2010
FRAGMENT OF THE AUBURN OAKS
C
ollege football, for all its manifold problems (see 1987 entry on SMU), maintains its attraction for a simple reason: it’s fun. There are dozens of traditions that to outsiders are hokey but to fans are as important as anything that happens on the field.
Watching 90,000 University of Wisconsin fans jump to “Jump Around” between the third and fourth quarters is thrilling. The University of Hawaii’s version of the “haka” may not be entirely accurate, but it’s very cool. And only the stony-hearted could fail to be stirred by the pregame march of the Army Cadets and Navy Midshipmen. Or by Florida State’s Chief Osceola galloping into the stadium on Renegade, his trusty steed, then planting a flaming spear at midfield. The Ivy Leaguers at Penn throw toast onto the field before the fourth quarter.
Then there is sound. Drumlines and battles of the bands are regular features of football at historically black universities; the sound-off between Grambling’s Tiger Marching Band and Southern University’s Human Jukebox is a highlight of the annual Bayou Classic in New Orleans. The routines of marching bands at large schools like Ohio State have become so intricate that they have become YouTube sensations.1
Then there are the chants. From Kansas: “Rock, chalk, Jayhawk!” From Alabama: “Rammer jammer, yellow hammer, give ’em hell, Alabama!” At Bethany College in Kansas, home to teams once known as the Terrible Swedes, students shout, “Rockar! Stockar! Thor och hans bockar!”2 To hear 100,000-plus fans belt out Michigan’s fight song—perhaps the best in all football—is to get goosebumps. Tennessee has a bluetick coonhound, Smokey, trained to howl after the Volunteers score.
But a coonhound is a comparatively minor member of the zoo of mascots associated with the college game. Colorado has Ralphie the buffalo. Louisiana State and Memphis both have tigers (caged, thank heavens), and Yale has had Handsome Dan bulldogs since 1889. Georgia also has a bulldog, Uga; after its death, it gets interred in a special marble vault near the stadium. There have been nine more Ugas since the first one. Navy has a goat mascot that really should get combat pay, because it keeps getting kidnapped. Army has a mule and Air Force a falcon, named Mach 1. Texas has a longhorn steer called Bevo. Baylor has two black bears, sisters named Judge Lady and Judge Joy, and South Carolina a red-breasted black gamecock, Sir Big Spur.
All this makes autumn Saturdays a uniquely American spectacle in college towns across the country. The only thing better is rivalry week, when an additional set of traditions kicks in, often in the form of a useless and ugly totem to the winner.
Oklahoma and Texas compete in the Red River shootout for the Golden Hat. Brigham Young University and Utah State compete for an old wagon wheel; Indiana and Purdue for an oak bucket; Notre Dame and USC for a made-in-Ireland shillelagh; Maine and New Hampshire for a musket; and Union and Rensselaer Polytechnic for a remarkably ugly set of red clogs called the “Dutchmen’s shoes.” The men of Concordia and St. Olaf fight for a troll made of Norwegian moss.
Perhaps the most famous totem is the axe head mounted on a wooden plaque that Stanford and the University of California have traded back and forth since 1899. Stanford students used the original axe to decapitate a blue-and-gold Cal effigy; Cal students stole the tool and kept it in a bank vault for the next 30-odd years, until Stanford stole it back in a daring heist.3 Barring the occasional theft—and the score in that regard is 4–3 Stanford—the winner of the Big Game gets the axe, and the score is etched onto the plate under the axe head.
But every time the axe changes possession, the owner rubs out the score of the 1982 game—the one that featured The Play. In that game, Stanford had scored with four seconds left to take a 20–19 lead. On the kickoff, Cal lateraled five times before threading through the Stanford marching band to score the winning touchdown. All Stanford fans swear that at least one lateral was illegal and possibly two. So when Stanford has the axe, it changes the score to 20–19; when Cal has the axe, it restores the score to 25–20.
There is no way to define what the most intense collegiate rivalry is, but Auburn–Alabama has to be near the top. The annual Iron Bowl between the teams in November is the most important date on the state’s calendar; the other 364 days, Auburn–Alabama is pretty important too. Auburn fans deride Alabama as a home for spoiled, lazy rich kids spending daddy’s money and whiling away afternoons under the magnolia trees. Bama fans ridicule Auburn as a cow college for folks with dirt between their toes and gaps between whatever teeth they have. In the words of one caller to Paul Finebaum’s popular sports radio show, “I ain’t got no love for them West Georgia coon-dog buzzard inbred toenail lickers.”4
The University of Alabama has the edge in the Iron Bowl (44–35–1 through 2015) and also in pedigree; it was the home of Bear Bryant, the legendary coach who led the Crimson Tide to six national titles from 1958 to 1982 and also played a key role in the racial integration of the university. Joe Namath played for Bama. For its part, Auburn has Nova, a golden eagle that swoops down over the stadium before games. It had Bo Jackson. And it has “rolling the corner.” After important victories, Auburn fans go to the corner of College and Magnolia Streets and throw toilet paper onto two oak trees. Like many college traditions, the ritual sounds more than a little cheesy. Auburn loves it.
All this is great fun, until someone gets the stupids. That’s what happened in 2010. In that year’s Iron Bowl, Auburn quarterback Cam Newton led the Tigers to victory after falling behind 24–zip—the biggest Auburn Iron Bowl comeback ever. In Auburn, the game is known as “the Cam-back”; in Tuscaloosa it’s “the collapse.” The Tigers went on to win the national championship.
And a man named Harvey Almorn Updyke of Dadeville got angry. Even in Alabama, Updyke’s allegiance is extreme. His children are named Bear Bryant and Crimson Tyde, and he once said that he thought about Bama football 18 hours a day.5 Distressed by the Cam-back, Updyke bought some herbicide, drove to Auburn, and poisoned the 85-year-old oaks. Then in January 2011, identifying himself as “Al from Dadeville,” he called into Finebaum’s show to brag that the trees are “not dead yet, but they definitely will die.”6 The former Texas state trooper was no criminal mastermind; he was quickly arrested and convicted of criminal mischief, desecration, and damaging agriculture.7
In April 2013 Auburn had to euthanize the trees; the cow college has experts on soil and tree health, but too much poison had been at work for too long. Even the miracle of Alabama fans sending $50,000 to help save the trees8 could not halt their decline. But it didn’t seem right to just toss trees that had been the site of so much joy. So the university chopped them up and sold the splinters, one of which is shown on the opposite page, with the proceeds going to the scholarship fund.
Auburn got its revenge on the field in 2013 in perhaps the greatest Iron Bowl ever. With one second left, and the score tied at 28, top-ranked Alabama tried a 57-yard field goal. The kick fell just short. Near the back of the end zone, with no time on the clock, Auburn’s Chris Davis caught the ball—and ran it back 109 astonishing yards. Auburn won 34–28—and also ended Bama’s quest for a third straight national title.
The play, known as the “Kick Six,” was a triumph that took less than 20 seconds. Fifteen months later came another triumph that was months in the making: Two 35-foot live oaks were planted at Toomer’s Corner. Another 30 trees, grown from acorns of the original oaks, were planted nearby.
2013
STUFFED ANIMAL LEFT AFTER THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING
A
t 2:49 p.m. on April 15, 2013, more than 5,600 of the 23,000-plus runners who had started that morning were moving toward the finish line of the Boston Marathon. These were ordinary people who had sacrificed time and their ordinary vices to try to do something extraordinary. As they plodded along, they were lifted by the encouragement of spectators who appreciated their efforts—people like the Richard family, who were there to cheer on friends.
And then there was an explosion, from a bomb in a knapsack placed near where the family stood. Eight-year-old Martin Richard was killed, his six-year-old sister would lose a leg, his mother would lose sight in one eye, and his father’s eardrums were ruptured. About 200 yards away, another pressure-cooker bomb killed Krystle Marie Campbell and Lu Lingzi. More than 260 others were injured.
The bombers were two Kyrgyzstan-born, Massachusetts-raised brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. During the ensuing manhunt, which all but shut down the city and several nearby towns, the two shot and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, Sean Collier. In an ensuing firefight, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed, and another police officer, Richard Donahue, was fatally wounded. Four days after the bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found, wounded and hiding in a boat. He was eventually convicted on 30 federal counts, ranging from murder to the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Boston is the world’s oldest marathon, and perhaps its most beloved (see 1967 entry on Kathrine Switzer). It began in 18971 as part of the celebrations associated with a new state holiday, Patriots’ Day, which commemorates the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord. The race is barnacled with tradition, from the “scream tunnel” at Wellesley to Heartbreak Hill and olive wreaths for the winners. The Red Sox always play a morning game, so marathoners run by Fenway Park during the action. Patriots’ Day is as much a rite of spring as Memorial Day is of summer.
In the aftermath of the bombing, the city’s motto was “Boston Strong.” Red Sox slugger David Ortiz became an unlikely laureate of the city’s emotions. “This jersey that we wear today, it doesn’t say ‘Red Sox.’ It says ‘Boston,’” he told a Fenway crowd the day after Tsarnaev was captured. “This is our f—ing city!”2 That was Boston Strong, in a slightly profane nutshell.
But Boston has a softer side, too. Right after the explosions, people began leaving small tokens of grief and remembrance. What began as a ripple became a veritable tide of mementoes, eventually spreading across several blocks. There were lots of running shoes, but also flags, balloons, crosses, and flowers. And stuffed animals by the score.
It is an image of sweet innocence—like the smile of Martin Richard.3
2015
MASSILLON TIGERS’ BABY FOOTBALL
D
evotion to Massillon Tigers football can last from the cradle to the grave—literally. For more than 50 years, every boy born in Massillon, Ohio, has received an orange-and-black football in his hospital crib, courtesy of the booster club. (Recently, some baby girls have also been graced.) On the other end of life’s journey, a local funeral home offers Tiger-themed urns and caskets.1
There is a certain historic justice to this, because Ohio was the cradle of professional football. There was an active, if disorganized, pro game in the state by the early 1900s, and 4 of the original 10 teams in what became the National Football League2 were from Ohio: Akron, Canton, Cleveland, and Dayton.3
Canton is home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and also to the McKinley Bulldogs, half of one of high school football’s oldest and fiercest rivalries, with the Massillon Tigers. Massillon won the Ohio professional championship in 1904, 1905, and 1906, the latter a satisfying victory against Canton.
After 1906 there was a period of disarray, due to scandals and financial difficulties. But the pro game in Ohio revived, and with it, the rivalry. This time, Canton had the edge. With Jim Thorpe (see 1912 entry) often in the backfield, competing against Massillon’s Knute Rockne (see 1925 entry on the modern football),4 Canton won titles in 1916, 1917, and 1919.
As professional franchises migrated to bigger urban areas in the 1920s, the football focus in Ohio shifted to the high schools. Canton’s schoolboys took the pro team’s nickname, the Bulldogs, and Massillon’s did the same, becoming the Tigers. The two have been fighting like cats and dogs ever since, with Massillon taking home the coveted Victory Bell 68 times to McKinley’s 53, with five ties.5 Massillon was the training ground for Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown, who played on the high school team, then coached it from 1932 to 1941, going 80–8–2 and winning six state championships.6 It was on Brown’s watch that the Booster Club was formed and the stadium built. Its address: Paul Brown Drive. The Tigers kept going after he left. A 1951 newsreel, Touchdown Town, called Massillon the “Number 1 grid city in America,” where “football is more than a sport. It’s a cult, a religion, a civic enterprise that knows no season and bounces its merry way 365 days a year.” That sums it up nicely.
The Tiger spirit manifests itself in many ways. Paul Brown Stadium can hold almost 20,000 people. And if often needs to, which is remarkable given that Massillon’s population is only about 32,000. There is also a privately funded, 80,000-square-foot indoor practice center7 and a state-of-the-art turf field. It is not unheard of to “red-shirt” a Massillon eight-grader so that he has an additional year to grow before entering high school.8
For nonplayers, there are a marching band and a cheerleading squad (also hotly contested). For the adults, there are several social clubs devoted to the team. Radio shows, newspapers, pulpits, and barbershop habitués talk up the Tigers constantly. “The identity of the town is what takes place at the high school,” is the way one coach put it in 1999.9 That is still the case, and the most important thing that happens at the high school happens on Friday nights in the fall.
The towns of Canton and Massillon have had their share of trouble. Both towns have struggled to find new sources of prosperity since heavy industry declined in the 1970s and 1980s. Through it all, football has been a source of civic spirit and cohesion—albeit one that puts a heavy burden on the shoulder pads of teenagers.
It’s fair to ask whether football is too important to the town. In the grand scheme of things, maybe being obsessed with, say, nanotechnology might be wiser. But it is only right to acknowledge that having football to rally around has given places like Massillon a sense of pride not easily nurtured and difficult to replace. Say what you will about putting football at the heart of the city, at least Massillon has a beating heart.
“Four things will always be in Massillon,” one fan put it: “pride, courage, hard work, and Massillon football.”10
2016
CTE-RELATED BRAIN SCANS
M
ike Webster was a born center. That was his position on the great Pittsburgh Steelers teams of the 1970s, on which he anchored the offensive line in four Super Bowl victories. As a team leader, he was in the center of the action in the locker room.1 And posthumously, Iron Mike was at the center of the discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in football players.
After years of behavioral and physical decline—at one point, the Hall of Famer was living in a truck and stunning himself with a Taser to get to sleep2—Webster died in 2002. He had played for 17 years and in 340 National Football League games.3 At his autopsy, the forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu decided to “fix” his brain—that is, prepare it for further analysis. Omalu was shocked at what he saw. Webster was only 50 when he died. His brain, however, looked like that of an 85-year-old man with Alzheimer’s.4
After more study, Omalu concluded that Webster had suffered from CTE, a neurodegenerative condition caused by repeated blows to the head. Symptoms include dementia, depression, aggression, and memory loss. In 2005 Omalu wrote an article to that effect, concluding, “This case highlights potential long-term neurodegenerative outcomes in retired professional National Football League players subjected to repeated mild traumatic brain injury.”5
Medical researchers believe that repeated trauma causes the buildup of the tau protein, in the form of neurofibrillary tangles. In people with CTE, these tangles, which look like skeins of yarn, accumulate in distinct areas.6 Think of them as little brown nooses that strangle nerves in the brain, including those that govern mood and cognitive functions such as memory and reasoning.7 The image on the left shows a healthy brain section; the one on the right is of a former football player and shows signs of CTE. The bright patches indicate excessive deposits of tau proteins.
In a sense, none of this should have been surprising. “Dementia pugilistica”—the formal name for boxers who are “punch drunk”—has been studied since the 1920s.8 It doesn’t stretch common sense to think that when football players get hit in the head, they too might suffer brain damage. But the NFL challenged—indeed, attacked—studies and scientists that found a link between football and brain trauma. Three doctors associated with the league—none of them neuropathologists—demanded that Omalu’s 2005 paper be retracted,9 saying that his understanding of CTE was “completely wrong.”10
For years11 the league’s own research was positively chipper.12 A series of papers reported that even after three concussions, there was no decline in brain function,13 and that much higher rates of dementia didn’t really mean anything.14 In one NFL-funded study, the authors made the assertion, surprising to every fan with a television, that “professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.”15 When the NFL retirement board approved partial disability payments to Mike Webster, however, it stated that his cognitive injuries were due to “head injuries he suffered as a football player.”16 Even after that, the league refused to admit any such thing, at least publicly.17
Beginning around 2007 the NFL changed course, creating concussion protocols and setting up a fund to help pay the medical bills of former players with dementia. In late 2009 the league conceded that concussions, as well as the accumulation of nonconcussive hits, could lead to long-term health problems.18 In 2015 the NFL settled a class-action suit on behalf of almost 6,000 former NFL players, agreeing to financial compensation for those diagnosed with CTE, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and dementia.19 The total cost could go north of $1 billion. But it was only in March 2016 that the NFL formally acknowledged a connection between the traumatic brain injuries that could be sustained by players and CTE.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is not fully understood, and at this time it can only be diagnosed posthumously. The how and why of incidence are unknown. There may be other factors, such as genetics, medical history, or steroid use, that could help to explain why some people develop it while others do not. What can be said with some confidence is that CTE is associated with repeated blows to the head, and that therefore football players and boxers are at much higher risk. The NFL players have been asked to donate their brains to research, and the evidence to date is devastating: almost all the donated brains (87 of 91, or 96 percent) show some degree of CTE.
2016
SPECIAL OLYMPICS MEDALS
S
ports occupy an ambiguous place in the social landscape. They provide pleasure to tens of millions of Americans and can help people get and stay healthy. At their finest, they create instances of beauty that are a form of physical art. On the other hand, sports have also provided a setting for greed, exploitation, prejudice, and corruption.
But one unambiguously positive trend has been that more and more people have been able to experience the positive dimensions of sports. One important moment occurred in 1968 in Chicago, when 1,000 young people from 26 states competed in three sports (track, floor hockey, and swimming) in the first Special Olympics. Now there are 4.5 million participants, from 180 countries.1
The idea behind the Special Olympics was to improve the general fitness and social skills of intellectually disabled children. And that is still largely the point; communities and parents put on 80,000 local events a year. In addition, the Special Olympics World Games are held every two years, alternating between summer and winter. There are 32 sports (25 summer,2 7 winter), and participants compete against others of similar ability. In 2015 in Los Angeles, 6,500 people competed at the most recent Summer Games; the Opening Ceremonies were held in the Coliseum, and ESPN was on hand.
These medals come from several such events. Christopher Byrne of New Jersey,3 who has been competing in the Special Olympics since the first meet in 1968, won a gold in ice skating at the 1989 Winter Games in Reno (left); a bronze in track-and-field at the 1991 Summer Games in Minneapolis (middle); and another skating gold at the 1993 Winter Games in Salzburg, Austria (right).
The Special Olympics were the inspiration of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, younger sister not only of John F. Kennedy but also of Rosemary Kennedy, who was intellectually disabled. Not everyone considered the event a good idea. Skeptics were concerned that the children (and at first the Special Olympics were for children only) would become frustrated by defeat or downhearted by the difficulty of learning a sport. While not every participant has loved the experience, the overwhelming lesson of the Special Olympics is that bringing sports to more people is a good thing, helping to build confidence and improve health. Besides, the games are fun.
The Paralympics are another example of how people who were once shut out of sports have found ways to get into them. In the United States, disabled World War II veterans took to the idea of wheelchair basketball.4 By 19495 there were wheelchair basketball tourneys, and in 1957 the first National Wheelchair Games took place, offering track, darts, Ping-Pong, and archery, as well as hoops.6
Three years later, Rome held the first Paralympics. It wasn’t big—400 men7 from 23 countries in eight sports8—and it was exclusively for wheelchair athletes, but it was a start. The Winter Paralympics began in 1976.9 Over time the Paralympics have broadened in scope, and the rules have been standardized. There are 10 disability categories; in addition, athletes are assessed on their degree of impairment to make the competition as comparable as possible. The standard of performance has risen markedly. The best Paralympians are world-class athletes; check out the ripped upper bodies of top wheelchair marathoners, who can finish a 26.2-mile course in less than 90 minutes.
In ironic proof of how the Paralympics have come of age, they even attract scandal and controversy on a regular basis, just like every other kind of sport. There have been flunked drug tests,10 classification disputes,11 sex scandals,12 and arguments over money and technology. South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius was the photogenic face of the Paralympics in 2012, when he became the first amputee runner to also compete in the conventional Games. Three years later, he was convicted of killing his girlfriend.13
On the whole, though, the story has to be seen as one of genuine progress, with more physically disabled people participating in sports, and more nondisabled people appreciating their skills. More than 4,300 athletes (1,523 of them women) from 164 countries participated in the London Paralympics in 2012.14
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
O
ne of the small pleasures of writing this book has been talking to people all over the country about their passion. Almost everyone I spoke to caught the idea immediately; for those who didn’t, all I had to do was ask, “What exhibit makes people stop and say, ‘That’s cool!’?” Then they got it—and almost all shared my enthusiasm. So I’d like to thank all those who keep America’s many wonderful small museums going and who have been so helpful to me. Ditto, of course, to the professional staffs at various halls of fame, sports organizations, and the Smithsonian.
Christopher Hunt was a helpful reader on an early version, and my brothers Cullen and Finn Murphy read the final draft. Brendan Murphy and Meg Murphy Nash read specific entries and improved them. My brother-in-law, Cary Sleeper, did brilliant photography for many items. My sister Cullene Murphy did the same with her image of Mike Eruzione’s stick. Another sister, Byrne Sleeper, helped keep me sane and reasonably cheerful throughout; yet another, Siobhan Grogan, helped me celebrate the end of it all with a weekend in Mexico City. My mother made a point of not asking about the book with such determination that I almost felt sorry for her, but I know she was always rooting for me, which is all that matters. And my late father, John Cullen Murphy, introduced me to the joy of sports.
My friends were wonderfully patient with how I could find a link between almost any topic of conversation and an item in the book. I consider this a neat party trick (and one, in fact, that I can keep playing). I suspect they might be less enthusiastic. Even so, their interest, even if some of it was feigned, kept me going.
For a variety of boring reasons, this book had to be written relatively quickly. I could never have finished if my colleagues at McKinsey had not supported me to a degree far above any reasonable expectation.
This is my third book. Each time, I have ventured to Thailand near the end of the ordeal for sun, sustenance, and friendship at the home of Gretchen Worth and her four-legged friends. Thanks, yet again.
Finally, thanks to my agent, Rafe Sagalyn, for selling the idea, and then for liking it, and to the staff at Perseus, who turned a jigsaw puzzle of words and pictures into a handsome book.
FRAGMENT OF THE AUBURN OAKS
C
ollege football, for all its manifold problems (see 1987 entry on SMU), maintains its attraction for a simple reason: it’s fun. There are dozens of traditions that to outsiders are hokey but to fans are as important as anything that happens on the field.
Watching 90,000 University of Wisconsin fans jump to “Jump Around” between the third and fourth quarters is thrilling. The University of Hawaii’s version of the “haka” may not be entirely accurate, but it’s very cool. And only the stony-hearted could fail to be stirred by the pregame march of the Army Cadets and Navy Midshipmen. Or by Florida State’s Chief Osceola galloping into the stadium on Renegade, his trusty steed, then planting a flaming spear at midfield. The Ivy Leaguers at Penn throw toast onto the field before the fourth quarter.
Then there is sound. Drumlines and battles of the bands are regular features of football at historically black universities; the sound-off between Grambling’s Tiger Marching Band and Southern University’s Human Jukebox is a highlight of the annual Bayou Classic in New Orleans. The routines of marching bands at large schools like Ohio State have become so intricate that they have become YouTube sensations.1
Then there are the chants. From Kansas: “Rock, chalk, Jayhawk!” From Alabama: “Rammer jammer, yellow hammer, give ’em hell, Alabama!” At Bethany College in Kansas, home to teams once known as the Terrible Swedes, students shout, “Rockar! Stockar! Thor och hans bockar!”2 To hear 100,000-plus fans belt out Michigan’s fight song—perhaps the best in all football—is to get goosebumps. Tennessee has a bluetick coonhound, Smokey, trained to howl after the Volunteers score.
But a coonhound is a comparatively minor member of the zoo of mascots associated with the college game. Colorado has Ralphie the buffalo. Louisiana State and Memphis both have tigers (caged, thank heavens), and Yale has had Handsome Dan bulldogs since 1889. Georgia also has a bulldog, Uga; after its death, it gets interred in a special marble vault near the stadium. There have been nine more Ugas since the first one. Navy has a goat mascot that really should get combat pay, because it keeps getting kidnapped. Army has a mule and Air Force a falcon, named Mach 1. Texas has a longhorn steer called Bevo. Baylor has two black bears, sisters named Judge Lady and Judge Joy, and South Carolina a red-breasted black gamecock, Sir Big Spur.
All this makes autumn Saturdays a uniquely American spectacle in college towns across the country. The only thing better is rivalry week, when an additional set of traditions kicks in, often in the form of a useless and ugly totem to the winner.
Oklahoma and Texas compete in the Red River shootout for the Golden Hat. Brigham Young University and Utah State compete for an old wagon wheel; Indiana and Purdue for an oak bucket; Notre Dame and USC for a made-in-Ireland shillelagh; Maine and New Hampshire for a musket; and Union and Rensselaer Polytechnic for a remarkably ugly set of red clogs called the “Dutchmen’s shoes.” The men of Concordia and St. Olaf fight for a troll made of Norwegian moss.
Perhaps the most famous totem is the axe head mounted on a wooden plaque that Stanford and the University of California have traded back and forth since 1899. Stanford students used the original axe to decapitate a blue-and-gold Cal effigy; Cal students stole the tool and kept it in a bank vault for the next 30-odd years, until Stanford stole it back in a daring heist.3 Barring the occasional theft—and the score in that regard is 4–3 Stanford—the winner of the Big Game gets the axe, and the score is etched onto the plate under the axe head.
But every time the axe changes possession, the owner rubs out the score of the 1982 game—the one that featured The Play. In that game, Stanford had scored with four seconds left to take a 20–19 lead. On the kickoff, Cal lateraled five times before threading through the Stanford marching band to score the winning touchdown. All Stanford fans swear that at least one lateral was illegal and possibly two. So when Stanford has the axe, it changes the score to 20–19; when Cal has the axe, it restores the score to 25–20.
There is no way to define what the most intense collegiate rivalry is, but Auburn–Alabama has to be near the top. The annual Iron Bowl between the teams in November is the most important date on the state’s calendar; the other 364 days, Auburn–Alabama is pretty important too. Auburn fans deride Alabama as a home for spoiled, lazy rich kids spending daddy’s money and whiling away afternoons under the magnolia trees. Bama fans ridicule Auburn as a cow college for folks with dirt between their toes and gaps between whatever teeth they have. In the words of one caller to Paul Finebaum’s popular sports radio show, “I ain’t got no love for them West Georgia coon-dog buzzard inbred toenail lickers.”4
The University of Alabama has the edge in the Iron Bowl (44–35–1 through 2015) and also in pedigree; it was the home of Bear Bryant, the legendary coach who led the Crimson Tide to six national titles from 1958 to 1982 and also played a key role in the racial integration of the university. Joe Namath played for Bama. For its part, Auburn has Nova, a golden eagle that swoops down over the stadium before games. It had Bo Jackson. And it has “rolling the corner.” After important victories, Auburn fans go to the corner of College and Magnolia Streets and throw toilet paper onto two oak trees. Like many college traditions, the ritual sounds more than a little cheesy. Auburn loves it.
All this is great fun, until someone gets the stupids. That’s what happened in 2010. In that year’s Iron Bowl, Auburn quarterback Cam Newton led the Tigers to victory after falling behind 24–zip—the biggest Auburn Iron Bowl comeback ever. In Auburn, the game is known as “the Cam-back”; in Tuscaloosa it’s “the collapse.” The Tigers went on to win the national championship.
And a man named Harvey Almorn Updyke of Dadeville got angry. Even in Alabama, Updyke’s allegiance is extreme. His children are named Bear Bryant and Crimson Tyde, and he once said that he thought about Bama football 18 hours a day.5 Distressed by the Cam-back, Updyke bought some herbicide, drove to Auburn, and poisoned the 85-year-old oaks. Then in January 2011, identifying himself as “Al from Dadeville,” he called into Finebaum’s show to brag that the trees are “not dead yet, but they definitely will die.”6 The former Texas state trooper was no criminal mastermind; he was quickly arrested and convicted of criminal mischief, desecration, and damaging agriculture.7
In April 2013 Auburn had to euthanize the trees; the cow college has experts on soil and tree health, but too much poison had been at work for too long. Even the miracle of Alabama fans sending $50,000 to help save the trees8 could not halt their decline. But it didn’t seem right to just toss trees that had been the site of so much joy. So the university chopped them up and sold the splinters, one of which is shown on the opposite page, with the proceeds going to the scholarship fund.
Auburn got its revenge on the field in 2013 in perhaps the greatest Iron Bowl ever. With one second left, and the score tied at 28, top-ranked Alabama tried a 57-yard field goal. The kick fell just short. Near the back of the end zone, with no time on the clock, Auburn’s Chris Davis caught the ball—and ran it back 109 astonishing yards. Auburn won 34–28—and also ended Bama’s quest for a third straight national title.
The play, known as the “Kick Six,” was a triumph that took less than 20 seconds. Fifteen months later came another triumph that was months in the making: Two 35-foot live oaks were planted at Toomer’s Corner. Another 30 trees, grown from acorns of the original oaks, were planted nearby.
2013
STUFFED ANIMAL LEFT AFTER THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING
A
t 2:49 p.m. on April 15, 2013, more than 5,600 of the 23,000-plus runners who had started that morning were moving toward the finish line of the Boston Marathon. These were ordinary people who had sacrificed time and their ordinary vices to try to do something extraordinary. As they plodded along, they were lifted by the encouragement of spectators who appreciated their efforts—people like the Richard family, who were there to cheer on friends.
And then there was an explosion, from a bomb in a knapsack placed near where the family stood. Eight-year-old Martin Richard was killed, his six-year-old sister would lose a leg, his mother would lose sight in one eye, and his father’s eardrums were ruptured. About 200 yards away, another pressure-cooker bomb killed Krystle Marie Campbell and Lu Lingzi. More than 260 others were injured.
The bombers were two Kyrgyzstan-born, Massachusetts-raised brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. During the ensuing manhunt, which all but shut down the city and several nearby towns, the two shot and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, Sean Collier. In an ensuing firefight, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed, and another police officer, Richard Donahue, was fatally wounded. Four days after the bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found, wounded and hiding in a boat. He was eventually convicted on 30 federal counts, ranging from murder to the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Boston is the world’s oldest marathon, and perhaps its most beloved (see 1967 entry on Kathrine Switzer). It began in 18971 as part of the celebrations associated with a new state holiday, Patriots’ Day, which commemorates the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord. The race is barnacled with tradition, from the “scream tunnel” at Wellesley to Heartbreak Hill and olive wreaths for the winners. The Red Sox always play a morning game, so marathoners run by Fenway Park during the action. Patriots’ Day is as much a rite of spring as Memorial Day is of summer.
In the aftermath of the bombing, the city’s motto was “Boston Strong.” Red Sox slugger David Ortiz became an unlikely laureate of the city’s emotions. “This jersey that we wear today, it doesn’t say ‘Red Sox.’ It says ‘Boston,’” he told a Fenway crowd the day after Tsarnaev was captured. “This is our f—ing city!”2 That was Boston Strong, in a slightly profane nutshell.
But Boston has a softer side, too. Right after the explosions, people began leaving small tokens of grief and remembrance. What began as a ripple became a veritable tide of mementoes, eventually spreading across several blocks. There were lots of running shoes, but also flags, balloons, crosses, and flowers. And stuffed animals by the score.
It is an image of sweet innocence—like the smile of Martin Richard.3
2015
MASSILLON TIGERS’ BABY FOOTBALL
D
evotion to Massillon Tigers football can last from the cradle to the grave—literally. For more than 50 years, every boy born in Massillon, Ohio, has received an orange-and-black football in his hospital crib, courtesy of the booster club. (Recently, some baby girls have also been graced.) On the other end of life’s journey, a local funeral home offers Tiger-themed urns and caskets.1
There is a certain historic justice to this, because Ohio was the cradle of professional football. There was an active, if disorganized, pro game in the state by the early 1900s, and 4 of the original 10 teams in what became the National Football League2 were from Ohio: Akron, Canton, Cleveland, and Dayton.3
Canton is home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and also to the McKinley Bulldogs, half of one of high school football’s oldest and fiercest rivalries, with the Massillon Tigers. Massillon won the Ohio professional championship in 1904, 1905, and 1906, the latter a satisfying victory against Canton.
After 1906 there was a period of disarray, due to scandals and financial difficulties. But the pro game in Ohio revived, and with it, the rivalry. This time, Canton had the edge. With Jim Thorpe (see 1912 entry) often in the backfield, competing against Massillon’s Knute Rockne (see 1925 entry on the modern football),4 Canton won titles in 1916, 1917, and 1919.
As professional franchises migrated to bigger urban areas in the 1920s, the football focus in Ohio shifted to the high schools. Canton’s schoolboys took the pro team’s nickname, the Bulldogs, and Massillon’s did the same, becoming the Tigers. The two have been fighting like cats and dogs ever since, with Massillon taking home the coveted Victory Bell 68 times to McKinley’s 53, with five ties.5 Massillon was the training ground for Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown, who played on the high school team, then coached it from 1932 to 1941, going 80–8–2 and winning six state championships.6 It was on Brown’s watch that the Booster Club was formed and the stadium built. Its address: Paul Brown Drive. The Tigers kept going after he left. A 1951 newsreel, Touchdown Town, called Massillon the “Number 1 grid city in America,” where “football is more than a sport. It’s a cult, a religion, a civic enterprise that knows no season and bounces its merry way 365 days a year.” That sums it up nicely.
The Tiger spirit manifests itself in many ways. Paul Brown Stadium can hold almost 20,000 people. And if often needs to, which is remarkable given that Massillon’s population is only about 32,000. There is also a privately funded, 80,000-square-foot indoor practice center7 and a state-of-the-art turf field. It is not unheard of to “red-shirt” a Massillon eight-grader so that he has an additional year to grow before entering high school.8
For nonplayers, there are a marching band and a cheerleading squad (also hotly contested). For the adults, there are several social clubs devoted to the team. Radio shows, newspapers, pulpits, and barbershop habitués talk up the Tigers constantly. “The identity of the town is what takes place at the high school,” is the way one coach put it in 1999.9 That is still the case, and the most important thing that happens at the high school happens on Friday nights in the fall.
The towns of Canton and Massillon have had their share of trouble. Both towns have struggled to find new sources of prosperity since heavy industry declined in the 1970s and 1980s. Through it all, football has been a source of civic spirit and cohesion—albeit one that puts a heavy burden on the shoulder pads of teenagers.
It’s fair to ask whether football is too important to the town. In the grand scheme of things, maybe being obsessed with, say, nanotechnology might be wiser. But it is only right to acknowledge that having football to rally around has given places like Massillon a sense of pride not easily nurtured and difficult to replace. Say what you will about putting football at the heart of the city, at least Massillon has a beating heart.
“Four things will always be in Massillon,” one fan put it: “pride, courage, hard work, and Massillon football.”10
2016
CTE-RELATED BRAIN SCANS
M
ike Webster was a born center. That was his position on the great Pittsburgh Steelers teams of the 1970s, on which he anchored the offensive line in four Super Bowl victories. As a team leader, he was in the center of the action in the locker room.1 And posthumously, Iron Mike was at the center of the discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in football players.
After years of behavioral and physical decline—at one point, the Hall of Famer was living in a truck and stunning himself with a Taser to get to sleep2—Webster died in 2002. He had played for 17 years and in 340 National Football League games.3 At his autopsy, the forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu decided to “fix” his brain—that is, prepare it for further analysis. Omalu was shocked at what he saw. Webster was only 50 when he died. His brain, however, looked like that of an 85-year-old man with Alzheimer’s.4
After more study, Omalu concluded that Webster had suffered from CTE, a neurodegenerative condition caused by repeated blows to the head. Symptoms include dementia, depression, aggression, and memory loss. In 2005 Omalu wrote an article to that effect, concluding, “This case highlights potential long-term neurodegenerative outcomes in retired professional National Football League players subjected to repeated mild traumatic brain injury.”5
Medical researchers believe that repeated trauma causes the buildup of the tau protein, in the form of neurofibrillary tangles. In people with CTE, these tangles, which look like skeins of yarn, accumulate in distinct areas.6 Think of them as little brown nooses that strangle nerves in the brain, including those that govern mood and cognitive functions such as memory and reasoning.7 The image on the left shows a healthy brain section; the one on the right is of a former football player and shows signs of CTE. The bright patches indicate excessive deposits of tau proteins.
In a sense, none of this should have been surprising. “Dementia pugilistica”—the formal name for boxers who are “punch drunk”—has been studied since the 1920s.8 It doesn’t stretch common sense to think that when football players get hit in the head, they too might suffer brain damage. But the NFL challenged—indeed, attacked—studies and scientists that found a link between football and brain trauma. Three doctors associated with the league—none of them neuropathologists—demanded that Omalu’s 2005 paper be retracted,9 saying that his understanding of CTE was “completely wrong.”10
For years11 the league’s own research was positively chipper.12 A series of papers reported that even after three concussions, there was no decline in brain function,13 and that much higher rates of dementia didn’t really mean anything.14 In one NFL-funded study, the authors made the assertion, surprising to every fan with a television, that “professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.”15 When the NFL retirement board approved partial disability payments to Mike Webster, however, it stated that his cognitive injuries were due to “head injuries he suffered as a football player.”16 Even after that, the league refused to admit any such thing, at least publicly.17
Beginning around 2007 the NFL changed course, creating concussion protocols and setting up a fund to help pay the medical bills of former players with dementia. In late 2009 the league conceded that concussions, as well as the accumulation of nonconcussive hits, could lead to long-term health problems.18 In 2015 the NFL settled a class-action suit on behalf of almost 6,000 former NFL players, agreeing to financial compensation for those diagnosed with CTE, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and dementia.19 The total cost could go north of $1 billion. But it was only in March 2016 that the NFL formally acknowledged a connection between the traumatic brain injuries that could be sustained by players and CTE.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is not fully understood, and at this time it can only be diagnosed posthumously. The how and why of incidence are unknown. There may be other factors, such as genetics, medical history, or steroid use, that could help to explain why some people develop it while others do not. What can be said with some confidence is that CTE is associated with repeated blows to the head, and that therefore football players and boxers are at much higher risk. The NFL players have been asked to donate their brains to research, and the evidence to date is devastating: almost all the donated brains (87 of 91, or 96 percent) show some degree of CTE.
2016
SPECIAL OLYMPICS MEDALS
S
ports occupy an ambiguous place in the social landscape. They provide pleasure to tens of millions of Americans and can help people get and stay healthy. At their finest, they create instances of beauty that are a form of physical art. On the other hand, sports have also provided a setting for greed, exploitation, prejudice, and corruption.
But one unambiguously positive trend has been that more and more people have been able to experience the positive dimensions of sports. One important moment occurred in 1968 in Chicago, when 1,000 young people from 26 states competed in three sports (track, floor hockey, and swimming) in the first Special Olympics. Now there are 4.5 million participants, from 180 countries.1
The idea behind the Special Olympics was to improve the general fitness and social skills of intellectually disabled children. And that is still largely the point; communities and parents put on 80,000 local events a year. In addition, the Special Olympics World Games are held every two years, alternating between summer and winter. There are 32 sports (25 summer,2 7 winter), and participants compete against others of similar ability. In 2015 in Los Angeles, 6,500 people competed at the most recent Summer Games; the Opening Ceremonies were held in the Coliseum, and ESPN was on hand.
These medals come from several such events. Christopher Byrne of New Jersey,3 who has been competing in the Special Olympics since the first meet in 1968, won a gold in ice skating at the 1989 Winter Games in Reno (left); a bronze in track-and-field at the 1991 Summer Games in Minneapolis (middle); and another skating gold at the 1993 Winter Games in Salzburg, Austria (right).
The Special Olympics were the inspiration of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, younger sister not only of John F. Kennedy but also of Rosemary Kennedy, who was intellectually disabled. Not everyone considered the event a good idea. Skeptics were concerned that the children (and at first the Special Olympics were for children only) would become frustrated by defeat or downhearted by the difficulty of learning a sport. While not every participant has loved the experience, the overwhelming lesson of the Special Olympics is that bringing sports to more people is a good thing, helping to build confidence and improve health. Besides, the games are fun.
The Paralympics are another example of how people who were once shut out of sports have found ways to get into them. In the United States, disabled World War II veterans took to the idea of wheelchair basketball.4 By 19495 there were wheelchair basketball tourneys, and in 1957 the first National Wheelchair Games took place, offering track, darts, Ping-Pong, and archery, as well as hoops.6
Three years later, Rome held the first Paralympics. It wasn’t big—400 men7 from 23 countries in eight sports8—and it was exclusively for wheelchair athletes, but it was a start. The Winter Paralympics began in 1976.9 Over time the Paralympics have broadened in scope, and the rules have been standardized. There are 10 disability categories; in addition, athletes are assessed on their degree of impairment to make the competition as comparable as possible. The standard of performance has risen markedly. The best Paralympians are world-class athletes; check out the ripped upper bodies of top wheelchair marathoners, who can finish a 26.2-mile course in less than 90 minutes.
In ironic proof of how the Paralympics have come of age, they even attract scandal and controversy on a regular basis, just like every other kind of sport. There have been flunked drug tests,10 classification disputes,11 sex scandals,12 and arguments over money and technology. South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius was the photogenic face of the Paralympics in 2012, when he became the first amputee runner to also compete in the conventional Games. Three years later, he was convicted of killing his girlfriend.13
On the whole, though, the story has to be seen as one of genuine progress, with more physically disabled people participating in sports, and more nondisabled people appreciating their skills. More than 4,300 athletes (1,523 of them women) from 164 countries participated in the London Paralympics in 2012.14
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
O
ne of the small pleasures of writing this book has been talking to people all over the country about their passion. Almost everyone I spoke to caught the idea immediately; for those who didn’t, all I had to do was ask, “What exhibit makes people stop and say, ‘That’s cool!’?” Then they got it—and almost all shared my enthusiasm. So I’d like to thank all those who keep America’s many wonderful small museums going and who have been so helpful to me. Ditto, of course, to the professional staffs at various halls of fame, sports organizations, and the Smithsonian.
Christopher Hunt was a helpful reader on an early version, and my brothers Cullen and Finn Murphy read the final draft. Brendan Murphy and Meg Murphy Nash read specific entries and improved them. My brother-in-law, Cary Sleeper, did brilliant photography for many items. My sister Cullene Murphy did the same with her image of Mike Eruzione’s stick. Another sister, Byrne Sleeper, helped keep me sane and reasonably cheerful throughout; yet another, Siobhan Grogan, helped me celebrate the end of it all with a weekend in Mexico City. My mother made a point of not asking about the book with such determination that I almost felt sorry for her, but I know she was always rooting for me, which is all that matters. And my late father, John Cullen Murphy, introduced me to the joy of sports.
My friends were wonderfully patient with how I could find a link between almost any topic of conversation and an item in the book. I consider this a neat party trick (and one, in fact, that I can keep playing). I suspect they might be less enthusiastic. Even so, their interest, even if some of it was feigned, kept me going.
For a variety of boring reasons, this book had to be written relatively quickly. I could never have finished if my colleagues at McKinsey had not supported me to a degree far above any reasonable expectation.
This is my third book. Each time, I have ventured to Thailand near the end of the ordeal for sun, sustenance, and friendship at the home of Gretchen Worth and her four-legged friends. Thanks, yet again.
Finally, thanks to my agent, Rafe Sagalyn, for selling the idea, and then for liking it, and to the staff at Perseus, who turned a jigsaw puzzle of words and pictures into a handsome book.
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