"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.