The Perils of Being a Football Writer

Ring Lardner (1885–1933)
From The Great American Sports Page: A Century of Classic Columns

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University of Chicago cheerleader and football player, 1907. Illustration by F. Earl Christy (1882–1961). For several years during the first decade of the twentieth century, Christy produced variations of an annual theme for college sports team merchandising, including postcards, posters, programs, and even pillows. (Library of Congress)

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When Ring Lardner was a junior at Niles High School in Michigan, he “was introduced,” as he put it a quarter century later, “to Cicero, German, geometry, gen. history and 2 other studies which I forget.” He was also introduced to football, playing tackle for the school team. His start in the first game was not promising, as he recalled in the folksy vernacular that had become his trademark:

We was playing Carroll Hall again and the ground was covered with wet snow. We had to punt and I started down the field hoping I would not get there first as their punt catcher was a man named Hogan. Well I did not get there first or last neither one as I decided to stop on the way and lay down a wile. This decision was reached immediately after receiving a special message from admirers on the side lines in the form of a stone carefully wrapped up in wet snow. The message was intended for my ear and came to the right address. For the rest of that fall I was what you might term stone deaf on that side and I thought maybe that was the reason I never heard our quarterback call my signal.

In spite of the injury, which has more than a hint of embellishment, Lardner finished out the year on the team. Ring Lardner Jr. later pointed out in his memoir of the family that it was remarkable his father played football at all. “Ring was born with a deformed foot, which was corrected by an operation in infancy and a metal brace he wore till he was eleven. The fact that he played tackle on the high school football team in his junior year would be an impressive indication of his recovery, except for the supplementary fact that his graduating class consisted of eleven girls and five boys.”

Much of Ring Lardner’s celebrated sports journalism covers baseball, as does his early short fiction, including the Jack Keefe stories collected in his best-known book, You Know Me Al. Yet in the early days of his career, writing for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, he also wrote about football, and his articles, which tended to be more straightforward than his baseball journalism, were admired by readers, players, and coaches. In 1915, when he had become a household name for his nationally syndicated daily column, “In the Wake of the News,” Amos Alonzo Stagg, the legendary University of Chicago coach, praised his football reporting in a profile published by the Press Club of Chicago’s magazine, The Scoop. “Lardner comes to the training quarters after the game with the other reporters. He doesn’t ask any questions. But he listens to the others’ questions while those big eyes of his are roaming around. Then he goes to his office and writes a story that contains more real football information than any of the others have gathered.”

Known among his colleagues and players for a deceptively quiet demeanor, Lardner could be coyly mischievous in print, and he occasionally used his column as an opportunity for hoaxes and pranks. He recalled one such episode:

On Thanksgiving morning I printed a dream story of a Michigan-Chicago game that was supposed to take place that afternoon. I wrote an introduction and followed it with a probable line-up, naming players who had been stars ten or twenty years in the past.

Now, there had been no hint of a resumption of athletic relations between Chicago and Michigan. Moreover, Thanksgiving games had been ruled out of the Middle West long, long before, because they interfered with church or turkey or something. Nevertheless, believe it or not, a crowd of more than five hundred people—this is Mr. Stagg's estimate—went to the University of Chicago's football field that day and stood around for hours, waiting for the gates or the ticket windows to open. At length they returned home mad, and many of them telephoned indignant messages to my boss.

Then as now, fans took football seriously, and a reporter whose writing seemed unreasonably critical or dismissive of the home team could expect hostile reactions in the form of angry letters or worse. In 1921, after Lardner and his family had moved to New York, he wrote “The Perils of Being a Football Writer,” a satirical piece recalling—and exaggerating—the occasionally tense relations between sports journalists, team members, and the fans.

Note: Joe Miller was a British actor among the Drury Lane players during the early decades of the eighteenth century. His reputation for seriousness outside of the theater led members of his troupe to credit him teasingly for their new jokes. After his death, the writer John Mottley published Joe Miller's Jests, or the Wits Vade-Mecum (1739), which was reprinted in dozens of revised editions during subsequent decades. By the end of the century, several competing series appeared, each carrying Miller’s name, which until the early twentieth century became for joke books what Webster’s is for dictionaries. Fielding Harris Yost was the University of Michigan football coach from 1901 to 1926, during which the team won ten Big Ten titles and six national championships.

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For this week’s selection, we depart from the usual format and reproduce the selection, in its entirety, below.
You may also download it as a PDF or view it in Google Docs.

The Perils of Being a Football Writer

CWell friends here it is the middle of the football season and maybe your favorite team looks like it will win the championship, and I don’t want to be no kill joy but I can’t resist from telling you what a treat you missed this fall namely I was going to write up some of the big games down east but at the last minute the boss said no. He didn’t state no reasons but I wouldn’t be surprised if I knew what they was and guess he is right for once. I don’t know nothing about the game but that don’t seem to stop a few of the other boys that is writeing it up and I doubt if my mgr. took that part of it into consideration but I guess he felt like my write ups would be kind of silly and I might get smart and introduce a spirit of levity into my write ups which would be out of keeping with a game which is almost sacred you might say and the coaches and aluminum of all the different colleges would be off of me for life. Then in the 2d place maybe he asked the different newspapers if they wanted the stuff and they all said no. If that is the case it may of had something to do with his decision as he is funny that way.

Well anyway I ain’t going to write up on football games but wile we are on the subject I would like to say a few wds. in regards to this great autumn complaint and firstly I beg to assure my readers that when informed that my services as football reporter was neither required or desired I managed to not break down in public because I once had that job for several seasons and I wouldn’t number it amongst the melons of journalism.

From the middle of Sept. till xmas a football reporter can’t go in his office without they s a bunch of letters from students or old grads or the coaches themselfs and the letters always starts out by calling you some name and then the writer goes on to say why and the he—ll don’t you give more space to the old Yellow and Pink. All we ask is a square deal, but we ain’t getting it. By a square deal they mean 8 columns about the old Yellow and Pink and nothing about nobody else and the 8 columns has got to be 8 columns of glory hallelujah. Maybe it’s necessary to mention that the Yellow and Pink was beat 98 to 0 last Saturday by the Old Mauve, but you are supposed to excuse this on the grounds that Buster Gifford the Yellow quarterback, was out of the game with a hangnail, but even at that the old Yellow would of rallied and tied the score in the 4th period only just as they were getting started, Jesse James, the head lineman, called an offside and the 5 yd penalty took the heart out of our boys. Coach Dunglebury says the penalty was a outrage as none of his men was ever offside in their life. He had learned them different.

Well friends when a man is a football reporter he gets acquainted with the different coaches and asst. coaches and theys a few of them that is as good fellows as you want to meet a specially some of the asst coaches and some of my best friends is asst coaches and a few head coaches too. And if any of the last named is reading this article I want them to understand that they are not the ones I am talking mean about. It’s the ones that ain’t reading this article that I refer to when I say that they’s no class of people that compares with head coaches when it comes to fair mindness unlest it’s the boys that wrote the official communiques during the war.

Dureing my turn of service as a football expert they was numerous occasions when different head coaches spent the sabbath writeing a letter to my sporting editor asking him to give me the air as a special favor to them. And they were also 2 occasions when coaches wrote to him and said that my write up of their game the day before was the best football report they had ever read and lest my readers should think I am bragging I will hasten to exclaim that in each of these 2 cases the teams who these gents coached had win a close game and my articles was nothing but hymns of praise for how well the teams were coached.

One of a football reporter’s little chores is generally to look up both coaches after the game and see what they have got to say for themself. The coach of the winning team pretty near kisses you but you don’t no sooner than lay eyes on the other guy when you realize for the first time that the result of the game was your fault. I won’t repeat none of the alibis that these birds have thought up as you would think I was copying out of Joe Miller’s joke book but instead of that I will tell you about the time I got the surprise of my young life and that was up to Ann Arbor, Mich. Cornell and Michigan had just had a alleged contest and the score was something like 35 to 10 in favor of Cornell. So afterwards I went in the Michigan dressing room to see Mr Yost and there he was smileing from ear to ear and I says
“Well what about it?”

“Well,” he says, “I guess we was lucky to score.”

The trainer worked on me for a hr.

I don’t know how they are running it out west now days but here in the east the coaches has a meeting in the off season and picks out the officials for their next season’s games and here is another place where fair play and sport for sport’s sakes comes leaping to the surface like a ton of lead. I don’t need to go into no details but it would be kind of fun to see the same system tried out in big league baseball, namely let the managers pick out their own umpires. As soon as a ball club lost a game, why the manager would say, “He can’t never umpire no more games for me” and when 8 games was lost the manager would be out of umpires and congress would half to pass conscription.

And it would also be fun if the football coaches was allowed to tell the newspapers who they could send to report their games. A lot of the boys that is now writeing up the games would have their Saturdays free for golf.

Originally published November 6, 1921, in various newspapers via the Bell Syndicate.