Flying United: On Location for the 2014 #WGUMeeting
October 24, 2014Justin Timberlake courtside; Jay Z and Beyonce rumored
October 24, 2014In eighth grade, I was an interior lineman for the football team. Meaning, I wasn’t very gifted at throwing, catching, or running with the ball. I was the football equivalent of the baseball Little Leaguer you would hide over in right field. That was fine. I was just happy to be in the game.
When playing defense, I knew from experience I had little chance of penetrating the backfield, or tackling in pursuit. But I became very good at two things. One was being involved in loud hits. Our oversized shoulder pads had a plastic flap attached on top, so when you lowered your shoulder and met something with a crushing impact, the flap would smack down. Observers within a hundred yards would go “oooooh.” The other thing I learned was the value in jumping over guys who were sprawled on the ground. From the sideline, the coach could see my jersey rise above the scrum, my arms waving.
So basically, my role was lowering my pads before getting run over by ball carriers. And on passing plays, my route to the quarterback was a jagged, connect-the-dots journey dictated by where the bodies were strewn.
During one postgame huddle, the coach dramatically raved, “GREG POPELKA earned some extra playing time today. GREAT EFFORT by him. THAT is what I am TALKING ABOUT.”1 I loved that he held these talks on the sideline, where outsiders could hear him (including the cheerleaders).
My route to the quarterback was a jagged, connect-the-dots journey dictated by where the bodies were strewn.
Our coach especially liked having players near him on the sideline. That way, he could grab their facemask with one hand, holler an affirming sentiment through it, and send them back into the game with a smack on the helmet with the heavy clipboard in his other hand.
“POPELKA!!” He was looking around for me, and appeared surprised I was standing right next to him. Number 57 on your mimeographed roster; number one in your heart. “Come here.”
Since I was already there, I hurriedly ran in place a little. His hand gripped my facemask, pulling me a little bit off-balance. “Here is the play. Are you ready?!!” I said, “YES SIR”. His eye contact remained steady. “OVER THERE, on that SIDELINE, is ED MODZELEWSKI. Do you know who that is?!?!” I said yes. But I wasn’t really sure. I had heard the name; it was a football name.
“ED MODZELEWSKI played with the CLEVELAND BROWNS, under PAUL BROWN. He is here, watching this FOOPBALL GAME.” (Football people never just say the word ‘ball’, or ‘game’. It is always ‘football’, or ‘football game’. Also, they often pronounce it, “foop-ball.”) All of the players on our sideline were his audience. “WE are going to SHOW HIM how WE play FOOPBALL!!!” I was pumped. I waited.
“Toss sweep right, on two. And remind them to protect the football.” I nodded. He pushed me away with his facemask grip, and sent me back onto the field with a WHACK of his clipboard on the back of my head. I ran out to our quarterback, who always was pretty cool with me. He looked at me… I looked at him… the play clock was running, and he said, “What’s the play?”
“I don’t knowwwwwwww!!! I don’t remember.” CRAP! I had been caught up in the moment. Ed Moe-juh-LESS-ski was over there, and I was drawing a blank. He said, “OK, OK, we’ll run a play.” Well, whatever he called in the huddle was only understood by some of the offensive squad. Only about half of us moved on the snap, and it was clear we had no idea what we were trying to accomplish on the play. Our quarterback ran for his life before being clobbered in the backfield. He fumbled. The tackler had blown me up on his way past. (I did lower my pads in time, and the crowd groaned an “oooooooh.”)
The thing that could be dicey about being a messenger guard was that after a bad play, you couldn’t drift away from the coach like the other players. You were his lightning rod.
“WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS THAT?!?!” I told him I forgot the play. To his credit, he moved on.
♦♦♦
Cleveland fans are familiar with Paul Brown’s football legacy. Arising from his legendary drive to win, his innovations transformed the sport into the modern game we enjoy. For example, he integrated professional football- unceremoniously signing several black players to his roster. This was in 1946, a year before Branch Rickey’s self-congratulatory penning of Jackie Robinson. His scouting was state-of-the-art, and his intelligence tests were the precursor to the NFL’s use of the Wonderlic exam. Paul Brown was a teacher, and coached as such. The notes his players took in the classroom were the first football playbooks. The coach also instituted the use of the facemask, the draw play, and the timing of players running the forty yard dash.
And messenger guards, which Paul Brown used to send in plays. Some observers derided this practice, and his quarterbacks chafed as he disregarded their opinions on game strategy. It was the coach’s role to think- not the players’.
Regardless, his messenger guard model was state-of-the-art in the NFL, and by the mid-1950s, several head coaches were similarly calling plays for their quarterbacks (a notable exception was Vince Lombardi, who took the Green Bay Packers job in 1959. Lombardi maintained if he couldn’t get his game plan in place during the week, he wasn’t an effective coach).
In 1956, Browns fans John Campbell and George Sarles came up with the idea of putting a radio receiver in the quarterback’s helmet. The coach could then directly communicate with him, precluding the need for messenger guards. This could avoid misunderstandings, and allow for a quicker pace for the offense. Coaches had dabbled with sign language, with results that were choppy at best.
Sarles was an electronic gadget salesman, and Campbell was a General Electric engineer. They worked together in Campbell’s home laboratory to craft an early prototype; however, it failed to penetrate the bone structure of the head. The signal needed to be stronger. The resulting 4-watt receiver was 2.5 inches in diameter and 1.5 inches thick. It was attached inside the top of the helmet. The earphone was attached inside the left earhole. The antenna consisted of strips of silver that were coated in paint. The power was supplied by a small battery that was supposed to last thirty hours.
When Sarles and Campbell approached Brown with their radio receiver, he asked for a demonstration. How far could the signal be received? Sarles donned their prototype Browns helmet and walked out into the woods as Campbell communicated with him. The others began to become concerned when Sarles did not return. As he distanced himself from Campbell’s house, a police officer had stopped him; the men had been illegally using a police broadcast frequency. The specter of a grown man wandering about wearing a Browns helmet appeared suspicious, as well. It turned out the officer was a Browns fan, and he kept the secret.
The receiver was first used in a preseason game against the Detroit Lions. Paul Brown had actually purchased an FCC license that in effect allowed him to run a small radio station, in preparation for its use.
The Browns offense moved efficiently, early in that Lions game. No messenger guards were used, and the Lions coach obviously knew something was going on. Adding to the intrigue was the sight of Browns quarterback George Ratterman slowly tiptoeing in broad circles (he was trying to improve his reception). At halftime, the Lions dispatched some assistants to go snoop around the Browns’ sideline. They discovered the transmitter, and an antenna attached to a light pole behind the bench. When the game resumed, they spotted Paul Brown talking into a microphone.
The Lions defense resolved to make it their business to destroy Ratterman’s helmet. It mattered not to them whether Ratterman’s head was inside it. They slapped and pounded it, knocking it off the quarterback’s head twice. He took it off himself, once—illustrating that it was not going to break. Ratterman later indicated that, to him, the abuse wasn’t worth the advantage.
In subsequent preseason games, other transmitted messages interfered with the Browns’ electronic play calling. Cab calls, stadium workers’ walkie talkies and other teams’ broadcasts rendered the Browns’ innovation useless. Paul Brown gave up the practice—until a big regular season game versus the rival New York Giants approached. The coach announced he was going to institute his radio play calling system, and declared that the Giants had better not interfere. (That would violate radio regulations. The Browns were only motivated by honoring the rule of law, after all.) Indeed, they had no plans to interfere—the Giants simply monitored the Browns’ transmissions, and ran them by a player who had recently been acquired from Cleveland (Gene Filipski). The New York defense was alerted to what each play was going to be. The frustrated Browns reverted back to the messenger guard system at halftime.
NFL commissioner Bert Jones outlawed the practice the following week. Helmet radios would be banned for 38 years, until their use was reinstituted on a league-wide basis in 1994. John Campbell donated George Ratterman’s game-used radio helmet to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985. The rest, as they say, was history.
- Think a thin, long-haired Chris Farley. Come to think of it, Coach was about 35, too. Although I am certain he did not ‘live in a van down by the river’. [↩]
10 Comments
It turned out the officer was a Browns fan, and he kept the secret.
Was there any other type of Clevelander before 1995?
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And fantastic article as always, Greg. I have heard of the radio failures, but never with this level of detail attached. Thanks.
Great piece. I never realized that Brown never really got to use it.
Nice piece again, Greg, including your reminiscence of your eighth-grade exploits.
I read recently that Chuck Noll didn’t like being one of Brown’s messenger guards. He thought it was demeaning.
Some time in the ’70s, Ed Modzelewski’s son wrote an essay that was published in Sports Illustrated. He wrote about how his Dad’s career changed when Jim Brown joined the team. Big Mo had been the starting fullback until then. In a kind of sad and poignant tribute to his Dad, the son described what it was like for his family when it became clear that Big Mo wasn’t going to be needed much anymore. (Little Mo was Ed’s brother Dick, who won two NFL titles as a defensive tackle for the ’56 Giants and ’64 Browns. He also coached the final game of the ’77 season for the Browns after Forrest Gregg was fired.)
Anyone here familiar with the Mo’s restaurants? There was an East Side Mo’s at a motel on 306 at rt 90 in the 80s. I think there was an older one somewhere else.
Gonna look up that SI article, btw
Let me know if you find it; I’d like to read it again too. It wasn’t a full-blown article, just one of those little one- or two-column pieces that SI used to run in the front of the issue as filler. I read it in a waiting room back then, and for whatever reason I never forgot it.
http://michaelmodzelewski.com/2000/01/as-i-saw-it-by-michael-modzelewski-published-in-sports-illustrated/Really appreciate the heads up on this. Also, glad I read it through to the end. And Mo apparently started the restaurant immediately upon retirement.
http://michaelmodzelewski.com/2000/01/as-i-saw-it-by-michael-modzelewski-published-in-sports-illustrated/
Thanks very much, Greg. That’s not the article I remember reading — this one is much longer — but the mood and the topic are the same.
However, Young Mo’s memory has failed him on some details, or he’s taken some editorial license, because the chronology is way off. The Browns beat the Rams in December ’55, Jim Brown arrived in the summer of ’57, and the Cowboys joined the league in ’60, but the author compresses all that time into less than a year. (Sorry, I can’t help it.) But it’s a nice piece nonetheless.
Mo & Junior’s. His partner was Junior Wren a CB with the Browns. Paul Brown is vastly underrated on the list of best all time coaches. Many have him behind Lombardi, Walsh etc. when he should be behind no one. He was the most innovative coach of all time. Toward the end, his stubbornness got the best of him.