As I do every year, I intend to follow the NFL Draft with interest. Usually, it's to follow the selections of the Packers, and while I'm at it, the rest of the NFC North. And the first round pick of the Raiders, but that last one's just for the comedic value.
This year, it'll be a little different. There's significant drama behind this year's draft, due to the lockout; the players selected won't be able to get to training camp or any team facilities or anything else official until the work stoppage ends. There is much being made of picking players who are going to be ready right away. The early picks will be presented with a player-sponsored event called 'The Debut' and asked to attend that instead of the draft (as it happens, the players are largely choosing to attend both).
I'm not interested much in that.
For me, the real drama comes two days later, in rounds 4-7. Specifically, the tail end, when players begin to wonder whether they'll be drafted at all. In a normal draft, you'd almost rather go undrafted than be taken in the last few selections. Immediately after the final selection is made, all undrafted players become free agents. Just because a player's undrafted doesn't mean they're unwanted, as immediately after the draft, teams rush the phones, trying to snap up as many undrafted players as they can. With many undrafted players getting calls from multiple teams, they get to choose their own situation, and sign with the team that gives them the best chance at a roster spot. Compare to the drafted player, who has their team chosen for them; if he gets cut, by the time it happens, the other teams have likely settled into their roster and it becomes significantly harder to displace someone.
With the lockout in effect, the situation is completely different at the draft's back end.
Players can have no contact with coaches, trainers or the front office in a lockout, save for labor negotiations. Nobody can be signed. For the drafted players, this is an obvious inconvenience, as they can't get contracts worked out or do any training at their team's facility. But they know they have a team, and as such, they can contact their new teammates and set up unofficial practices.
This is something the undrafted players don't have. Not having a home in a work stoppage is not an inconvenience. It is a disaster. They have no teammates. They have no team. They have no link to the NFL to hang onto over the course of the stoppage. Until they have a team, they don't even have much of an argument: if they have no team, they're not playing anyway, and they're not being locked out of anything until they belong to a team. They can't exactly count on other football leagues either, such as the arena league, UFL and CFL, as these jobs in the event of an extended stoppage could be taken by better, more proven players- NFL veterans and high-round draft picks seeking to keep their form up and make some small bit of money while waiting the owners out. (In a lockout, they are unemployed, and can rent themselves out like that.) The UFL will try to poach some of them, but there are only five teams in the UFL, and only so many jobs. And with an enforced disconnect from all 32 teams, and no NFL teammates to turn to, all that the undrafted players unable to find work in the UFL or some other league can do is wait and hope that the lockout is resolved, and fast. Because you may be wanted by the NFL, but they're not going to go out of their way to look at you. If they wanted you that badly, they'd have drafted you.
In the event of a lockout that loses the NFL the entire season, the non-UFL undrafted will have mostly wound up a year out of football. Football is not a sport where you can take a year off with no job and pop back in. Once you stop playing, you usually stop playing. Worse yet for the undrafted, in the case of a lost season, between them and the first NFL game stands not only a year of no link to football, but if a deal is reached after the season is called off, a deal reached between the cancellation of the season and this time next year would lead to a second draft. That's a whole new set of draftees, and a whole new set of undrafted players, players just like them but not a year out of football.
And even if a deal is reached in time for the season, the reason all those undrafted players get called up is that the teams have 80-man rosters to fill for training camp, which will eventually be cut to 53. Undrafted players help make up the numbers and fill out any bare positions not filled in the draft. The longer the lockout, the less the teams can mess around with extra roster spots, and the less opportunity the undrafted get.
Either way, this year, if you don't get drafted, and the UFL doesn't call, you're pretty much hosed.
Usually, the NFL draft is watched to see highly-touted players at the very beginning of their careers. This year, at the other end, you might see players for whom this is either the beginning, or the end.
Showing posts with label football. Show all posts
Showing posts with label football. Show all posts
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Green And Yellow Edition
First off, clearly, this must be done.
And an NFC Champions shirt must be bought. That done, an addition to the Rapid-Fire Book Club was done in the meantime; there was a Barnes & Noble gift card that needed a workout.
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Colossal Collection of Quotable Quotes
Fuller, Alexandra- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (suggested by someone on a Fark thread)
Grant, John- Discarded Science: Ideas That Seemed Good at the Time...
Sass, Erik; Wiegand, Steve- The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits
In addition, my birthday brought three Penny Arcade collections: The Warsun Prophecies, Birds Are Weird, and The Case of the Mummy's Gold, which makes that a complete set of the first six books there.
In conclusion, in the interest of equal time, here is the Steelers' equivalent song.
And an NFC Champions shirt must be bought. That done, an addition to the Rapid-Fire Book Club was done in the meantime; there was a Barnes & Noble gift card that needed a workout.
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Colossal Collection of Quotable Quotes
Fuller, Alexandra- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (suggested by someone on a Fark thread)
Grant, John- Discarded Science: Ideas That Seemed Good at the Time...
Sass, Erik; Wiegand, Steve- The Mental Floss History of the World: An Irreverent Romp Through Civilization's Best Bits
In addition, my birthday brought three Penny Arcade collections: The Warsun Prophecies, Birds Are Weird, and The Case of the Mummy's Gold, which makes that a complete set of the first six books there.
In conclusion, in the interest of equal time, here is the Steelers' equivalent song.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Tonawanda Kardex
In the modern-day NFL, it's easy to forget the league's roots; the years prior to the first Super Bowl are rarely brought up beyond vague references to leather helmets. It's often easy to forget any sports league's roots, in fact; the days before the league stabilized, expanded, and built the palatial stadiums they currently call home. It's easy to forget the sport's humble beginnings, when teams popped up anywhere that would have them, when games were played in less-than-ideal facilities more likely than not built for something else, when it was uncertain which teams would live and which teams would die, but it was certain that if the league wasn't careful, EVERY team would die. It often makes for some of the most fascinating stories any sport has to offer, as one can sit watching highly-trained athletes with highly specialized skills decked out in state-of-the-art equipment and marvel at how, many years ago, these same athletes would have been semi-random guys with day jobs trying to make do with whatever was handy that day.
I imagine part of the reason I take an interest in it is because, at least in the NFL's case, I'm in the catchment area of the last true callback to that era of the NFL, the Green Bay Packers- the last blue-collar, small-factory-town team. Other teams from that era exist, but the callback sputters out somehow for all but the Packers. The Chicago Bears are no longer the Decatur Staleys. The Detroit Lions are no longer the Portsmouth Spartans. The New York Giants are still the New York Giants, but... they're the New York Giants, not the Poughkeepsie Giants or the Utica Giants or the Syracuse Giants.
Most of the other teams from that era have simply died off. The graves of teams such as the Hammond Pros, Oorang Indians and Rock Island Independents go unmarked and unvisited, even teams that won titles such as the Providence Steam Roller and the Pottsville Maroons (whose title was later taken away and given to what are now the Arizona Cardinals, a transgression that Pottsville curses the owning Bidwell family for to this day). And even among these gravestones, there is one that is less loved than any other, seen only as a curiosity: the Tonawanda Kardex.
The official record will show the Kardex, otherwise known as the Lumbermen, as having lost one game in 1921, a road game, by the score of 45-0, and then folding. This is officially the shortest tenure in NFL history. In reality, it's a little more complicated than that.
Tonawanda, a suburb of Buffalo, first saw the All-Tonawanda All-Stars in 1916, playing semi-pro ball at a high school field. Coached by Walter "Tam" Rose, the All-Stars played in the the New York Pro Football League, which would later merge with a like-minded league in Ohio to create the NFL. The All-Stars-slash-Lumbermen would win that league in their second season, 1917, defeating the Rochester Jeffersons in the final. 1919 brought a trip to the semifinals.
In 1920, New York and Ohio joined forces to create the American Professional Football League, which would later be renamed the NFL. The Lumbermen were not part of the inaugural class, but would play a mixture of teams that were and teams that weren't. They went 7-1, including a 14-3 win over the Jeffersons on Thanksgiving (which, by the way, was the first year of the NFL Thanksgiving tradition.)
In 1921, however, the league worked to keep league teams from playing non-league teams. Tonawanda decided to take the plunge- it only cost $50 to join.
There were, however, two changes made. They were renamed the Tonawanda Kardex, after sponsor Rand Kardex, an company that six years later would become Remington Rand, the company that created UNIVAC. The other change was that the Kardex would be a traveling team. If they were going pro, the Kardex needed money, and Tonawanda, New York was not the place to go look for money. They wouldn't be the only such team; the Buffalo News reported at the time that there would be "eight or ten such teams to do the touring to the big cities where the dough lies."
First, though, was a tuneup against the Syracuse Pros, who were themselves in what would be their only pro season, and who Tonawanda had previously done well against. Syracuse would have won the game, but a last-second touchdown reception was pulled back on a holding call. The game ended a scoreless tie, contributing to Syracuse's professional lifetime record of 0-2-1, but not counted in Tonawanda's record. Next was supposed to be a game against the amateur Rochester Scalpers, but the game was cancelled. Instead, the Kardex would begin their professional career against the Rochester Jeffersons, who they knew they could take.
They couldn't. The Jeffersons crushed them 45-0, the worst defeat the Kardex had ever suffered. No further details on the game are available.
The writing was on the wall. The Kardex were not up to professional standards and they knew it, folding with only the one game on their record. The Professional Football Researchers Association shows they couldn't find any more opponents to play, but that was probably fine by them. The next season, the franchise fee rose from $50 to $1,000, but the PFRA figured the Kardex "wouldn't have operated had the guarantee been 10 cents."
Buffalo had another team in that era, but it was so haphazard and chaotic that Wikipedia is left calling it "Buffalo (1920s NFL teams)". And with this team and the Kardex, Buffalo's illustrious life of professional football was underway.
I imagine part of the reason I take an interest in it is because, at least in the NFL's case, I'm in the catchment area of the last true callback to that era of the NFL, the Green Bay Packers- the last blue-collar, small-factory-town team. Other teams from that era exist, but the callback sputters out somehow for all but the Packers. The Chicago Bears are no longer the Decatur Staleys. The Detroit Lions are no longer the Portsmouth Spartans. The New York Giants are still the New York Giants, but... they're the New York Giants, not the Poughkeepsie Giants or the Utica Giants or the Syracuse Giants.
Most of the other teams from that era have simply died off. The graves of teams such as the Hammond Pros, Oorang Indians and Rock Island Independents go unmarked and unvisited, even teams that won titles such as the Providence Steam Roller and the Pottsville Maroons (whose title was later taken away and given to what are now the Arizona Cardinals, a transgression that Pottsville curses the owning Bidwell family for to this day). And even among these gravestones, there is one that is less loved than any other, seen only as a curiosity: the Tonawanda Kardex.
The official record will show the Kardex, otherwise known as the Lumbermen, as having lost one game in 1921, a road game, by the score of 45-0, and then folding. This is officially the shortest tenure in NFL history. In reality, it's a little more complicated than that.
Tonawanda, a suburb of Buffalo, first saw the All-Tonawanda All-Stars in 1916, playing semi-pro ball at a high school field. Coached by Walter "Tam" Rose, the All-Stars played in the the New York Pro Football League, which would later merge with a like-minded league in Ohio to create the NFL. The All-Stars-slash-Lumbermen would win that league in their second season, 1917, defeating the Rochester Jeffersons in the final. 1919 brought a trip to the semifinals.
In 1920, New York and Ohio joined forces to create the American Professional Football League, which would later be renamed the NFL. The Lumbermen were not part of the inaugural class, but would play a mixture of teams that were and teams that weren't. They went 7-1, including a 14-3 win over the Jeffersons on Thanksgiving (which, by the way, was the first year of the NFL Thanksgiving tradition.)
In 1921, however, the league worked to keep league teams from playing non-league teams. Tonawanda decided to take the plunge- it only cost $50 to join.
There were, however, two changes made. They were renamed the Tonawanda Kardex, after sponsor Rand Kardex, an company that six years later would become Remington Rand, the company that created UNIVAC. The other change was that the Kardex would be a traveling team. If they were going pro, the Kardex needed money, and Tonawanda, New York was not the place to go look for money. They wouldn't be the only such team; the Buffalo News reported at the time that there would be "eight or ten such teams to do the touring to the big cities where the dough lies."
First, though, was a tuneup against the Syracuse Pros, who were themselves in what would be their only pro season, and who Tonawanda had previously done well against. Syracuse would have won the game, but a last-second touchdown reception was pulled back on a holding call. The game ended a scoreless tie, contributing to Syracuse's professional lifetime record of 0-2-1, but not counted in Tonawanda's record. Next was supposed to be a game against the amateur Rochester Scalpers, but the game was cancelled. Instead, the Kardex would begin their professional career against the Rochester Jeffersons, who they knew they could take.
They couldn't. The Jeffersons crushed them 45-0, the worst defeat the Kardex had ever suffered. No further details on the game are available.
The writing was on the wall. The Kardex were not up to professional standards and they knew it, folding with only the one game on their record. The Professional Football Researchers Association shows they couldn't find any more opponents to play, but that was probably fine by them. The next season, the franchise fee rose from $50 to $1,000, but the PFRA figured the Kardex "wouldn't have operated had the guarantee been 10 cents."
Buffalo had another team in that era, but it was so haphazard and chaotic that Wikipedia is left calling it "Buffalo (1920s NFL teams)". And with this team and the Kardex, Buffalo's illustrious life of professional football was underway.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Killing The Golden Pigskin
Has there ever been an expansion of a popular sport that fewer people asked for than an expansion of the NFL season to 18 games? Sure. Two more games onto the season. Woot.
On the other hand, you're not actually adding any extra football. You're just removing two preseason games- games that people tend to watch anyway- and replacing them with regular-season games. In the process, the starters- which would either have sat out those two games or played at half-tilt and handed things over to lower-level guys fighting for roster spots- will instead have to play every down at full-tilt. And with attention currently focused as it is on injury avoidance, two extra games added onto their current workload is something their bodies are simply not capable of. And everyone is seemingly willing to go to a work stoppage over it.
David Fleming of ESPN's Page 2 envisions the NFL paying dearly for those two extra games, and sooner rather than later. In the process, he also envisions happy days ahead for the UFL, a league that has been positioning itself explicitly as a minor-league outfit.
That's the UFL, which currently boasts talent such as Josh McCown, Brooks Bollinger, Ahman Green, Anthony Davis, Daunte Culpepper, Maurice Clarett, DeMarcus Faggins, Morton Greenwood, Marcel Shipp, and Tim Rattay. If you'd like a look at it, a game is on tonight at 6 PM Eastern on Versus, and boy, is that TV deal starting to look like the best move Versus ever made.
On the other hand, you're not actually adding any extra football. You're just removing two preseason games- games that people tend to watch anyway- and replacing them with regular-season games. In the process, the starters- which would either have sat out those two games or played at half-tilt and handed things over to lower-level guys fighting for roster spots- will instead have to play every down at full-tilt. And with attention currently focused as it is on injury avoidance, two extra games added onto their current workload is something their bodies are simply not capable of. And everyone is seemingly willing to go to a work stoppage over it.
David Fleming of ESPN's Page 2 envisions the NFL paying dearly for those two extra games, and sooner rather than later. In the process, he also envisions happy days ahead for the UFL, a league that has been positioning itself explicitly as a minor-league outfit.
That's the UFL, which currently boasts talent such as Josh McCown, Brooks Bollinger, Ahman Green, Anthony Davis, Daunte Culpepper, Maurice Clarett, DeMarcus Faggins, Morton Greenwood, Marcel Shipp, and Tim Rattay. If you'd like a look at it, a game is on tonight at 6 PM Eastern on Versus, and boy, is that TV deal starting to look like the best move Versus ever made.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Football And Why Its Storytelling Sucks
Football season's on the way, and being a Wisconsinite, it is state law for me to root for the Packers. Football's one of my sports, after all.
But don't expect me to go on about it here like I do with baseball and soccer. That's because as much as I enjoy football, it is terrible at producing the kind of stories I'd want to recount here. We don't have NFL Network in my area, and as far as I'm concerned, it can stay that way.
Why is that? There are a couple reasons.
1: Everyone's face is obscured. That can't be helped. You do have to keep everyone somewhat safe, after all. But when you've got a helmet on, nobody can see who you are. Individualism is gone. You are the name on the back of your jersey, and you are your number. Perhaps you are 'the guy with the dreadlocks coming out of the helmet', but that's really not much to go on. There are no distinctive looks when everyone's got a helmet on, which means no stories about what people go on the field looking like. No afros like half the ABA, no surfer hair like Tim Lincecum, no Snidely Whiplash mustache like Rollie Fingers. Just another guy with the same helmet as everyone else.
2: Highly-choreographed plays. Nobody's got time to be peculiar in any way. Here's your assigned guy, now run away from him/tackle him. That's about it. Run, throw, catch, block, tackle. The most one can do here is make a diffcult catch, or go above and beyond on the tackle, which leads to...
3: Football stories mostly sounding the same anyway. War stories. 'So there I wuz...' After a while, if you're not the war type, they start to blend together in your head. (Unless you decide to go on the speaker circuit, in which case you will tell middle-management types who have spent the last 15 years in a cubicle how what they're doing is exactly like football. These middle-management types deserve every bit of inevitable misdirection they get from a guy that spent a decade repeatedly running headlong into 300-pound college dropouts.)
4: Nobody's running trick plays. Which means no crazy-play stories. They tend to get squashed anyway.
5: The 'No Fun League'. Excessive celebration? 15-yard penalty on the ensuing kickoff. May be good for sportsmanship, but it turns things that much further into a league full of interchangeable dudes who matter to you mainly because of what they did for your fantasy team. Unless you are on defense, in which case you will be stripped of your identity entirely and get lumped in with the rest of your team as one defensive roster spot. A few chosen names may act out- Brett Favre, Chad Ochocinco, Terrell Owens- but mostly names come and go and that's all there is to it. One day revered, the next day forgotten, and even if you're a Hall of Famer, there is every chance a fair number of fans might not recognize you going in even if you played recently. You don't see that happening to baseball or basketball players.
Many of the best stories in football come from the earlier days, when it was a lot looser in operation. You may not want to return to those days of leather helmets and small-town teams that survive three whole seaons before folding and even frequent deaths, but you know the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
More recently, the best stories tend to come when some part of the proceedings goes wrong. The "wardrobe malfunction". "South America's Team". A Packers/Panthers game in 2001 being marred by gigantic clumps of sod being torn from the ground throughout the game.
Most likely, teams' seasons will come and go with little to tell the grandkids about except the final record, and maybe a playoff run or even a Super Bowl win, in which case you'll remember the names of some of the players in the years ongoing.
How'd it happen? The same way it happened every other season. Fun to watch, but difficult to remember.
But don't expect me to go on about it here like I do with baseball and soccer. That's because as much as I enjoy football, it is terrible at producing the kind of stories I'd want to recount here. We don't have NFL Network in my area, and as far as I'm concerned, it can stay that way.
Why is that? There are a couple reasons.
1: Everyone's face is obscured. That can't be helped. You do have to keep everyone somewhat safe, after all. But when you've got a helmet on, nobody can see who you are. Individualism is gone. You are the name on the back of your jersey, and you are your number. Perhaps you are 'the guy with the dreadlocks coming out of the helmet', but that's really not much to go on. There are no distinctive looks when everyone's got a helmet on, which means no stories about what people go on the field looking like. No afros like half the ABA, no surfer hair like Tim Lincecum, no Snidely Whiplash mustache like Rollie Fingers. Just another guy with the same helmet as everyone else.
2: Highly-choreographed plays. Nobody's got time to be peculiar in any way. Here's your assigned guy, now run away from him/tackle him. That's about it. Run, throw, catch, block, tackle. The most one can do here is make a diffcult catch, or go above and beyond on the tackle, which leads to...
3: Football stories mostly sounding the same anyway. War stories. 'So there I wuz...' After a while, if you're not the war type, they start to blend together in your head. (Unless you decide to go on the speaker circuit, in which case you will tell middle-management types who have spent the last 15 years in a cubicle how what they're doing is exactly like football. These middle-management types deserve every bit of inevitable misdirection they get from a guy that spent a decade repeatedly running headlong into 300-pound college dropouts.)
4: Nobody's running trick plays. Which means no crazy-play stories. They tend to get squashed anyway.
5: The 'No Fun League'. Excessive celebration? 15-yard penalty on the ensuing kickoff. May be good for sportsmanship, but it turns things that much further into a league full of interchangeable dudes who matter to you mainly because of what they did for your fantasy team. Unless you are on defense, in which case you will be stripped of your identity entirely and get lumped in with the rest of your team as one defensive roster spot. A few chosen names may act out- Brett Favre, Chad Ochocinco, Terrell Owens- but mostly names come and go and that's all there is to it. One day revered, the next day forgotten, and even if you're a Hall of Famer, there is every chance a fair number of fans might not recognize you going in even if you played recently. You don't see that happening to baseball or basketball players.
Many of the best stories in football come from the earlier days, when it was a lot looser in operation. You may not want to return to those days of leather helmets and small-town teams that survive three whole seaons before folding and even frequent deaths, but you know the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
More recently, the best stories tend to come when some part of the proceedings goes wrong. The "wardrobe malfunction". "South America's Team". A Packers/Panthers game in 2001 being marred by gigantic clumps of sod being torn from the ground throughout the game.
Most likely, teams' seasons will come and go with little to tell the grandkids about except the final record, and maybe a playoff run or even a Super Bowl win, in which case you'll remember the names of some of the players in the years ongoing.
How'd it happen? The same way it happened every other season. Fun to watch, but difficult to remember.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
10,000 Yard Penalty, Repeat First Down
Super Bowl Sunday, might as well show up with a football story. Specifically, let's talk George Trafton.
Trafton won't be hard to find; he's got a bust in Canton for his days playing center for the Bears. He's also got a bust just about everywhere he played, because that's more or less what he did to players. He's known as the roughest player ever to grace the NFL. Rougher than Jack Tatum. Rougher than Bill Romanowski. Rougher than anyone you care to name. One specific day lives on in legend.
That day was October 17, 1920, in Rock Island, Illinois, when the Bears, then the Decatur Staleys, played the Rock Island Independents. Staleys owner George Halas had recieved word that the Independents had designs on neutralizing Trafton.
It didn't quite happen that way.
Within 12 plays, Trafton had knocked four Independents out of the game. Rock Island, seeing the trend forming, sent in a backup with the sole and only goal of taking out Trafton by any means necessary. That guy ended up being carried off on a stretcher. As the Football Hall of Shame tells it, "Trafton had left bloody cleat tracks from the man's forehead to his chin."
A career-ending injury at some point was near-inevitable, and Trafton dutifully oomplied in the fourth quarter by running star halfback Fred Chicken, who was initially pegged in pregame as the player most likely to knock out Trafton, out of the game. According to What a Game They Played: A Inside Look at the Golden Era of Pro Football, "'I tackled him right on the sideline,' Trafton said. 'There was a fence close to the field, and after I hit Chicken he spun up against a fence post and broke his leg. After that the fans were really on me.'"
Were they ever. After the game (the Staleys won 7-0), the fans threw rocks, bottles, anything handy. Trafton attempted to hide his jersey number with a sweatshirt. It didn't work. They followed him into the parking lot, drove him out of a taxi by shattering a window (with a rock), and chased him on foot until some unwitting driver stopped to give Trafton sanctuary and drive him to nearby Davenport, Iowa, where the team was staying.
Three weeks later, the Staleys returned to Rock Island for what would end in a scoreless tie. The fans had not forgotten. Halas still entrusted Trafton after the game with the Staleys' gate receipts for the day. (Accounts differ on whether these receipts amounted to $3,000 or $7,000.) Why? According to Halas, "I knew that if trouble came, I'd only be running for [the money]. Trafton would be running for his life."
Trafton won't be hard to find; he's got a bust in Canton for his days playing center for the Bears. He's also got a bust just about everywhere he played, because that's more or less what he did to players. He's known as the roughest player ever to grace the NFL. Rougher than Jack Tatum. Rougher than Bill Romanowski. Rougher than anyone you care to name. One specific day lives on in legend.
That day was October 17, 1920, in Rock Island, Illinois, when the Bears, then the Decatur Staleys, played the Rock Island Independents. Staleys owner George Halas had recieved word that the Independents had designs on neutralizing Trafton.
It didn't quite happen that way.
Within 12 plays, Trafton had knocked four Independents out of the game. Rock Island, seeing the trend forming, sent in a backup with the sole and only goal of taking out Trafton by any means necessary. That guy ended up being carried off on a stretcher. As the Football Hall of Shame tells it, "Trafton had left bloody cleat tracks from the man's forehead to his chin."
A career-ending injury at some point was near-inevitable, and Trafton dutifully oomplied in the fourth quarter by running star halfback Fred Chicken, who was initially pegged in pregame as the player most likely to knock out Trafton, out of the game. According to What a Game They Played: A Inside Look at the Golden Era of Pro Football, "'I tackled him right on the sideline,' Trafton said. 'There was a fence close to the field, and after I hit Chicken he spun up against a fence post and broke his leg. After that the fans were really on me.'"
Were they ever. After the game (the Staleys won 7-0), the fans threw rocks, bottles, anything handy. Trafton attempted to hide his jersey number with a sweatshirt. It didn't work. They followed him into the parking lot, drove him out of a taxi by shattering a window (with a rock), and chased him on foot until some unwitting driver stopped to give Trafton sanctuary and drive him to nearby Davenport, Iowa, where the team was staying.
Three weeks later, the Staleys returned to Rock Island for what would end in a scoreless tie. The fans had not forgotten. Halas still entrusted Trafton after the game with the Staleys' gate receipts for the day. (Accounts differ on whether these receipts amounted to $3,000 or $7,000.) Why? According to Halas, "I knew that if trouble came, I'd only be running for [the money]. Trafton would be running for his life."
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