Why every football fan should know Red Grange

Gary Andrew Poole believes Harold "Red" Grange's life holds lessons that go way beyond his football legend.

"I think Grange's story really captures the excitement, innocence, beauty, pain, life lessons, and even treachery of our games," said Poole, who spent three years researching the football hall of famer who grew up in Wheaton.

Tonight, the author will share stories of the man described by some as the most important figure in American football during a talk about his new book, "The Galloping Ghost."

The publisher provided an interview with the author, who spent three years visiting places, talking to people and reading articles for the book, which tells a story that evokes the golden age of sports.

Q. Why did you decide to write about Red Grange?

A. The germination of "The Galloping Ghost" came about at a football game. I was there with my daughter. I looked around. The passion was intense. Ninety thousand people. Millions watching on TV. I have been to plenty of games, but a childlike question hit me: Where did this football phenomenon begin?

I decided to draw a stick in the mud through American history and find the person from which this game originated. I came upon Red Grange. I knew about Grange. I had heard about him. But when I started understanding him, I realized that he was an overlooked and unexplored icon. Grange is one of the most significant athletes in American sports and the most important figure in American football - college or pro.

But other than in the Midwest, Grange had been forgotten to a large degree. ESPN named Grange the greatest college football player ever, and he legitimized the NFL by turning pro, of course, but I felt the whole story hadn't been properly told.

Q. Why was he so great? Why did a generation of men idolize him?

A. The surface stuff had been covered, but there was plenty of back story and human drama - warts, too - that had been left out of the story of his life. Grange played in the 1920s. This was the golden age of sports. Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Jack Dempsey, and Grange. They are the Mount Rushmore of American athletics. But I think Grange was that era's most mysterious athlete, and in some ways the most profound.

I had 90-year-olds writing to me - with shaky hands - talking about how they had seen Grange run, or recalling a memory of him. I wanted to tell Grange's full story to the older generation, and I also wanted - through a redoubled reporting effort - to bring his legend to a new generation.

Q. Why is Grange so important? Is it his statistics? His All-American honors?

A. Grange was not only ranked the best-ever college player, he won championships with the Chicago Bears, and he is credited with popularizing the pro game. After he turned pro, which was quite controversial, Grange went around the country playing game after game, creating interest in pro football.

There wasn't much interest in the NFL before Grange, but the guy riveted the nation. He sold out Cubs Park (now Wrigley), the Polo Grounds, and the Los Angeles Coliseum, to name a few stadiums. The newspaper attention was enormous. The nineteen-game tour legitimized the NFL. This has become an overused phrase in sports literature, but Grange's decision to turn pro did change American sports forever.

But I think his legend went deeper - into the American psyche.

Q. What do you mean?

A. In the 1920s, when Grange had his greatest success, the country was going through a cultural shift, leaving its agrarian roots and becoming a more industrialized nation. It was a transition period. There were popular images of flappers and bootleg gin, but it was also a nation where people lived in small towns and on farms, or were related to people who came from rural areas. Only a small number of people went to college. There was prosperity, but it was also illusory - a media concoction - in many ways.

Sports was becoming a larger part of American life for all classes of people, and boxing, baseball, and college football were the main draws.

While there were some football powers in the Midwest, like Michigan and the University of Chicago, the game was still rooted in Ivy League schools. Grange grew up in a small town, represented an underdog group. Grange's dad was a policeman. His mother had died when he was young. As a kid Red worked on a farm and then, to help his family make ends meet, he was an ice man; he delivered large blocks of ice to people's homes.

So here was this working-class guy, very humble and tough, who was able to scrape enough money together to go to college, and through his athletic genius he was able to bring the game to the people. He was an elegant, breakaway runner. His college coach, who was a man of many words, always had a difficult time describing Grange. But one day he was on the rim of the Grand Canyon and saw a deer. "There goes Grange!" he said.

In his college career he scored thirty-one touchdowns in twenty-three games, but he also had a great sense of timing. A small number of athletes have it. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods have a sense of drama. They just seem to do well in the most important moments.

A little story: Grange played a game at the University of Pennsylvania in 1925. Penn was considered one of the best teams in the nation. Grange's University of Illinois squad was completely overmatched, but Grange ran for 363 yards and three touchdowns. After that performance, Damon Runyon wrote that Grange was "three or four men and a horse rolled into one for football purposes. He is Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Al Jolson, Paavo Nurmi and Man o' War. Put them together they spell Grange."

And the novelist and New Yorker writer John O'Hara said, "There he was, the boy who had come through when the chips were really down, dragging his blanket behind him, and it was wonderful. The men on the field could have pulled pistols and shot it out and no one in the stands would have noticed, because we were all looking at Grange. Somehow or other I felt that the eyes of the whole East were on that solitary figure, and for some reason or other I was proud of him."

Grange also had his landmark performance against the mighty University of Michigan in 1924. He famously ran for four touchdowns in the first twelve minutes of the game. During that era, the games were typically low-scoring affairs, and Michigan was on a twenty-game winning streak, and they had only surrendered four touchdowns the previous two seasons. Grange would end that day with five touchdowns on runs, and a throw for a sixth.

These kinds of performances, and Grange had many, captured something in people.

Q. Why did you find Grange of such interest?

A. On the face of it, Grange seemed like a rather simple guy. Someone might look at him and say, Here is a great athlete and nothing more. But underneath it all he wrestled with big questions of values, the spirituality of sports, and fame.

I also came upon his manager, Charles C. Pyle, who is a wonderful character and provided a great entree into Grange. Pyle was known as "the P.T. Barnum of sports," and he had been a vaudeville actor. He was an idea man and a mad genius. With Grange as his calling card, he helped popularize football. He is also credited with professionalizing tennis. He is perhaps best known for running a transcontinental footrace, dubbed the Bunion Derby. Many people, including many courts of law, considered him a crook. I love paradoxical characters, and Pyle was a paradox - in spades. Some authors have scratched the surface of Pyle, but I decided to really dig, to search through archives and law libraries and obscure police reports to really get a handle on him, and better understand his relationship with Grange and how the two men used each other.

Grange and Pyle were unlikely friends. I found the interplay between the two men fascinating and a great way to drive the narrative.

Q. How would Grange do in today's NFL?

A. An impossible question, but a fun one to think about. It was a much different game, and comparing eras is quite difficult. Grange was an exceptional runner, but he was also a good defensive back, passer, and kicker. In Grange's day, the players played both offense and defense and they rarely substituted, so it was much more of an endurance sport. And the players called their own plays; coaching from the sidelines wasn't allowed.

Moreover, there weren't off-season camps and almost constant weightlifting. While Grange was muscular from his work on the ice truck - he was 5 feet, 11 inches and weighed 170 - he wasn't participating in off-season camps, doing sports-specific conditioning, or adhering to some sophisticated diet. The modern game has evolved into something quite different: It's much more of a specialty game, the players condition themselves all year, and coaches dictate their actions on the field.

Here is an indication of Grange's greatness. In 1969, on college football's one hundredth anniversary, the Football Writers Association selected an all-time All-American team. Many of the writers had seen the older-style game and the more modern version. Grange was the lone unanimous choice for the team.

With his speed, smarts, and toughness, I think he would do fine in today's NFL. He was, as they say, a football player.

Chris Berman of ESPN tells the story of talking with George Halas, the Bears owner, about Grange. "I was interviewing George Halas and I asked him, 'Who is the greatest running back you ever saw?' And he said, 'That would be Red Grange.' And I asked him, 'If Grange was playing today, how many yards do you think he'd gain?' And he said, 'About 750, maybe 800 yards.' And I said, 'Well, eight hundred yards is just OK.' He sat up in his chair and he said, 'Son, you must remember one thing. Red Grange is 75 years old.'"

Q. Is Red Grange still alive?

A. No. He died on January 28, 1991. He was eighty-seven.

Q. What was Grange's jersey number?

A. 77. For modern football fans, it is an odd number for a running back. When Grange was asked about why he was given the number 77, he replied that the fella in front of him got 76.

Q. Why would someone with little or no interest in football find this book interesting?

A. I asked a friend of mine to be one of the readers of the book when it was in an early draft. The reader, a published author, knew nothing about football and I wanted her to read the book so I could make sure I was, at the core, writing a story. She said that by reading "The Galloping Ghost" she now knew why Americans had such a passion for the sport. After all, football is our national communion, and it is an important subject to explore.

But, at the end of the day, I was trying to write a great story about someone's life. I think it is an entertaining read, and that is important to me.