Last Team Standing (36 page)

After four seasons in Green Bay, Walt Kiesling returned to the Steelers in 1949 as an assistant coach. Before the 1954 season, Art Rooney fired head coach Joe Bach and, once again, asked Big Kies to take over. After three losing seasons Kiesling stepped down as head coach but stayed with the Steelers as an assistant, the job he always preferred. Kiesling remained with the team until he passed away on March 2, 1962, at age 58. At the time of his death, Kiesling's tenure in the National Football League was second only to George Halas's. In recognition of his longevity, Kiesling was posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame in 1966. The Steagles, therefore, were coached by two Hall of Famers, albeit two who never got along. In Canton their busts sit just a few feet apart.

As commissioner, Bert Bell presided over the National Football League's phenomenal growth after the war. He assumed control of scheduling, ending the owners' tiresome practice of endlessly haggling over the particulars of each and every game. The owners, weary themselves, trusted Bell and were glad to hand him the task. Bell drew up each season's schedule by labeling his sons' dominoes with the various team names, then arranging them on a giant cardboard calendar on his dining room table. His philosophy was simple.

“Weak teams should play other weak teams while the strong teams are playing other strong teams early in the year,” he said. “It's the only way to keep more teams in contention longer into the season.” The result was to become the league's hallmark: parity. (Bell is often credited as the source of the famous quote, “On any given Sunday, any team can beat any other.”) The stranglehold that the Bears, Redskins, Giants, and Packers had on the championship game was broken. Even the Cardinals and the Eagles had a shot at the title now.

Bell also ushered football into the television age, shrewdly exploiting the medium to both promote and protect the league. By 1956, CBS was broadcasting every regular season game, and paying more than $1 million for the privilege, while NBC had the rights to the championship game. But the networks weren't showing injuries or fights. Bell, ever protective of the game's image, prohibited that.

“We don't want kids sitting in the living room to see their heroes trading punches,” he explained. “That doesn't teach good sportsmanship.” Bell was also known to call play-by-play announcers after games to critique their performance. (Runners were not to be “tripped up” or “wrestled to the ground”; they were always to be “tackled.”) His attention to detail paid off handsomely. Ratings skyrocketed. The famous 1958 championship game, in which the Colts beat the Giants 23-17 in overtime, was watched in 10.8 million homes, establishing professional football as the nation's preeminent televised sport.

But Bell was wary of the young medium as well.

“Television creates interest and this can benefit pro football,” he said. “But it's only good as long as you can protect your home gate. You can't give fans a game for free on television and also expect them to pay to go to the ballpark to see the same game.” Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? So Bell banned the free milk. In 1951 he decreed that a team's home games could not be televised locally. The blackout policy angered many fans and was challenged by the Justice Department as an illegal restraint of trade. But Bell stood firm and a federal court upheld the policy. Attendance rose by 72 percent through the 1950s, from 25,356 per game in 1950 to 43,617 in 1959. (In 1972 Congress passed a law lifting blackouts for home games that are sold out 72 hours before kickoff. The legislation was said to be the result of frustrated congressmen who couldn't get Redskins tickets and wanted to watch the games on TV.)

Yet even as he helped build the National Football League into the wealthiest sporting enterprise in the nation, Bell never
lost his passion for the game itself. On an autumn Sunday afternoon there was only one place he wanted to be, and that was at a football game. As a man of power and privilege, he could have sat, for free, in the most expensive box in the stadium. But he always preferred to buy his own tickets and sit in the stands, among the “working stiffs,” as he called the league's bread and butter. That's where he was on Sunday, October 11, 1959, when he suffered a massive heart attack that killed him almost instantly.

“It was almost as though he were allowed to choose time and place,” wrote the sports columnist Red Smith.

Bert Bell died at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, where he'd starred at quarterback for the University of Pennsylvania four decades earlier. He was watching the Eagles play the Steelers.

H
EINZ FIELD, THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS' CURRENT HOME,
overlooks the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, not far from the very spot where General Forbes wrested Fort Duquesne from the French. The stadium exemplifies all that the National Football League has become since World War II: enormous, flashy, and rich. Built at a cost of $281 million (of which taxpayers contributed $158 million), Heinz Field is a spectacular venue, a glistening glass-and-steel horseshoe with impeccable sightlines and breathtaking views of downtown. Each of its 64,450 seats is the color of yellow mustard, and the three-story-tall video screen at the open end of the stadium is topped by two giant bottles of Heinz ketchup.

Heinz Field could scarcely be more different from Forbes Field, the Steelers' first home. It is thoroughly modern in every way, from its state-of-the-art sound system to its turf, a blend of natural grass and synthetic fibers called DD GrassMaster. But when the Steelers hosted the Philadelphia Eagles in a preseason game on August 16, 2003, the atmosphere inside the stadium was decidedly retro. No garish logos adorned the field. Big band music, not rock, blared from the sound system. On the giant video screen, all the pictures were in black and white. For on that
muggy Saturday night, the Steelers turned the clock back to 1943 to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Steagles.

The event was the brainchild of Steelers owner Dan Rooney, who was 11 when what was then his father's team merged with the Eagles.

“It was a time in America that was so meaningful,” Rooney said.

At halftime, faded images of the Steagles were shown on the video screen while the public-address announcer, Randy Cosgrove, briefly explained to the incredulous throng the hybrid team's strange saga. Then Cosgrove read the names of the three former Steagles who were unable to attend the evening's festivities.

“Tackle Ted Doyle.”

Ted Doyle retired from the Steelers after the 1945 season. Or rather he wasn't invited back. A new coach, Jock Sutherland, had taken over.

“I never heard from him so I guess he didn't want me,” Doyle said. “I didn't go back.” Doyle never pursued the matter with Art Rooney because he “didn't want to interfere with anything.” So he and Harriet and their two children moved back to Nebraska. Doyle managed a bowling alley in the town of Fairbury for a time, then went to work for an agricultural products company. He retired for good in the mid 1980s. He and Harriet live in Gretna, Nebraska. Doyle still thinks he would've been better off taking that job with Hormel back in 1938.

“Halfback Jack Hinkle.”

Jack Hinkle would never have another season like 1943. Steve Van Buren replaced him as the Eagles' No. 1 running back the following season. Hinkle was switched back to a blocking back, a position he filled quite adeptly until his retirement after the 1947 season. In 1951 he became an assistant football coach at the Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University) in Philadelphia. In 1958 he was named head coach. After three losing seasons he resigned to take a sales job with a brass and copper company. He and his wife Joane, who still calls him “Honey,” live outside Philadelphia.

“End Tom Miller.”

Shortly before the 1945 season, the Eagles traded Tom Miller to the Redskins. The following summer, Miller went to visit his in-laws, who happened to live in Green Bay. In a barbershop he bumped into Packers head coach Curly Lambeau, who was surprised to learn that Miller's wife was a local girl. A month later, Lambeau, apparently convinced Miller's relations with his in-laws were sound, bought his contract from Washington.

“Not that I was very good,” Miller joked. “The Redskins were glad to get rid of me.” Miller ended up playing just two games for the Packers, but in 1955 he was appointed the team's publicity director. He was promoted, first to assistant general manager under Vince Lombardi, then to assistant to the president. He retired from the Packers in 1988 and was inducted into the team's Hall of Fame in 1999. After a lengthy illness, Tom Miller died on December 2, 2005. He was 87.

At this point in the ceremonies, six old men, all stooped but sturdy, emerged from a tunnel beneath the stands and slowly made their way to midfield as the PA announcer called their names.

“Center, No. 52, Ray Graves!”

After retiring from pro football for good following the 1946 season, Ray Graves took a job as an assistant coach at Georgia Tech, where he worked under the legendary Bobby Dodd. In 1960 he became the head coach at the University of Florida. He coached the Gators to five bowl appearances, winning four, including a 27-12 victory over his mentor Dodd in the 1967 Orange Bowl. Graves retired from coaching after the 1969 season with a record of 70-31-4. He was the winningest coach in Florida history until 1996, when he was surpassed by one of his former players, Steve Spurrier. But his most lasting contribution to the school came in 1965, when he was approached by four university researchers who wanted to test a concoction they'd developed for alleviating dehydration.

“One of the reasons I have respect for Coach Graves was that when we explained to him what we had found he professed no
ability to really understand what we were saying, but he accepted it,” Robert Cade, one of the researchers, later recalled. “But he hedged his bets a bit. He said we could try it only on the freshman team.” So far the University of Florida has collected more than $80 million in royalties from sales of the resulting product, which the researchers, in honor of the school's football team, named Gatorade.

“Tackle, No. 76, Frank ‘Bucko' Kilroy!”

A knee injury ended Bucko Kilroy's playing career after the 1955 season but he never left the NFL. He became a scout, first for the Eagles, then for the Washington Redskins, Dallas Cowboys, and New England Patriots. Kilroy was instrumental in developing many of today's standard scouting techniques.

“I used to go out and time people and measure them, and some of the other scouts used to ridicule me,” he said. “When we started giving them IQ tests, they really started in on me. We were the first to do any of that, and the other scouts would say, ‘Aw, why the hell are you doing that? Just look at the guy.'”

Kilroy joined the Patriots as director of player personnel in 1971. He was twice promoted, first to general manager, then to vice president. He helped assemble the teams that won three Super Bowls in four seasons from 2001 to 2004, and he still works for the Patriots as a consultant. The year 2005 was his sixty-third in the National Football League, equaling George Halas's record of longevity.

“Tackle, No. 79, Vic Sears!”

Even after two-platoon football became the norm with the permanent implementation of unlimited substitution in 1950, soft-spoken tackle Vic Sears still played both ways for the Eagles. During most games he never left the field; he even covered kick-offs and punts. As a result, he probably put in more actual playing time than any other player in Eagles history and was truly one of the last of the “60-minute men.” (Eagles legend Chuck Bednarik played “only” 58 minutes in the 1960 championship game.) Sears finally retired after the 1953 season but stayed in the Philadelphia area, working as a manufacturer's representative.

“I did a lot of traveling along the East Coast,” Sears said. “It was a good way to make a living and I enjoyed it.”

“Quarterback, No. 10, Allie Sherman!”

Allie Sherman never did get a chance to be a first-string quarterback, but his time on the sidelines with Greasy Neale paid off in 1949, when longtime New York Giants coach Steve Owen finally decided to switch to the T formation.

“Take Allie Sherman to help you,” Neale said to his old friend Owen. “He's the smartest young man in football.” After five seasons as an assistant with the Giants, Sherman became the head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Canadian Football League. In 1957 he returned to the Giants as a scout. Two years later he was promoted to offensive coordinator, replacing Vince Lombardi, who had left to take the top job in Green Bay. In 1961, at age 38, Sherman was named head coach of the Giants. Greasy Neale would often come out to watch his protégé run practices, standing silently on the sidelines, his white poodle Bianco tucked under one arm. Sherman coached the Giants to the Eastern Division title in each of his first three seasons but lost the championship game each time, twice to Green Bay and once to the Bears. As stars like Frank Gifford and Y.A. Tittle retired, however, the Giants slumped into mediocrity. Fans began serenading Sherman with choruses of “Goodbye Allie,” sung to the tune of “Good Night, Ladies.” On the eve of the 1969 season Sherman was dismissed. He never coached again. Instead he pursued lucrative business ventures on Wall Street. Now comfortably retired in New York, Sherman frequents the Friars Club, where he is known, simply, as “Coach.”