"The Big Time" by Michael MacCambridge

Please note the subtitle of this new book by Michael MacCambridge: "How the 1970's Transformed Sports in America".  If you are my age, the book will bring back some cool memories for you.  If you are much younger, say in your twenties of thirties, the book will open your eyes to world that is barely recognizable today.

Consider these conditions in the word of sports at the dawn of the 1970's.

• Player's Associations existed but were largely impotent when fighting the ownership in sports leagues.  
• Free Agency in sports did not exist.
• Women's sports, if they existed at all at the college level, were afterthoughts and not much more that intramural or club sports.
• The University of Texas, winner of the 1969 then-mythical National Championship in college football, did not have a single African-American player on it's team.  The same was true for such football powerhouses as Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida.
• The Super Bowl had only been played four times, and it wasn't even called  the Super Bowl.  It was the NFL-AFL World Championship Game.
• The American Basketball Association existed, but was struggling to meet payrolls and stay in business.  It did have Dr. J though, and that would prove to be most significant.
• The World Hockey Association had yet to be born.
• The NBA Playoffs were televised on tape delay.
• There was no Monday Night Football.  In fact, there were no sports on prime time network television.
• There was no internet.
• There was no ESPN

You get the idea.  Then several momentous events took place.

• In 1972, Congress passed and President Nixon signed into law the Education Amendments Act.  Tucked into that was a provision that contained were thirty-seven words, words that comprises Title IX of the EAA: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, or be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."  (There has been revisionist speculation that had he realized the full implications of Title IX, Sports Nut Dick Nixon would never have signed the bill.)
• Two days before Christmas in 1975, arbitrator Peter Seitz made a ruling in the case involving baseball players Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally that declared them to be free agents, ended the reserve clause, and opened the door to free agency, not only in major league baseball, but effectively, in all other professional sports in America.
• In September 1973, an exhibition tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs was nationally televised in prime time on ABC from the Houston Astrodome, drew record ratings and, when King dispatched Riggs handily, opened the door for women in sports in ways unimaginable at the time.  

MacCambridge, who wrote the terrific biography of Chuck Noll, "Hs Life's Work", a few years back, summed it up in the opening chapter of the book:

"The new decade would witness the emergence of spectator sports as an ever-expanding mainstream phenomenon, as well as show remarkable changes in the way athletes were paid, how they played, and how they were perceived.......By the end of the 1970's sports would become a decidedly big business, a microcosm of the larger social fabric, a social glue that crossed all demographic boundries.  One could also begin to see what was to become of sports as a transcendently lucrative profession that would serve as both the last big tent in American popular culture, and a stage upon which many of the nation's more nettlesome issues in morality, ethics, and values would be played out."

Here are just a couple of takeaways that I had from the book.

• I knew that Billie Jean King was an important figure in sports history, but I really never thought of just HOW important she was.
• Bowie Kuhn was as stuffed shirt horse's ass.  I knew that, but I never realized just HOW BIG a horse's ass he was.
• Marvin Miller.  Probably the most significant figure in sports history, outside of Jackie Robinson.  I did know that.
• And I learn about an absolutely astounding stipulation that Pittsburgh favorite Connie Hawkins had in his contract with the Phoenix Suns. Read the book.

If you're in my age neighborhood, the book will bring back a lot of memories.  Some good, but not all of them. And if you're one of those kids out there who consider Barry Bonds and Magic Johnson "old-timers", the book is a terrific and entertaining history lesson.  And for the local folks, lots of good Pittsburgh Stuff in there about the Seventies Steelers and the We are Family Pirates.

Four stars from The Grandstander.

Book Review - "Chuck Noll, His Life's Work"

As the book, "Chuck Noll, His Life's Work" by Michael MacCambridge was about to be released, I heard Dan Rooney being interviewed, and he said something to the effect that he was tired of going to NFL meetings year after year and hearing about how great guys like Bill Walsh and Bill Parcells were, while no one ever said anything about Chuck Noll.  So, in 2012 Rooney, at that point a United States Ambassador, approached author Michael MacCambridge and asked if he would be willing to write a definitive biography of the former Steelers coach.   MacCambridge agreed to take on the task, and now, after four years of dedicated research (the bibliography covers five printed pages), hundreds of interviews, and actually sitting down and writing, football history, not to mention football fans in general and Steelers fans in particular, are the better for it.   I just finished reading this book and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Part of the reason that so little is known of Noll other than the runs-hits-and-errors (if I may use a baseball metaphor) of his coaching record can be traced to Noll himself.  A naturally reticent man, Noll was a notoriously private and closed individual. Part of this is his family heritage and background, which is told in great detail here, and he made his choice to be that way.   Yet, he was one of the more interesting and well rounded men - away from the football field - that you will ever read about.  He was, MacCambridge says, "one of the last hugely successful NFL coaches to have an identifiable life outside of football, to be such a well rounded person."  However, few people knew this, and players who played their entire careers for him will tell you that they never had a personal conversation with him.  Those same players will also tell you, decades removed from their playing days, just what an effect Noll had on them and continues to have on them in their life's work as, say, football coaches (Tony Dungy), businessmen (John Stallworth), and parents (Cliff Stoudt).  

Above all, the book is about the love story that was the life and fifty-seven year marriage of Chuck and Marianne Noll.  Marianne Noll and the Nolls' son, Chris, cooperated with and were interviewed by MacCambridge for this book.  During all the years of Noll's coaching tenure, the Noll Family was very private by their own choice, you knew they existed, but you knew nothing about them, so their stories and input to the book are invaluable and extremely insightful.

Two things I learned in this book that I never knew.  One was that Noll suffered from epilepsy, which he lived with and controlled all of his adult life.  Secondly, when his older sister became widowed at the age of 38 with seven children under the age of ten, Chuck and Marianne contributed greatly to the upbringing and raising of those nieces and nephews.  Chuck walked his one niece down the aisle at her 1989 wedding.

Just about every important and significant name in football and the Steelers of that era agreed to talk with MacCambridge as he researched and wrote this book with one notable exception - Terry Bradshaw.  Probably just as well given Bradshaw's penchant for giving, shall we say, contradictory viewpoints of his relationship with Noll (and others) over the years.  There is a great anecdote in the book of Stoudt running into Bradshaw at some NASCAR event in 2002 where he pretty much tells Bradshaw to give it up and realize just what Noll did for him.

Like many biographies, the best part of the book comes in the telling of the subject's life after he leaves the main stage, and this one is no exception.  I defy anyone to read the last two chapters and the epilogue of this one without a few tears welling up in your eyes.  

But, okay, if all you really care about is the football stuff, there is plenty of that in there for you, too.   Reading it brought back memories of many football games at Three Rivers Stadium where I was present, including the Immaculate Reception Game, but two other stories recounted in the book also stand out to me.  One was the reaction of Glen Edwards in the tunnel waiting to be introduced before Super Bowl IX when one of his old college teammates, now a member of the Vikings, refused to acknowledge him.  If you know your Steelers lore, you know this story, but it's one I never get tired of reading.  The second story was about the Wild Card Playoff game win over the Houston Oilers in overtime in 1989.  It was a loss that cost Oilers Coach Jerry Glanville his job, and the players' euphoria over that win rivaled that of previous Super Bowl wins.

Like I said, I cannot recommend this one highly enough.  Four Stars from The Grandstander for this one.