Passing Game: Benny Friedman and the Transformation of Football

369 Pages·2008·0.98 MB·English

by  Murray Greenberg

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PASSING GAME
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PASSING GAME
Benny Friedman
and the Transformation of Football
MURRAY GREENBERG
PublicAffairs • New York
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Copyright © 2008 by Murray Greenberg
Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™,
a member of the Perseus Books Group.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address
PublicAffairs, 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1321, New York, NY 10107.
PublicAffairs books are available at special discounts for bulk pur-
chases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organiza-
tions. For more information, please contact the Special Markets
Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street,
Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, call [phone], ext. 5000, or
e-mail
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For my Mom, Bea Greenberg, who never missed a game,
and my Dad, Ted Greenberg, who taught me how to play.
And for my wife, Andrea, and
my daughters, Allie and Samantha,
who were there from the beginning
and who rooted for me every day.
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C O NTENTS
Introduction 1
1 The Kid from Glenville 5
2 Michigan 18
3 Grange Opens the Door 33
4 Benny Takes Command 51
5 “We Got the Little Badgers’ Skins
to Wrap the Baby Bunting In” 63
6 Benny to Bennie 78
7 “The Greatest Team I Ever Coached” 94
8 Senior Year 106
9 “Benny Friedman Passed All Afternoon
Like Only Benny Friedman Can” 118
10 King of the Big Ten 129
11 The Pros Come Calling 138
12 “One Sweet Tough Racket” 152
13 “Friedman Has Six Threats Instead of Three” 172
14 New York 186
15 “That Redoubtable Descendant of Palestine” 206
vii
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viii CONTENTS
16 Benny and Rockne 219
17 “The Greatest Football Player in the World” 231
18 Transition 247
19 Coach and Commander 269
20 Brandeis 284
21 Passed Over 302
Epilogue 313
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 317
NOTES 321
BIBLIOGRAPHY 339
INDEX 349
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Introduction
ootball wasn’t always a game dominated by strong-armed quarterbacks
Fflinging the ball sixty yards downfield. In its beginnings football was
mostly a messy affair in which brave men with altogether insufficient pro-
tective equipment would carry the melon-shaped ball into an angry thicket
of defenders and scratch and plod and push for yardage. Rarely was foot-
ball real estate acquired by way of the forward pass. The ball was so large
that most players couldn’t grip and throw it; the best they could do was
hold it in their palm and heave it. That’s why photographs of quarterbacks
posing as if to pass in those early days evoked the image of a shot-putter in
football pants.
Herman Maisin recalled those Neanderthal times. For more than seven
decades, Maisin was the editor of the instructional magazine Scholastic
Coach, a how-to bible for coaches and athletes filled with pictorial essays
and articles featuring some of the sporting world’s great performers. He
was ninety-four years old when I met him in his Manhattan apartment to
talk about Benny Friedman. They had first met in Scholastic’s offices, where
Benny had come to discuss doing a photo shoot on the art of the forward
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