by Mark Bowden
“I’d like to do what I’m doing right now. I’d like to be your general manager,” Harry said.
“Well, you’ve got the job.”
Harry learned later that Norman had begun looking around for a new general manager right after making the deal, but had encountered, by chance on a plane, former Penn president Martin Meyerson, who had conveyed his high opinion of Harry and explained that Penn’s lackluster football program over all those years could not be fairly blamed on the earnest and capable coach.
As Norman’s general manager, Harry became guardian of the purse and the boss’s chief football adviser. And he wasn’t about to abdicate either role to his first major hire. The language in Buddy’s contract made it clear that Harry (hence Norman) was firmly in charge. It was, as Norman might say, “a deal breaker.”
And it was Buddy who blinked.
“Well, even if I’m not in charge, it has to look like I’m in charge,” he said.
And Harry bought that on the spot. He could understand where Buddy was coming from. He didn’t exactly relish the prospect of disgruntled players trying to get around the head coach by coming directly to him. Both his coaching and management experience counseled against that. So Harry solemnly pledged to maintain the pretense. The issue was adroitly dismissed at the inaugural press conference,with both Buddy and Norman agreeing that the new coach would have “some authority” over personnel decisions. Pressed to be more explicit in coming days, Buddy would say, almost truthfully, “They gave me what I wanted.”
What Buddy knew, and what Harry and Norman failed to fully appreciate, was that by promising their new coach the appearance of control, they were effectively giving him control. Both men were novices compared with Buddy. What Harry had in mind was a collegial management-coach relationship, where differences were worked out in private and the organization maintained a united front. It didn’t matter to Harry who got up behind the podium. But there wasn’t a collegial bone in Buddy’s body. And Buddy had been around long enough to understand the role played by the Pack.
Every NFL team has one. By long-standing league practice, the locker-room door is opened for one hour every day, and through it spills a motley collection of amiable parasites, newspaper, TV, and radio reporters, scruffy young to middle-aged men, declining in physique, eager and solicitous in manner, there to collect crumbs of trifle and vapid sound bites to feed the public’s insatiable appetite for even the most nugatory information about their team. The tame ones thrilled in equal parts to be sharing space with their football heroes and to be perceived at large as insiders, genuine football experts; the ornerier ones were a collection of cynical misfits who, underneath their hard-bitten exterior and unceasing efforts to pry into cracks of team discord, were as thrilled to be in the locker room as the tame ones. Mostly, the Pack was harmless. They wrote reams of adoring prose pumping up the coaches and players and whipping up local enthusiasm for the weekly games. But they were also like the chorus in an ancient Greek play, an extremely annoying chorus standing safely off to one side of the stage and singing praise or criticism after every move the team made. There was a ton of tribute for every feather of fault, but the players mostly hated them anyway. The way players saw it, reporters were a necessary nuisance, glorified fans with a mean streak, all smiles and unctuous goodwill in person, often biting and critical in print or on the air, sticking microphones and cameras in their faces as they tried to gobble a quick sandwich between meetings and workouts, pouncing on them when they were most vulnerable— after dropping a big pass late in a losing game, for instance, or just after being demoted—trying to coax from them comments that could get them in big trouble with their teammates or (worse, and far easier) the coach—Tell me, Seth, just between you and me … don’t mind this liI ol’ microphone here … what do you think about Kotite’s play-calling in that game
you lost yesterday? If you took the bait, look out! Your words echoed louder than you’d ever imagined—
SETH RIPS COACH
—and you spent the next week desperately trying to explain your way out of the mess, because once you sounded off, the next wave hit, as the columnists and commentators, the grayheads and round-bellied bigfeet, weighed in, men who never even set foot in the locker room and whom you’d never met, authoritatively psychoanalyzing you in print or on the air and chewing you a new asshole for opening your big mouth, risking the fate of the franchise, and placing your own bigheaded but small-brained self before the team. In a city like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, or Philadelphia, this sort of thing happened almost every day. The season was marked as surely by the train of petty tempests in the locker room as by wins and losses on the field. The Trenton Times, the Camden Courier-Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, the Wilmington News-Journal, the Delaware County Daily Times, the Burlington County Times, the Atlantic City Press, the West Chester Daily Local News, the Bucks County Courier Times, the Allentown Morning Call, the Lancaster New Era, the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, the Gloucester County Times, the Norristown Times Herald, the Reading Eagle and Reading Times, the York Daily Record, the fan magazine Eagles Digest, AP, UPI, thirteen separate radio and TV stations—these were just the print and airwave organizations that dogged the Eagles’ beat on a regular basis. The Pack regulars numbered into the dozens, all laboring to fill space in the local newspapers and time on the local news programs every day during football season, which now, what with the annual draft, rookie camp, minicamp, training camp, exhibition games, and postseason, took up about ten months of the year. Pro football generated more bad prose and insipid airtime every season than a presidential campaign, and still the stomach of the reading-watching public growled for more. The tidbits mined by the local Pack fed the bigfoot national correspondents and TV-network sports gurus, who repeated it as gospel—no one had time to keep close track of all twenty-eight teams. So an unguarded moment of candor while lacing your cleats before one of these clowns could erupt into a full-fledged national sports crisis, prompting all sorts of dire commentary about your career and the future prospects of your club.
Understandably, most players and coaches labored to say as little of consequence as possible, which suited most of the Pack just fine. The core of fandom was still hero worship. What the public really wanted was just to glimpse their hero out from under his helmet, or to hear his voice, or to read some tiny insight in prose of what he’s really like. It didn’t matter what he said. As a consequence, pro football had become a sport about which everyone talked incessantly without ever really saying anything—more or less the essence of the sports-talk-radio format.
But the Pack was an essential part of the League, if not the Game, and wise coaches and players understood its power. “Pub” was essential for building your rep in an otherwise faceless game. There were plenty of mediocre players with huge reputations and, hence, huge contracts, but the reverse was also true: a great player with a mediocre rep was apt to have a mediocre contract. What’s more, the League encouraged cooperation with the media. There was a little clause in the boilerplate of NFL contracts wherein players agreed to be polite and cooperative with the Pack. Buddy had gotten used to the league’s largest and most aggressive Pack in New York during his years with the Jets and kind of missed them up in Minneapolis, when only two or three worshipful reporters would show up for Bud Grant’s press conferences. In Chicago, as the Bears climbed to the top of the ladder, Buddy saw the Pack swell to its full frightening national proportions, so that by the end of the ’85 season there were at least a dozen media types on hand for every player and coach, and the locker room became a surly mob of cameramen, sound engineers, desperate print reporters, and other hangers-on generating controversy and excitement about virtually everything, from how many Super Bowl tickets were hoarded by the Bears’ owner, Mike McCaskey, to the slogans on Jim McMahon’s headbands.
The Pack was there about one hundred strong on the day the Eagles unveiled their new coach, and Buddy worked the room like the old pro he w
as, feeding the monster with a steady stream of barbed one-liners, showing off his down-home hauteur, promising to give the boys plenty to write about, which was, of course, all they ever really asked. Veteran reporters could whip a little controversy out of almost anything, but Buddy went them one better; he fed them—ripping his own players, for instance, or (with a mischievous glint in his eye) encouraging his own legend.
“Buddy, how did Mike Ditka react to your decision?”
“Mike who?”
The Pack roared with appreciation. His whole performance that day was exquisite. Give a sports reporter a quote to wrap a story around and you’ve made a friend for … well, at least a week. Whenever Buddy said something certain to make somebody else mad (this was just about every day), the Pack loved him all the more. And why not? Editors and producers back at the shop loved this guy. After the ardently vanilla Vermeil, who segued neatly from his football career to one as a corporate TV pitchman, and Campbell, a nonconductor of electricity if God ever made one, Buddy gave off sparks. Buddy was such a vivid character that it hardly mattered what he said. He could pronounce, “The sun was dern hot today,” and the Packmen would be elbowing one another, winking and chuckling over what that rascal really meant.
In time, their stories about Buddy earned him such a reputation for cutting comebacks and snappy one-liners that people started thinking of him as a comedian, which he wasn’t. Buddy was funny because Buddy was funny, not because he tried to be that way. He told the truth crudely and often, and coupled with his country drawl, it made people laugh. He wasn’t a raconteur or master of the crisp rejoinder. Most of the time Buddy didn’t even know he had said something funny until people laughed. If you took him out of his element, took the whistle off his neck and put him in front of a camera, and expected him to turn into a witty conversationalist … well, good luck.
That’s exactly what a TV crew tried one afternoon, late in Buddy’s tenure. They arrived, looking very arty and hip—long hair, bandannas, earrings (male and female), colorful sneaks—at training camp in West Chester to tape some promotional spots for Buddy’s in-season TV show. He agreed to give them a few minutes after the morning practice.
With makeup on his face, the coach perched like a toad on a high stool beneath the bright lights, scowling at the fruity bunch buzzing all around him—oblivious to his disapproval. The job of the director, who looked rigorously Spielbergian in his beard and baseball cap, was to prompt the coach. He plopped down in front of Ryan on a crate off camera, determined to provoke the dry wit people had come to expect from Buddy. The idea was to capture some authentic Buddyisms on tape and edit them into a series of promos for his show. But Buddy has a good ’ol boy’s sixth sense for being made to play the fool; he didn’t like the look of this bunch.
“A lot of football expressions have found their way into the language,” began the director cheerfully. “So I’m going to say a few terms, and I want you just to free-associate. Suppose, for instance, I said ‘Offensive line.’ And you said something like, ‘The girl at the bar last night told me that was the most offensive line she’d ever heard.’ That kind of thing.”
“I wouldn’t say anything like that,” said Buddy.
The director nodded. “But you get the idea,” he said, optimistically. “Let’s start with that one—offensive line.”
“Well, I think our line is going to be real strong this year. We have a couple of returning veterans …”
Buddy spoke earnestly for a few moments about the strengths of his blocking front, about the general fine character traits of offensive linemen, and the director listened patiently until he was done.
“Okay,” he said. “But that’s not what we’re fishing for here.”
Buddy was growing impatient. He took a long, pointed look at his watch.
“Let me ask you this,” the director said. “If Big Al Meltzer [a local sports anchor, cohost of Buddy’s show] was a football player, what position would he play?”
“I’ve known Al for a long time,” said Buddy solemnly. “Going all the way back to Buffalo thirty years ago. I’ve never seen him as somebody who would play football.”
“Okay, but let’s just pretend that this is, say, twenty years ago, Al is younger and faster, and he’s a football player. Do you see him as, say, a lineman? Or a quarterback? A water boy?”
“Well, I’d probably put him somewhere where he wouldn’t get hurt. So I’d say water boy.” Another long look at the watch. “Come on,” Buddy complained. “We’re not making a feature film here, are we? This is for a commercial, right?”
It went on like this for about twenty minutes. Then Buddy abruptly hopped off the stool, demiked himself, thanked one and all, and split.
No, Buddy was no TV star, but he understood the Pack. You let them stand on the sidelines during practice and you fed them a steady stream of verbal stingers, and you reminded them at least once or twice a week that they really knew jackshit about football (this was true), and before long they were eating out of your hand. Once Buddy had them eating out of his hand, Harry and Norman were screwed. Since they had agreed to give Buddy the appearance of control, all he had to do was sound off to the Pack, and where would that leave the boys upstairs? After introducing his new head coach as the next St. Vince, how was Norman going to publicly reverse him? And right away, if it came down to a popularity contest in the sports media between the meddling Miami car dealer and the new patron saint of smash-mouth football, who do you think would win? The little sumbitch had ‘em hog-tied before the new Philadelphia Eagles ever played a game.
Buddy’s trump card was, of course, Norman’s supposed absentee ownership. If BramanMan had a failing as owner, it was a tendency to get too involved (as Eagles fans would discover in coming years), but Buddy turned that perception on its head. Most big personnel decisions were made in summer, when Norman and Irma were away at their villa in southern France. Of course, Norm had a telephone and a fax machine over there. He was in constant touch with Harry and made all the club’s big decisions, but Buddy intuitively seized upon the symbolism afforded by the Atlantic Ocean—and, you know, that fruity fer’n culture—and thus Norman, the take-charge NFL owner bent on gratifying his public ego, became, to his deep and lasting chagrin, the Guy in France.
HARRY KEPT his promise to Buddy, even with the regular zingers about the incompetent dabblers upstairs. It started before the Eagles’ first training camp. Harry was charged with minding Norman’s wallet when bargaining with players through the summer. Corporate coaches, who respected the larger realities of the League (not to mention the folks who signed their paychecks), rarely whined about holdouts. Clearly, no club—no small country—could afford to pay a full roster of pro football players what they thought they were worth. So the task faced by Harry and his minions was to deflate the expectations of an athlete and bring his contract demands back down to earth (and in line with Norm’s budget). That meant pointing out all the unpleasant things blustery agents overlooked— So, let me get this straight, you think that even though you’ve had two major knee surgeries in four years and led the league in fumbles the last time you played a full season, we should be paying you more than Joe Montana? While this process went forward, it didn’t help when the head coach told the Pack that if those bean counters upstairs didn’t get off their duffs and sign some people soon the team would be swimming upstream all season. Buddy routinely sang the praises of players who were holding out, provided they were among his favorites. And, oh, how they loved him for it! Buddy’s attitude was strictly Us versus Them, the Game versus the League, the noble dedicated player (and coach) versus the penurious Guy in France. Wins were player triumphs; losses were club failures—”It would help if we could get our guys in here” was the standard Buddy lament.
Then there was the way Buddy acted. It was tough for Norman and Harry to take. Granted, Norman was no choirboy. He’d kicked butt himself in the corporate jungle, and he wanted a head coach who knew how. But Buddy went too fa
r. He taunted opponents, insulted players who couldn’t measure up to his standards; he behaved badly—which was one source, frankly, of his appeal. As Norman saw it, Buddy appealed to the wrong element. He was the hero of the Id-people, the ugly football fans, the lowest common denominators. The Idpeople were hate-driven fans, who were drawn to football more than any other sport (except maybe pro hockey).
Richie and Norman and the players preferred fans who rooted rationally, who showed up Sundays decked in green and silver and cheered their heads off and then—buoyed by victory or disappointed by defeat—returned to their lives refreshed, pleased with the memory of an exciting afternoon. Norman was convinced most fans were like this. But the most visible and vocal fans were those whose self-worth seemed to hang on the Eagles’ fortunes, fans for whom winning was not just a preferred outcome on a fall afternoon, but something owed, by the players, the coaches, ultimately by Norman Braman himself, presumably in return for the cost of their tickets or, for the hardest cases, as a Philadelphia birthright. The Id-people came out on game day, thousands of them, for some primitive venting ritual. They howled abuse and hatred at the enemy—anyone they perceived as an obstacle to victory. They reveled in the violence of football, would cheer when hated opponents (or sometimes hated members of the home team) were carried bleeding, mangled, or unconscious from the field. They were like the throngs who cheered the dismemberment of Christians in Roman coliseums or who turned public hangings into social events. The sheer unthinking brutality of these fans connected vaguely with Norman’s Jewishness, summoning disturbing ancestral echoes of murderous mobs, of pogroms, and Kristallnacht.
Needless to say, Id-people were Buddy’s biggest backers.
In his character and coaching style, Buddy had tapped into one of the basic underlying themes of American football, and it was a little bit scary. In our Judeo-Christian society, the central dichotomy was Good versus Evil. Buddy’s worldview was Homeric. He grasped intuitively that one of football’s attractions in our intensely moralistic society was its devotion to a more primitive standard: Victory versus Defeat. Not goodness, but winning (as St. Vince said) was the highest virtue. Who gives a shit how you play the game? The NFL was kind of embarrassed about this, actually, and went to great lengths to promote the good works done by its coaches and players. The underlying theme of virtually all the League’s public relations was this effort to overcompensate: Yeah, we’re brutes on the field, but we’re supercitizens off it, just a bunch of devoted Christian family men making an honest buck playing the Game. Slick corporate PR, along with the efforts of the hero-worshiping Pack around every club, not to mention the selfimportance of the coaches themselves, whose ghostwritten autobiogra phies and homilies fed their legends while milking their popularity, had together made coaches like Dallas’s Tom Landry, Washington’s Joe Gibbs, San Francisco’s Bill Walsh, and Don Shula in Miami into secular saints, exemplars of virtuous achievement, models for the modern corporate CEO, molders not just of championship football teams, but of men.
