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.
