FOOTBALL: PROFESSIONAL

Futility

Few would have thought that when the Los Angeles Raiders defeated the Washington Redskins 38-9 in Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984 the game would signal the end of the era of American Football Conference (AFC) dominance. The mighty Pittsburgh Steeler dynasty last won the title in the 1980 Super Bowl and the nucleus of players that made up their championship teams had retired by 1984, but the future was apparently bright for the AFC. Marcus Allen, the Raiders' catalyst that January evening, had run wild, including a breath-taking change-of-direction touchdown gallop of 74 yards that seemed like a bit of playground mischief. Mean-while, the pretenders to the Raiders' AFC crown had armed themselves with a cluster of strong-armed and strong-willed quarterbacks in the 1983 National Football League (NFL) draft. Yet the rest of the 1980s and half of the 1990s would pass without an AFC victory in the title game; moreover, the National Football Conference (NFC) representative typically won with remarkable ease (a 26-point average margin of victory from 1985 to 1990), thus turning every season's anticipated spectacle into a predictable, often unwatchable, affair. San Francisco, Washington, Chicago, and the New York Giants, each bolstered by an aggressive defense and methodical, ball-control offense, showcased their talents by crushing their AFC rivals before millions of television viewers. But perhaps it was the Denver Broncos who best epitomized AFC futility during the latter half of the decade. Led by their young and confident quarterback, John Elway, the Broncos won the AFC championship in 1987, 1988, and 1990, only to lose three Super Bowls by a combined score of 136-40. Having already stumbled in a title game in 1977, the hapless Broncos tied an NFL record for most losses in the Super Bowl (held by the NFC's Minnesota Vikings and later equaled by the AFC's Buffalo Bills in the 1990s).

Year of the Quarterback

On 26 April 1983 the AFC began building for the future. That year's senior class was considered one of the deepest talent pools in college football history, so when the NFL draft rolled around, many of the league's weaker teams sought an immediate change of fortune. Scouts were particularly intrigued by the wealth of fine quarterbacks available, and six signal-callers were selected in the first round, all of them by AFC squads. Beginning in 1985, four of those six—Stanford's John Elway, Miami's Jim Kelly, Illinois's Tony Eason, and Pittsburgh's Dan Marino—would go on to quarterback the AFC's Super Bowl representative in nine of the next ten title games. They would, however, lose every one of them. The number one pick of the draft was Elway, a big, strong-armed gunslinger who thrived in Stanford's pro-style offense. He refused to come to terms with the Baltimore Colts, who selected him with the first overall pick in the draft despite Elway's repeated warnings that he would play only for a West Coast franchise or a championship contender. The woeful Colts fit neither description. On 2 May the Denver Broncos acquired Elway in a trade with Baltimore, and he proceeded to lead the Broncos through the 1980s and beyond. But it was the last quarterback selected in the first round, Marino, who outshone them all. Chosen by the Miami Dolphins with the twenty-seventh pick, Marino exploded into the league, earning Rookie of the Year honors and a Pro Bowl invitation in his first season. Marino shattered long-standing league records in his sophomore campaign, passing for a phenomenal 5,084 yards and 48 touch-downs. Possessing a powerful arm, a lightning-quick release, and the ability to see opportunity amid defensive chaos, Marino soon established himself as one of the game's all-time greats. The careers of Elway, Marino, and Kelly—who took the Buffalo Bills to four straight Super Bowls in the 1990s after a three-year tenure in the ill-fated United States Football League (USFL)—symbolized the AFC's accomplishments and its disappointments.

The Hogs

The Washington Redskins, who were the last NFC team to lose a Super Bowl, were nonetheless one of the great teams of the decade. What set the Redskins skins apart from other successful franchises was the versatility displayed in their two championship seasons (1982-1983 and 1987-1988), Although both teams were coached by the dignified and cerebral Joe Gibbs, they attained their laurels with dissimilar quarterbacks—Joe Theismann and Doug Williams—and with contrasting offensive styles. The 1982-1983 team, in the words of Paul Zimmerman, "grabbed modern NFL football by the scruff of the neck and tossed it back a few decades into a simpler era—a big guy running behind bigger guys blocking." The "big guy running" was the incomparable John Riggins, a human sledgehammer with startling speed; the "bigger guys blocking" were known simply and fondly as the Hogs. The 27-17 victory over Miami in the title game was definitive Redskins football: Riggins shouldered the load, carrying 38 times for a then-record 166 yards, including a rumbling 43-yard touchdown run on fourth and one that put the Redskins on top for good. Gibbs occasionally threw in a bit of trickery to keep the Dolphins' defense from keying on his star, including an offensive set called the "Explode Package" in which all five eligible receivers scramble and shift places before the snap. The formation, used sparingly, resulted in two short touchdown passes from Theismann. Where the 1983 titlists ground out victories with brutal and methodical ease, the 1988 Super Bowl champions were an explosive bunch and saved their most electrifying moments for the championship game itself Trailing the Denver Broncos 10-0 at the start of the second quarter, the Redskins scored 35 unanswered points before halftime. The quarter resulted in some astonishing statistics: five possessions resulting in five touchdowns and 356 yards of offense. Williams completed nine of eleven passes, including throws of 80, 27, 50, and 8 yards for touchdowns, all in one quarter. By the end of the 42-10 Redskin romp, rookie halfback Timmy Smith, who had totaled only 126 yards rushing during the entire season, had gained 204 yards on the ground.

Strikes

The NFL suffered through two significant labor disputes during the decade, both of which resulted in the suspension of play. In 1982 a fifty-seven-day strike resulted in the cancellation of seven weeks of play. The strike occurred after the league signed a five-year, $2.1 billion contract with the three major television networks; the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) responded by demanding a larger cut of the guarantees, 55 percent of the league's gross revenues. NFL team owners kept camps closed throughout the strike in the fear that a series of makeshift games conducted with replacement players might irredeemably tarnish the league's image. After weeks of unproductive bargaining sessions a mediator was finally brought in, and the NFLPA agreed to a contract in which the team owners guaranteed to spend $1.6 billion over four years on players' salaries, including $60 million in "money now" bonuses for ending the strike. The settlement was, many observed, a far cry from the union's initial demands. "The strike was a complete failure," one player representative noted afterward. "If we'd kept the old agreement, we would have been better off" Two games into the 1987-1988 season a second work stoppage of play occurred, but this time franchises reloaded their rosters with replacement players immediately, and the league determined that any games played during the strike would count in the final league standings. While free agency was not the principal motivating factor in the earlier strike, the NFLPA in 1987 initially demanded unlimited free agency; they later proposed freedom of movement after a four-year tenure in the league. Despite the fact that the average NFL career is less than the four-year minimum proposed, the owners rejected the condition outright. Failing to reach a new collective bargaining agreement, the players, union ended the strike after twenty-four days and three weeks of "replacement" games. The conflict was a study in obstinacy and futility. Law professor John Weistart found the owners' stubbornness to be particularly troubling when compared with comparable labor disputes in other sports: "Management was surprisingly intransigent in its position on free agency, more so than in past contract talks. Their position was harsh in light of the fact that the increase in free agency hasn't led to the demise of baseball and basketball. It was tough economic posturing, a flat refusal to bargain, which is the definition of bad-faith bargaining. There was no evidence of give-and-take." The owners did pay for their unyielding position, at least in the short term, by forsaking $104 million in potential revenue due to the suspension of play, but in the long run they maintained significant leverage in the constant battle over player autonomy.

Moving

The NFL was a bit unsettled in the 1980s, largely due to the efforts of the Oakland Raiders' managing general partner, Al Davis. A shrewd and somewhat eccentric figure within the league's corridors of power, Davis decided to move the Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles for the start of the 1982 football season, despite twelve straight years of capacity crowds in the Bay Area, because Los Angeles offered a larger venue and the opportunity to operate in one of the country's media capitals. Davis's decision represented a conscious violation of the league constitution, which required the approval of three-quarters of the league's owners before a franchise could relocate. Davis, the Raiders, and the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission sued the NFL for $213 million on the grounds that the league was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act when they tried to block the Raiders' move. Following a five-week trial, a jury ruled in favor of the Raiders, a judgment which prompted commissioner Pete Rozelle to lament that the NFL's "basic structure and stability" was under attack. He warned that the ruling might result "in the relocation of clubs under auction-type conditions." Many speculated that Rozelle's anxiety was heightened because Davis was depriving the NFL of a chance to sell L.A.'s "territorial rights" to a new franchise for an extravagant expansion fee. Nevertheless, the Oakland Raiders became the Los Angeles Raiders and went on to win the 1984 Super Bowl under their new name (they would, ironically, move back to Oakland during the summer of 1995). Davis's legal triumph opened the way for further movement. In the early morning of 29 March, Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay stealthily moved all of the Colts' possessions to Indiana with a fleet of moving vans, thus establishing the Indianapolis Colts in a sleek new domed stadium. Despite the strangeness of Irsay's machinations, the league, according to Pete Axthelm, "had no stomach for a fight with an owner who wanted to sneak out of town" after the Davis fiasco. The abandonment of Baltimore left a sour taste in the mouths of true Colts fans. Frank Deford wrote, "A man who could screw up professional football in Baltimore would foul the water at Lourdes or flatten the beer in Munich." Finally, in 1988 the St. Louis Cardinals moved to Phoenix, thanks to the efforts of team owner Bill Bidwill. St. Louis, long acknowledged as a "baseball town," consistently had trouble attracting a substantial football crowd. For star quarterback Neil Lomax, therefore, the move to Phoenix was convenient: "We won't have to apologize anymore because we don't play baseball." After the Davis challenge and the Irsay covert operation, some observers were relieved that at least the Cardinals' Bidwill went through the proper channels before abandoning St. Louis.

A Special Case

The desire to expand the professional game inspired in part the formation of the United States Football League (USFL). Initially the foundling league set out to avoid direct competition with the NFL by structuring their eighteen-game season for the spring and early summer months when the older league was dormant. The USFL gained considerable legitimacy by luring veterans such as Greg Landry, Stan White, and Raymond Chester, as well as college stars such as North Carolina's Kelvin Bryant and Michigan's Anthony Carter, away from the NFL. But the coup de grace was the New Jersey Generals' signing of running back Herschel Walker, a junior at Georgia and the 1980 Heisman Trophy winner. Even though both leagues possessed a man-date prohibiting the signing of undergraduates, USFL commissioner Chet Simmons, obviously eager to add a marketable name to the fold, conceded that he personally approved of the negotiations and argued that Walker was such an exceptional athlete that he represented a one-time "special case." The Generals sold seven thousand season tickets within hours of Walker's signing. On 6 March 1983 the league began play with twelve teams in three divisions. By summer it had crowned its first champion, the Michigan Panthers, who defeated the Philadelphia Stars 24-22 before 50,906 fans at Denver's Mile High Stadium. To its credit the league featured a host of experimental offensive schemes and saw many young players hone their considerable talents, but it was soon doomed by the team owners' collective frenzy to obtain the services of football's next generation of superstars. Steve Young, Mike Rozier, Marcus Dupree, Jim Kelly, Doug Flutie, and many others signed multimillion-dollar contracts, even while their franchises were struggling to stay afloat financially. Donald Trump, who purchased the New Jersey team after its disappointing inaugural year, still imagined the USFL eventually challenging the hegemony of the senior league: "Institutions are sometimes the most vulnerable elements of our society, and the NFL is very vulnerable." Despite Trump's confidence the league oversaw frequent franchise moves and mergers. When the USFL planned to compete head-on with the NFL in the fall of 1986, it could not negotiate a network television contract. After only three seasons of competition and nearing bankruptcy, the USFL filed a $1.69 billion antitrust suit against the NFL, charging that the senior league constituted a monopoly. In a curious decision a jury, after thirty-one hours of contentious deliberation, allowed the USFL's claim to stand, but awarded the league only one dollar in damages. Needing an estimated $300 million to proceed, the USFL suspended its upcoming fall schedule on 4 August 1986, never to resume play. Most of the league's stars went on to sign with NFL franchises.

Drugs

The USFL's attempt to maneuver into the NFL's competitive markets was hardly the only threat to football's collective peace. Tales of drug and anabolic steroid abuse by NFL players frequently surfaced during the decade, and on occasion the league took action against prominent players. In July 1983 commissioner Pete Rozelle suspended four players—Cincinnati's Ross Browner and Pete Johnson, St. Louis's E. J. Junior, and New Orleans's Greg Stemrick—for the first four games of the 1984 season after Junior and Stemrick were arrested for possession of cocaine and Browner and Johnson confessed to cocaine use during a trial of a suspected drug dealer. Don Reese, a former NFL player, related in a lengthy 1982 Sports Illustrated cover story the harrowing tale of his cocaine addiction. Said Reese, "cocaine is a .38 at the head of every player in the game" and "controls and corrupts the game, because so many players are on it." By the end of the decade the NFL had established large-scale drug-testing measures and had put into place prescribed penalties for each successive positive test result, including a thirty-day suspension for a second infraction and a ban from the league after a player's third violation. Some teams initiated their own drug counseling and rehabilitation programs modeled after the Cleveland Browns' system, "The Inner Circle." But despite disciplinary measures, rehab groups, and plaintive warnings like Reese's, the problem often led to tragedy before abuse was detected. Former defensive lineman Lyle Alzado felt that his twenty-year addiction to steroids and human growth hormone exacerbated the brain cancer that caused his eventual death. In June 1986 Cleveland Browns defensive back Don Rogers overdosed on cocaine and died of heart failure. Rogers, the 1984 AFC Rookie of the Year, was to be married the next day. The tragedy, following closely on the heels of the cocaine-related death of college basketball star Len Bias, prompted Rick Reilly to pronounce, "The Big Lie is over. Sports can't bury its head in the sand anymore; there are too many bodies buried there.…This is not a party anymore. Somebody just called the paramedics."

Sweetness and Joy

In the midst of the various lawsuits, suspensions, tragedies, and covert transactions unfolding off the field, the NFL thrived by virtue of some marvelous performances on it. In particular Chicago's Walter Payton, known as "Sweetness," erased the bitterness of league turmoil with his unique blend of grace, agility, and power. Although a small running back, Payton seemed to enjoy contact. When Payton did not stutter-step a lineman off his feet or beat the linebacker to the corner, he simply flattened an unsuspecting corner-back with a stiff-arm or a lowered shoulder. In 1984 Payton broke Jim Brown's all-time rushing mark of 12,312 yards, and by the time he retired in 1987 he had tacked another 4,000 yards onto the standard. For much of his career Payton was the stellar member of mediocre Chicago teams, but in the mid 1980s head coach Mike Ditka and defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan assembled an extraordinary squad. With Payton and maverick quarterback Jim McMahon leading a ball-control offense, and Mike Singletary, Wilber Marshall, Richard Dent, and William "Refrigerator" Perry disrupting NFL offenses, the Bears ripped through the 1985 postseason with surprising ease. After shutting out both the New York Giants and the Los Angeles Rams, Chicago destroyed the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX, 46-10. Ryan's innovative defensive schemes helped limit New England to minus-19 yards of total offense in the first quarter, and the run-oriented Patriots only generated seven yards rushing for the entire game. Perhaps the Bears' enthusiastic defensive play was best summed up by middle linebacker Singletary when he described a devastating hit on running back Eric Dickerson in the NFC championship game: "I don't feel pain from a hit like that. What I feel is joy. Joy for the tackle. Joy for myself. Joy for the other man. You understand me; I understand you. It's football, it's middle-linebacking. It's just…good for everyone."

L. T

While Chicago had the decade's most stubborn, unyielding defense, the New York Giants possessed the NFL's most ferocious marauder, linebacker Lawrence Taylor. When Taylor entered the league in 1981 as the second player chosen in the draft, Paul Zimmerman likened him to "an emissary from another planet." Indeed, "L. T." redefined the linebacker position. Strong enough to fill holes in the middle of the defense and agile enough to drop back into pass coverage (he once returned an interception 97 yards for a touchdown), Taylor also routinely ran down halfbacks with his breathtaking speed. But L. T. seemed to save his most spectacular brand of menacing for quarterbacks. Spinning around or simply leaping over offensive linemen, Taylor swooped in on unsuspecting quarterbacks before they could even find the laces on the ball, burying them in a one-man avalanche of Giant blue. His defensive coordinator, Bill Belichick, tried to pinpoint the source of Taylor's ferocity: "What makes L. T. so great, what makes him so aggressive, is his total disregard for his body." Stories abound of Taylor's capacity to "play through" his pain. In a 1988 game against New Orleans he tore a deltoid muscle severely and had to play in a shoulder harness but still managed to record ten tackles, two sacks, and two forced fumbles. Early in his career he suffered a concussion during a game against archrival Philadelphia, and the Giants' trainer had to hide Taylor's helmet to keep him from returning to the fray. Taylor had his best year in 1986, recording over twenty sacks during the season and becoming the first defensive player in history to be named consensus league MVP. Not coincidentally, the New York Giants dominated the NFC that season and won their first Super Bowl on 25 January 1987 against the Denver Broncos, 39-20. Mercilessly double- and tripleteamed throughout the game, L. T. was neutralized by the Broncos' offensive scheme—which allowed fellow linebacker Carl Banks to record ten unassisted tackles—but it was the Giants' offense that stole the show. Giant coach Bill Parcells kept the Denver defense off balance by unexpectedly passing on first down and mixing in trick plays (a fake punt, a flea-flicker), and quarterback Phil Simms ran the offense to near perfection, completing a remarkable 22 of 25 passes and earning Super Bowl MVP honors for his efforts. Taylor would get a second Super Bowl ring after the Giants' victory in Super Bowl XXV in 1991. Finally, worn down from a decade of double-teams and his continual struggles to curb his substance abuse, Taylor retired in 1994 as perhaps the most intimidating player of his generation.

SWOOSH!

Although sports in the 1980s were, in Craig Neff's words, "awash in logos, brand names and marketing gimmicks," there is little doubt that Nike led the way. Named after the mythological winged goddess of victory, the Nike athletic footwear company was founded in 1972, but it was not until the 1980s that it became a force in the sports world. Led by founder and chairman Phil Knight, recognized as one of the most powerful men in sports, Nike made its mark through innovative product design and shrewd marketing, especially of superstars such as Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson. Recognizing that "nobody roots for a product," Knight sought to project images of heroism and glory onto gifted athletes. According to writer Donald Katz, "people would come to these heroes and listen to what they had to say, Knight believed, because superior athletic ability speaks to everyone's belief in some primordial capacity for a kind of true greatness that has been obscured over time by expediency and disappointment and the general clutter of contemporary life." Of course the corollary is that people would then want to buy Nike products. To enhance its image further Nike outfitted elite athletes in sports-wear emblazoned with its swoosh icon, which was ubiquitous during the 1980s, Katz reports that by the early 1990s it was estimated that seven times as many athletes had "working agreements with Nike than with any other company. Over half of the NCAA championship basketball teams of the past ten years had worn Nikes, and more than sixty big-time colleges were 'Nike schools'—this, in most cases, because their coaches were Nike coaches. Well over 200 of the 324 NBA players wore Nike shoes, over 80 of them by contract. Two hundred seventy-five pro football players wore Nikes, as did 290 major-league baseball players." Collectively, these associations translated into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. By the end of the decade and beyond, argues Katz, Nike came "to signify status, glamour, competitive edge and the myriad intricacies of cool. Especially for the young, Nike shoes conjure up a yearning and fascination that for much of the century has been inspired by cars." At a time when sports were plagued by a variety of ills Nike promoted the nobility of competition and athletic excellence and in the process significantly shaped the way many Americans thought about sports.

Sources:

Donald Katz, Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World New York: Random House, 1994);

Craig Neff, "The Selling of Sport," in The Best of Sports Illustrated (New York: Oxraoor House, 1990);

J. B. Strasser and Laurie Becklund, Swoosh: The Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1991).

Niners

Make no mistake, the dominant team of the 1980s was the San Francisco 49ers. Where the Bears and Giants dictated each game with their ferocious defenses, the Niners demoralized the opposition with a precise, nearly unstoppable offense. Designed by their innovative head coach, Bill Walsh, and mastered by quarterback Joe Montana, the San Francisco system depended on short passes, the "ready" of options by the quarterback and his receivers, and players who could run after they caught the ball. It did not hurt that Walsh coached two of the best players ever to play their positions, Montana and receiver Jerry Rice, but Montana was quick to give Walsh his due, saying "there's no coach I could have played for who would have been better for my career. Absolutely none." What made the Niners offense so potent was its flexibility: in their first Super Bowl in 1982, Walsh implemented an assortment of trick plays and new formations (some designed the day before the championship game) in order to confuse the Cincinnati Bengals early in the game. San Francisco led 20-0 at halftime and won 26-21. In January 1985 Montana simply outgunned the Dolphins' Dan Marino in Super Bowl XIX, hitting on 24 of 35 passes for 331 yards and three touchdowns. Then, after four years of missing the Super Bowl, the 49ers returned in 1989 and 1990 to win the first back-to-back titles since the great Pittsburgh teams of the 1970s. For all of Montana's accomplishments, perhaps it was Rice who best embodied what might be deemed the 49er spirit. Widely regarded as the best receiver ever to snare a pass, Rice appeared to prepare for each game with a continual fear that he would be supplanted from his lofty perch. Dismissing those who said they would love to be in his shoes, Rice sighed, "They don't know what it's like. The pressure. Before games I can't sleep. Before Super Bowl XXIII I woke up at 4 a.m. and just paced. I can't relax. I should be able to enjoy it, but I can't. The table can turn." Perhaps it is such vigilance that makes champions.

A Chapter Closed. The once-proud Dallas Cowboys franchise in 1988 posted the NFL's worst record at an anemic 3-13. On 13 February 1989 Dallas head coach Tom Landry, sixty-four, declared proudly that he intended to guide the club for at least four more years, "because I just don't want to leave the Cowboys when they're down." Landry's loyalty to a sinking ship is understandable when one considers that he was the only head coach the franchise had ever had, and after twenty-nine years of dignified service he refused to reconcile himself to mediocrity, or worse. But less than two weeks later, Cowboy owner H. R. "Bum" Bright sold the team to Jerry Jones, an Arkansas millionaire who summarily fired the stone-faced Landry and replaced him with Jones's close friend, Jimmy Johnson, the coach of the University of Miami. The $140-million business deal and the sudden and seemingly unfeeling dismissal brought recriminations against Jones, but he maintained that the move was both painful and necessary. "This man is like Bear Bryant to me, like Vince Lombardi to me," said Jones. "If you love competitors, Tom Landry's an angel." Yet Jones noted, "I wouldn't have bought the Dallas Cowboys if Jimmy Johnson couldn't be my coach!" While NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle and many of Landry's former players treated the news as if it were an obituary, the old coach himself was more philosophical: "I was looking forward to this year. I thought it was going to be a tremendous challenge. But that's over with. It's a chapter closed. This is the worst scenario, I guess, but I'm not bitter." Dallas stumbled to a 1—15 record in Johnson's first year, but through a series of shrewd draft choices and trades the Cowboys rose to prominence again, winning consecutive Super Bowls in 1993 and 1994. The close bond between Jones and Johnson collapsed, however, and after the second championship Johnson was replaced by another of Jones's old friends, former University of Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer.

Sources:

Jim Byrne, The $1 League: The Ri: and Fall of the USFL (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1986);

David Harris, The League: The Rise and Decline of the NFL (New York: Bantam, 1986);

Peter King, Inside the Helmet: A Player's Eye View of the NFL (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993);

Michael LeBlanc, ed., Professional Sports Team Histories: Football (Detroit: Gale Research, 1994);

John Wiebusch and Brian Silverman, eds., A Game of Passion: The NFL Literary Companion (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1994);

Paul Zimmerman, The New Thinking Mart's Guide to Pro Football (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984),

Football: Professional

Change for the Sunday Game

The 1990s was a decade of expansion and change for the National Foot-ball League (NFL). New franchises and stadiums, additional wild-card teams in the playoffs, expanding television coverage, and increased audiences and Attendance all meant more money for the owners and players, but higher ticket prices for the fans. Several teams moved to new cities (for example, the Rams from Los Angeles to St. Louis; the Oilers from Houston to Nashville, now known as the Tennessee Titans) in search of better facilities, larger markets, and other financial incentives. The Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers joined the league, and Cleveland was awarded a new team (although they kept their old name, the Browns) after the former franchise had moved to Baltimore (to become the Ravens). The expansion of the draft into the ranks of college underclassmen meant that good players often left school early to pursue large contracts. Multimillion-dollar salaries and bonuses for untested rookies became the norm.

On-and-Off-the-Field Problems

Many of the headaches for league officials came from off-the-field criminal activities, ranging from drug offenses to domestic abuse. There were ever-expanding fines against players for senseless fights away from the stadiums, as well as for shoving referees on the field. In July 1999 three members of the New York Jets were arrested following a bar fight. Current and former players were cited for possession of drugs, driving while intoxicated or vehicular offenses, and other violent actions; some NFL players even went to jail. Several players even attacked and wounded fellow teammates in practice sessions. Most seriously, at the end of the decade, Rae Carruth, a wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers, was on trial for the murder in a drive-by shooting of his wife, who was pregnant with their child, on 16 November 1999. Ray Lewis, a Baltimore linebacker, was for a short time also accused of murder, although the charges were eventually dropped. At the end of the decade the league instituted tougher penalties for players who committed serious offenses.

Super Powers

The decade began with perennial powers the San Francisco 49ers, New York Giants, Washington Redskins, and Dallas Cowboys winning Super Bowls. Dallas won three (1993, 1994, and 1996) and San Francisco two (1990 and 1995). The Giants (1991) and Redskins (1992) each won one, as did former "good ol' days" champions, the Green Bay Packers (1997), their first title in twenty-nine years. Their victory was widely hailed as a deserved reward for faithful fans and for three-time league MVP Brett Favre. Finally, a (relatively) new team won the championship when the Denver Broncos and John Elway finally took the title in 1998. No American Football Conference (AFC) team, inexplicably, had won a Super Bowl since 1984, until Denver won two in a row, the second in 1999 against the Atlanta Falcons. The final season of the decade ended with the St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans heading to Super Bowl XXXIV (which was played on 30 January 2000 and won by the Rams).

Trouble in Dallas

Once America's Team, the Dallas Cowboys seemed to be despised by many fans during the decade. Callers to radio sports-talk shows, and for that matter, sportswriters and commentators, could not show enough contempt for owner Jerry Jones and coach Barry Switzer. At the end of the 1980s Jones had brought in Jimmy Johnson from the University of Miami (Florida) Hurricanes to coach his team, and Johnson led the Cowboys to two consecutive championships. A series of off-the-field activities by his players, however, ranging from accusations of drug use to battery, some of which were later discovered to be false, stained the image of the team. Jones did not help him-self either in the eyes of management, defying the NFL by signing sponsorship deals with Pepsi and Nike that broke the spirit and letter of league rules. Then, in a feud with Johnson, Jones fired his successful coach and hired renegade Oklahoma University coach Switzer, who had enough coaching skills and player talent to win one more Super Bowl, before he moved on from his own mutually disagreeable relationship with Jones. No wonder fans embraced Favre and the Packers in 1997-1998, and then Elway and the Broncos in 1998-1999.

Big Names

The fans cheered Joe Montana during his last years at the helm of the San Francisco 49ers dynasty that lasted into 1990, when he won another MVP award and the Super Bowl. Dan Marino, quarter-back for the Miami Dolphins, eclipsed Fran Tarkenton (Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants, 1961-1978) in four passing categories—attempts, completions, yards, and touchdowns. Jerry Rice, wide receiver for the 49ers, established all-time records for receptions and reception yardage. Emmitt Smith, running back for the Cowboys, tallied twenty-five touchdowns in 1995, breaking the old standard. Barry Sanders, Terrell Davis, Steve Young, and Reggie White were other high-profile and popular players during the decade. Another enormously talented quarterback came on the professional football stage at the end of the decade; Peyton Manning led the previously hapless Indianapolis Colts into the playoffs in just his second year (from a 3-13 record to 13-3). A new crop of players were also poised to achieve stardom, including Randy Moss, Tim Couch, Kurt Warner, Edgerrin James, and Ricky Williams. Don Shula, longtime coach for both the Balti-more Colts (1963-1969) and Miami Dolphins (1970-1995), became the winningest coach in NFL history on 14 November 1993; when Shula retired after the 1995 season, he had led his teams to 347 victories.

SOUPER BOWL OF CARING

More than $7 million was raised for charity during the 1990s thanks to a creative response to a perennial problem by the youth minister of a South Carolina church. Brad Smith, associate pastor of the Spring Valley Presbyterian Church and founder of the Souper Bowl of Caring, came up with the simple plan in 1989 of having members of his youth group stand at the exits of the church with pots and pans on Super Bowl Sunday to collect $1 from each person. On a day of excess and extravagance, he reasoned, surely churchgoers could manage to give $1 each so that a hungry person could cat. The idea was so well received that it was shared with other churches in the area, then around the state, and then nationwide. The money was used in the village or city where it was collected. It was not sent "away" for someone else to distribute, but each church made the decision about which local charity should benefit. Sponsors were asked, however, to report the amount of the gifts received so that a nationwide tally could be kept. By the end of the decade even the National Football League (NFL) had joined the crusade, supporting the cause in a variety of ways. More than eleven thousand congregations participated in 1999, giving millions of dollars to local benevolence, an impressive amount for an organization and tor an idea only ten years old.

Source:

The Souper Bowl, Internet website.

Still Popular

In spite of its detractors, NFL football continued to be the most popular spectator sport in the country. It was so favored, in fact, that the league sold the rights to broadcast its games for an eight-year period for $17.6 billion. No sport at any level capitalized on television as well as pro football. One example was the constant tweaking of instant replay. Banned after 1992 (after being in use for six years), it was reinstated in an altered fashion in 1999. Other evidence of television savvy was the addition of a additional wild-card level for the playoffs. Helping to keep the sport in the forefront was its remarkable level of parity during the decade, as many teams experienced disastrous declines or remarkable turnarounds in success. For instance, the participants in Super Bowl XXXIII, Denver and Atlanta, experienced the ignominy of having their records fall to 6-10 and 5-11 respectively, in the following season. Adding to the excitement for the fans, during the next-to-last weekend of the 1999 schedule every game played had playoff implications, an amazing result of parity and scheduling. Few fans cared that 8-8 teams made the playoffs. The goal was not to create a dynasty but to create fan interest. As a result, there was a per-game rise in average attendance at each game of about one thousand fans, up to 65,349. This figure represented an almost five-thousand-fan-per-game increase since 1996. Even expansion teams benefited from parity. In their second year of existence under head coach Dom Capers, the Carolina Panthers posted a 12-4 record and won the NFC West title. In the same year, 1996, the Jacksonville Jaguars, coached by Tom Coughlin, beat the Buffalo Bills and the Denver Broncos en route to the AFC championship game. What Aikman called a "watered-down league" became another term for exciting football. George Young, senior vice president for the NFL and former general manager of the New York Giants, asked, "Why should there be anointed teams and anointed cities? Wouldn't you get tired of that?" More to the point, Les Carpenter, a reporter for the Seattle Times, pointed out that "Parity equals profit."

Sources:

NFL.com, Internet website.

Official 1998 National Football League Record & Fact Book (New York: Workman, 1998).

Prosportspage.com, Internet website.

The Sports Illustrated 1999 Sports Almanac (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998).

FOOTBALL: PROFESSIONAL

From Rags to Riches

At the beginning of the 1920s professional football was in disarray. The play-for-pay sport was twenty-five years old in 1920, but few people took notice. Tickets to games could hardly be given away. Players met in the lobby of a hotel on a Sunday morning, discussed some plays, and then put them into the game that afternoon. A teammate in one game might be an opponent in the next. What league organization existed was merely a loose confederation. Four men changed the game into a popular, rapidly growing spectator sport before the decade was over: Joe E. Carr, Tim Mara, Red Grange, and George Halas.

The National Football League

On 17 September 1920 the American Professional Football Association was founded in Ralph Hays's automobile agency in Canton, Ohio. The great former Olympian and football star Jim Thorpe was elected president; Stanley Cofall, the former Notre Dame star and coach of the Massillon Tigers, was elected vice president. George Halas was also among those present. Each of the eleven franchise teams paid $100 to be part of the organization. These eleven teams were the Canton Bulldogs; the Cleveland Indians; the Dayton Triangles; the Akron Professionals; the Massillon Tigers; the Chicago Cardinals; the Chicago Staleys; and yet unnamed clubs in Rochester, New York; Rock Island, Illinois; Muncie, Indiana; and Hammond, Indiana. The association, however, lacked direction until 1921 when Joe E. Carr, an experienced sports promoter, transformed it into the well-managed National Football League, as the association was renamed in 1922. Carr realigned teams, and Green Bay, Buffalo, Detroit, Columbus, and Cincinnati franchises replaced Massillon, Muncie, and Hammond teams. Although it was in the smallest market, the Green Bay team, founded in 1921 by Earl Louis "Curly" Lambeau for $500, provided one of the most consistent spectator markets in the league.

True League Prosperity

The turning point for professional football occurred in 1925 when Tim Mara paid $2,500 for the New York Giants franchise although he had not seen a football game in his life. His purchase of the franchise proved to be a brilliant business venture, for it coincided with Red Grange's entry into the pro game. The huge New York sports market provided 76,000 paying customers to watch Grange and the Chicago Bears play the New York Giants on 6 December 1925. Such a crowd helped insure financial stability for Mara, Grange, and George Halas's Chicago team.

Halas and Grange

Grange was signed to play professional football by George Halas, the former University of Illinois great. When Halas finished playing college football, his coach, Bob Zuppke (later Grange's coach), bemoaned his player's graduation, saying, "Just as a player begins to get good and learn something about this game, he graduates." Zuppke's words stuck with Halas, who decided to remedy the absence of postgraduation football. Halas, hired as the athletic director and football coach of the Staley Starch Works of Decatur, Illinois, formed the Chicago Staleys. He approached his professional team with a college coach's sense of organization, demanding daily practice, for example. Halas at first served as coach, captain, and end for the team. Later he became the team owner and in 1922 renamed his team the Chicago Bears. With Grange on the team, the Bears became a powerful club and financial success. Grange, who had been the most publicized college player in the country, created national interest and drew front-page newspaper coverage—the boost the sport needed to ensure its financial future. From 1925 on, professional football succeeded and eventually grew into one of America's greatest spectator attractions.

Sources:

Arthur Daley, "Professional Football," in Sport's Golden Age, edited by Allison Danzig and Peter Brandwein (New York: Harper, 1948);

The Encyclopedia of Football, edited by Roger Treat (New York: Barnes, 1959).

FOOTBALL: PROFESSIONAL

Limited Beginnings

Teams began paying players to play football in the 1890s, but professional football remained a largely disorganized sport from 1900 to 1920, with most teams clustered in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the Chicago area of Illinois. The popularity of pro football was strictly local or regional as the teams of athletic clubs challenged each other for city or state supremacy. Unlike college football, early pro football was dominated by ethnic, Catholic, and working-class players.

African American Players

Although both the professional and collegiate ranks were dominated by whites in the 1910s, black players participated in the professional game in this early period. Doc Baker played four seasons with the Akron Indians as halfback, the last in 1911; Henry McDonald played backfield for the Rochester Jeffersons (1911-1917); and Fritz Pollard, a Brown University star who was the first black to make Walter Camp's first-team All-American, played for four different professional teams from 1919 to 1926 and was the first black pro coach when he was player-coach at both Akron and Hammond.

Jim Thorpe

The star of the decade in professional football was Jim Thorpe, the Olympic champion from the Carlisle Indian School who turned pro in 1913. In 1915 Thorpe signed with the Canton, Ohio, Bulldogs for $250 a game. His appearance in the game between Canton and Massillon that year drew fourteen thousand fans. In the 1916 season, Thorpe led his team to ten straight wins and the Bulldogs became the pro champions of the world. Thorpe remained the premier attraction in pro football into the 1920s.

Problems

Despite some success, professional football suffered internal problems that greatly undermined its advancement. Many teams refused to organize into leagues or abide by uniform rules, and they routinely raided talent from other teams and even from colleges, which irritated many college coaches. Players jumped from team to team during the season to maximize their pay. The constant player turnover, betting and gambling scandals, and uneven competition turned off many potential fans. As early as 1914 college coaches and fans began to berate the professional game. It was a discouraging struggle for the pros, for though they had exciting players they could not match the respectability of the college game or draw its crowds. Hoping to reverse the tarnished image of professional football, and to improve its profitability, representatives from mostly smaller Ohio cities gathered at the Hupmobile automobile agency showroom at Canton in 1920. There they formed a new pro league that officially became the National Football League in 1922.

SEATTLE METROPOLITANS

In 1917 the Seattle Metropolitans of the Pacific Coast Hockey League became the first American ice hockey team to win the Stanley Cup. The Pacific Coast Hockey League, which consisted of the Portland Rosebuds, Vancouver Millionaires, Victoria Cougars, New Westministers Royals, Spokane Canaries, and Seattle Metropolitans, was founded by Ontario-born hockey players Frank and Lester Patrick in 1911. The Patricks built the Pacific Coast Hockey League by raiding National Hockey Association teams and paying players higher salaries. In 1916 the Portland Rosebuds played in the Stanley Cup finals against the Montreal Canadiens but did not win. In 1919 Seattle met the Montreal Canadiens once again for the Stanley Cup, but the series was not completed because of an influenza epidemic that swept across North America.

Source:

Frank G. Menkc. The Encyclopedia of Sports, fourth revised edition (New York: Barnes, 1969).

Sources:

William S. Jarrett, Timetables of Sports History: Football (New York: Facts On File, 1989);

Douglas A. Noverr and Lawrence E. Ziewacz, The Games They Played: Sports in American History, 1865-1980 (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983).