The Great Jewish Quarterback

HISTORY BOX The Great Jewish Quarterback In the 1920s, when pro football occupied a players played both offense and defense, and agility. The boy from the ghetto passed lowly place in the American sports universe, he was a renowned tackier. He also was a with unerring and uncanny ability.” the National Football League’s New York gifted runner, and he kicked extra points In his later pro years, Friedman also Giants were money losers and not very and field goals. coached at Yale. After retiring as a player, good, either. So Tim Mara, the team’s owner The son of immigrants who settled in he coached for nine years at City College and a legal bookmaker, sought to upgrade Cleveland, Friedman was one of the first of New York, where many of his players the team’s skills and its box-office appeal. major sports heroes to capture the hearts were Jewish walk-ons with minimal His eye fell on the Jewish quarterback of of America’s Jews. Not that there weren’t gridiron experience. Following World War the Detroit Wolverines, Benny Friedman, a other Jewish football players at the time. II, in which he served as a naval officer, former star at the University of Michigan. Greenberg relates that Friedman’s he became the first athletic director, Friedman, Mara reasoned, was good, very presence forced two University of and football coach, at the new Brandeis good, and, in a city with New York’s Jewish Minnesota linemen, George Abramson University. He was selected to the Pro population, had the potential to Football Hall of Fame in Canton, expand the team’s fan base. Ohio in 2005. But the Wolverines’ owners Greenberg, a Brandeis alumnus refused to trade Friedman. So Mara who learned of the respect his did the next best thing: In 1928, he former players had for their coach, bought the Wolverines and moved wonders what took so long. “The the team to New York, paying the lack of popularity of the pro game quarterback a stratospheric $10,000 in his time may have been part a season. The 1929 Giants had a of it,” he speculates. “Maybe his great season, turning a profit for the personality played a part—he was first time, and Friedman became a self-assured to a fault.” Big Apple star. Could anti-Semitism have played That was only one highlight in a role? “I haven’t uncovered any the career of the famed quarterback, hard evidence,” Greenberg says. subject of a new biography, Passing “It’s something to speculate on.” Game: Benny Friedman and the Several former Brandeis players Transformation o f Football, by Murray mounted a campaign that led to Greenberg. That title contains no his selection to the Hall of Fame. hyperbole: Friedman made the At Friedman’s induction ceremony, forward pass an integral part of his nephew David Friedman, a offensive football rather than simply Massachusetts optometrist, related an afterthought to the running how his uncle attributed his injury- game. His arm strength, his touch, free football career to his mother his accuracy and his imagination and her faith. revamped the game’s strategy. At a “Mounted on a wall in his time when the ball itself hindered parents’ home was a pushke, a passing—it was shaped more like charity box,” David Friedman told an oversized melon than the sleek the national television audience. pigskin of today—and the rules “When he was in high school, he required passers to throw from observed his mother dropping a few at least five yards behind the line coins in the box and seeing her lips of scrimmage, Friedman’s passing move as if she was in prayer. When records, first at Michigan and then in the and Louis Gross, to abandon their practice he asked what she was doing, she said she NFL, are amazing. of calling signals in Yiddish, something was protecting him from injury by putting Football’s early record-keeping was far they ordinarily did without fear of tipping 18 cents (the number stands for chai, which from the encyclopedic statistical enterprise off the other team. means life) into the pushke. From that day it is today, but after being named a two- Friedman’s Jewishness, which he forward, as far as Friedman was concerned, time All-American in college, Friedman considered a simple fact of life, was not it was his mother’s faith and chai that kept was named all-NFL four times. He was lost on others. Sportswriters, while singing him healthy.” the first player to throw 20 touchdown his praises, often singled it out as worthy Eventually his luck ran out. His passes in a season and the first to throw of comment. One wrote in 1930 of “that enshrinement in the Hall of Fame four touchdown passes in one game, and he redoubtable descendant of Palestine, occurred 23 years after he committed set a career record of 66 touchdown passes Benny Friedman, not so much a giant in suicide in 1982 while despondent over ill that lasted into the 1940s. In an era when physique as in football ability, mentality, health.—Boris Weintraub 22 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008.

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