In the Wild West, bullets flew in barrooms; today, it’s epiphanies. One should beware of both.
A sometimes teary and always beery memoir of a son, a dying father, and their mutual love affair with Cleveland and its football Browns.
U.S. News and World Report editor McGraw begins in August 1999 on the day his father, terminally ill with colon cancer, entered a hospice. First identifying himself as “the family fuckup” (a characterization he proves beyond a reasonable doubt in subsequent pages), the author then adopts a rough chronology, following in desultory fashion the dismal fortunes of the 1999 Browns, the NFL expansion team awarded to Cleveland after the previous owner, Art Modell, had whisked the old Browns away to greener (i.e., more profitable) pastures in Baltimore (a “little rape act,” as McGraw puts it). Intercut with brief accounts of the 1999 Browns’ 2–14 season are descriptions of the author’s Irish Catholic boyhood and extraordinarily dissolute adolescence, of his father (a noted Cleveland trial attorney who was both hero and nemesis to his son), of the “old” (highly successful) Browns, of other professional athletic teams in Cleveland, of the hours the author spent in neighborhood bars (where he was a popular regular), and of his father’s final moments of life. McGraw is disturbed that the new Browns seem more interested in luring yuppie families to the games than in catering to their old fans (who, as the author admits, were noted for drunkenness, violence, and urinating in drinking fountains). “[E]verything about these new Browns seemed regimented and scripted,” he complains—and in one manic, indecent burst of hyperbole he compares the current team management to Nazis. McGraw’s other principal concern is to make certain we know about his prodigious drinking problem; for most of his adulthood, we learn, he has been drunk—a condition that would explain some of his more bizarre declarations (e.g., women have not played football, so they are more likely than men to hold grudges).
In the Wild West, bullets flew in barrooms; today, it’s epiphanies. One should beware of both.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-49833-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
A colorful history of the Univ. of Texas Longhorns football program by Austin sportswriters Maher and Bohls, who help explain the mentality behind the unofficial team slogan, ``Be number one, or be no one.'' The Longhorns won their last national championship in 1969, crowning the glory days of coach Darrell Royal, a legendary figure who led the team to ten Cotton Bowls and never had a losing season in 20 years. Opening the 1990 season under head coach David McWilliams, following a losing 1989 campaign and scandals involving steroids, gambling, and academic snafus, there was little reason for optimism. But a convincing win against Penn State and a close loss to tough Colorado showed promise of better things. Bookend tackles Stan Thomas, 6'6'', 300 lbs., and Chuck Johnson, 6'5'', 275 lbs., brought back memories of yesteryear, when grind-it-out trench warfare was the Longhorns' strong suit. Interspersed with descriptions of the 1990 season are glances back at the Royal years and after, with profiles of athletic director DeLoss Dodds, running back Earl Campbell, ``the perma-pressed [Coach Fred] Akers era,'' and powerful ``Czar'' Frank Erwin, who was chairman of the Board of Regents in the 60's and 70's. Maher and Bohls also examine—and only occasionally soft-pedal—the issues of racism (Royal ``didn't manage to recruit a black to his football team until'' 1969), NCAA recruiting violations, and drug use and other scandals that have plagued college football in recent years. As the Longhorns progress through the 10-1, 1990 season en route to an embarrassing loss to Miami in the Cotton Bowl, there are big wins against rival Oklahoma, Arkansas, TCU, and Houston, amply detailed and analyzed by the authors, who are both fans and critics of the ``whatever it takes'' football philosophy. As much fun as a Texas barbecue, but with its serious side. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-06305-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
A new convert to the game of football, Oppenheimer (Private Demons, 1988) decided to observe, record, and analyze the daily activity of her son's 1988 Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School team. Like the team's season, the results are mixed. Toby, senior offensive lineman in only his second year, didn't like the idea: ``What seventeen-year-old wants his mother hanging around a locker room?'' The BCC Barons and head coach Pete White, meanwhile, felt there was reason for optimism despite going 5-5 in 1987, their best record in years. ``Win 8 in '88 and go to state!'' was the battle cry. The talent at this ethnically diverse, affluent suburban school included a 300-lb. center, a 5'-6'' Korean linebacker, a swift Jamaican running back, and an assortment of blacks, Asians, and white kids more inclined toward soccer. It wasn't always a comfortable mix. As Oppenheimer follows their progress, she scrutinizes their attitudes toward one another and the coaches, toward winning and losing, their sex lives, and their use of drugs and alcohol. Fighting off her own anxieties—``Zen and the art of football parenting''—about her son, she rarely inserts herself in the picture but allows the boys to speak in their own, often inarticulate, tiresome way: But I'm, like, okay, so I go, and he goes.... There's a disappointing opening game; a racist coach (``black kids...were more arrogant, tougher, meaner''); a bitter, injury-rife, one-point loss to rival Einstein; the boys' cockiness following the homecoming victory; and, finally, the season-ending trouncing at the hands of ``mammoth, untouchable, abandon-all-hope'' Gaithersburg. The annual banquet, despite the 4-6 record, would toast individual achievements and look toward next year. At times self-conscious and shrill (the locker room, ``a place for the ancient rites of grabass'') and at other times perceptive, but Oppenheimer never quite puts it all together. Rather like missing the point after.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-68754-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
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