Rozelle

  to haul angry editors and rewrite men away from steins of beer

  and half- eaten sandwiches and back to the office to work on one

  of the biggest stories in the history of American newspapers. The

  president of the United States had been shot.

  Who among us cannot recall the sounds and sights of the imme-

  diate days that followed, the constant drone of the radios and tele-

  vision sets, the sadness . . . the tears . . . the anger? For those of my generation (since Kennedy was one of us), it was the single most

  traumatic event of our lives at that time.

  And in this chaotic time, Rozelle had to make a decision. cbs,

  which carried his games, was waiting for it, and it couldn’t wait too

  long. The media, conscious of the afl cancellations, were watch-

  ing. What made the urgency for action from Rozelle even more

  demanding was the fact that due to travel arrangements, television

  plans, and ticket holders, his clock was clicking at a furious pace.

  In Cleveland, Browns owner Art Modell picked up the phone,

  called Rozelle, and expressed an immediate opinion of his own.

  “I had spoken to some people I knew in the White House, and,

  of course, I had my own feelings.

  “I deeply felt the games should not be played out of respect.

  Pete had his own opinion. What made it worse for both me and

  the city of Cleveland personally was that the team we were going

  to play at home that day was the Dallas Cowboys.

  “And what hurt me was the fact that the afl, which at the time

  had no stature, had made what I considered to be the right decision.”

  Modell was not alone. Nobody ever took a straw poll, but clearly

  the issue left a house divided. As for Rozelle, what would influence

  his decision most was not surprising. As he always did, he reached

  back to old friends for their opinion. Pierre Salinger, the city- side reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle for whom Rozelle always left tickets for usf football games, had remained close to him

  through the years. He had also become Kennedy’s press secretary.

  Heads They Win, Tails He Loses

  83

  Salinger seemed to speak for the whole Kennedy family when he told Pete that he was sure Kennedy would not have wanted

  the games canceled. He said that Bobby Kennedy had person-

  ally said as much to him. Within hours Rozelle announced that

  the nfl would play as scheduled. When he made that announce-

  ment, the commissioner immediately became the target for a tsu-

  nami of public condemnation that even his gifted public relations

  instincts could not divert.

  For me, the game- day drive that Sunday across the Macomb’s

  Dam Bridge that fronts Yankee Stadium was like a journey through

  the twilight zone. It played hell with normal visual perspective.

  Looking at the big, concrete saucer of a ballpark, it seemed as

  though some alien Gulliver had swept a giant hand across the

  horizon and totally rearranged the skyline.

  And then I realized what it was. The flags.

  They had always been a constant, ringing the top of the sta-

  dium as a kind of landmark. But now they were at half- mast, they

  hung limply in the November wind, dramatically changing the

  entire configuration of a view that I had seen hundreds of times

  before without really seeing it.

  The emotions and the events of the day were staggering, not

  only in the Bronx but all across America. Out in Cleveland Modell

  had invited a few reporters into his box to watch the news telecasts

  from Dallas as the teams warmed up. There— as in the Yankee Sta-

  dium press room, where I was watching— we saw Oswald shot and

  killed on live tv being transferred from police headquarter to the

  county jail. Modell recalled the horror he and the reporters in his

  press box felt when “we were watching a second damned murder.”

  The irony for a number of sportswriters was staggering because

  Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby, as a strip club owner, often picked up

  the tab for local cops at his Carousel Club. In addition, he was a

  virtual sportswriter groupie, visiting our hotels and handing out

  free- drink cards. Most of us had met him. Each time he left his

  parting words were “Don’t forget to tell the other guys they’re

  welcome at the Carousel.”

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  Heads They Win, Tails He Loses

  Back in New York, before the Giants- Cardinals game, Jack Mara, then the team president, offered refunds for any season

  ticketholder who did not attend. There were no takers, and there

  were no protesters.

  I did not agree with Rozelle’s decision at the time, but appar-

  ently most football fans did, because 62,992 of them showed up at

  Yankee Stadium. There were seven games played that afternoon,

  and the only drop in expected attendance was in Minnesota, where

  the weather and not grief was the key factor.

  So the crowds did show up, leading to the conclusion that at

  least for America’s nfl fans, Rozelle had made the right decision.

  Even today, however, I am convinced that much of the country

  did not agree at all with what he elected to do.

  But I could not help but wonder if the cancellation of a week’s

  worth of nfl football would have affected cbs or nfl profits and

  what the impact on both corporations would have been of the need

  to extend the entire schedule deeper into the calendar by resched-

  uling the week’s games. In other words, was money a factor?

  And what if Dallas or Washington had been scheduled to play

  at home? What would the nfl have done, faced with the incredi-

  ble nonfootball things happening in those two cities on that day?

  In New York the crowd was so quiet and reflective, I won-

  dered again, “Why are they playing this game?” Modell said that

  in Cleveland there were close to 60,000 fans on hand, but “it was

  the strangest day I ever experienced at any stadium. They were

  so quiet. The best way to describe the whole day is ‘eerie.’ What

  made it even worse was the fact that of all the teams in the league

  we had to draw the one from the town where it happened.”

  And there was something else. It was the time of America’s love

  affair with the transistor radio, and at Giants stadium, like in every other venue, they seemed to grow in number through sheer osmo-sis. Usually, you saw them because football fans like to hear the

  radio announcers explain things they cannot quite see. But on this

  day their bulletins from Dallas turned the crowd positively schizo-

  phrenic: the Giants complete a screen pass and the crowd wants

  Heads They Win, Tails He Loses

  85

  to cheer, but then the radios tells them that Lee Harvey Oswald has been shot. The Cardinals score and the crowd wants to groan,

  but the radios report that the late president’s body is on its way to

  Washington. The Cardinals begin a drive and the crowd wants

  to chant “Defense . . . Defense . . . Defense . . . ,” but the radios

  tell them that Lee Harvey Oswald has died.

  And an hour earlier Martha Wright, the Broadway star, sang the

  national anthem, and for the first time in my life I heard 62,992

  people sing along w
ith her in unison. New York sports fans are

  not by nature singers of the national anthem at any event. But on

  this day they sang. I didn’t have a clue as to what that meant in

  terms of Rozelle’s decision, but I suppose there was some kind of

  message in it.

  It was on that day and still is Frank Gifford’s contention that

  Rozelle’s decision was “the best thing that could have happened for

  the city of New York and its people. The whole thing was so hor-

  rible that we all seemed to be standing still. I played in that game,

  and I honestly believe it was a release. I think the city started mov-

  ing forward again with it behind us. We had to get back to living.”

  After the game I went to look for Rozelle. He had elected to

  come to the Giants game because, well, because he was Rozelle

  and he had made a decision, and I knew he would not take the easy

  way out. Earlier, in a formal statement he had said, “It has been

  traditional in sports for athletes to perform in times of great per-

  sonal tragedy. Football was Mr. Kennedy’s game. He thrived on

  competition.” That was the nfl publicity machine’s explanation,

  but I still wanted to hear something from him.

  I found him in the long, cold tunnel underneath the grandstand

  on his way out about a half hour after the game. It was chilly, and

  I have a vague memory that he was wearing a light- colored trench

  coat. I remember telling him I thought he had been wrong and

  then asking him how he made his decision. This is what he said:

  It’s your right to think what you like, but I do not believe you have the right to tell me how to mourn any more than I have the right to tell

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  Heads They Win, Tails He Loses

  you or anyone else. Each man has to mourn in his own way. I went to church this morning. Nobody made these people come here today.

  They wanted to come. I think it [playing the games] was a good thing

  for them and for the country because it kept some form of order for

  them and gave them some kind of relief.

  I don’t think playing the games was disrespectful. I don’t think I

  made a mistake. I know that some feeling has developed since I made

  the decision on Friday. We got a lot of phone calls that were critical at the office. But I believe it was good for the country.

  And money quite honestly had absolutely nothing to do with that

  decision.

  But what if Dallas had been scheduled to play at home? Or

  Washington had? “What would you have done then?”

  “That would have changed everything— completely. But it wasn’t

  that way. It’s not unfair for you to question me about it, but with

  that a nonfactor, I honestly believe I did the right thing.”

  Except for Modell most owners did not express opposition to

  Rozelle’s decision. Back in 1963 they pretty much supported just

  about everything he did. John Mara’s recollection was that Wel-

  lington never even discussed it with him until the subject came up

  after the attack on the World Trade Center thirty- eight years later.

  It was odd that we never had discussed it before then, but I certainly had no memory of his position when it happened. But after the attack

  on the World Trade Center it was unanimous among owners not to

  play, and I do recall that my dad said then that it had been a mistake to play the jfk game.

  He was adamantly opposed to it, but he understood that Pete did

  it with the best of intentions to try to get us all back to normalcy.

  But in retrospect my dad thought it probably was the wrong thing

  because people were still grieving and there was no way to judge that.

  Rozelle surely defended it during that brief one- on- one we had

  after the game. But later he continually and publicly stated that

  in retrospect, he had come to regret that decision. Still, over the

  Heads They Win, Tails He Loses

  87

  years I have not been clear over what Rozelle really thought. Did he really come to regret it? Did he think he was wrong, or did he

  believe deep down that he had actually done the best thing pos-

  sible for the league and for the country at large?

  Joe Browne, who later became the league’s top pr man and its

  vice president for government affairs, probably still has the best

  read on it:

  In 1989 when he was leaving, someone was interviewing him and

  asked him to go over some of the things that pleased him most dur-

  ing his career. He talked about the growth of the Super Bowl into a

  huge national event and the day Art Rooney won his first Super Bowl.

  And then the guy asked him about the Kennedy game and he went

  along with the idea that he regretted playing it, but I don’t think he meant that.

  The guy had asked him about his biggest regret or disappointment,

  and the truth is that he had so few as commissioner that I think he

  went along with the idea that maybe the Kennedy game had been a

  mistake.

  But later he told me he still believed it was the right thing to do

  and remember Pierre Salinger had advised him that it was, and his old

  tie to him and their days in San Francisco I am sure convinced him.

  It was, arguably, the first time popular opinion over a Rozelle

  decision was split so passionately. It would probably be the last.

  The war between the nfl and the afl was about to ignite in full

  fury. But as the two leagues battled, Rozelle’s got no heat because

  there were really no tangential issues that forced America to take

  sides beyond plain, old- fashioned municipal chauvinism.

  It wasn’t the need to bring professional football to growing

  cities that had been left out of the mix that would trigger serious

  trauma for the commissioner. He knew expansion was coming, as

  his subsequent acts showed. That it would come through heated

  competition didn’t worry him, either. After all, competition was

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  Heads They Win, Tails He Loses

  ingrained deeply within him, with a serious passion going all the way back to those quarter- a- hole matches at Gittleson’s miniature golf course.

  Pressure had always seemed to bring out the best in him. But

  now he was about to be pressured to compete as never before.

  There was a new gunslinger in town. His name was Al Davis, and

  nobody before or after would get his competitive juices flowing

  as intensely and for as long a period of time as this new player in

  America’s 100- yard game would.

  The old guard of the National Football League would face the

  biggest challenge in its history. Never were the stakes as high as

  the ones for which Rozelle and Davis would go head- to- head— on

  the playing fields (both collegiate and professional) and ultimately

  in the courts.

  Some would say, well, it wasn’t personal. What it was was busi-

  ness. But even after it had run its course and a new combined

  league morphed out of it, and for as long as Rozelle was the com-

  missioner and Davis was the gadfly, it was, indeed, very personal.

  Heads They Win, Tails He Loses

  89

  7

  The 100- Yard Armageddon

  Let them raise enough money to buy a football.

  —nfl com
missioner Elmer Layden, when asked how the All- America

  Football Conference would fare in the entertainment field

  What’s bigger than a giant? A titan, that’s what.

  —Harry Wismer on the naming of his afl franchise

  He knew his history, which is more than you can say for some of

  his owners, who seemed to believe with an almost religious fer-

  vor that the roots of their 100- yard monopoly had something to

  do with Mount Sinai and stone tablets.

  Pete Rozelle fully understood that those who ignored the failures

  of past history were destined to repeat them. And when it came to

  rival leagues failing, there was no shortage of messengers. He knew

  that for all the failed attempts, there were two that had a tremen-

  dous impact on what the National Football League had become.

  In 1925 George Halas had struck the single biggest positive blow

  for solvency in the history of the fledgling nfl when he signed Red

  Grange, a magnificent running back out of the University of Illi-

  nois who had captured the nation’s imagination. The architect of

  his inspiration had been a man named C. C. (Cash and Carry) Pyle,

  a press- agent entrepreneur, whose later brushes with immortality

  would include a coast- to- coast walkathon he creatively named the

  Bunion Derby. The signing of Grange, a home- grown hero, brought

  the Chicago Bears as close as they had ever been to solvency.

  As an aside Tim Mara, whose Giants were playing in their inau-

  gural season, gave away five thousand tickets each Sunday and still

  90

  couldn’t draw customers. Over the first ten games, he couldn’t clear the ten thousand dollars a game he needed to break even.

  But Mara had scheduled the Bears and Grange for game 11. On

  that day they broke the fire laws. Roughly seventy- three thousand

  people paid their way in. A visiting superstar had made the Polo

  Grounds the place to be in New York City.

  It was that way everywhere Halas took the Bears. But the love

  affair between Halas and Pyle soon generated into one of pure

  hate. The year after the Polo Grounds milestone, Pyle suggested

  a new arrangement. The thing he wanted to rearrange was the

  Halas bank account. He demanded a 50 percent ownership stake