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re: Who still thinks Bear Bryant was all that great?
Posted on 6/14/09 at 10:32 am to trackem
Posted on 6/14/09 at 10:32 am to trackem
Boys are Only Human
Take the average American boy today in first or second year high school. The day he goes out and makes the football squad he takes a dangerous step. For he soon begins to neglect his classwork. He learns that he belongs to a favored group-that he doesn't have to study- that if he's good at football he's going to be passed anyway. Human nature being what it is, most of them take the easy way. From the day a boy starts playing football until he falls out somewhere up the ladder, his chief interest is going to be football. It has to be. The system demands it. And the day he falls out-whether it's on the freshman squad or whether he goes on to join the great heroes-he is going to discover that he knows how to do just one thing-play football. He is going to find out that during the years in which he might have been fitting himself to earn a living, he has been occupied with mousetraps and cross-blocks.
Some weeks ago, with Collier's cameraman Hans Groenhoff, I examined the records of a hundred or more products of the Alabama machine. We traveled many miles and interviewed boys all the way from the Tennessee Valley to the Black Belt fans in southern Alabama. Many of them were coaching and "teaching" in small-town high schools-manufacturing new prospects for the Tide-at salaries of $900 to $1,350 a year. The rest ranged from complete unemployment with "no prospect of work" up to Big John Miller, All-Southern guard in 1931, who, as premier snuff salesman in four TVA counties, seemed to be faring best of all.
We found Roy "The Ripper" White living in the teacherage at a D.A.R. high school on Sand Mountain. His wife teaches home economics at the school, and The Ripper, unemployed, hunts squirrels and helps around the house. A smashed knee has given him a deep limp. His younger brother died a few weeks ago after lying paralyzed for a month as a result of injuries received in a high-school football scrimmage.
"I played two years of freshman and Red Shirt ball," The Ripper said, "and in '33 1 was third man behind Dixie Howell at left half. I got in the Stan- ford game for two minutes. But in '34 I got hurt and crossed up with Thomas, and they threw me to the 'automatics.' I transferred to a smaller school and tried to carry on with my education, but it was no use." (By being "thrown to the automatics," The Ripper was referring to the university rule which automatically expels any student who fails to pass eight semester hours of work. When a football-scholarship player is dropped from any of the various squads, "the automatics" usually catch him, since he no longer receives tutoring or influential aid.)
Tony Holm, All-America fullback in '29, played pro football for six seasons, but when "five freight trains" hit him on a kickoff in Pittsburgh, a knee buckled the wrong way and his playing days were over. He has worked as a bouncer in a gambling house outside Birmingham, a clerk in a state whisky store and now has a commission job in a Birmingham furniture store.
Jimmie Moss was playing with his two children the night we called at his four-room farmhouse in Morgan County. Jimmie and I were kids together. In elementary school he was smart enough. But in high school he learned he was a star tackle. He went to Alabama the year I did, on a football scholarship. I remember the day he left the university. It was three months after he had entered. His knee had been wrenched the first week out and he had had no chance to make himself seen among those scores of striving freshmen. His scholarship had soon played out. He was a picture of dejection. He was heading back to the small town we came from, and there'd be no band to meet him.
"How can I go on?" he asked me. "If I had studied in high school and planned my education, I wouldn't mind working my way through. There's nothing for me to do now but go back home and try to get a job." Jimmie is now working as a helper in a Decatur steel-fabricating plant, trying at thirty-three to learn a trade he might have learned in high school. I've been told that when the rest of his crew are cocking their ears toward the football broadcasts on Saturday afternoon, Jimmie hammers doggedly on and on and doesn't bother to listen.
In 1928 Dwight "Pug" Deal, a sophomore at the university, was hailed as the toughest blocking back in the school's history, but he was fired off the squad by Coach Wade after Alabama lost to Tennessee.
We found Deal working on a farm in Tuscaloosa County.
"It's been tough since those days," he said. "But I've gotten over my bitterness. Wade knew I wasn't any more guilty of taking a drink than the other fellows, but he had to make an example of somebody."
N. A. "Nap" Powell now drives a soft-drink truck in Selma, Alabama, after spending several years "taking in washing" for a laundry. Alumni from Thomasville, Alabama, recruited him from Selma for their high-school team, and then sent him to Alabama. He fell out of the Red Shirts.
Neil Rogers is a WPA interviewer in Florence. Don Campbell has fought back to become the announcer for a tiny radio station in Selma after buckling a knee with the Red Shirts.
Three thousand hopeful young men have entered the University of Alabama to play football during the fifteen years I have been close to that machine. Fifteen hundred fell out by the end of the first semester. All of these initial casualties had played football in high school and had learned little else. When the athletic department dropped them, what could they do? Even if their parents could afford to send them to classes, they were not prepared. They had come to college prepared only to play football. Had football not robbed them of their opportunities in high school some of them might have worked out successful college careers.
Yet the 1,500 who fell out first were more fortunate than most of those who stuck. They got their jolts sooner and have had more time to recover.
Take the average American boy today in first or second year high school. The day he goes out and makes the football squad he takes a dangerous step. For he soon begins to neglect his classwork. He learns that he belongs to a favored group-that he doesn't have to study- that if he's good at football he's going to be passed anyway. Human nature being what it is, most of them take the easy way. From the day a boy starts playing football until he falls out somewhere up the ladder, his chief interest is going to be football. It has to be. The system demands it. And the day he falls out-whether it's on the freshman squad or whether he goes on to join the great heroes-he is going to discover that he knows how to do just one thing-play football. He is going to find out that during the years in which he might have been fitting himself to earn a living, he has been occupied with mousetraps and cross-blocks.
Some weeks ago, with Collier's cameraman Hans Groenhoff, I examined the records of a hundred or more products of the Alabama machine. We traveled many miles and interviewed boys all the way from the Tennessee Valley to the Black Belt fans in southern Alabama. Many of them were coaching and "teaching" in small-town high schools-manufacturing new prospects for the Tide-at salaries of $900 to $1,350 a year. The rest ranged from complete unemployment with "no prospect of work" up to Big John Miller, All-Southern guard in 1931, who, as premier snuff salesman in four TVA counties, seemed to be faring best of all.
We found Roy "The Ripper" White living in the teacherage at a D.A.R. high school on Sand Mountain. His wife teaches home economics at the school, and The Ripper, unemployed, hunts squirrels and helps around the house. A smashed knee has given him a deep limp. His younger brother died a few weeks ago after lying paralyzed for a month as a result of injuries received in a high-school football scrimmage.
"I played two years of freshman and Red Shirt ball," The Ripper said, "and in '33 1 was third man behind Dixie Howell at left half. I got in the Stan- ford game for two minutes. But in '34 I got hurt and crossed up with Thomas, and they threw me to the 'automatics.' I transferred to a smaller school and tried to carry on with my education, but it was no use." (By being "thrown to the automatics," The Ripper was referring to the university rule which automatically expels any student who fails to pass eight semester hours of work. When a football-scholarship player is dropped from any of the various squads, "the automatics" usually catch him, since he no longer receives tutoring or influential aid.)
Tony Holm, All-America fullback in '29, played pro football for six seasons, but when "five freight trains" hit him on a kickoff in Pittsburgh, a knee buckled the wrong way and his playing days were over. He has worked as a bouncer in a gambling house outside Birmingham, a clerk in a state whisky store and now has a commission job in a Birmingham furniture store.
Jimmie Moss was playing with his two children the night we called at his four-room farmhouse in Morgan County. Jimmie and I were kids together. In elementary school he was smart enough. But in high school he learned he was a star tackle. He went to Alabama the year I did, on a football scholarship. I remember the day he left the university. It was three months after he had entered. His knee had been wrenched the first week out and he had had no chance to make himself seen among those scores of striving freshmen. His scholarship had soon played out. He was a picture of dejection. He was heading back to the small town we came from, and there'd be no band to meet him.
"How can I go on?" he asked me. "If I had studied in high school and planned my education, I wouldn't mind working my way through. There's nothing for me to do now but go back home and try to get a job." Jimmie is now working as a helper in a Decatur steel-fabricating plant, trying at thirty-three to learn a trade he might have learned in high school. I've been told that when the rest of his crew are cocking their ears toward the football broadcasts on Saturday afternoon, Jimmie hammers doggedly on and on and doesn't bother to listen.
In 1928 Dwight "Pug" Deal, a sophomore at the university, was hailed as the toughest blocking back in the school's history, but he was fired off the squad by Coach Wade after Alabama lost to Tennessee.
We found Deal working on a farm in Tuscaloosa County.
"It's been tough since those days," he said. "But I've gotten over my bitterness. Wade knew I wasn't any more guilty of taking a drink than the other fellows, but he had to make an example of somebody."
N. A. "Nap" Powell now drives a soft-drink truck in Selma, Alabama, after spending several years "taking in washing" for a laundry. Alumni from Thomasville, Alabama, recruited him from Selma for their high-school team, and then sent him to Alabama. He fell out of the Red Shirts.
Neil Rogers is a WPA interviewer in Florence. Don Campbell has fought back to become the announcer for a tiny radio station in Selma after buckling a knee with the Red Shirts.
Three thousand hopeful young men have entered the University of Alabama to play football during the fifteen years I have been close to that machine. Fifteen hundred fell out by the end of the first semester. All of these initial casualties had played football in high school and had learned little else. When the athletic department dropped them, what could they do? Even if their parents could afford to send them to classes, they were not prepared. They had come to college prepared only to play football. Had football not robbed them of their opportunities in high school some of them might have worked out successful college careers.
Yet the 1,500 who fell out first were more fortunate than most of those who stuck. They got their jolts sooner and have had more time to recover.
1
Posted on 6/14/09 at 10:33 am to trackem
Why Football's Lost a Fan
Of all the 3,000 1 don't know a single one today, outside coaching or professional football, who could be pointed out as an eminent success. I have known only one who was unusually intelligent. He was Freddie Sington, All-America tackle in 1930. Sington, a Phi Beta Kappa student, wanted to study law but found it impossible with his football activities. He played professional baseball for a while and is now selling automobiles in Decatur, Georgia.
We fellows who have helped make football what it is today may as well face the facts. We've come a cropper. In the name of sportsmanship we've built a rah-rah empire that's phony to its roots. We've taken a fine game and converted it into a monster which takes from a boy his formative years and leaves him nothing but a letter to wear on his chest, a spavined knee and a false sense of values.
What's happening at my alma mater is only typical of what is happening in all sections of the country. And I said all sections. We who have recruited Alabama's players know who our competitors have been. And we've offered no higher prices than were necessary to compete in the open market.
Millions of my fellow fanatics will have seen some great grid shows when this season with its bowl games is over. But I won't be there any more. I'm going to be down on my farm using the war whoop to call my hogs.
On those days when I'm riding around over the state, instead of recruiting a couple of blocking backs, I'm going to stop at the playgrounds and chat with the boys. They'll ask me about the Tide. And I'm going to say:
"Sure, the Tide's all right. But say, did you fellows ever play badminton. Now there's a real man's game."
I know. Next time I go around most of them will still be playing football. But ten years from now when they come to see me wearing those All-America pins, I won't have to duck out the back door or squirm guiltily in my chair. I can look them in the eye and say:
"Old friend, you remember I told you badminton was a swell game."
Of all the 3,000 1 don't know a single one today, outside coaching or professional football, who could be pointed out as an eminent success. I have known only one who was unusually intelligent. He was Freddie Sington, All-America tackle in 1930. Sington, a Phi Beta Kappa student, wanted to study law but found it impossible with his football activities. He played professional baseball for a while and is now selling automobiles in Decatur, Georgia.
We fellows who have helped make football what it is today may as well face the facts. We've come a cropper. In the name of sportsmanship we've built a rah-rah empire that's phony to its roots. We've taken a fine game and converted it into a monster which takes from a boy his formative years and leaves him nothing but a letter to wear on his chest, a spavined knee and a false sense of values.
What's happening at my alma mater is only typical of what is happening in all sections of the country. And I said all sections. We who have recruited Alabama's players know who our competitors have been. And we've offered no higher prices than were necessary to compete in the open market.
Millions of my fellow fanatics will have seen some great grid shows when this season with its bowl games is over. But I won't be there any more. I'm going to be down on my farm using the war whoop to call my hogs.
On those days when I'm riding around over the state, instead of recruiting a couple of blocking backs, I'm going to stop at the playgrounds and chat with the boys. They'll ask me about the Tide. And I'm going to say:
"Sure, the Tide's all right. But say, did you fellows ever play badminton. Now there's a real man's game."
I know. Next time I go around most of them will still be playing football. But ten years from now when they come to see me wearing those All-America pins, I won't have to duck out the back door or squirm guiltily in my chair. I can look them in the eye and say:
"Old friend, you remember I told you badminton was a swell game."
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