Lately, I have been remembering my longtime friend John Underwood, mainly because of a book he wrote, Death of an American Game.
If you’re an old-timer who has kept up with sports with a serious bent, you are likely to have read some of John’s work. He wrote for Sports Illustrated in the magazine’s heyday from the 1950s and into the ‘70s.
He was also a highly acclaimed author and was serenaded for his books on Ted Williams. Underwood was the hitter’s best friend, even though the irascible slugger danced to a different beat from the rest of the world — and that included John.
But nobody knew the inside story of Williams’ life and career like John. They hunted and fished together. John was a great admirer of the man the experts say was the greatest power hitter in history of baseball. He recorded conversations with Williams and spent countless hours over meals and social outings, which enabled Underwood to become the foremost authority on this complex personality.
In 1979, Little, Brown and Co. published Death of an American Game, but it was based on the mayhem that had taken place in football — not recruiting based on commitments going to the highest bidder.
John’s book is replete with vignettes about the brutality that had come to the sport. At that time, it was a treatise on how sissies were not welcome in the game. Players took umbrage with fellow players who did not have the mettle for playing hurt. Then, the next thing we know, it became a “hit ‘em in the numbers” tackling routine, and we all know what that led to.
The game will always be physical, but any time a discussion comes up about why so many head-related injuries came about over the years, I recall a conversation with Georgia great Charley Trippi, who died a few days before his 101st birthday.
The Bulldog immortal played high school, prep school, military, and college football, and then spent 10 years in the NFL and lived a long life without any hint of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) issues. One day, I asked him about that and he said poignantly: “Simple, we led with our shoulders and not with our heads.”
John Underwood passed away before NIL and excess stipends to college athletes — principally football and basketball players — became standard practice, though with the potential of bankrupting college sports.
Congress now has an opportunity to do some good for us, but if we get a law that we believe will work, chances are that it won’t. Maybe we should do away with scholarships altogether.
In 1954, the Ivy League agreed to award all scholarships based on need. I have enjoyed witnessing several Ivy League games, including the Harvard-Yale game in Cambridge, and have also taken in military academy games including the annual Army vs. Navy headliner. There was as much pure fun, excitement, and prideful cheering as you’d find at any Georgia-Florida, Oklahoma-Texas, or Alabama-Auburn game.
Although there is considerable ambiguity with all suggested plans, there seems to be a growing consensus that “something must be done.”
Somebody out there with the energy and cogency of a Billy Payne needs to surface with a concept that will work. There was only a handful of his closest friends who thought he could pull off bringing the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta, but everybody knows the rest of that remarkable story. If only Billy were 20 years younger.
I have to mention, too, this past weekend on the UGA campus, nothing could top the pure joy of the Georgia Bulldogs defeating Mississippi State to earn a berth in the College World Series.
There was drama, there was excitement, and there was euphoria with the baseball Bulldogs of Athens, coming from behind twice to take the measure of a quality opponent in a classy performance that made the day of every Dawg (only those who hail from Athens, of course).
That was once the way it was for football. I sincerely hope we’re not going to let greed ruin our greatest of games.