, at their school, their track, they just kind of ran around the football field. One time, they didn't really have a track, and there was one part of it that would flood, and it was like running in a bunch of wet dirt, but the dude could fly. He could run and run for days. He eventually worked his way to playing in college or running track in college. The only way he got a scholarship was because he said he would join the football team. It was just that he was kind of on the football team because the St. Louis Cardinals took a shot at him. And the football stories around Jackie Smith are remarkable. I mean, he's kind of forgotten in the history of the game, but yards per reception, he still has a record of a full two yards, I believe. He was a tough, tough, tough player. There are some remarkable stories of just being injured in one game. Terry Metcalf, I believe the running back, takes a cheap shot, and Jackie just runs right out on the field. Just runs right out and goes after the player for the Washington Redskins and gets to his face. And the ref is, you know, screwing him up. He thinks the fan is like a great fan running out of the field. It makes Jackie sit in a chair, far away from the team. Now that following up season, Jackie's mother down in Jackson, Mississippi, greets him at the door and says, hey, Jackie, there's a player for the Washington Redskins who had just moved in, and he said he wants to see you. And Jackie's a God-buried man. He's like, oh my gosh, Jesus Christ has delivered me my revenge. And so he goes over to the guy's house. He's ready to punch him, slug him, and get his vengeance. He's got a clutch fit behind his back. The player answers the door, and it's somebody else. And they have themselves a beautiful chat. He was a, you know, that those Cardinal teams, I mean, they had Conrad to Ober, right? They and Deardor. There were some tough tough guys on that team. Yeah, they are all to a man, really.

Darin Hayes
Jimmy Hart at quarterback, those teams, I believe, too.

Tyler Dunne
Yeah, yep, yep, good call. Yeah, but God, the name escapes me. They had somebody that competed like one of the world's strongest men, too. I mean, you're talking about gnarly, mean, nasty human beings, but Jackie Smith, they told me, is he was the bad, bad dude of mine. He was the man in charge. You feared him. He had a toughness to him. And it was great to just tell his story because, sadly, you hear that name and you think of 5.5 seconds in the Super Bowl, where that drop that he had in the end zone in 1979, there was so much more that went into it. Yeah, it wasn't like he just dropped this easy pass. The play call, where they called it, Rodgers, Staubachs, Thoreau. There were a lot of moving parts, let alone the fact that it was in the third quarter, they got a field goal that drove, and they gave Randy White a plumb of the kick-off return, and Staubach threw a bad pick that led to a tough hit. Many other factors were why the Dallas Cowboys lost that game, but I think the stories out of that on how he had to deal with this in his post-playing days, that's where it gets heavy because Jackie Smith is sitting down with him. I was like, sit with my grandfather, an unbelievably kind human being, great, great soul, and you can just feel his pain and how that moment affected him, and more so affected the relationships that he had with so many of his loved ones. It took a while. He was pretty honest. It took until about a couple of years ago for him to really look in the mirror, face that man in the mirror, and say, let's quit letting this bother you, like really cherish these relationships, and I think that's a huge element to the tight end position too. So many of these guys kind of had that man-in-the-mirror moment and bettered themselves as human beings.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Jackie and his previous, uh, you know, history because, as you say, he sort of gets a bad rap for that Super Bowl thing. But I have a little bit of theory on that. You know, first of all, he came from the Cardinals, which, uh, that way back then, uh, the Cardinals and the Cowboys were in the same division. Uh, sounds kind of foreign to us now, but I can remember those days. I'm a little older, but, uh, so, you know, he really, by Cowboys fans, he's a very passionate fan base now and then, um, you know, they've probably had a little bit just like from way back when, cause he, he heard them so much, you know, when he played against the Cowboys twice a year and then, uh, you know, him doing that and they needed a scapegoat, uh, you know, playing at the Steelers that year. And, uh, I think he just sort of, he was the, the donkey, they were going to pin the tail on, and the poor guy got a bad rap. But like you say, there was a lot of football left after that. And a lot of, uh, plays that were left on the field that, uh, could have changed the outcome of that game. So a great player, though. And I'm glad that you bring him up and, uh, talk about his, uh, being such a great player instead of being a scapegoat of a Superbowl loss.

Tyler Dunne
thank you. Yeah, you know you're right. There were other factors at play, too, like Vern Linquest's call. Bless his heart, we all people who were who remember watching that game can remember the imagery right of even like Roger Staubach Tom Lance or just the despondent look on their faces it was just heavy and right in the moment it was just played up to the extreme where oh my god so much other stuff happened and I just I think if everybody listening out there if you were judged by something that happened in your life that was such a fleeting moment in time I can't imagine

Darin Hayes
Yeah, it's not like he, you know, it was an easy catch that should have been made, not saying that. But I believe he's down on his knees as a result of a low throw by Staubach and a high-pressure situation. And what one of us can honestly say that you haven't made a mistake on the job when you're under a little bit of pressure, you know, in a unique circumstance, I can, I don't think anybody's going to be raising their hands says it's never happened to them because it's happened to all of us. I'm sure. He's just on the big stage of the most televised program in the country for the year, and everybody is watching at a critical point. So yeah, he deserves to get more credit for being the great player that he was.

Tyler Dunne
And you know what, just while we're on him, that play, Jackie broke it all down. Granted, we didn't just open up our conversation with that play. We were gently kind of easing into it because I think it is still a sore subject for him, obviously. Some of his closest friends haven't even brought it up. But that play, Roger Staubach, when he threw it, he kind of fluttered it, he floated it. Like normally, he'd zip it in there. But Jackie was so wide open. Unexpectedly wide open, like the fourth or fifth option on the play. It's not even for him that he thought he wanted to make it easy, where Jackie was running his route fast and like he always would. And that's what kind of made him flip, and then he dropped it, and also was called it like the 10-yard line. Typically, when they run that play, which was just put in, I mean, they just put the play in, it was supposed to be a goal-line play. So he'd go to the back of the goal line to catch it. And this time, it's just different, the dimensions of where they're calling; that's why, like Tom Landry, one of the best coaches of all time, whose fingerprints are all over the tight end position, too, as people will read. It's crazy that he called that play where he did. It doesn't make much sense for one of the smartest coaches ever to do that.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, but it actually worked though. He was hoping they could get an advantage on it.

Tyler Dunne,
regardless, he was open. Yeah, you're right.

Darin Hayes
You're right. Interesting. Now, I'm interested in hearing a little bit about Ozzie Newsom that you sat down with because that man's mind, I mean, as a player, he had to be one of the smartest football minds in football on the field. And definitely his, you know, general manager duties, he's, you know, off the charts. A guy had success with everything he did in the game of football. So I'm just interested in, maybe, some of the interesting things that you got out of your conversation with him.

Tyler Dunne
Oh, my goodness. He's so different than, you know, if you're talking common threads with these tight ends, it'd be personality, right? So many of them have just explosive, loud, fun, energetic personalities. I mean, Ozzy, when he was the GM, he went after Jan and Sharp. Jan and Sharp often went to the Super Bowl, so he welcomed that person. That wasn't Ozzy. I mean, he is, as Joe de la Melora says, quiet as a mouse. I mean, he really didn't say much privately. He doesn't say much publicly. To sit down with him for this book, I'm surprised that he was up for it, but he was. We talked for about an hour about his remarkable life. You know, I think it's a product of where he grew up, the segregated South, where he's living so many of the experiences we just read about in textbooks, really. I mean, he was there, and then he saw it, and he's on a youth baseball team, and their team is forced to just stay somewhere else because people at this establishment did not want African Americans there. So, yeah, I mean, I think the fact that he then decided, okay, I'm going to go to a white school, and I'm going to compete academically and athletically and prove that I'm just as good, if not better than everybody, and he did. He crushed everybody in that department. Gift of Alabama, Bear Bryant is like a father figure to him; he just wants to make him proud that they had unbelievably important conversations that he still holds near and dear. And I think that all the play of heartbreak in Cleveland, I mean, he just endured so much heartbreak, and those playoff losses, the Red Right 88, the Drive, the Bumble, the theme would be just calm and chaos. That's the title of that chapter. He's just so unbelievably calm. And even the way he caught the ball, he was smooth. I mean, he looked at him with his eyes. And after he had it dropped early in his career, he just dropped another pass. Practice games didn't matter. He never dropped the ball because he's just so dang calm and quiet and productive. And yes, that's absolutely how he ran the Baltimore Ravens. You know, that first draft when it's all bare bones. My God, they didn't even have a logo. They're working on the police barrack. Their rosters gutted. You know, the city of Cleveland wants Art Modell dead. Ozzy was just a de facto GM when he was like Bill Belichick. Whatever you call him, he just gopher before for the Phyllis Brown scenes. He was just a scout scout, you know, working on the card to practice. But now, all of a sudden, he's entrusted with running the Baltimore Ravens. And he had the foresight at that moment to just trust their draft board in 96. They had Nohner and Art Modell, and they had Coach and Ted Marcia Broda, who won the Lawrence Phillips. They want to make a big splash. They're running back out of Nebraska, talented, obviously troubled, very, very, very troubled, historically troubled. And Ozzy knew some; all he said was that we had done all this work on these college prospects. Our scouts have Ogden and Jonathan Ogden, and number one, we're going to stick with Jonathan Ogden. And the pick obviously worked out. They take Ray Lewis later in that first round, and the Ravens, for two decades, are a gold standard for how you run a team.

Darin Hayes
Absolutely. Yeah, that's fantastic on that. Now, why don't you take this opportunity to say the name of your book again and where folks might be able to get it?

Tyler Dunne
Absolutely. It's the blood and guts that tight ends save football. Amazon's probably the way to go, right? That's where everybody is anyway. So, hardcover, Kindle, and Audible are all available there. Obviously, Barnes& Noble, Walmart, Target, Indie Books, and your local bookstore are good options. It should be all over the place. So, yes, you'll get all these stories and a hell of a lot more; I promise you that. It was a passion project. Loved every second of it.

Darin Hayes
Well, that's great. Okay, one last question before we let you go here. Now, you know, the tight end position, we know how it's morphed into what it is today. You know, it's a dynamic position. It's always changing. But where do you see the course of tight ends going further? I mean, do you see any more changes to the position for the good of the game, or do you think it's gonna be pretty much what it is today?

Tyler Dunne
No, I think it is changing. I mean, you're seeing the athleticism just reach extremes. I mean, what Kyle Pitts does in Atlanta is unbelievable. Really, to have that kind of athleticism, that kind of speed, to run a 4 -4 at 250. I mean, he's unbelievably productive. We'll see how, you know, the quarterback play shakes out there. And if you can kind of develop as a blocker, blocking is obviously his weakness. But I talked to him about actually working on a story right now with Kyle Pitts. We just caught up a couple of days ago. So, I go along to you .com. People can check that out. I think this guy's got an inner drive, like Gonzales has, like Gates has like all of these greats really possessed. And as much as you really do want that do-it-all -tight end that can block and drive somebody into the dirt 15 yards field and make a play in the passing game, you know, George Kittle is the best of the best today. Kittles don't grow on trees because that's not a tight end that you're really going to find in college anymore. You're going to find athletes, and then you have to try to coach them up and teach them how to block. But that's okay. You know, I think Pitts is going to take this tight end position into a new realm that is hopefully going to get these guys paid because they're some of the most underpaid professional athletes in any sport. And it's kind of terrible. I mean, fullbacks and specialists only make less of them.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's very true indeed. Now, I really appreciate you coming on today to talk about the Titan position. I'm glad that you wrote this book and gave them the love that they deserve and told their story in football history. And Tyler, it's an amazing book. And folks, I highly recommend it. Like you said, you know, Amazon and the Barnes and Noble of the world, I hear they both sell a few books. So, definitely get Tyler's book there. Probably, it makes a great Christmas gift. We've got that season coming up for the football fan in your life who loves to read about football history. I appreciate that. Tyler, do you want to share any of your social media with folks so they can keep it? I know they can keep track of you on the website, but, you know, social media is always a good thing, too, for people who only have a couple of seconds in their pocket, you know, the phone in their pocket. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tyler Dunne
Just at Ty Dunn, so T -Y -D -U -N -N -E on Twitter, Instagram, and all that good stuff. So yeah, follow along, and we'll be spreading the tight end of love and uncovering pro football best mechanics that go along

Darin Hayes
All right, Tyler Dunne, book Blood and Guts, How Tight Ends Save Football. We appreciate you coming on here today, sir, and sharing and preserving football history.

Tyler Dunne
No, thank you, man. I really enjoyed the conversation. I hope we can do it again.