Godfather of the NFL is Gone an Era Ends

Tisch, Tisch, Tisch...the Godfather of the NFL is gone, dead less then a month and now his partner Robert Tisch has joined him wherever NFL owners go. Mara’s death October 25 evoked wails and hand wringing. Mara’s going ended an Era. A New York Times headline read, “Will Revenue Sharing Survive Wellington Mara’s Death.” Does the National Football League have a future after this giant is gone? When rich and powerful figures die, many become saints. Beloved by many, Wellington Mara was no Saint to me.

Wellington Mara owned the New York Giants franchise as a result of a bookmaking client of his father’s (Tim Mara, a Bookie at NY Racetrack) not being able to redeem a bookmaking marker he owed Mara. Gambler owner Art Modell introduced the Mara- Tisch Giants partnership.

As a player with the Cleveland Browns I hated not just the NY Giants but the Charley Conerly, Y.A. Tittle, Kyle Rote, Sam Huff, Bob Schnelker, Alex Webster, Mel Triplett, Andy Robustelli, Del Shofner, and Erich Barnes, Jim Lee Howell, Allie Sherman, Tom Landry, Wellington Mara New York Giants with an unbridled passion. It is a respect they earned from many hours of fierce battles in Yankee Stadium and on the cold Lake Erie dampened turf of Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. Those exhilarating playing days turned into Machiavellian games involving the players union and book publishing orchestrated by Giants owner Wellington Mara. The NFL establishment viewed the prospects of my publishing a book about my experiences as a player and player’s union leader with alarm.

Wellington Mara bought off McGraw Hill, the first publisher, of my book They Call It A Game over lunch with Harold McGraw. After cocktails and a few arm twists McGraw caved in and for and undisclosed amount “topping your $60,000 advanced by plenty” and some season ticket sweeteners, according to Don Hutter, my editor with The Dial Press, Harold McGraw made a deal with the NFL’s Godfather to cancel my book contract.

Yes, the mighty McGraw Hill Publishing Company wimped out and allowed a book, my book to be silenced, squashed by Wellington Mara wielding the money and power of the National Football League and its symbiotic partners the media and Organized Gambling. The deal was made after the 2/3 point in the contract after my McGraw Hill editor had paid me a second $20,000 advance installment and was raving about how great the manuscript was. Suddenly after the Mara-McGraw lunch McGraw Hill cancelled the contract and told me to keep the $40,000 advance.

I finished the book and my agent Gerry McCauley then put the manuscript out to bid and made a deal with The Dial Press in less than 30 days. It became an immediate best seller in Boston and San Francisco although there were still Mara machinations going on behind the scenes. Book deliveries were mysteriously interrupted, not getting to various book stores in time for my scheduled author appearances and signings. An appearance on the Johnny Carson Show was cancelled after I was already in the green room waiting to be called out for an interview. I was told by an old acquaintance I played against in high school that Carson was friends with Mara and NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle who both ask him not to allow me to appear on his Tonight Show.

Mara also tried but was unable to stop appearances on the Dick Cavit Show, and an interview with 60 Minutes Mike Wallace. In an ambush, rumored to have been arranged by Mara and Pete Rozelle, on the David Frost Show, I turned the tables on Howard Cosell by exposing the ABC-TV-NFL contract that gave NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle control over ABC-TV’s hiring and firing of Cosell thereby controlling what Cosell had to say about the NFL. As Cosell yelled it wasn’t true, Paul Zimmerman (Sports Illustrated Editor now, then with the New York Post) reluctantly confirmed that in checking out the facts in my book he found that I had indeed obtained a copy of that ABC-TV-NFL contract that subjugating Cosell to Rozelle and the NFL from the Congressional Record, just as I said I had in my book.

Zimmerman also told me “You could have proven everything you set out to prove if you had just asked the right people.” Paul’s implication was that he knew sources who could prove even more NFL owner organized crime gambling connections and foul play than I had documented in my book, which is plenty. If Paul ever followed up with those sources, that he said I missed, I haven’t seen his writings resulting from those better sources, maybe I missed those as well.

The Literary Guild Book Club selected They Call It A Game as their book of the month for Christmas which gave Mara and the rest of the NFL merry men a few small lumps of coal for their stockings that year.

The paperback rights to They Call It A Game were bought by New American Library for over $150,000, the highest amount ever paid at the time for a sports book. New American Library’s editor in chief Ned Chase, comedian Chevy Chase’s father, then was approached by and made a deal with Mara to halt the distribution of the paperback version of the book, 600,000 copies of which had already been printed. Chase sold 580,000 of those copies to Mara for over $700,000. According to Dial Press Editor Don Hutter those books were warehoused for some years then burned, yes burned, like some dangerous tract, not in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia but in Wellington Mara’s New York. I received no additional royalties on the 580,000 paperback copies of the book. The other 20,000 were sold and are out there in circulation some where. I’ve probably autographed a few thousand of them over the years so I know that many at least are out there in circulation.

The Internet, God Bless it, has allowed me to republish They Call It A Game and it is now being distributed again through barnesandnoble.com, iUniverse.com, booksamillion.com, Amazon.com and all the other .com’s so now the game…the publishing game goes on without the NFL Godfather’s behind the scene’s machinations. They Call It A Game is scheduled for translation into Russian and Chinese early in 2006.

The birth of the Mara New York Giants and the NFL is described below from page 208 of They Call It A Game: “The New York Giants’ owner Tim Mara was according to Fortune Magazine, “a bookmaker who did business under a pin striped umbrella at New York racetracks when bookmaking was still legal; one persistent legend has it that a bettor gave Mara a marker for the Giant franchise, and when he was unable to redeem it Mara had the team.” His son Wellington Mara, is the present owner.

Art Rooney won $256,000 at Saratoga Race Track in 1927 and bought the Steelers Franchise for $2,500. He later allegedly hired Joe Bach as his head coach so Bach could pay off a gambling debt he owed Rooney. Rooney still owns Shamrock Trotter Track near Pittsburgh and spends most of his time there while his son, Art, Jr. runs the Steelers. Charlie Bidwill, owner of the Chicago Cardinals and part owner of the Chicago Bears, had Ed O’Hare as his lawyer. O’Hare was also Al Capone’s lawyer and had an office in Sportsman’s Park (race track), which was owned by Bidwill and Bill Johnson, described by Senator Estes Kefauver investigators as a member of the Capone gang. Johnson told the Senate Crime Committee that Bidwill was also partner in many other business deals. One afternoon O’Hare took his gun from the desk drawer of his office in Sportsman’s Park, went out and was murdered gangland style a few hours later. Charlie’s sons, Stormy and Bill, inherited and now own Sportsman’s Park as well as the Cardinal football franchise, which they moved to St. Louis in 1960.” (Note: The Cardinals later moved to Arizona, to be replaced in St Louis by the former Los Angeles Rams, owned by Georgia Rosenbloom. She inherited the team when her husband, Carroll, died under mysterious circumstances. Carroll Rosenbloom had a history of his own with organized crime figures.)

“Mickey McBride became sole owner of the Continental Press wire service when James Ragen was murdered in Chicago to end the infamous bookmaking wire service wars. The late Senator Estes Kefauver characterized the Continental Press as “public enemy number one.” McBride was paying Paul Brown $1,000 a month in 1944 and 1945 while he was in the Navy until Brown and McBride formed the Cleveland Browns. McBride sold his interest in the Browns to Saul Silberman, a flamboyant gambler who boasted of betting $2,000,000 a year. Silberman owned Tropical Park in Miami and Randall Park in Cleveland. His partners headed by Dave Jones, a local sports figure involved in boxing, bought out Silberman and sold their interest to Art Modell.”

On the day following the funeral ESPN’s Sal Paolantoino described Wellington Mara as the George Washington of the NFL. "George Washington?" At a Fountainbleu Hotel dinner in Miami Beach, with Frank Sinatra and Harold Gibbons, Vice President of the Teamsters Union, Sinatra referred to Mara as “…the Irish Mafia.” as he was offering to help me convert the NFLPA from a clubby little fraternity controlled by Mara and the owners into a labor union recognized by the National Labor Relations Board. I accomplished that NLRB recognition despite Mara's efforts to stop that as well..

I'm sure Wellington Mara was as admirable as the eulogies are proclaiming but fans should consider some of the other real NFL history before they accept all they are told by the league’s media machine with its self serving versions of history.

Mara has never been a player’s advocate on any issue. His fawning over Frank Gifford has irritated Giant players for decades. Mara is least respected for never stepping up to help to improve NFL Player Pensions to try to partially repay the pioneers of the game. He has shown little if any respect for the Jack Stroud’s, Chuck Bednarik’s, Leroy Kelly’s, Y.A. Tittle's, Dick Modzewleski’s and Tommy McDonald’s, John Henry Johnson’s and John David Crow’s, Jim Ray Smith’s, Bill Glass’s, Rick Casares, Buddy Dial’s, and Ollie Matson’s and the other now elderly players who’s "Shoulders The NFL Stands On" today.

Art Modell is the only owner, I have heard of who has moved on behalf of those pioneer players who built the foundation for this golden age of professional football. Forty years ago we drew 70,000 to 80,000 to the games every week with millions watching on TV. In 1958 the Giants vs Colts Sudden Death game caught the interest of football fans everywhere. When Sam Huff appeared on the cover of Time magazine the games strategies were acclaimed, then in 1964 the first big TV contract increase took place and from there the money river flowed into the league, the league being the owner’s bank accounts. That period from 1958 to 1964 was the most important period in the history of the NFL. The public’s love for “the game”, “the NFL” didn’t suddenly emerge from some Gangster Rap video last year as most current players and the officers of the NFLPA seem to think. Those great old players love for the game, their sweat, blood, a few tons of broken cartilage and bones, a few lives lost, and an endless amount of courage built the NFL and ran the value of that $500 Mara, Sr.’s gambling marker to its current $565,000,000 price tag according to Forbes.com. And I never saw Mara cover a single kick off or make a single block or tackle in the NFL…which seems to me to be what you do if you “love the game.”

I’ll say a prayer for Wellington Mara perhaps because I am getting older and perhaps I’m going soft, but as much as I still hate the Charlie Conerly, Kyle Rote, YA Tittle, Sam Huff, Alex Webster. Andy Robustelli, Del Shofner, New York Giants I also love them for being there so I could measure myself against them, like Chuck Bednarik and Tommy McDonald an the other top guns of the era, a personal gut check against the best of the best; nothing can ever replace that piece of my life and I will carry it with me to my grave and beyond. In my era there were 12 teams with 36 players on each team that is only 432 players in the league. That is a dense concentration of talent and emotions. With our slave labor contracts players stayed on the same teams longer and hatreds had a chance to grow and fester. Familiarity bred contempt; we didn’t run around shaking hands and hugging our enemies on the other team. Now there are 32 teams and 50 players on a team that’s 1600 players with 10 man taxi squads with a high percentage moving through the revolving doors of what is called “free agency.” There is a misconception that players are bigger and faster today. Only the steroid induced 300+lb interior linemen are larger than the players of my era. Our linemen averaged 265lbs and smashed each other with their helmets and forearms. Today’s fatso’s push and shove each other with their hands like some almost brawl that never actually breaks out into a fight. The game even sounds different, it is quiet along the line today except for a few grunts. Get a sound track from 1964 and hear the difference. Back then the sounds are of heavy blows being struck, forearms to the head, head slaps, helmet to helmet collisions on every play, not silent hand pushes and shoves. The face masks were much lighter and were often broken with a forearm with a section of oval shaped tapecan taped to it under your sleeve, but that was part of the game. The running backs, the receivers, the linebackers, the defensive backs are the same size now they were in 1964. I don’t believe that the players of today are bigger, faster, or better. I played cornerback starting the season at 195 finishing it at 183 and I was average size. Running backs were up to 260lbs, I believe Ernie Wheelwright of the giants was over 260lbs and every team had backs that were 230 lbs. There were lots of receivers 6ft 4inches and bigger.

I intercepted the last pass of YA Tittle’s fantastic career, a Z out pattern. He threw it perfectly, absolutely perfect, like always, but I knew it was coming or I would have had no chance. Gifford tried to cheat fading outside while keeping his shoulders square to the line of scrimmage and tipped off his Z out patterns. It was an important play at a crucial time in the crucial last game of that season in Yankee Stadium. That interception took YA and Gifford both out of the game, and out of the game forever. Neither ever played another down. Robert Shaw understood that moment and used it in his book, play, and movie Man In A Glass Booth. Shaw wrote of his hero Tittle "His whole life was in that pass." It was do or die that day again to win the division Browns against the Giants, to get into the World Championship game or lose and go home. We did it, we didn’t die and we won that game and the Championship that year.

I guess it’s really do or defeat…isn’t it.

There are many more tales of the close connection in the history of the NFL and organized gambling, both legal and illegal. But, those you can read about in my book on another day. Wellington Mara was no doubt a towering figure in the history of the NFL. He was a key to getting the owners to accept the revenue sharing policy that guaranteed the survival of small market teams like the Green Bay Packers. He built the New York Giants into a formidable team, a worthy opponent, worthy of our collective hatred. As a child I grew up imagining myself as King Arthur leading his armor clad crusaders against evil but worthy opponents in battles to the death where no one was ever spared. Mara pursued his interests with imagination and ruthlessness. I know about the latter. The NFL owes him a lot, and so do I, in a very different way.

Mara’s greatest legacy appears to me to be that he has produced a large handsome group of grandchildren. His granddaughter Kate sang a touching rendition of the National Anthem for him before the Giants-Washington Redskins game the Sunday following his funeral.

Remembering Mara helps to keep alive the feelings that I had for him and his players when I was at war with them on and off the playing field. It’s nice to feel those juices still flow.

At my age a lot of old friends, heroes, enemies, and acquaintances are dying off and on those occasions I am reminded of the following quote that not too long ago I sent to all my 1964 Championship Browns teammates: “We draw together when we are aware that night must close in on all living things; that we are condemned to death at birth, and that life is a bus ride to the place of execution. All our squabbling and vying are about seats in the bus, and the ride is over before we know it.” Page 100, In Our Time by Eric Hoffer, longshoreman, author, and philosopher.