Rozelle

by Jerry Izenberg

  agreement. And then there was another long silence, and I could see

  the pain in his eyes, and I said, “Let’s go have a drink.”

  They went down the elevator in silence and walked east on

  Forty- Ninth Street. “Neither one of us could say much at first,”

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  How Do You Tell Vince?

  Rozelle recalled. “Then we found this bar, and we sat there and we talked . . . and we drank scotch . . . We drank scotch for four

  hours.”

  Lombardi left town that night, still unclear on what action

  Rozelle would take. Now events were moving swiftly toward a

  conclusion. The penalties were already clear in Rozelle’s mind.

  Arriving at them was difficult, but implementing them would be

  even more precarious. It had to be done swiftly so that the story

  did not leak to the press. It would have to be done decisively so

  that the American public, which held the future to the product

  he had been chosen to protect, would not turn against the league.

  He wanted to do it diplomatically as well, so that he did not

  get into a public brawl with the defendants. “I felt the first thing

  I wanted to do,” he told me, “was to speak with Hornung.”

  I had already planned to do this thing the next day, and I didn’t want him or anyone else to learn it through the newspapers. I found him

  through his mother, Loretta, in Louisville.

  Apparently, he had told her a little bit about what was happening

  because when she found out who was calling, she indicated that she

  knew it had to do with my final decision.

  I told Paul what I was doing and why. I know he was deeply disap-

  pointed. I don’t know whether he and Vince had discussed it, but he

  showed so much class that night, and he would do it again the next

  day on television.

  The other guy [Karras], well, we had a very tense conversation.

  All I can recall these days was his anger— and it was considerable.

  Conversely, Hornung had actually written the commissioner

  a letter after his suspension ended and told Rozelle he believed

  the commissioner had done the right thing except for the case of

  Lions management, which he thought got away far too easily with

  what he told Rozelle was a slap on the wrist.

  “Vince called me before I knew anything about their meeting,”

  Hornung told me, “and said Rozelle would be calling and maybe

  I should also go see him.”

  How Do You Tell Vince?

  75

  Neither of us knew what the penalty would be. I knew they had tapped my phone. I didn’t know whether that was legal or not, but I never

  called an attorney because I knew what I did was wrong. I knew of

  others, but I didn’t give a damn if it was just going to be me because I was wrong. So I didn’t mention anyone else, and I never will.

  He was the best commissioner any sport ever had. He told me that

  I was to stay away from casinos and race tracks and that meant the

  Derby, too, and you know I live in Louisville and hadn’t missed one

  since I was twelve. But I listened. I dotted my i’s and crossed my t’s, and I still think he did the right thing.

  But I did have a little fun with him. After both of us were out of football, I went to Del Mar Race Track with my buddy D. Wayne Lukas,

  the trainer, and I looked down from our box, and I saw him below.

  So I ran down there. He was glad to see me, and he asked how I was

  doing, and then I said, “I just want to know one thing. Can I make a

  bet on a few horses today?” He actually roared he laughed so hard.

  After he called Hornung and Karris, Pete Rozelle did not sleep

  well that night. That figures. Nobody ever pleads the execution-

  er’s case. He has to work it out on his own. He knew that within

  twenty- four hours, he would be looking squarely into the jaws of

  the moment of truth. It would be the day the nfl and its young

  commissioner would learn how much clout it really had with the

  American sports fan and his hot little disposable sports dollar. He

  tossed and turned until finally he said the hell with it and rolled

  out of bed at 5:15 a.m.

  The morning fog was just beginning to lift when he finally hit the

  street. It was April 17, a warm spring day. As he walked he could see

  the UN complex in the first flush of light, reaching toward the sky.

  A soft breeze came rolling in off the East River, and he paused for

  a moment to watch a snub- nosed Moran tug groan its way against

  the current, a generation of soot plastered against its weary side.

  It was not yet 7:00 a.m., and the rush hour was still an hour away.

  For a time he paused and watched the river, and then he turned

  away to walk the fifteen blocks to his office near Rockefeller Plaza.

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  How Do You Tell Vince?

  For some time he had contemplated moving the offices from the cramped quarters in the General Dynamics Building to much

  roomier digs. Now he regretted he hadn’t done so. He was still a

  journalist at heart. He knew the television crews with their heavy

  equipment would be a problem, the still photographers with their

  aggressive psyches perhaps even more so, and an army of report-

  ers jockeying for space and one- on- one interviews would be the

  greatest challenge of all.

  By the time he arrived his mind was already clicking off march-

  ing orders for the staff. First, there would be the sharp metal-

  lic clicking of the keys on the office twx machine, and when the

  short, terse message of no more than three sentences (he still hadn’t

  figured how to frame it) was finished, all hell would break loose.

  How do you tell the world that Vince Lombardi’s golden- boy

  prodigy is at the heart of the biggest gambling scandal in league

  history? How do you tell the owner of the Detroit Lions that not

  only are you suspending one of the greatest defensive linemen in

  the history of football but that you are also fining other Lions and

  the Detroit management?

  He stepped into the empty elevator and rode toward his office.

  It was time to do the laundry.

  The press conference was the most masterful piece of media

  manipulation I have ever seen as a working newspaperman. Shortly

  after Rozelle relayed his state of the penalty- box message, Kensil

  was already telephoning newspapers and the electronic media. As

  Rozelle had expected, the cramped quarters could not even begin

  to accommodate the seekers- after- nfl- truth. Within an hour even

  standing room was at a premium.

  Rozelle began with a simple statement of fact. Hornung and

  Karras were suspended indefinitely. Five other Lions— guard John

  Gordy, defensive back (db) Gary Lowe, All- League middle line-

  backer Joe Schmidt, linebacker Wayne Walker, and defensive end

  (de) Sam Walker— were fined two thousand dollars each for the

  bets they had placed. And, finally, the Lions’ management was

  fined four thousand dollars because Coach George Wilson had

  How Do You Tell Vince?

  77

  failed to forward a Detroit police report to the proper authorities on his club and failed to properly police his own sideline.

  The shock of Hornung’s and Karras’s involvement had
over-

  ridden the much larger problem of what had happened on the

  Lions’ sideline and inside the locker room. Those management

  violations in their way were potentially the seeds of a far greater

  problem. Had it not been Hornung and Karras but two lesser

  players, the media would have focused far more on the Lions’

  management.

  Was the penalty for this serious problem so light because Rozelle

  would have been disciplining one of his own bosses? Perhaps.

  But I have another theory. Jerry Greene of the Detroit News, one of three daily newspaper reporters to have covered every Super

  Bowl, told me years later that after the merger between the afl

  and nfl he had asked Rozelle if the Lions would be one of three

  nfl teams forced over into the afl. Rozelle had responded by

  answering Greene with another question. Did he know that the

  Ford Motor Company was one of the league’s primary television

  sponsors at the time?

  And then there was what he did not say. Where does Ford live?

  Michigan. Who else lives in Michigan? The Lions. Who owned

  the Lions in 1963? William Ford Sr. Who got away with mur-

  der in this whole gambling mess? It wasn’t Hornung and Karras.

  Karras got the official word in the Lions’ office that day. “I

  haven’t done anything I’m ashamed of,” he said, “and I’m not

  guilty. I have retained a lawyer.”

  Meanwhile, back in New York as the press conference droned

  on, somebody asked Rozelle how he would characterize Karras’s

  reaction to the commissioner’s phone call informing him of the

  penalty. “Angry,” Rozelle said. “Very, very angry.” And if he had

  to find a word for Hornung? “Stupid,” somebody in the back of

  the room shouted. “Disappointed,” Rozelle responded.

  Rozelle was the ringmaster, alternating between the press and

  television, shuttling from the makeshift press section to a small

  ante room where tv crews came and went with the precision of

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  How Do You Tell Vince?

  an automatic punch press. The big topic of discussion relative to Hornung and Karris was “How long is indefinite?”

  “Can you excuse me?” Rozelle asked the multitude, picking up

  on a signal from Kensil. “Paul is on television and I’d like to listen.”

  On the screen in the corner of Rozelle’s office Hornung was

  saying all the right things. He was sorry. He was sorry that he had

  let his teammates down. He was sorry that he had been so fool-

  ish. He was sorry that he had let his fans down.

  “One more sorry,” a guy in the back whispered, “and ‘indefi-

  nitely’ will end by noon tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rozelle said, and everyone looked to the ceiling to

  see if a duck with a ten- dollar bill in its beak would drop down,

  proving that “sorry” was the old Groucho Marx Show’s magic word for the day. “I’m sorry,” Rozelle repeated, “for the interruption.

  Where were we?” Not that it mattered. The show was over.

  “It was,” Rozelle told me that day, “the hardest decision I ever

  had to make. Now that it’s over, all I can tell you is that I have a

  tremendous feeling of relief. There has to be when you live alone

  with something like this.”

  Hornung, as America’s favorite, could have been a problem, but

  he handled the party line perfectly. Rozelle had handled the legal

  problems perfectly by announcing the suspended players were

  free to play elsewhere, knowing full well that no afl team would

  dare to sign an admitted gambler at a time when it was fighting for

  respectability. And there was little trouble Karras could make once

  the team management fell in line— which it couldn’t do quickly

  enough once it saw how light the penalty for management was.

  Karras remained as volatile as ever during the suspension. A

  friend of his who actually may have been one of the fellows men-

  tioned in the Detroit police reports told me that during the ban,

  Alex flew to New York City with him on business and bumped

  into Rozelle on Sixth Avenue.

  “How are you?” Pete said.

  “Fine. I really want to get this suspension over with. I’ve changed

  my lifestyle. I’d like you to meet my new business manager.”

  How Do You Tell Vince?

  79

  Which is how, without ever knowing the truth, Pete Rozelle happened to shake hands with a bookmaker in broad daylight in

  the middle of Manhattan.

  And you also have to say this for Karras: he had a sense of

  humor. After the ban ended and he was back in football, he walked

  to the center of the field for the coin toss to start a game against

  the Vikings.

  “Mr. Karras,” the referee said, “you are the visiting captain.

  Will you please call the coin toss now?”

  “No,” Karras said.

  “I beg your pardon?” the referee said. “What did you say?”

  “I said no. I won’t call the coin toss. I’m sorry, but the commis-

  sioner says I’m not allowed to bet.”

  Shortly after the suspensions ended, Rozelle hired his first chief

  of security, Jim Hamilton, the cop who had founded America’s first

  police intelligence- gathering unit in Los Angeles. “I want them

  to know you are watching,” Rozelle told him.

  The week that his hiring was announced, Hamilton was seen

  in the Giants’ dressing room before the game. But members of

  the Colts insisted that he was in Baltimore that day. “We saw him

  after our game. He can’t be in two places at once.”

  “Oh, no?” Hamilton told me when I repeated what the guy had

  said. “Don’t tell him, but that’s why trains run between New York

  and Baltimore.”

  Rozelle always loved that story.

  80

  How Do You Tell Vince?

  6

  Heads They Win, Tails He Loses

  From Dallas, Texas, a flash apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1:00 p.m., Central Standard Time.

  —Walter Cronkite, cbs newsroom, November 22, 1963

  I felt badly over all the criticism Pete took because I think he did the absolutely right thing. He didn’t cancel the games. I played that Sunday in New York, and I believe, at least in this city, it got us all moving again.

  —Frank Gifford, in defense of why Rozelle did not cancel the nfl

  schedule

  It was the kind of media honeymoon that would melt a politician’s

  heart. From the time that Pete Rozelle became commissioner of

  the National Football League on January 26, 1960, until the day

  all of America froze in horror on November 22, 1963, he had been

  viewed as a kind of 100- yard Mother Teresa, cleaner than dirt and

  purer than a Green Bay snowfall.

  From his radical television policy to his shrewdly ignoring

  the rebel afl until he believed that his ownership was finally

  ready to fight, from the suspension of Golden Boy Paul Hor-

  nung and Black Hat Alex Karras for gambling to his personal role

  in the forced integration of the Washington Redskins, Ameri-

  ca’s media virtually applauded his every act. He was, they uni-

  versally acknowledged, the best- looking, most articulate, and

  brightest of a
ll the commissioners that had preceded him in all

  of America’s sports.

  And then came that horrendous day when President Kennedy

  was assassinated in Dallas that struck at the very heart of all Amer-

  81

  ica. That was on a Friday afternoon around noon, local time. He died within the hour at Parkland Medical Center.

  The country was paralyzed by that act. By nightfall those same

  circumstances would force Rozelle to make a decision that would

  bring down an avalanche of acerbic criticism upon him no matter

  what he did. There was, for him, simply no way to win. For the

  first time in his career, the commissioner who seemed to always

  plan for every contingency was thrust into the teeth of a lose- lose

  decision. With a beloved president assassinated and a nation in

  mourning, the question that caught Rozelle flush on the jaw was

  “to play or not to play.”

  The mood of the country more than reflected the tragedy— it

  lived it. The afl in conjunction with nbc, which carried its games,

  immediately canceled its full schedule. In some minds that put

  the National Football League at a public relations disadvantage.

  Like all Americans, I remember clearly where I was when the

  events that set that weekend in motion began to take shape. On the

  morning of November 22, 1963, I drove across the George Wash-

  ington Bridge from New Jersey, exited onto the Major Deegan

  Expressway in the Bronx, and went on to Yankee Stadium, where

  the nfl Giants were preparing for their Sunday game with the

  St. Louis Cardinals.

  It had been a year of ups and downs for Sam Huff, the middle

  linebacker, who had become a New York City hero since he had

  joined the club seven years earlier. I planned to build my Sunday

  column around him, so I watched practice, met with Sam in the

  locker room, and headed back down to Manhattan. By then I was

  already the lead columnist with the Star- Ledger in New Jersey, but I spent so much time in New York City that I was in the habit of

  stopping by my former newspaper, the New York Herald Tribune,

  to write and file my column.

  I was halfway through the piece when this tremendous com-

  motion broke out on the other side of the city room. People were

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  Heads They Win, Tails He Loses

  running toward the glass- enclosed alcove where the wire- service machines were housed. Copy boys were sprinting toward the elevators and then disappearing into various saloons and restaurants