NFL history a superb read

The number of outstanding baseball books dwarfs those about pro football, possibly because the nature of the horsehide beast encourages us to bury ourselves deeper in its lore. After all, a baseball game offers eyewitnesses and TV viewers much more leisure time to dwell on the past while yawning through the interminable reality of today’s four-hour ballgames.

There is little doubt, however, the ranks of significant football books (as opposed to the quickie “told-to” genre) are increasing. Now we have been gifted with one of the best in “America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation” ($27.95, Random House, 552 pages, illus.) by Missouri author Michael McCambridge.

This lengthy volume is a big winner in terms of content, good writing and analysis. If you’re looking to buy an early Christmas present for a fan, grab this one and stick it in the closet until you spot Santa and the reindeer. You won’t be sorry, and neither will the lucky recipient.

I consider myself fairly knowledgeable regarding NFL history — as a fan of the Redskins since 1949, I should be — but there is much I didn’t know until I picked up McCambridge’s book.

The author posits that pro football surpassed baseball in the 1960s and 1970s to become the nation’s favorite sport — a fact so indisputable today that even Bud Selig might agree if he weren’t busy licking Peter Angelos’ boots. And like many before him, McCambridge identifies as the turning point the Baltimore Colts’ victory over the New York in the 1958 NFL title game (and first sudden-death overtime contest).

Yet McCambridge doesn’t make the mistake of assuming pro football was nowhere before that signature event, noting the NFL was wildly successful much earlier in such cities as New York, Chicago, Green Bay and Washington.

By the time I came along as a spectator, the once-powerful Redskins were mediocre or worse — largely because founding owner George Preston Marshall refused to employ black players. The usual private explanation was the Redskins, as the NFL’s Southernmost team before 1960, enjoyed highly profitable radio and TV networks throughout the old Confederacy. I recall all too well how the team band, upon finishing “Hail to the Redskins,” broke into “Dixie” just before the kickoff.

McCambridge relates how Marshall implored Bobby Mitchell, who became the team’s first black player in 1962, to sing “Dixie” along with the crowd at a preseason “Welcome Home” luncheon for the team.

“Mr. Marshall, I don’t know the words,” Mitchell replied, presumably with a straight face.

Perhaps I’m showing my age, but the part of the book I enjoyed most was devoted to the late 1940s and early 1950s. McCambridge does a superb job of describing the birth and death of the All-American Football Conference, which lasted as a purported rival league from 1946 to 1949 and later contributed the original Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers to a “merger” with the NFL.

One problem with the AAFC was that the Cleveland Browns dominated all competition for its four seasons. When they joined the NFL in 1950, most observers expected the whippersnappers to be put in their place. As it turned out, that place was first. I remember the shock when the Browns routed the NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles 35-10 in their first game and went on to win the title their first season.

And if you’re curious about the NFL’s financial status in those years, consider this: Despite winning the NFL title in 1949, the Eagles lost $85,000 for the season. Imagine how the bedraggled Redskins must have fared with a 4-7-1 record (including losses to the Eagles by 49-14 and 44-21).

If trivia is your thing … well you can learn what colors the original Colts wore before folding after the 1950 season (green and silver), who the first black players were in the modern NFL (Kenny Washington and Woody Strode with the transplanted — from Cleveland — Los Angeles Rams in 1946), or how a single franchise operated as the New York Bulldogs in 1949, the New York Yanks in 1950 and ’51, the Dallas Texans in 1952 and the revived Colts in 1953).

And do you know what NFL franchises combined to survive during World War II? The Pittsburgh Steelers merged with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1943 (as, honest, the “Steagles”) and with the original Chicago Cardinals in ’44 (“Card-Pitt”).

But this is neither a book of trivia nor a trivial book. McCambridge tells how Pete Rozelle, selected as an obscure compromise choice to succeed the late Bert Bell as commissioner in 1960, steered the NFL into the modern age and assured the solvency of all its clubs by signing one lucrative network TV package after another. And we learn how the job and its pressures aged Rozelle so that he resembled “a president at the end of his second term” before turning the job over to Paul Tagliabue in 1989.

All this didn’t stem from Johnny Unitas and the Colts piercing the Giants’ fearsome defense in that ’58 title game, but the dramatic result alerted untold millions around the nation to the beauty and excitement of pro football. Sunday afternoons and Monday nights have never been the same.