Among players, while we’re playing we’re very close. Some of the best clubs I’ve played with have this intimacy—an intimacy modern man hardly ever achieves. We can see each other naked, emotionally, physically. We’re plugged into each other, because we need each other. There have been times when I knew what the other guy was thinking without him ever talking to me. When that happens, we can do anything together.
It can’t be just a job. It’s not worth playing just for money. It’s a way of life. When we were kids there was the release in playing, the sweetness in being able to move and control your body. This is what play is. Beating somebody is secondary. When I was a kid, to really
move
was my delight. I felt released because I could move around anybody. I was free.
That exists on the pro level, but there’s the money aspect. You know they’re making an awful lot of money off you. You know you’re just a piece of property. When an older player’s gone, it’s not just his body. With modern training methods you can play a long time. But you just get fed up with the whole business. It becomes a job, just a shitty job. (Laughs.)
I’m not wild about living in hotels, coming in late at night, and having to spend time in a room waiting for a game. You’ve got a day to kill and the game’s in back of your mind. It’s hard to relax. It’s hard to read a good book. I’ll read an easy book or go to a movie to kill the time. I didn’t mind killing time when I was younger, but I resent killing time now. (Laughs.) I don’t want to
kill
time. I want to
do
something with my time.
Traveling in the big jets and going to and from hotels is very tough. We’re in New York on a Wednesday, Philadelphia on a Thursday, Buffalo on a Saturday, Pittsburgh on a Sunday, and Detroit on a Tuesday. That’s just a terrible way to live. (Laughs.) After the game on Sunday, I am tired —not only with my body, which is not a bad kind of tiredness, I’m tired emotionally, tired mentally. I’m not a very good companion after those games.
It’s a lot tougher when things are going badly. It’s more gritty and you don’t feel very good about yourself. The whole object of a pro game is to win. That is what we sell. We sell it to a lot of people who don’t win at all in their regular lives. They involve themselves with
their
team, a winning team. I’m not cynical about this. When we win, there’s also a carry-over in us. Life is a little easier. But in the last two or three years fatigue has been there. I’m sucked out. But that’s okay. I’d sooner live like that than be bored. If I get a decent sleep, a bit of food that’s good and strong, I’m revived. I’m alive again.
The fans touch us, particularly when we’ve won. You can feel the pat of hands all over. On the back, on the shoulder, they want to shake your hand. When I’m feeling good about myself, I really respond to this. But if I don’t feel so good, I play out the role. You have to act it out. It has nothing to do with pure play. It has nothing to do with the feeling I had when I was a kid.
’Cause hell, nobody recognized me. I didn’t have a role to play. Many of us are looking for some kind of role to play. The role of the professional athlete is one that I’ve learned to play very well. Laughing with strangers. It doesn’t take much. It has its built-in moves, responses. There is status for the fans, but there’s not a whole lot of status for me. (Laughs.) Not now. I know it doesn’t mean very much. I shy away from it more and more. When I’m not feeling good and somebody comes up—“Hello, Eric”—I’m at times a bit cold and abrupt. I can see them withdrawing from me, hurt. They want to be plugged into something and they’re not. They may make a slurring remark. I can’t do anything about it.
I’m fighting the cynicism. What I’d like to do is find an alter-life and play a little more. I don’t have another vocation. I have a feeling unless I find one, my life might be a big anticlimax. I could get a job, but I don’t want a job. I never had a job in the sense that I had to earn a living just for the sake of earning a living. I may have to do that, but I sure hope I don’t.
I have doubts about what I do. I’m not that sure of myself. It doesn’t seem clear to me at times. I’m a man playing a boy’s game. Is this a valid reason for making money? Then I turn around and think of a job. I’ve tried to be a stockbroker. I say to a guy, “I got a good stock, you want to buy it?” He says, “No.” I say, “Okay.” You don’t want to buy, don’t buy. (Laughs.) I’m not good at persuading people to buy things they don’t want to buy. I’m just not interested in the power of money. I found that out. That’s the way one keeps score—the amount of money you earned. I found myself bored with that.
I’ve worked on construction and I liked that best of all. (Laughs.) I’d been working as a stockbroker and I couldn’t stand it any more. I got drunk one Friday night and while I was careening around town I ran into this guy I knew from the past. He said for the hell of it, “Why don’t you come and work on the Hancock Building with me?” He was a super on the job. The next Monday I showed up. I stayed for a week. I was interested in seeing how a big building goes up—and working with my hands.
A stockbroker has more status. He surrounds himself with things of status. But the stockbroker comes to see me play, I don’t go to see him be a stockbroker. (Laughs.)
The real status is what my peers think of me and what I think of myself. The players have careful self-doubts at times. We talk about our sagging egos. Are we really that famous? Are we really that good? We have terrible doubts. (Laughs.) Actors may have something of this. Did I do well? Am I worth this applause? Is pushing the puck around really that meaningful? (Laughs.) When I’m not pushing that puck well, how come the fans don’t like me? (Laughs.) Then there’s the reverse reaction—a real brashness. They’re always rationalizing to each other. That’s probably necessary. It’s not a bad way to handle things when you have no control over them. Players who are really put together, who have few doubts, are usually much more in control. If you’re recognized by your peers, you’re all right.
I still like the physicality, the sensuality of life. I still like to use my body. But the things I like now are more soft. I don’t want to beat people. I don’t want to prove anything. I have a friend who used to play pro football, but who shares my philosophy. We get into the country that is stark and cold and harsh, but there’s a great aesthetic feedback. It’s soft and comforting and sweet. We come out there with such enormous energy and so fit. We often go into town like a couple of fools and get mildly drunk and laugh a lot.
Being a physical man in the modern world is becoming obsolete. The machines have taken the place of that. We work in offices, we fight rules and corporations, but we hardly ever hit anybody. Not that hitting anybody is a solution. But to survive in the world at one time, one had to stand up and fight—fight the weather, fight the land, or fight the rocks. I think there is a real desire for man to do that. Today he has evolved into being more passive, conforming . . .
I think that is why the professional game, with its terrific physicality—men getting together on a cooperative basis—this is appealing to the middle-class man. He’s the one who supports professional sports.
I think it’s a reflection of the North American way of life. This is one of the ways you are somebody—you beat somebody. (Laughs.) You’re better than they are. Somebody has to be less than you in order for you to be somebody. I don’t know if that’s right any more. I don’t have that drive any more. If I function hard, it’s against a hard environment. That’s preferable to knocking somebody down.
I come up against a hard young stud now, and he wants the puck very badly, I’m inclined to give it to him. (Laughs.) When you start thinking like that you’re in trouble, as far as being a pro athlete is involved. But I don’t want to be anybody any more in those terms. I’ve had some money, I’ve had some big fat times, I’ve been on the stage.
It’s been a good life. Maybe I could have done better, have a better record or something like that. But I’ve really had very few regrets over the past twenty years. I can enjoy some of the arts that I had shut myself off from as a kid. Perhaps that is my only regret. The passion for the game was so all-consuming when I was a kid that I blocked myself from music. I cut myself off from a certain broadness of experience. Maybe one has to do that to fully explore what they want to do the most passionately.
I know a lot of pro athletes who have a capacity for a wider experience. But they wanted to become champions. They had to focus themselves on their one thing completely. His primary force when he becomes champion is his ego trip, his desire to excel, to be somebody special. To some degree, he must dehumanize himself. I look forward to a lower key way of living. But it must be physical. I’m sure I would die without it, become a drunk or something.
I still like to skate. One day last year on a cold, clear, crisp afternoon, I saw this huge sheet of ice in the street. Goddamn, if I didn’t drive out there and put on my skates. I took off my camel-hair coat. I was just in a suit jacket, on my skates. And I flew. Nobody was there. I was free as a bird. I was really happy. That goes back to when I was a kid. I’ll do that until I die, I hope. Oh, I was free!
The wind was blowing from the north. With the wind behind you, you’re in motion, you can wheel and dive and turn, you can lay yourself into impossible angles that you never could walking or running. You lay yourself at a forty-five degree angle, your elbows virtually touching the ice as you’re in a turn. Incredible! It’s beautiful! You’re breaking the bounds of gravity. I have a feeling this is the innate desire of man.
(His eyes are glowing.) I haven’t kept many photographs of myself, but I found one where I’m in full flight. I’m leaning into a turn. You pick up the centrifugal forces and you lay in it. For a few seconds, like a gyroscope, they support you. I’m in full flight and my head is turned. I’m concentrating on something and I’m grinning. That’s the way I like to picture myself. I’m something else there. I’m on another level of existence, just being in pure motion. Going wherever I want to go, whenever I want to go. That’s nice, you know. (Laughs softly.)
GEORGE ALLEN
Head coach and general manager of the Washington Redskins. One word, if but one were chosen, describes him: intense. One aim, if but one were chosen, explains him: to win. An air of monasticism as well as industry pervades. He is Parsifal seeking the Holy Grail each Sunday afternoon of the season.
We’re at the headquarters of the professional football team. It is an enclave
in Virginia, some twenty-five miles outside Washington. It has the appearance of a successful industrial complex. Aside from blackboards, chalked with arcane diagrams, there are plaques on the walls of the offices bearing the recurring encomium: “. . . for the unselfish sacrifice while serving with outstanding leadership, vision, ability. . . .” Most striking are two silver discs under glass: it is the Fiftieth Anniversary American Legion Award for God and Country.
The conference room, in which the frequently interrupted conversation took place (his secretary, besieged by callers, in person and on the telephone, beckoned him out every few minutes), has the feel of “clout.” The enormous table should be the envy of any board of directors. He appears harried by the pressures of the moment. Tomorrow the training camp opens in preparation for the forthcoming season.
I took the job and walked out in the middle of this woods. I call it our Shangri-La. We’ve got everything we need here to win. And we’re going to improve it. We’re putting in a hundred yards of Astroturf, and they’re replacing the cinder track with a synthetic track, tartan. There will be no distractions.
We’ve been working in the off-season as much as twelve, fourteen, fifteen hours a day. When the season begins, it’s seven days a week, morning, noon, and night. To get ready for football.
I like to make notes at home and go over things. I take a pad and a pencil and carry it around with me all the time. I want to read, things that have to be done.
Among the books in his office were
The Encyclopedia of Football, Best Plays,
several by himself, including
Defense Drills, How to Train a Quarterback, The Complete Book of Winning Football Drills,
as well as the
Football Register,
the
Congressional Directory
for the 92nd Congress,
Outstanding Young Men in America,
and
What the Executive Should Know About the Accounting Statements.
You have to put a priority on everything you do each day. If you don’t, you won’t finish it. If you enjoy your job, it isn’t work. It’s fun. If you detest going to work, then you’re looking for ways to beat the clock. I’d rather come to the Redskin Park and do my thing, so to speak, than I would play golf. Golf is a fine sport, but it’s too time-consuming. I don’t have that time schedule.
When you get so engrossed in your job during the season it has to come ahead of your family. I’m fortunate that I have an understanding wife, who’s a good mother. My children have now kind of accepted that routine. They’ve been brought up with it and it’s just the way I am. It may be a mistake. It should be that your family and church come first. But I think that during the season there’s so much to be done. I am even working right up to the kickoff to figure out a way that we can still win.
Everything we do is based on winning. I don’t care how hard you work or how well organized you are, if you don’t win, what good is it? It’s down the drain. You can have a tremendous game plan, but if you lose the game, what good was the plan?
One of the greatest things is to be in a locker room after a win. And be with the players and coaches and realize what’s been accomplished, what you’ve gone through. The rewards are not necessarily tangible. It’s the hard work and the agony and the blood and sweat and tears.
When you lose, it’s a morgue. That’s the way it should be, because you’ve failed. Once in a while you’ll see some tears. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with crying. I think it’s good, it’s emotional. I think when you put a lot of yourself into something it should take a lot out. Some people can lose and then go out and be the life of the party. I can’t. The only way you can get over a loss is to win the next week.