Proud Highway:Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (103 page)

Anyway, I wonder if you could root me up a copy of that piece he did for the
Free Press
on Lenny Bruce. I think it was sometime last spring … a long while before Lenny died. It was one of the best things Lionel ever did and, as I recall, it was as much an obit for himself as it was for Bruce … although they were both very much alive when he wrote it. He sent me a copy, but I left it with my letter file in San Francisco and I won't get back there until February.

I'd like to write something about Lionel and I think his Bruce article would be a big help to me. He always struck me as the crown-prince of free-lancers, a congenital anarchist like his father, running out his string in a world that had less and less use for him. I've owed
The Nation
a piece for a long time and I think they'd like the one I have in mind on Lionel and where he lived. (I don't mean Topanga, but where his head was.) OK, and thanks for any effort it might take to locate the article.

Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson

A die-hard San Francisco 49ers fan, Thompson floated to various editors this proposal for an exposé on the politics of professional football
.

December 25, 1966
Woody Creek, Colorado

T
HE
H
YPE OF THE
C
ENTURY

A THESIS—TO BE WRITTEN BY A RABID FAN—IN WHICH IT IS ARGUED, RESEARCHED, PROVEN AND OPENLY DISPLAYED THAT PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL IS A VICIOUS UN-SPORTING HOAX—A VIOLENT SICK JOKE, BEING PERPETRATED ON A SICK SOCIETY—WITH THE FEELING FOR ULTIMATE GALL—IN
THE PERSON OF PETE ROZELLE—THAT CAN ONLY BE MAINTAINED ON A LEVEL BEYOND THE WILDEST DREAMS OF HISTORY'S GREATEST HYPE-SELLERS.… AND A SECONDARY THEORY THAT SUCKERS IN THIS COUNTRY ARE MADE, NOT BORN.… A MERCILESS EXPOSÉ ON THE ROLE OF SPORTSWRITERS IN THE GREAT INDUSTRY OF SPORTS-PROMOTING.…

I don't have any solid ideas about who might print this article, but it's a fine bundle of possibilities and I can't think of anybody better suited to write it than your friendly veteran sportswriter, HST. For one, I have paid first $40 and then $50 for season tickets to the San Francisco 49er games during the past two years.… I sit in my regular seat with all the other animals, drunk and shouting, and even though I know I'm being taken, I get a boot out of it … and when either the 49ers or I (am/are) out of town, I seek out the nearest TV set and squat religiously in front of it, whether the game comes on at 10:00 in Baltimore, or 7:00 in Los Angeles. Even after moving to Aspen in mid-autumn, I've managed to see all but one of the 49ers' Sunday crusades, either via television from Grand Junction, or by driving back to San Francisco for various professional reasons that allow me, by coincidence, to occupy my seat at Kezar [Stadium] on Sunday afternoons.

[ … ] My second fine credential has to do with the fact that the first words I published for pay or otherwise were as a sportswriter, a wretched profession that I pursued for at least two years, or until I learned better. I began my writing career as sports editor of the Eglin AFB (Florida)
Eagle
, and the main part of my duties lay in detailing the weekly glories of such as Zeke Bratowski (who quarterbacked the fabulous Eagles to the Air Force championship), who hurled passes to Max McGee … for many yards gained, and many touchdowns, primarily because the bohunk defensive backs on other Air Force teams couldn't understand why nice, quiet-talkin' fellas from the Green Bay Packers had to always grab people's belts when they ran out for a pass,… It didn't seem quite fair, and of course it wasn't … McGee would run about 20 yards with his hand resting easily on the defensive back's hip, and then when the ball started dropping on them he would suddenly root his antagonist to the ground with a violent downward shove, and step off all alone to catch the pass. I was sports editor of the
Eagle
for two years: for the first of these I merely sat in the press box and did my job, but after the coach (a flight colonel) realized what a champ he had going for him, he ushered me into the hierarchy. At the end of the '56 season I forged enough ballots to elect four of the Eglin Eagles to the All-AF eleven (or maybe it was All-Service, I forget).

Anyway, the next season, due to circumstances beyond my control, I was purged as sports editor and threatened with reassignment to Iceland because of things I had written. The football coach, sensing a loss more crucial even than the retirement of Bratowski to civilian life, pulled enough strings to have me reassigned to an entirely new military slot—football statistician and official biographer of the wondrous Eglin Eagles. […]

All this is a sort of weird background for the piece I want to write … a sort of sidelight, as it were, to the underground side of professional football. The rest I would have to do in the guise of a fan, one who has sat through many wretched, drunken afternoons with the 49ers … and then haggled with the hired punks and sportswriters on long spring afternoons on the subject of the 49ers' chances in the coming year, and always being lied to, cheerfully, by people who knew better.

The fact is that the 49er management (the club is owned by two old ladies) didn't care about winning or losing in 1966 because they had sold enough season tickets (like Otto Graham
²¹
said in his classic “fuck the public” quote) to make the season a profit whether they won or lost. The main factor was an $800,000 settlement (one each to the 49ers and the New York Giants) from the AFL, in exchange for rights to place a competing team in NFL territory—according to terms of the merger (the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets). There was also the strange episode of [49ers quarterback] John Brodie's $900,000 contract, a settlement made necessary by the fact that failure to settle might result in a lawsuit that could upset the NFL-AFL merger. (A big part of Brodie's money was paid by the AFL and Bud Adams, the loud and witless owner of the Houston Oilers, who stupidly nailed himself down to a verbal contract regarding Brodie's maybe jump to the AFL.) Another, similar story had to do with
Al Davis
, who went from coach of the Oakland Raiders to “commissioner” of the AFL at the same time the two leagues were in the making. Davis got enough out of the settlement (which entailed his demotion and discharge) to come back and buy the team, and one of the two or three major stock-holders.

Another key to the story is Emmanuel Cuellar, the representative from Brooklyn, who did all he could to stymie the merger in Congress … on the grounds that pro football is a business, not a sport, and should therefore be subject to antitrust laws. But other congressmen got the word from other pressure-sources, and since there is not a pro football team in Brooklyn (unless the Jets might qualify on the basis of performance and subway distance), Cuellar got whipped by means of one of
the most peculiar and devious moves in recent congressional history. A congressional rider was tacked onto something like the foreign aid bill (I think it was Senator [Everett] Dirksen who did it) and Cuellar was dodged. Needless to say, the bill passed, and the merger of the two leagues became a reality at least until 1967, when Cuellar will have another shot at it. So now we have the “Super Bowl,” from which each member of the winning team will glean $15,000 … and the losers, something around $7500. (A sport, not a business.) One game, played before 100,000 of the faithful in the L.A. Coliseum (at an average of $8–$12 a head), and for which a combination of TV networks will pay $125,000 a minute for their commercial advertising (or maybe it's the sponsors who'll have to pay that sum … this is something I can find out in the course of my research.…), in any case, $125,000 a minute is the cost of advertising on TV for the Super Bowl.

As for the mechanics of the article, I see it as something to appear either during the (late) 1967 season, or shortly afterward. I'd want to spend some time in the summer pro training camps and also in the dressing room and on the field during the first few games of 1967. But mainly I'd want to contact some of the most articulate players during the off-season and get them talking over a bit of the Old Crow … which brings to mind John David Crow, of the 49ers, who has a construction business in Arkansas when he ain't on the field whacking people … and Bernie Casey (also of the 49ers), who's a good enough artist to be exhibited in San Francisco and also to teach art at (I think) Bowling Green State College (Ohio) or maybe it's Miami U. (Ohio) in the off season.

My interest—at least for this piece—is the view of pro football from an insider's off-season perspective. Not the boom-boom bullshit of the [Washington Redskins quarterback] Sam Huff films, but a sort of investor's view … since it's obviously a business, not a sport … and what kind of a business it really is.

There are oddities in the same … such as Frank Ryan's Ph.D. in math, and Lance Rentzel's conviction for child molesting.
²²
And what caused the Bears to fold in 1966, when all the in-money had them as champs? I don't know, but I think some good legwork—which the sportswriters either won't do or can't write—might pay off with a mean fat article, which none of the league's PR men (Rozelle's included) will want any part of when it's published.

But of course there's always the objection that pro football is an “American Institution,” like the hollow husk of baseball, and that only an Un-American
Freak would write ugly words on the subject as long as everybody in the game or in any way connected with it is making good money. That's not my concern. Yd like to write something real about the “game,” and I already know enough about it to guarantee that anything I write won't be a PR puff. Anyone interested is urged to contact:

Hunter S. Thompson
Owl Farm
Woody Creek, Colorado

 

Hell's Angels
.
(P
HOTO BY
H
UNTER
S. T
HOMPSON
;
COURTESY OF
HST C
OLLECTION
)

Terry the Tramp and friend
.
(P
HOTO BY
H
UNTER
S. T
HOMPSON
;
COURTESY OF
HST C
OLLECTION
)