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Authors: Rich Cohen
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himself at me and down I went, into a pool of water. But I slid over the goal. No professional had run 98 yards for a touchdown. None did so again until 1972.” The Green Bay Packers entered the league in its second season; the New York Giants came a few years later. Tim Mara, a bookmaker who knew Halas from the smoky back rooms where ballplayers and gamblers mingled, paid $2,500 for the franchise. He was no football fan but figured anything in New York was worth $2,500. The Steelers started as the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1933, the hobby of former prizefighter Art Rooney, who knew everyone because he basically grew up in a saloon. The Redskins began in Boston but were moved to D.C. by George Preston Marshall, a Southerner who made a fortune in laundry. Marshall, the premier racist of the NFL—because of him, African Americans were kept off rosters for years—had his wife write the league’s first fight song:
Hail to the Redskins!
Hail victory!
Braves on the warpath!
Fight for old DIXIE!…
Scalp ’em, swamp ’em
We will take ’em big score …
When I think about those early days, I imagine black-and-white photos, moments of football time frozen in the phosphorous stink of a cameraman’s flash. Bloody faces beneath leather headgear, busted teeth, bloody hands, a ball wobbling in the cold air. The league was filled with characters: Shipwreck Kelly, Benny Friedman, Johnny Blood. Its great early star was Thorpe. By making him the first commissioner, Halas and Hay seemed to connect their game to the original inhabitants of the land, distinguishing football from fey sports like baseball and golf, which stunk faintly of Europe. Football was American, its first star a big gamboling red man, who, a generation before, you might have faced in more dire circumstances at the Little Bighorn. The presence of Thorpe, who was a myth when he was still alive, seemed to prove what the champions of the game claimed from the beginning: though the West had been won and the Indian Wars had ended and the cowboy had faded away, the spirit of the frontier lived on, on the football field.
Thorpe was a perfect symbol of the frontier because he was actually born there, in Indian Territory in 1887 or 1888. His parents were of mixed heritage, part Irish, part Sac, Fox, and Potawatomi Indian. Thorpe grew up on reservations all over the Midwest. The skills Thorpe developed while rambling in the open country were just the ones he’d need for football: speed, endurance, stealth. His Indian name was Wa-Tho-Huk, “Bright Path.” He was as fast and strong as anyone who ever lived. His career in organized sports began at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where, according to lore, he walked onto the field one day and did a just-for-the-fun-of-it high jump in street clothes that set a record: five feet nine inches. He was nineteen. He played every sport at Carlisle but excelled in football, where he was coached by Pop Warner. It was Warner who convinced Thorpe to go out for the U.S. Olympic Team. In 1912, Thorpe won the decathlon and pentathlon in Stockholm. He was covered in gold. At the medal ceremony, he was given gifts by Czar Nicholas II and King Gustav V of Sweden, who shook the Indian’s hand and said, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”
Jim Thorpe, the first great star of professional football
Thorpe’s response—“Thanks, King!”—was said to demonstrate the casualness of the new American character. He returned a hero, marched in parades, and was showered in honor. He called it the peak of his life. That’s the way of the world: you are shown everything, the entire hand, fanned out with kings and one-eyed jacks, a moment before it’s taken away and shuffled back into the deck. A few months after Thorpe’s return, a newspaper scared up an old minor league box score, which proved Thorpe had been paid a few dollars to play a handful of baseball games for the Rocky Mount Railroaders of the Carolina League.
Hail to the Redskins!
Hail victory!
Braves on the warpath!
Fight for old DIXIE!…
Scalp ’em, swamp ’em
We will take ’em big score …
When I think about those early days, I imagine black-and-white photos, moments of football time frozen in the phosphorous stink of a cameraman’s flash. Bloody faces beneath leather headgear, busted teeth, bloody hands, a ball wobbling in the cold air. The league was filled with characters: Shipwreck Kelly, Benny Friedman, Johnny Blood. Its great early star was Thorpe. By making him the first commissioner, Halas and Hay seemed to connect their game to the original inhabitants of the land, distinguishing football from fey sports like baseball and golf, which stunk faintly of Europe. Football was American, its first star a big gamboling red man, who, a generation before, you might have faced in more dire circumstances at the Little Bighorn. The presence of Thorpe, who was a myth when he was still alive, seemed to prove what the champions of the game claimed from the beginning: though the West had been won and the Indian Wars had ended and the cowboy had faded away, the spirit of the frontier lived on, on the football field.
Thorpe was a perfect symbol of the frontier because he was actually born there, in Indian Territory in 1887 or 1888. His parents were of mixed heritage, part Irish, part Sac, Fox, and Potawatomi Indian. Thorpe grew up on reservations all over the Midwest. The skills Thorpe developed while rambling in the open country were just the ones he’d need for football: speed, endurance, stealth. His Indian name was Wa-Tho-Huk, “Bright Path.” He was as fast and strong as anyone who ever lived. His career in organized sports began at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where, according to lore, he walked onto the field one day and did a just-for-the-fun-of-it high jump in street clothes that set a record: five feet nine inches. He was nineteen. He played every sport at Carlisle but excelled in football, where he was coached by Pop Warner. It was Warner who convinced Thorpe to go out for the U.S. Olympic Team. In 1912, Thorpe won the decathlon and pentathlon in Stockholm. He was covered in gold. At the medal ceremony, he was given gifts by Czar Nicholas II and King Gustav V of Sweden, who shook the Indian’s hand and said, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”
Jim Thorpe, the first great star of professional football
Thorpe’s response—“Thanks, King!”—was said to demonstrate the casualness of the new American character. He returned a hero, marched in parades, and was showered in honor. He called it the peak of his life. That’s the way of the world: you are shown everything, the entire hand, fanned out with kings and one-eyed jacks, a moment before it’s taken away and shuffled back into the deck. A few months after Thorpe’s return, a newspaper scared up an old minor league box score, which proved Thorpe had been paid a few dollars to play a handful of baseball games for the Rocky Mount Railroaders of the Carolina League.
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