Read Online Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football by Rich Cohen - Free Book Online
Book: Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football by Rich Cohen
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Authors: Rich Cohen
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schedule, he wanted standings and rules, he wanted a commissioner, and he wanted a winner. In this way, the league was born. For the first two seasons, it was called the American Professional Football Association, a name later changed to the National Football League. Jim Thorpe was named commissioner, as he was the game’s only star. A terrible administrator, he was soon replaced by Joe Carr. The charter members were required to pay a $100 fee, forked over in greasy bills or check or IOU. The tickets getting here cleaned me out. Over the next ninety years, the $100 Halas used to purchase his franchise doubled in value, was raised to the tenth power, and multiplied by a gazillion. In September 2012, the Chicago Tribune estimated the team’s worth at $1.19 billion.
The list of NFL charter teams reads like a roll call of nineteenth-century street gangs: Canton Bulldogs, Decatur Staleys, Cleveland Indians, Dayton Triangles, Akron Pros, Rochester Jeffersons, Rock Island Independents, Muncie Flyers, Racine Cardinals, Hammond Pros. Industrial towns—that’s where the league started, where its personality formed. It’s a ruggedness that still lingers in the mentality of the coach who distinguishes between hurt and injured: injured is broken, meaning you’re done ; hurt is pain, meaning get back out there, you fuckin’ pussy. Only two original franchises survive: the Chicago Bears and the Arizona Cardinals, who previously played as the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Cardinals, and the Racine Cardinals, not because they were based in Racine, Wisconsin, but because the roster was made up of guys who hung out on Racine Street on Chicago’s South Side.
4
LEATHER HEADS
Red Grange, the Galloping Ghost, played seven seasons for the Bears and put the NFL on the map.
The early years of the NFL recall a lost chapter in the leisure life of America. It was a time of over-the-hill quarterbacks and asthmatic runners, men traded for equipment, fans deputized to play. It was fun in the way of a fad or an enterprise everyone expects to fail: enjoy it while you can, soon you’ll take your place on the factory floor. The league was considered disreputable, the Wild West of professional sports. Each year, the names of the teams changed as old powers faded and factory squads ascended. Thirty-five franchises folded in the first decade, including the Milwaukee Badgers, which featured Paul Robeson, the great African American bass-baritone, who played one season in the NFL while attending Columbia Law School; the Providence Steam Rollers; the Akron Pros; and the strangest team in sports history, the Oorang Indians. The passion project of Walter Lingo, who made a fortune in dog kennels, the Oorang Indians were based in LaRue, Ohio, the smallest town to ever boast a professional anything. Lingo, a digger of arrowheads and builder of tepees, loved all things Native American and staffed his team entirely with Indians. He recruited from the Carlisle and Haskell Indian schools as well as Chippewa reservations in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The names on the starting roster included Big Bear, Red Fang, Little Twig, Deer Slayer. He signed Jim Thorpe when he was so broken-down no other pro team would have him.
Halas made the great play of his career against Oorang. It happened in Chicago, on a rainy afternoon. Thorpe was carrying the ball, plunging into the pile. Halas put his head into the big man’s stomach. You could hear the wind leave his lungs: oof! The dark face scowled as the ball came loose and bounded across the field. Halas picked it up, made one cut, and was gone, with Thorpe behind him. “I ran faster and faster but I sensed he was gaining,” Halas wrote. “I could hear the squishing of his shoes in the mud. When I could almost feel his breath, I dug in a cleat and did a sharp zig. Thorpe’s momentum carried him on and gave me a few feet of running room. He narrowed the gap. I zagged. Just short of the goal, Thorpe threw
The list of NFL charter teams reads like a roll call of nineteenth-century street gangs: Canton Bulldogs, Decatur Staleys, Cleveland Indians, Dayton Triangles, Akron Pros, Rochester Jeffersons, Rock Island Independents, Muncie Flyers, Racine Cardinals, Hammond Pros. Industrial towns—that’s where the league started, where its personality formed. It’s a ruggedness that still lingers in the mentality of the coach who distinguishes between hurt and injured: injured is broken, meaning you’re done ; hurt is pain, meaning get back out there, you fuckin’ pussy. Only two original franchises survive: the Chicago Bears and the Arizona Cardinals, who previously played as the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Cardinals, and the Racine Cardinals, not because they were based in Racine, Wisconsin, but because the roster was made up of guys who hung out on Racine Street on Chicago’s South Side.
4
LEATHER HEADS
Red Grange, the Galloping Ghost, played seven seasons for the Bears and put the NFL on the map.
The early years of the NFL recall a lost chapter in the leisure life of America. It was a time of over-the-hill quarterbacks and asthmatic runners, men traded for equipment, fans deputized to play. It was fun in the way of a fad or an enterprise everyone expects to fail: enjoy it while you can, soon you’ll take your place on the factory floor. The league was considered disreputable, the Wild West of professional sports. Each year, the names of the teams changed as old powers faded and factory squads ascended. Thirty-five franchises folded in the first decade, including the Milwaukee Badgers, which featured Paul Robeson, the great African American bass-baritone, who played one season in the NFL while attending Columbia Law School; the Providence Steam Rollers; the Akron Pros; and the strangest team in sports history, the Oorang Indians. The passion project of Walter Lingo, who made a fortune in dog kennels, the Oorang Indians were based in LaRue, Ohio, the smallest town to ever boast a professional anything. Lingo, a digger of arrowheads and builder of tepees, loved all things Native American and staffed his team entirely with Indians. He recruited from the Carlisle and Haskell Indian schools as well as Chippewa reservations in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The names on the starting roster included Big Bear, Red Fang, Little Twig, Deer Slayer. He signed Jim Thorpe when he was so broken-down no other pro team would have him.
Halas made the great play of his career against Oorang. It happened in Chicago, on a rainy afternoon. Thorpe was carrying the ball, plunging into the pile. Halas put his head into the big man’s stomach. You could hear the wind leave his lungs: oof! The dark face scowled as the ball came loose and bounded across the field. Halas picked it up, made one cut, and was gone, with Thorpe behind him. “I ran faster and faster but I sensed he was gaining,” Halas wrote. “I could hear the squishing of his shoes in the mud. When I could almost feel his breath, I dug in a cleat and did a sharp zig. Thorpe’s momentum carried him on and gave me a few feet of running room. He narrowed the gap. I zagged. Just short of the goal, Thorpe threw
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