PIGSKIN NATION JESSE BERRETT PIGSKIN NATION SPORT AND SOCIETY Series Editors Randy Roberts Aram Goudsouzian Founding Editors Benjamin G. Rader Randy Roberts A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book. ✯ ✯ ✯ PIGSKIN NATION ✯ ✯ ✯ How the NFL Remade AMERICAN POLITICS JESSE BERRETT © 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Berrett, Jesse Isaac, author. Title: Pigskin nation : how the NFL remade American politics / Jesse Berrett. Description: urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2018. | Series: Sport and society | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017048958| ISBN 9780252041709 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780252083327 (paperback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: National Football League—History— United States—20th century. | Football—United States—History—20th century. | Football—Political aspects—United States. | Political culture—United States—History—20th century. | BISAC: SPORTS & RECREATION / Football. | HISTORY / United States / 20th Century. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / National. Classification: LCC GV955.5.N35 B45 2018 | DDC 796.332/64—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017048958 E-book ISBN 978-0-252-05037-4 For Susan Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Football’s Taking Over 1 PART I MAKING FOOTBALL IMPORTANT 1 No Football Fans, Just Football Intellectuals 11 2 Search and Destroy 30 3 The NFL’s Role in American History (Somebody’s Gotta Be Kidding) 53 PART II MAKING FOOTBALL POLITICAL 4 The Kennedy/Lombardi School 85 5 A Real Coup with the Sports Fans 108 6 I Really Believed in the Man 133 7 Out of Their League 159 8 Right Coach, Wrong Game 181 Epilogue: Hollywood Ending 205 Notes 215 Bibliography 257 Index 277 Acknowledgments One of my professors in college, Gerald Linderman, began the acknowledgments for his book on the experience of soldiers in the Civil War with the wonderfully concise phrase, “I owe much to many.” I’ve always wanted to borrow that. I owe much to many. My thanks for initial help and encouragement from Christopher Loomis, Peter Olney, Michael Oriard, and David Wiggins. I espe- cially appreciate Michael very generously not telling me not to bother, as his work had covered all of the bases, so to speak, after I sent him an extraordi- narily vague exploratory email on this subject. Thanks to the archivists and curators whose expert help steered me through mazes of material. In roughly chronological order, my thanks to Tab Lewis at the National Archives; John O’Connell at the Ford Library; Cate Mayfield at the Mill Valley Library local history room; Melissa Bowman, Mary O’Leary, and Jonah Steinhart at Tam High; Peter Waack, Mike Rempter, Mary O’Brien, and Ed Galvin at Syracuse; Joe Smith and Charles Lamb at the Notre Dame archives; Kevin Haire and Michelle Drobik at Ohio State; Nancy Dewald at Penn State; Sheon Montgomery at the Texas Tech Vietnam Archive; David McCartney at the University of Iowa libraries; Jane LaBarbara and Kevin Fredette at the West Virginia and Regional History Center; Liz Novara at the University of Maryland; the staff of the Richard Nixon Library for helping me eventually fill out those forms more or less correctly; William Baehr at the FDR Library; Jim Rutter and Acknowledgments Alan George at Stanford; Lee Grady at the Wisconsin Historical Society; Lauren Leeman at the Missouri State Historical Society; Sean Benjamin at Tulane; Pam Eisenberg at the Nixon papers; Cliff Hight at Kansas State; Jane Klain at the Paley Center; and Carole Parnes at CBS. The interlibrary-loan staff ta the San Francisco Public Library, which got to know me quite well, has repeatedly and generously dealt with my endless Link+ and ILL requests; finally, my local Presidio branch has always been a source of generosity and help. Thanks to everyone whose precision and creativity taught me how much more I had to learn about research, particularly Peggy Ann Brown for her astonishing expertise in and around every archive and database in Washington, D.C.; Eric Wright for excellent assistance in the Fairmont Times; David Williams at the Wisconsin Historical Society; Mick Caouette in Minnesota; Mira Kohl at Tulane; Jared Lucky at Yale; and Scott Russell at the Nixon papers. Thanks also to those who took the time to answer a question or five from someone they’d never heard of or met: Alex Belth and John Schulian for their inexhaustible well of knowledge about sportswriters and sportswriting; Saul Austerlitz for a random question about Chip Oliver; Peter Richardson for Ramparts; H. Bruce Franklin for pointing me to Hearts and Minds; Dan Daly for book suggestions; Liz Grady for explaining some of the ins and outs of photograph rights; Travis Vogan for his suggestions about screenshots; John Campbell McMillian for his encouragement and useful suggestions about where to look in the alternative press and whom to talk to; John Fortunato for his thoughts and comments on branding; Professor Emeritus Jerry Lewis, Alan Canfora, and especially Tom Grace, who went far above and beyond while putting the finishing touches on his own book, at and about Kent State. Thanks also to Richard Zitrin for sharing his often-painful memories of Kent State and Woody Hayes, and to George Solomon for his thoughts about sports journalism in the period. Thanks to Eric Miller for some thought-provoking suggestions about Christopher Lasch; Tom Dowling for his vivid and funny memories of crossing lances with Spiro Agnew and George Allen; Meredith Lair and Michael Kramer for explaining how USO tours worked and why I should not try to use unit newspapers; Phil Hetu at the Polynesian Football Hall of Fame for putting me in touch with Ray Schoenke; Ray Schoenke, for his memories and photographs of the McGovern campaign and 1970s Washington; Craig Fifer and Anna Leider in Virginia. It goes without saying that any remaining errors are my own. x Acknowledgments At the University of Illinois Press, thanks to Danny Nasset for shepherding this project, and Danny and the anonymous readers for the press for helping me shape something out of the five-hundred-page monstrosity I originally attempted to inflict on readers. Thanks also to Kevin Cunningham, Tad Ringo, and Walt Evans for their expertise in getting the book ready for production. My gratitude to Susan Storch for indexing. Among people I could impose on personally, thanks to Gale Jesi for explaining photographic techniques and to Marissa Rosenberg-Carlson for quick research assistance that saved me a trip. I’ll get you that sundae someday. Charlene Li for helping me figure out how to get the book started; my colleague Sudie Sides for wisdom as a reader and human being that has taught me so much for so many years (and also for making me get rid of all those parentheses); Aram Goudsouzian for his generosity, support, and encouragement; Dave and Kathy Rosenberg-Wohl for reading over the manuscript and continually forcing me to rethink what I was doing and why I was doing it; my colleagues in the History Department at UHS past and present—Carolyn McNulty, Jenny Kline, Chris Martin, Ezra Davidson, Chuck Witschorik, David Roth, Justin Morgan Johnson—for getting me through the day with laughs and hot sauce. Thanks to everyone else who lent a sympathetic ear and especially Michael Holt and Scott Laughlin, who commiserated about how hard it is to write, let alone write well. But my biggest debt is to my family. My parents, Josh and Lynne, have always been the biggest champions in m y corner and were unstintingly enthusiastic supporters and press agents at every stage of the process. (And Dad’s getting into Michigan for graduate school fifty years ago inadvertently set the stage for this project by making me forever a UM football fan.) Though we ended up not going with the title my brother Dan and I came up with while walking around Minneapolis, I learned a lot from him about how to write something that normal people might want to read, and I treasure our yearly baseball trips. Thanks to Isaac for allowing Dad to use the computer on occasion, and for all the terrible knock-knock jokes. But my biggest debt is to my wife, Susan Etlinger, who took time out of her own busy writing and speaking schedule to check in with me from the other side of the house, read various chapters, and hear me try out ideas. She believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself, and her love and faith kept me going on this project in the most fundamental sense. Maybe someday she’ll even watch a football xi Acknowledgments game with me. I couldn’t have finished the book, or done much of anything, really, without her. It is gratefully dedicated to her. Finally, to all of my students over the years, from those who said, “That sounds great! I’m totally going to read that!” to those who wondered, “What were you doing again?” to Erin, who supportively asked, “Why would you want to do that?!” (You just wait for my response to your first book!), my gratitude for encouraging and challenging me every day, and for making me love my job. A bunch of you promised to buy the book and have me autograph it. Guys, here’s your chance. xii INTRODUCTION Football’s Taking Over “Poverty may make a comeback,” [I said]. “Perhaps it won’t be called poverty, but they’ll call it some- thing else.” “Maybe they could call it pro football,” McAlister said. “Americans don’t seem to lose inter- est in that.” “Let’s not lose our perspective,” I said angrily.