Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football

by Robert W. Peterson

Overview

In Pigskin, Robert W. Peterson presents a lively and informative overview of the early years of pro football -- from the late 1880s to the beginning of the television era. He describes the colorful beginnings of the pro game and profiles some of the most famous players.

After the NFL formed in 1920, pro football's popularity grew gradually but steadily. It burst into national prominence with the Chicago Bears-Washington Redskins championship game of 1940. As one sportswriter put it: "The weather was perfect. So were the Bears." The final score was 73-0. Peterson shows how, after World War II, the newly-created All-America Football Conference challenged the NFL, which never viewed the new teams as much of a threat. That is, not until 1950 when the two leagues merged. In the first game of the 1950 season, the Cleveland Browns, winner of all four AAFC titles, buried the 1949 NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles 35-10.

An elegy to a time when, for many players, the game was at least as important as the money it brought them, Pigskin takes readers up to the 1958 championship game when the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in overtime. An estimated thirty million people saw the game on their grainy, black-and-white television screens and many of them became instant fans. Pro football had arrived as a major sport.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198023920
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1997
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Robert W. Peterson, a college baseball and basketball player right after World War II, has been a magazine writer for 30 years. He has written two previous books on sports history: Only the Ball Was White, and Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years. He lives in Ramsey, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

1.	Before the Television Bonanza	3
2.	In the Beginning	13
3.	The Cradle of Professionalism	23
4.	The Coming of Jim Thorpe	45
5.	The Birth and Infancy of the NFL	67
6.	Glimmers of Glory	85
7.	The Pro Style Is Born	109
8.	A Debacle and the Wartime Blues	127
9.	The Postwar War	147
10.	Black Players and Blackballs	169
11.	The Television Era Begins	191
12.	Extra Points	205
	Notes on Sources	213
	Index	217

Editorial Reviews

Veteran magazine writer and author of two previous books on sports history, Only the Ball Was White and Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years, Peterson weaves oral history, analysis and anecdote into a play-by-play history of the game from 1920 to the 1958 championship contest between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. In those four decades, the old power game gradually changed into one of strategy and skill. It was a transformation that greatly increased football's appeal as a spectator sport, until, as the 1958 game showed, it became inextricably bound up with the new medium of television. Improvements in the game included the advent of forward passing, the change in the shape of the ball in 1933 (the new form, as Peterson points out, is "a passer-friendly ball, but it ended the drop-kick era because the sharper point caused an erratic rebound from the ground") and the institution of the T-formation: "The overall purpose of the T-formation with man in motion was to emphasize speed and deception rather than power." According to Peterson, "During its first forty-odd years, professional football was the raggedy step-child of the glamorous college game," but the NFL started to come into its own in the late '20s and early '30s with the competent and likable New York Giants and the Notre Dame All-Stars, the latter coached by the famed Knute Rockne. Peterson highlights the careers of pivotal individuals of the early pro game such as Chicago Bears coach and owner George Halas and former Olympian and first president of the American Football Association (which would, in 1922, change its name to the NFL), Jim Thorpe. Also mentioned are John V. McNally (aka John Blood), Bulldog Turner and Paul Brown, the great first coach of the eponymous Cleveland Browns. For the genuine football aficionado interested in such esoteric particulars as the origins of the draw play, or for the curious bystander intrigued with the seemingly elusive intricacies of the sport, Pigskin is an engaging and detailed chronicle. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

YABased on lively oral histories drawn from individuals who coached or played in the early years of professional football, this narrative is vibrant and engaging. Peterson did extensive research and diligently backed it up with primary sources from newspapers as well as these personal interviews. The account covers the game's humble beginnings in 1889 when college players in the Ivy League were paid for playing football and given preferential treatment. From that point, it continues the story up to the 1958 championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. Peterson discusses the formation of the NFL in 1920 and the many trials endured along the way over the subsequent 38 years. He includes some of the sport's most famous personalities such as Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Sammy Baugh, and George Halas. The author also delves into the important contributions blacks made in the early days of "pigskin" combat. One of the most absorbing chapters is about football in America during the challenging years of World War II. The center section of black-and-white photos adds significantly to the book's appeal. An excellent bibliography and a substantial index are appended. A worthy addition to the sports section of any YA collection.Peggy Mooney, Pohick Public Library, Burke, VA

School Library Journal

Presents a lively and informative overview of the early years of pro football<-->from the late 1880s to the television era. Describes the colorful beginnings of the pro game and its outstanding teams (the Green Bay Packers, the New York Giants, the Chicago Bears, and the Baltimore Colts), and the great games they played. Offers profiles of the most famous players of the era<-->including Pudge Heffelfinger (the first certifiable professional), Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski, and Fritz Pollard, the NFL's first black star. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

"With consummate skill and an impressive command of sources...Peterson reconstructs this colorful aspect of America's sporting past accurately and with great immediacy."—Kirkus Reviews

"For lovers of football there are a number of volumes worth gift wrapping. Robert W. Peterson's Pigskin...might well top the list."—Sports Illustrated

"[A] vibrant drama involving real men, their passions, and their disappointments....Wonderful reading."—Booklist

"The best and most accurate early history [of pro football]....Peterson...is a craftsman who tells his story smoothly, convincingly, and with enough true (or probably true) anecdotes to keep the reader turning those pages. I put off reading the latest Sue Grafton to read Pigskin first, and I was glad I did. definitely recommended."—The Coffin Corner

"An accomplished sports historian traces pro football's metamorphosis from a regional curiosity into a national obsession....In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pro football was seen by athletes and organizers as a corruption of the purer, more noble college pasttime—never mind that many pros were collegians playing under assumed names. Today, universities fight a losing battle to keep their best players from bolting to the NFL after a season or two on campus. With consummate skill and an impressive command of sources, Peterson chronicles the persons and events that made this turnabout a reality....Peterson reconstructs this colorful aspect of America's sporting past accurately and with great immediacy."—Kirkus Reviews

"Based on lively oral histories drawn from individuals who coached or played in the early years of professional football, this narrative is vibrant and engaging."—School Library Journal

From the Publisher