Jack Gilden interview

Jack Gilden is the author of the brilliant new NFL book Collision of Wills about the tumultuous pairing of two behemoths of the Gridiron in Johnny Unitas - the first great Quarterback - and Don Shula, the Hall of Fame coach whose paths crossed together at the now defunct Baltimore Colts.

His novel is a look back at a very different NFL where running was key to success, games were won at the line of scrimmage and a quarterback was a game manager who rarely threw downfield and merely handed off to a tailback.

Gilden successfully weaves a narrative that has an abundance of characters and stories, and charts the changing climate of a sporting landscape going hand in hand with an ever changing socio-political context of the late 1960s in the shadow of foreign wars, political assassinations and freedom of expression.

I was lucky enough to gain some time with Jack Gilden, in the week leading up to the book's release to ask some questions about the book and his takeaways from it.

What was the idea for the book?

When I was a high school student I went to a conference for high school journalists put on by the old Baltimore Colts at their new facility near my school.  There was a famous (famous in Baltimore) old newspaperman there named John Steadman who was very close to the franchise and especially to the old Colts players.  He happened to mention that Unitas and Shula hated each other.  I thought to myself then, 'How interesting that the greatest player and the brilliant coach (he would later surpass George Halas as the biggest winner in league history) spent seven seasons together and never won a title.  Plus they didn't get along.  That's a great idea for a book.'  When I finally started the project (in my 40s) I discovered the discord between the men echoed their nation, which was also in deep conflict.  The men and their times, I felt, offered an origin story for America and professional football in the 21st Century.

- How much research was involved?

There was a great deal of research for this book.  I went back and talked to as many men (and a few women) as I could find who could shed light on the careers and personal lives of both men.  I read as many books as I could on the men, the Colts, football, and the 1960s in general.  I pored through periodicals and newspapers of the era for news that was contemporaneous to the events.  I watched as much film as I could that pertained to the old Colts and to football of the 1960s, including both raw game footage and documentaries so that I could describe the players and the events as I saw them through my own two eyes.

- What were your preconceptions of both Unitas and Shula going into the book?

When I started the book Johnny Unitas was my hero.  I played football in high school for four seasons.  I started off as a quarterback who was under 100 pounds (I was the smallest player on the field in every game in which I ever played).  Unitas's long shot story and rise to unprecedented success resonated with me then as it does now.  As a high schooler I read everything I could about him in order to learn the secrets of his success and apply them to my own game.  In general, however, by the time I entered high school both men were still living and still relatively young, but they were both already mythologized. At that time, they seemed to represent the American virtues:  Hard-nosed toughness prevailing over all, duty, and adherence to the chain of command (as opposed to later day players who seemed to upstage their coaches, their teams, and the game itself.)

- What are your conclusions of the men now?

I found that the men were quite different than what I, and many others had assumed about them.  Unitas was far from a dutiful and unquestioning warrior.  By the time he came under Shula's tutelage he was egotistical and felt he knew more than the coach.  Sometimes his actions were insubordinate, as when he would change or ignore plays that were sent in from the bench.  I also think the pressures of his position mounted on him and caused him to act out in certain ways.  Both men are considered among the biggest winners the game has ever seen, but they were forced to deal with crushing defeat during their time together.  They didn't always handle it well.  After researching them, my conclusions about them are that they were far more complex than the public knew.  They had big egos, and stunning vulnerabilities. They were very good men, incredibly driven to succeed, but at times their emotional weaknesses got the better of them.

- How different is the NFL now to then?

I believe that the NFL of the 1960s represents the apex of both the league and the game.  The sport hit its highest levels then with so many players and coaches considered among the greatest in history all active at the same time.  Unitas, Jim Brown, Dick Butkus, Paul Warfield, Jim Parker, Raymond Berry, Gino Marchetti, Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Paul Hornung...the names go on and on.  In the coaching ranks, there was Lombardi, Shula, Paul Brown, George Halas, George Allen, Blanton Collier, Chuck Noll and Weeb Ewbank.  In the AFL there was Al Davis, Sid Gilman, Hank Stram, and others.  It was extremely hard to make the postseason then.  In '67 the Colts lost only a single game and had the best record in football and still did not make it.  So every game then was filled with great players and coaches, and every single game crackled with import.  The theatre of of it all was so compelling it propelled the sport past baseball as the number one game in America and it had people tuning in for special prime time games...the precursor of Monday Night Football.

- Why has Weeb Ewbank been lost to history, a man who never lost a Championship game winning 3?

Weeb isn't totally lost to history; he is in the Hall of Fame.  He was also the winning coach in the two most famous and important games in league history:  the '58 Championship Game, and Super Bowl III.  He is the only coach in history who does NOT have a losing record in head-to-head competition with Lombardi.  Even so, he clearly doesn't get his due.  I consider him to be the best football coach in history.  His low-key reputation comes from a couple of factors.  Number one, he was fired from the Colts.  In his era that was an ignominy, and after he left Baltimore no one in the NFL wanted to hire him.  He was forced to go to the supposedly inferior AFL.  To a certain extent, Weeb's strengths are precisely the things that overshadow him.  Number one, he was a superb team builder.  Unlike Lombardi and Shula who both walked into teams that had excellent players already on the roster, Weeb essentially inherited two bankrupt franchises and built both of them from the ground up.  Consequently his winning percentage is low even though his championships are high. He chose all the talent for both of his franchises, including finding and developing two of the games greatest-ever quarterbacks in Unitas and Namath.  His teams were slow to build but ultimately were brimming with depth.  Unfortunately, the charisma of his QB's overshadowed Ewbank.  Both Unitas and Namath were taught to be superb and autonomous play callers by Ewbank, so the public assumed that Weeb had less control of his teams and was less responsible for their successes than, say, Lombardi, who seemed to dominate with a (supposedly) mediocre quarterback in Bart Starr.  (In fact, Starr was superb and extraordinarily accurate.)  In other words, Lombardi was bigger than his teams, while Ewbank prepared his teams to be bigger than himself. 

- And for that matter Earl Morrall, four Super Bowl wins

Actually, Morrall went to four Super Bowls, but won three.  He lost Super Bowl III to the Jets.  Earl was the best player on one of the best teams in history, the '68 Colts.  Earl was MVP of the league that year.  He also quarterbacked the undefeated Dolphins to nine straight victories, more wins than Hall of Famer Bob Griese had that year.  Morrall is lost to history because his very poor showing in Super Bowl III swallows his entire legacy.  In fact, he was a heroic player with statistics that are similar to Joe Namath's.  He deserves to be in the Hall.

- The names that pass through the stories – Lombardi, Ryan, Noll, Namath for example – are amazing, it must have surprised you to see how far this coaching tree extended to current history of the NFL

It is a testament to how great the football was in the 1960s to see how the coaches, players and front-office personnel influenced the game over the next several decades.  Former Baltimore Colts employees dominated football in the seventies and eighties, showing how deep and great that franchise really was. 

- What is your NFL team?

Today I am a season ticket holder and fan of the Baltimore Ravens.  Nothing, however, can supplant the love I had for the Baltimore Colts.

- What are your opinions of the game now? What can be changed?

My opinion of today's game is that it has been watered down a great deal, making it less exciting and compelling than the game was in the 60s.  I think the quarterback position seems to be more important than ever, and yet the modern quarterback is diminished.  With the modern rules designed to protect the quarterback and improve his statistics the position seems less genuine. With so many plays coming from the sidelines quarterbacks are no longer the intellectual leaders of their franchises.  I'm not sure what can be done to change modern football to 'fix' it.  It's just a different game than it was, and not necessarily better.

- What are you working on currently?

I'm currently working on my second book.  Again, it examines the success/failure dynamic.  It is a horse racing story that uncovers issues of drug abuse, mistreatment of a child, and true stories that have never been told.


Collision of Wills is out now from University of Nebraska Press and available on all platforms.

Collision of Wills

Out from the University of Nebraska Press, the novel by Jack Gilden looks deep in to the conflicted relationship between two titans of the NFL - Johnny Unitas and Don Shula - and how this helped model the present day NFL

Johnny Unitas is lauded as the first great quarterback, his legacy is untouchable as that of a gifted athlete but a born leader who helped the Baltimore Colts be vaulted to elite status as one of the premier teams of American football before the merger of the AFL and NFL which led to the Super Bowl being created. While Unitas never won the premier competition, his influence and type of play to change it from a brutal battle reminiscent of trench warfare to one embracing passing quarterbacks and dynamic receivers is relevant today more than ever.

The first modern day QB - Johnny Unitas

Don Shula is one of the great coaches in NFL history, winner of two Super Bowls and still the only coach to oversee a perfect season in the sport when with the Miami Dolphins in 1972.  Yet he started as a player himself, playing with Unitas as a linebacker for the Colts before becoming a coach.  When he became coach of the Colts, his style and manner clashed directly with Unitas who was the figurehead of the franchise - one is outgoing, personable and respected; the other (Shula) was introvert, cold and demanding.

This collision of personality types led to a complex relationship between two men who were very similar in terms of Christian values, morality and work ethic; yet this tempestuous relationship played out against a changing social-political landscape of the United States in the mid to late 1960s with the advent of the sexual freedom, the Vietnam war, political assassinations and civil rights.

Don Shula and  Unitas (19)

The times were a changing, as they were in the NFL, gone were the days of running backs pounding the rock time after time into monsters of defensive lineman, the game used to be won at the line of scrimmage but the advent of west coast offence and embracing of athleticism meant that more faith was being thrust into the now archetypal figure of the quarterback - a man who can make decisions based on defensive shifts and blitz coverage, he passed the ball in the air more to receivers running down field. More points were being scored and games were becoming more appealing to broadcasters who began to screen games live in prime time; and the person throwing the ball became the photogenic persona that praise was bestowed upon weekly.

Gilden's expertly researched book is full of anecdotes about not just the two named stars of the book but also the luminaries and contemporaries who are connected to the two men either as team-mates, rivals, coaches. The roll call of Hall of Fame talent that are name checked are Vince Lombardi, Jim Brown, Dick Butkus, Bart Starr, Jim Taylor , George Halas, Chuck Noll, Al Davis, Joe Namath and Bubba Smith.

Namath is testament to the quarterback becoming the star, a charming handsome man who famously guaranteed that the New York Jets would defeat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl 3 in Miami; Namath was true to his word as the Colts suffered five turnovers as Shula had no answer to the Jets defence, shepherded by another famous name, Weeb Ewbank.

In the UK, we have a shorter history and knowledge of the NFL, names that I have mentioned before will be well known to many a true NFL fan, yet for all my knowledge I cannot recall nor remember hearing the name of Weeb Ewbank before.

Weeb Ewbank and QB, Joe Namath - Champions of Super Bowl 3, January 1969

Ewbank was the coach of the Jets during Super Bowl 3 and was also the coach of the 1958 Championship game won by the Baltimore Colts. Both times Ewbank built small teams from ruins and created winning franchises; created two greatest-ever quarterbacks for their franchises in Unitas and Namath; yet he was unceremoniously sacked from the Colts pathing the way for Shula to take an already excellent team and make them winners.

Yet reading Gilden's transcript of the Super Bowl triumph, it is Ewbank who marshals the team to victory - Namath does not throw that much but is accurate when he needs to be, the defence swamp Earl Morrall forcing mistakes that they capitalise on.

While Lombardi and Shula became the mouthpieces for their team, Ewbank gladly stepped aside and let his players take the credit, even if it means overshadowing his achievements.

Written with great purpose and elaborating cleverly on the socio-political context of the late 1960s, Gilden makes clear that without these men as forefathers you cannot have the spectacle that the NFL has become now, this institution that has become the No. 1 sport in America. During the 1960s, it was behind baseball in terms of popularity and exposure. Now the NFL is far and away the biggest team sport in America, with talk continuing of a franchise being based in London someday.

Without this collision between Unitas and Shula, we would not be in a position we are now, and thanks to Unitas he made the athlete the star. Many casual observers can name a dozen starting quarterbacks easily, can they name five head coaches.

Collision of Wills is published by University of Nebraska Press on October 1st.

Interview with Jason Vuic, author of The Yucks

What was the genesis or beginnings of your research for The Yucks?

Well, I grew up in Florida.  I was born and raised there in a town called Punta Gorda about 100 miles south of Tampa.  I vaguely remember the Bucs run to the 1979 NFC Championship Game, but became a Bucs fan myself when several team members came to my local high school in 1981 or 1982 for a charity basketball game.  That's when I met Doug Williams, the Bucs' quarterback.  He looked like a super hero to me, plus he was an African-American quarterback in a league with no African-American quarterbacks, which even then, as an eight or nine year old, I found fascinating.  So, from then on I was a Bucs fan, even when Williams left the team in 1983 in a contract dispute, and even after the so-called "the Curse of Doug WIlliams," when the Bucs franchise suffered a mind-boggling 14 losing seasons in a row.  Years later I became a writer, and decided for my third book that I wanted to do something on my love affair with what historically has been the losingest franchise in the history of the league. 

Did it feel like a story too good to be true?

Yes, in some respects.  But that's what you look for as a writer...a story that's funny enough and interesting enough and engaging enough to carry the reader through 200 pages.  I also look for stories that defy common tropes.  My focus with The Yucks was on the worst team in NFL history, specifically the 1976 and 1977 Buccaneer teams that lost an all-time record 26 games in a row.  I didn't want to do a worst-to-first story, or a "Bad New Bears" story.  Those are too easy, and to me, boring. I wanted to write about how the Bucs began as a franchise and how and why they suffered through such a horrible losing streak. 

You grew up in the Florida area, do you recall the Yucks when you were younger?

Absolutely.  To us, growing up, Tampa was the big city...a somewhat distant city.  Interstate I-75, the main thorough south from Atlanta to Tampa and on south to Ft. Myers and Naples and across Alligator Alley to Miami, hadn't been finished yet.  We're talking in the early 1980s.  So, as a kid, my father and I would leave the house early in the morning, and drive light to light to light up old US 41, "Tamiami Trail," to attend Buccaneer games.  We'd get there, sit for hours in the roasting sun, watch the Bucs get their asses beat, then return home.  We get back at dark, tired and exhausted but somehow satisfied we'd gone through the effort. 

Have you always been an NFL fan?

Yes, certainly.  I've wavered in recent years, preferring college basketball and football, but NFL football has been America's most popular sport since at least 1970, and as kids we were a party to that.  I imagine its like the Premier League in Europe.  You can ignore it, or you can try to ignore it, but the most popular teams and players are cultural icons.

The stories of McKay thinking his college ideology could translate easily to the NFL still resonates with how illustrious college coaches falter at the professional level like Nick Saban and now Chip Kelly? Why did McKay fail and why does that step up still trip people up?

Well, McKay failed in the short run.  But he was, by 1979, the only coach to take an expansion team to the playoffs in 4 years.  That was the fastest any coach had ever done it.  I would say that McKay's college-like offense was incredibly simplistic, but he proved that with an elite defense and the right personnel, he could ultimately run it.  But, because there was no free agency in the NFL at the that time, it took several years of drafts, of drafting young players from the college ranks, to do it.

As for the jump from college to the pros...It's a different game.  The players are adults, not kids.  They're professionals, and it takes a different sort of finesse to get them to play for you.  The techniques you use to motivate college kids are different from the techniques you use with the pros.  Offenses are far more complex, too, and everyone at every position on every team, is a 1 percenter.  By that I mean...roughly 1% of high school kids play football in college, and just 1% of those make it to the pros. So scouting is fundamentally important.  A good player-personnel director and a good general manager are fundamentally important, too, and college coaches sometimes find it difficult to relinquish control.   

Do you feel failing like Steve Spurrier did at the Bucs drive him to succeed in coaching?

Maybe not specifically due to his one season with the Bucs, but I'd say, after spending his career on the bench in San Francisco, he was certainly unfulfilled.  This was a guy who won the Heisman Award at Florida, the award for the nation's best college player, but then was a backup quarterback for 8 or 9 years with a bad 49ers team.  He then lost every game in 1976 with the Bucs. Maybe coaching was a way to scratch the itch, as they say, or maybe to prove himself to his peers. Who knows?

What was the funniest story you came across?

 My favorite story, or stories, involved the Bucs' first owner, Hugh Culverhouse.  He was, without a doubt, the cheapest owner in the history of professional sports.  A tax attorney by training, Culverhouse was a micro-manager and a bean counter, and learned that he could pocket his portion of the NFL's TV and merchandising revenues while squeezing the team to make money.  For years, the Bucs had the fewest employees and the smallest headquarters in the league.  He'd trade away costly first-round draft picks for older, cheaper veterans, and he scrimped on team expenses in a variety of ways.  The team's airplane, for example, was leased not from American or United, but from McCullogh Chainsaws.  Once, when a player separated his shoulder in a game and trainers had to cut off his jersey to treat him, Culverhouse billed him for it. He billed roommates 38 cents each for a 75 cent phone call. There was a Coke machine in the locker room that charged players for Cokes. He was so cheap, in fact, that he gave each team employee one season ticket, because he knew that no one went to a pro football game alone.

Was there anything you could not print?

There were a few funny stories which were off the record. I wish I could tell you them but I can't.  I've promised not to.

-Have you been pleased by the response of the book?

The response has been great. I've done 20 or so radio and TV interviews, and a Florida book tour, and recently did Only a Game on NPR.  Sports Illustrated also did a snippet on the book as did the Christian Science Monitor. It's been a good run.

I notice you are not on Twitter, is that deliberate?

Yes, I'm kind of a Luddite when it comes to new media. I also didn't want to get into a tit for tat with current Buccaneer fans who didn't know where I was coming from. I love the Bucs, and this book was my way of coming to terms with their difficult history and origins.

What are you working on now?

I'm thinking about a true crime story though I plan to return to sports someday to do a book on the coming of the three-point line and the shot clock to college basketball. Those two things really did change the game.  Who knows? Maybe I'll do a second Yucks book someday, something like the "The Curse of Doug Williams," about the terrible teams of the 1980s.

The Yucks is out now from Simon & Schuster in Hardback available from all good book retailers.

Fight for Old DC

Written by Andrew O'Toole, the Fight for Old DC started in 1932 when laundry store tycoon George Preston Marshall became part owner of the Boston Braves franchise in the National Football League. To separate the team from the baseball team of the same name, he renamed it the Redskins in 1933 and moved them to Washington in 1937. 

Marshall was an innovator, his team were the first to telecast all their games, have their own fight song (as is customary in College Football), have half-time entertainment and assemble a cheerleading squad.

However, innovation does not come without controversy. As a proud patriot of the old South and the flag of the Confederacy; Marshall insisted on his team remaining white, his team were the last team to intergrate black professional football players.

Partly due to pressure by NFL commissioner, Pete Rozelle who wanted league expansion across the nation and the new television contracts, as well as pressure from Congress; the reluctant owner would eventually relent and pushed the team trading for Bobby Mitchell, in 1962 becoming the team's first black player. Mitchell's image adorns the books front cover.

O'Toole does a fine job of not only researching the era, but painting a picture of the systemic problem of racism that is so paramount and at the forefront of current affairs in the United States currently.  Quoting Sam Lacy, columnist for the Baltimore Afro-American;

'Only in the capital of the nation, in a stadium be-deckled by flags of freedom 

does the spirit of democracy get kicked in the pants'

Lacy liked referring to Marshall's team as lily-white, which would go hand-in-hand with contemporary beat writer Shirley Povich, who would refer to 'the decor Marshall has chosen for the Redskins is burgundy, gold and Causcasian'.

Yet for all his innate bigotry, the forward thinking of Marshall cannot be ignored:

'

You'll see the time comes when having good seats to a pro football game becomes a status symbol, when almost every stadium in the land is sold out before the season begins....Going to the football games will be the thing to do in the social fabric of the nation. It will be all that because we're going to make fans of the women, and what appeals to the women will carry along the men who are national football fans.'

This was said by Marshall in 1952 as he nursed a drink with writers, what he states could easily be used as the tagline for the NFL by Goodell in the 21st century.  From humble beginnings, the NFL has become this monster of commerce, growth and yet it has sometimes forgotten about the well-being of its players, be it the black players being segregated or up to now the safety of the players being put at risk by a high impact physicality that cannot be absorbed by the human body irrespective of padding and protection.

Imagine an owner today being so racist, you cannot because at that level of professional sport there is a need to be integrated and understanding of all people you employ, your fanbase may be of that skin colour so you have to embrace it.  There has been a lot of misunderstandings with the stance Colin Kaepernick has taken in light of police brutality in targeting black individuals culminating in another tense few days in Carolina, yet no owner has come out and told their players that they can or cannot stand and protest like Kaepernick has done. The owners stand too lose too much, in this day and age it is right to protest peacefully.

While it is good to see people like Marshall be out of the game now, for all his fall backs he was a trend-setter who did burn a trail for louder-than-life owners who wanted the team they owned to be an extension of their personality, like we have Jerry Jones now and his JerryWorld complex.

The book itself is fascinating with its insights into the world of professional sports and how it has changed pre and post Second World War, how sport became more and more a part of the social fabric Marshall mentioned, how NFL has slowly overtaken Major League Baseball.

Filled with amazing anecdotes and brimming with interesting characters who pour out of this opus ranging from the aforementioned Rozelle and Lacy to the hard working Secretary of Interior, Stewart Udall who after being picked for the job by JFK, took it upon himself to integrate the nation's football team, it gives the appeal of a big picture of new v old and liberalism v bigotry.

The Fight for Old DC is not just a valuable football book but an important book of cultural understanding.

Published by University of Nebraska Press it is released on 1st November in Hardback for £22.99RRP

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