The sports book business seems specialized enough on its own, but there could be a subclass that could describe a particular type of literary effort.
Let's call it, "Defunct Teams and Leagues."
While many sports books concentrate on success stories, and deservedly so, some cover the spots on the sports landscape where almost everything went wrong. It's particularly true for start-ups teams and leagues which is a reading exercise in "What were they thinking?" Such books have a serious side, naturally, since we're talking about events that affected people's lives. But they have the extra benefit of often bringing laughs to the table.
That all brings us to "A Big Mess in Texas," by David Fleming.
Hardly anyone remembers when the National Football League wasn't on particularly solid financial ground. It started in 1920, and ran through teams like tissues for several years. You'd think that the NFL would have been poised for success by 1950, when the league merged with its major rival, the All-American Football Conference. But even so, only a few teams were earning a profit, and most were hanging on. Pro football still took a back seat to the college game in terms of interest, and revenues weren't keeping up with expenses - and wouldn't until television entered the, um, picture.
In 1951, a football team called the New York Yankees (no relation) was struggling in a major way in the NFL. It had lost a huge amount of money by the standards of the day, and competing with the New York Giants had become a bad idea. It was time for the franchise to go elsewhere. Anywhere.
And Dallas was pretty much anywhere at the time. Texas certainly loved football, but mostly in the form of high school and college football. The pros hadn't even tried to put a team there yet. But Giles Miller, the son of a wealthy Dallas businessman who never saw a long-shot financial chance he couldn't bet on, decided to take a chance on it. He was so confident, in fact, that he agreed to be responsible for the Yankees' leftover debt from 1951 - which got the franchise off to a flying standstill.
Everyone tried hard, but there were too many obstacles. Fleming does some of his best work in describing the racial situation in Dallas, which was not pretty at the time. The new Dallas Texans had three African-American players on the roster, and Miller had plans of having integrated seating in the Cotton Bowl for games. But the powers that be wouldn't let the races sit near each other, generating substantial anger among both whites - who wanted no part of integration - and blacks - who wanted no part of sitting in the worst seats while sections of the stadium went unused. It's not exactly a formula for success. Dallas wasn't quite ready for the NFL, although the Texans probably knocked down a few walls that helped pave the way for the arrival of the Dallas Cowboys in 1960.
(Just to confuse things a little more, 1960 also was the year that the American Football League was formed, and a team in Texas debuted as ... the Dallas Texans. That team couldn't compete with the Cowboys and eventually moved to Kansas City.)
The original Texans started slowly and then got worse. Attendance was never good and quickly faded to virtually nothing. Before the season, ownership essentially gave up and handed the franchise back to the league, which had it finish the season by playing road games and paid its bills. The Texans finished 1-11, with the win coming over a Chicago team that didn't even bother to play its starters until late in the game. Coach George Halas of the Bears was a little too overconfident about that one. Eventually, NFL commissioner Bert Bell convinced Carroll Rosenbloom to take over the team and move it to Baltimore, where it thrived for quite a while.
But there's still a bit of a legacy here, as the Texans had more talent on the field than off it. Gino Marchetti found a home in Baltimore and became a legend. Art Donovan not only had Hall of Fame talent, joining Marchetti in Canton, but he also was a world-class party animal. Quite a few of the laughs in this book are provided by Donovan, and deservedly so. Running back Buddy Young, an African-American, was simply beloved by teammates and fans wherever he went. George Taliaferro is recognized as one of the Black pioneers of the sport, and went on to a life that earned him a statue by the stadium at Indiana University. There are several other connections to the Texans involving football standouts (on and off the field) that are pointed out here, thanks to some fine research. Therefore, it's easy to keep an interest in the material here, particularly if you enjoy reading about football history.
Admittedly, not everyone qualifies for that last classification. Some gray hair might be needed to appreciate what happened in some cases. Even so, "A Big Mess in Texas" nicely paints a picture of the last NFL team go go under financially. It doesn't take very long to go through it, and there are plenty of interesting moments to push the reader along. Fleming did good work here.
Four stars
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