Rozelle Read online

  “Well, we had some neighbors who had moved to Modesto the

  year before,” Ray recalled. “They had this ranch, and we thought

  why couldn’t we hold him out a year and let him go on up there

  and work on the ranch so he could fill out physically and do some

  social maturing? He went up there for ten months, and he worked

  with horses and pigs and cows. He set up a basketball hoop to

  improve his game when he had time off. When he came home

  we were amazed. I think he crammed two years of maturity and

  physical growth into those ten months.”

  The sabbatical from school had another far- reaching effect. It

  put him into a social group of classmates that created the bond

  with friends like De Long and Joseph and a number of others that

  lasted all through their adult lives.

  Both his father and De Long remembered the adolescent Pete

  Rozelle as a kid with an enormous drive to get things done but

  with little interest in ego or ceremony. As a case in point, it is

  worth noting that neither of them attended their subsequent grad-

  uations from Compton Junior College after the war. They chose,

  instead, to go fishing.

  Back when they were seniors in 1944 at Compton High, Lyn-

  wood, like the rest of their generation all around the country,

  began to change. Familiar faces disappeared, scattered to the bat-

  tlefields of Europe and the Pacific. World War II was breaking up

  that old gang of Pete’s.

  “I remember,” Rozelle told me, “that when we were juniors in

  high school, Myron had gone to one of those grade- B movies at the

  Arden— I don’t recall which one, but it was probably a ‘John Wayne

  in the Pacific’ kind of flick— and the next day he told me, ‘This is

  personal for me now. I got to get into the navy.’ Well, I felt the same way. My dad was navy in World War I, and Myron and my other

  friends had their minds made up, so I guess mine was made up, too.”

  In the Beginning

  13

  Rozelle tried to enlist three times and was turned down all three. But a challenge to Rozelle was like a debt unpaid. Because

  the military’s left hand never seemed to know what its right hand

  was doing, Rozelle finally got his wish.

  “It was the damnedest thing,” his dad told me.

  He got rejected each time because he was color- blind. They wouldn’t

  let him enlist, but then they drafted him. So Pete goes over to the

  draft board in Los Angeles, and there is this huge line. It must have

  stretched out longer than a city block.

  Well, it was getting near lunch, and one of the guys comes out a

  side door and sees Pete and he hands him some money and asks, “Will

  you get me a quart of milk?“ and Pete says he will if the guys saves

  his place, because Pete is thinking that maybe when he gets back, the

  guy will let him in early.

  When he comes back with the milk and knocks on the side door,

  the fellow takes him inside and asks what he wants— army or navy.

  The guys tells him, “Okay, it’s navy if that’s what you prefer, but all these other guys are going into the army.“ After three tries, he gets

  a guy a quart of milk and he’s in the navy.

  After his basic training he was assigned to a ship— and what a

  ship, a rusty old bucket of bolts called the Gardoqui, named after a Spanish gunboat captured during the Spanish- American War.

  The navy converted it into a class of tanker called the Double

  Eagle but did not rename it. It had been refitted, and its keel was

  laid down at the Kearny shipyard in New Jersey in 1921. The uss

  Missouri it was not.

  “It was an old standard tanker,” Rozelle recalled, not exactly

  the pride of the Pacific fleet.

  What it was was kind of a seagoing filling station. You go out some-

  place and wait, and sooner or later people came to you. It was hardly

  the stuff of which war movies were made.

  We had a small crew (seventy men including officers), and every-

  one had to stand wheel watch. It was so old; it wasn’t electronic and

  14

  In the Beginning

  it was a big, old heavy thing, and you were forever trying to compen-sate because it was so tough to keep it on course.

  Right after the war ended, they sent us into Tokyo Bay, and that

  became kind of a dramatic thing. We were getting close to the main-

  land, and a lookout spotted a floating mine that had broken loose from its mooring. It was headed straight toward us, and I remember we had

  to make a hard right to avoid it. But, really, that was the highlight of my career as far as danger was concerned.

  Two months later we had discharged our cargo and headed back

  to sea, back to Pearl Harbor, through the Panama Canal to Mobile.

  We arrived in January. That’s pretty much my entire navy career.

  “Not exactly,” I suggested. “Myron De Long told me that you

  ran the football pools on the Gardoqui. Did you?”

  “Well, I don’t quite remember that,” he said, but his face lit up in

  the kind of aurora borealis of a smile that was a Rozelle trademark.

  I will admit that on at least on one occasion, I did engage in a little freelance bookmaking.

  I knew a little more about football than most of the crew did. Most

  of them were Catholic, and they were great Notre Dame fans. That’s

  all they were talking about that November because Note Dame was

  getting ready to play Army. Now this was the Blanchard- Davis era,

  and Army was loaded, one of the best college football teams ever.

  Well, all these guys did was talk about the Irish this and the Irish

  that, and so I said, “Well, suppose I take Army, and I’ll give you and the Irish eight points.”

  Rozelle laughed again and said it was the easiest money he ever

  made. Army won by a mere 49– 0.

  “Isn’t that gambling?”

  “Well,” he said, then he paused and threw back his head and

  laughed, “not if you knew football.”

  So here came Pete Rozelle, retired yeoman, retired “bookmaker,”

  and hungry young man, marching home after the war, and if you

  studied him closely at that stage, you would have had to conclude

  In the Beginning

  15

  that there was very little difference between him and millions of other young men in the same circumstance. At loose ends and

  thinking about a career in journalism (his dream was to become

  sports editor of the Los Angeles Times) and entitled to financing from the gi Bill, Rozelle returned to Compton and enrolled in

  the local junior college.

  Among the returning servicemen in that freshman class was his

  old buddy Myron De Long. “A lot of things began to happen that

  year,” De Long recalled. “They obviously shaped his life, and in

  a way they shaped mine as well, because when they were over, I

  knew what I didn’t want to be.”

  The event that had the biggest long- range impact on Rozelle’s

  ultimate calling was taking place a continent away in New York

  City. Even as the old Gardoqui was docking in Mobile for decommissioning, the nfl owners were meeting to vote on a request by

  owner Dan Reeves to move his Cleveland franchise to Los Angeles.

  The Rams had beaten the Washington Redskins a month earlier
/>
  to win the 1945 league championship. But theirs was a typical nfl

  story for many owners. Champions or not, the team had lost fifty

  thousand dollars that year. And the future did not look any better.

  The rival All- America Football Conference’s Cleveland Browns

  were for real. Their league was headed for nfl merger, and the

  Browns were the hottest football team in either league. The pros-

  pect of two Cleveland football teams was unacceptable. It scared

  the hell out of Reeves.

  With a guaranteed lease offer from the Los Angeles Coliseum

  in hand, Reeves sought permission to move. He was denied on the

  very first vote. Enraged, he threatened to walk out and sell the club.

  Then one of the lodge brothers wondered how they were going to

  explain that the nfl, still seeking a significant fan base in many

  of its cities, had lost its championship franchise.

  Off that rare burst of logic, they took another vote, and the

  Rams were headed to Los Angeles. Compton Junior College had

  a nationally acclaimed football program with appropriate facili-

  ties. The Rams set up their preseason training camp there.

  16

  In the Beginning

  Meanwhile, Rozelle and De Long, on campus with tuition paid by the gi Bill, were hustling once again. They had set up the

  Compton News Bureau to add to their walking- around money,

  with Compton jc football as the vehicle.

  “A guy named Maxwell Stiles was doing the Rams’ publicity,”

  De Long recalled, “and Pete knew him from the days when Pete

  was working part- time at the Long Beach Press- Telegram. So he walks into our office and asks us to put together the programs for

  their preseason games.”

  That’s when Rozelle first met Tex Schramm, who would have a

  major impact on him within a few years, and Reeves, who would

  have an even bigger one.

  “So the Rams came down to Compton that summer,” De Long

  said, “and it was like we woke up suddenly in the middle of Fairy-

  land. I mean, here we were, two kids just out of the navy, and now

  we were running around the practice field, rubbing shoulders with

  Tom Harmon and Kenny Washington and Bob Waterfield. And

  there was Jane Russell, Waterfield’s fiancée and Hollywood pinup

  queen, at every practice.”

  For De Long, this was heady stuff. But for Pete, it was another

  step in valuable on- the- job training. He was learning his job, and

  as a bonus he got fifty bucks for putting out the exhibition- game

  programs. To quote De Long, “Pete was in football heaven.”

  Then the Rams left for LA to start the season, but they didn’t

  miss a beat because Compton had a terrific football team that

  year. They did their publicity and covered Compton for the local

  papers. “We felt they were good enough to represent the West in

  the Junior Rose Bowl,” De Long said. They were right. They were

  young and eager, and suddenly they were caught up in an aura of

  self- importance. “I’d be a liar if I said we didn’t feel like that,” De Long admitted. Here they were just a few months out of the service, giving out radio interviews and going into newspaper offices

  and planting stories. “Looking back now, I can see what was hap-

  pening,” De Long said with genuine insight. “Pete was getting

  ready for a career, and I was just having a hell of a lot of fun.”

  In the Beginning

  17

  The following year we were so sure that Compton would be back in the game that we sat up all night writing press releases and stuffing envelopes. Cameron College [of Oklahoma] was the visiting team. Then

  Pete calls down to the newspaper to see if the selection committee

  has made a decision about the home team. The guy tells him they did,

  and they didn’t pick us. They picked Chaffey Community College.

  I think that over all the years I’ve known him, that’s the only time

  I ever saw him really angry. Angry? Hell, he was furious. We were

  tearing up all the press releases and cursing and stomping. Looking

  back, I can see that both of us acted as though it were some kind of

  directly personal insult.

  They took it so personally that the heart went out of the Comp-

  ton jc News Bureau after that. With graduation on the horizon,

  they shut it down. But before they did, an unexpected opportu-

  nity would step out of the shadows to put the future czar of pro-

  fessional football’s life on the road to his place in history.

  Indirectly, it began with Louis Joseph, the young man whose

  brother, Emile, had been the wheelman on those pre— World War

  II expeditions in Compton to play miniature golf. Joseph, a deter-

  mined but never gifted athlete who had played on the Compton

  High School basketball team with Rozelle and Snider, desperately

  wanted to go on to college. Through sheer self- discipline, he had

  made himself an acceptable player. With a plan that would have

  done honor to the legend of Frank Merriwell, it was his idea to

  enroll at Notre Dame, try out for basketball, and win a free ride.

  But fairy tales usually remain just that. He didn’t make it, but

  while he was there he met a young man from Milwaukee who was

  trying to do the same thing. His name was Paul Schramka, and

  along with Joseph he was also cut, but a friend told him that Pete

  Newell, the coach at the University of San Francisco, was looking

  for what he euphemistically called “physically motivated” players.

  Schramka, who never threw an elbow he didn’t like, headed for

  the city they were beginning to call Baghdad by the Bay.

  Newell found a use for his limited skills. Later when Rozelle

  18

  In the Beginning

  and De Long would wind up on the usf campus, they dubbed his forte “the Schramka Sacrifice.” It was a highly complex maneuver

  worthy of a caveman. The opponent had the ball . . . the oppo-

  nent had the shot . . . and then the opponent had two free throws,

  because Schramka had put him up in the eleventh row, and it is

  very difficult to shoot from there with a guy from Milwaukee

  attached to your sternum.

  So Schramka became a substitute and a scholarship player with

  the usf Dons. That season Newell took the team south to play the

  University of Southern California (usc). Rozelle and De Long were

  at the game, and because Schramka had heard about him from

  Louis Joseph during their brief stay at Notre Dame, he introduced

  them to his coach.

  Newell asked them about the Compton News Bureau and how

  it worked. Then he told them, “I may be calling you guys. We are

  going to need some help with publicity.”

  Joe Kuharich, a new football coach, had been hired. Newell’s

  basketball team was on the brink of big- time results, and both

  would play a major role in Rozelle’s future.

  The future commissioner of the nfl always did think a jump

  or two ahead. “We both wanted to get our four- year degrees,”

  Rozelle recalled when I asked him what motivated them to head

  for usf. “I didn’t think the academics were going to interfere with

  the job. I knew that sports were really my life. I got good grades. I

&nb
sp; got mostly As and some Bs all through school, but I really crashed

  to get them. I didn’t stay up with my studies as I should have to

  really learn. I’d cram for a test and get an A or a B. So now if I

  could get a degree and a salary [he would get both] and still stay

  in sports, I figured usf would be a good deal.”

  “I don’t know what he got,” De Long told me, “and I really

  never cared. I was working toward a degree, getting five bucks a

  month for laundry, and I was single and we had the gi Bill. I was

  having fun, and in my heart I just wanted to knock around until

  I figured out what I really wanted to do with my life. With Pete,

  it was different. I’m sure he already knew.”

  In the Beginning

  19

  And as would happen so often in the future, he was headed for the right place at the right time. Swept along by the postwar boom,

  a group of local businessmen were interested in making usf a

  major sports attraction for the city. You can find similar groups

  at almost every major college in America. They are called boost-

  ers, and they believe that winning teams will make their schools

  something special. This group had money and influence. There

  were five of them headed by a local construction tycoon named

  Charlie Harney. Newell, who saw where the school’s athletic pro-

  gram was headed, convinced Harney to interview Roselle and De

  Long. Realizing they wanted degrees and the money was second-

  ary, Harney hired them.

  “Right from the start,” Rozelle told me, “San Francisco had a

  special attraction for me. It’s a tight geographical city like New

  York, and I like that. I like a well- ordered place.”

  All his adult life, it remained a favorite for him. To use his word,

  what he liked the most was its “character.” But his arrival at usf was not an “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” kind of social thing.

  It was 1948 and he felt he was on his way toward something, and

  through yet another set of strange circumstances he had come to

  the place that would be the next vehicle for it.

  The University of San Francisco is a Jesuit school located near

  Golden Gate Park in the heart of the city. Like the whole Ameri-

  can spectrum in general and urban colleges in particular, both its

  scope and its role underwent massive changes in the years imme-

  diately following World War II. For a time the returning gis even