Those bored with my NFL ramblings, please scroll down a bit where there’s a book review. OK, it’s NFL related but it could appeal to a wider audience.
Oh yes, it’s that time of year again and the new season is upon us. I’m firmly on the Jimmy Garoppolo band wagon and I’m convinced that we’ll get to 8-8 this year. I’m not asking for the play offs, that can wait until next year 🙂
There’s been surprisingly little London Team chat during the off season. I think that this is partly due to the NFL having plenty of other off-field issues to keep it occupied and partly because the Football World Cup has been on. However there have been a few developments:
Shahid Khan has bid £600M for Wembley Stadium which has lead to a lot of speculation that an NFL team could be based there. Quite what the Spurs chairman Daniel Levy makes of this I don’t know seeing as his new White Hart Lane stadium is meant to be hosting some London NFL games1. Oh, and Shahid Khan wants the Super Bowl played there as well. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has also got on the Super Bowl band wagon.
1But not just yet
There was a follow up article about the proposed sale in the Guardian but, to me at least, it doesn’t really explain the thinking behind the acquisition. But then I’m not a billionaire so I may be missing the point.
Not content with London and Mexico City, a game in Australia has now been mooted. I thought that the time zones would be completely out of the question but apparently the time difference is similar to that of China which is due a game in 2019 ( maybe ).
One thing is for sure is that discussions about a team outside the US will not go away. As I said last time it’s far too useful a stick with which to beat recalcitrant teams and cities into building shiny new stadia.
Anyway onto the book review …
Paper Lion – Confessions of a Last String Quarterback
George Plimpton was an American writer maybe best known for his sports journalism but whose career seemingly covered almost every aspect of the performing arts. He wrote several books describing his investigations of how big a gap there is between the average good amateur sportsman and a top professional athlete. “Paper Lion” is his story of spending a pre-season with the 1963 Detroit Lions who were at that time part of the NFL’s Western Conference ( before the 1970 merger with the AFL ). I won’t discuss his performances in the pre-season games so as not to spoil the ending, suffice to say that he didn’t get picked up for that regular season, or indeed any other 🙂
Initially he had some trouble finding a team that would take him on, especially as Plimpton insisted on playing quarterback. He would liked to have joined a New York team and he nearly joined the Baltimore Colts but eventually ended up at the Detroit Lions and was issued with jersey number 0. Plimpton tried some of the other positions, both offense and defense, to get an idea of the skills involved but with little success. Of course there are very few players of that time still active in football in any capacity. The only one that I recognised was Dick Le Beau, then a defensive back and now coach at the Tennessee Titans.
A small part of one chapter briefly discusses racial problems within the team. The view that I get was that, during the season at least, the team absolutely felt that it was performance that counted and not the colour of your skin. However … “In the off-season, the social communication between black and white, however close the rapport seemed in training camp, was almost nonexistent.”
Some things never change, such as practice squads being trimmed as the season approaches. There’s an interesting chapter describing “the night of the squeaky shoes” as players are told that they won’t make the team that year and to hand back their playbook. The differing reactions of the players I suspect are exactly the same as have happened over the past few weeks.
Other aspects however have undergone dramatic changes. The annual college draft is now a 3 day extravaganza with parrots announcing draft picks ( or not ) and wall to wall TV coverage of the 6 rounds. Back in 1963 it was 20 rounds, starting at 8 a.m. and going straight through until the last person was picked, usually about 30 hours later.
As an NFL fan I found the book interesting on a number of levels. It’s fascinating as a historical record of football at that time and to realise that in some respects it’s not that different now. There may be more sports science involved but the personal struggles to make the team and the elation or disappointment at the end of training camp are just the same. What has changed of course is the realisation of the damage that can be done to the body, usually damage that is not evident until much later in life. A star member of the 1963 Detroit team was Dick “Night Train” Lane who was a ferocious tackler and whose robust approach to the game caused a rewriting of some of the tackling rules but who suffered from CTE later in life.
I’d be interested if a non-NFL fan found it as interesting. Plimpton’s writing is first class and his observations on human nature are very sharp so I think that it would appeal.
The Retired Engineer 