The Conspiracy Theory of Game 6, 2002

April 30, 2014January 10, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

I am not a conspiracy guy. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, I think Elvis is dead, and Paul McCartney is not. I don’t believe Colombian drug lords took the lives of Nicole Simpson and Ron Brown, and I don’t believe that the American Government had any involvement in the terrorist incident that occurred on 9/11/2001, but I do believe that the officiating in game six of the Western Conference Finals, in 2002, was either so incompetent, or so biased, that it invited the ‘C’ word into the conversation.

I’ve been a conspiracy guy before, suggesting that there might be one in certain situations (not the ones listed above), and I know that “C’mon” smile we give conspiracy guys. I know the “C’mon” smile well, because it is better to give than receive. The “C’mon” smile asks you if you know the totality of what you’re suggesting, and it asks you if you know how many people would have to be involved for it to be true. We try to avoid that smile at all costs, but if I’m ever going to “get over” the idea that a conspiracy prevented the Sacramento Kings from advancing to the NBA final in 2002, someone is going to have tell me how two of the NBA’s top officials made so many bad calls that the Lakers’ had twenty-seven free throws in the fourth quarter, on May 31, 2002, that just happened to lead to one more game out of this very heated and very popular series. I don’t want to believe the conspiracy, if there was one, reached into the upper echelon of the NBA or NBC, or that these two NBA officials had any money on the game. I do think, however, that these officials had a bias towards the Lakers, reflected in the numerous bad calls they made, that ended up affecting this game, and I think that latter point is near irrefutable. I also think it’s plausible that the officials may have been trying to make up for the “bad, or missed,” calls that some complain happened to favor the Sacramento Kings in the previous game, game five of the series. Whatever the case is, the officials of this particular game, made a number of calls in game six that provided an insurmountable advantage to the Los Angeles Lakers.

It can be very enticing to be that guy who defaults to conspiracy theory any time our team loses. Doing so prevents fans from dealing with the fact that their team may not have been as skilled, as clutch, or as lucky as the other team in those decisive moments when their team lost.

Poor officiating is poor officiating, and most rabid sports fans need to take a deep breath of fresh air to reboot when calls don’t go their way. Most sport fans need to accept the idea that until we load these games up with computer sensors, or mobile robots, there are going to be bad calls, and missed calls that cost one team a game. It’s the human element of the game that results in the fact that game officials –even in the age of instant replays– are going to make bad calls.

I’ve dropped the ‘C’ word in the past. It’s what die-hard fans do in the heat-of-the-moment, but at some point, we all realize that more often than not, our team is going to lose. It’s hard to be rational in the heat-of-the-moment and realize that even though the bad call happened to be a bad call, it was nothing more than a bad call. Age and experience have taught me that more often than not, the ‘C’ word is often better left in the hands of the screaming drunk at the end of the bar, watching his team get annihilated.

There is one conspiracy charge, however that I may never be able to shake. If I live for another forty years, and I become twice as rational as I am now, I may still be decrying the unfairness that occurred in Game 6, 2002 of the Western Conference Finals. To say that I’m not alone with these concerns would be an understatement, as this game has become one of the most popular games cited by those conspiracy theorists who claim that the NBA will do “whatever it takes” to get its most popular teams in the championship.

To attempt to put all of these Game 6, 2002 conspiracy theories to rest, Roland Beech, of 182.com, provided an in-depth analysis of the game. After this exhaustive review, Beech found that the:

“Officiating hurt the King’s chances at victory.” He also declared, “No nefarious scheme on the part of the refs determined the outcome.”

Sheldon Hirsch from Real Clear Sports expounded on Beech’s findings, commenting that the Kings:

“Were clearly unlucky, (but) that’s not the same thing as being cheated.”

After reading, and rereading Beech’s analysis, I’ve found Beech’s findings to be thorough, meticulous, and objective. These findings, however, have done little to quell my irrational condemnation of two of the three referees who handled Game 6, 2002, and a Game 6, 2002 cloud has loomed over every NBA game I’ve watched since, and it will continue to be there in any NBA games I might watch in the future.

Corroborating Evidence?

When former NBA referee Tim Donaghy received a conviction for betting on games in 2007, my first thought went to Game 6, 2002. He was not an official in that game, it turns out, but he did submit a letter, and later a book, that suggested a collusive effort on the part of two of the three referees to affect that game’s outcome. This letter does not mention the teams involved in Game 6, 2002, but the Kings v. Lakers series was the lone playoff series to go seven games in 2002.

“Referees A, F and G [Dick Bavetta, Bob Delaney, and Ted Bernhardt] were officiating a playoff series between Teams 5 [Kings] and 6 [Lakers] in May of 2002. It was the sixth game of a seven-game series, and a Team 5 [Kings] victory that night would have ended the series. However, Tim [Donaghy] learned from Referee A that Referees A and F wanted to extend the series to seven games. Tim knew referees A and F to be ‘company men,’ always acting in the interest of the NBA, and that night, it was in the NBA’s interest to add another game to the series. Referees A and F favored Team 6 [Lakers]. Personal fouls [resulting in injured players] were ignored even when they occurred in full view of the referees. Conversely, the referees called made-up fouls on Team 5 in order to give additional free throw opportunities for Team 6. Their foul-calling also led to the ejection of two Team 5 players. The referees’ favoring of Team 6 led to that team’s victory that night, and Team 6 came back from behind to win that series.”

Then-NBA Commissioner David Stern denied the allegations Donaghy made in this letter, stating that they were made by a desperate, convicted felon. Stern said Donaghy was a “singing, cooperating witness”, and Stern has since referred to any, and all, Donaghy allegations as those coming from a convicted felon.

It is true that Donaghy is a convicted felon. He received a conviction for betting on games he officiated. Does that mean everything he wrote in this particular letter is false? How many times has a convicted felon provided evidence that others later corroborated? At this point, however, there are no corroborations for Donaghy’s allegations, and a cynical outsider could say that Donaghy picked this particular, controversial game to serve up as a sort of plea bargain either to the FBI, or to the society that holds him as the lone, proven corrupt official of the NBA. Some have also said that Donaghy’s explosive allegations were made soon after the NBA required Donaghy pay them $1 million dollars in restitution.

It’s oh-so-tempting for scorned Kings’ fans to believe everything Donaghy wrote, and deny everything the former lawyer Stern said to protect his product, but it is difficult to deny the “desperate act” characterization Stern uses when referencing Donaghy’s allegations. Especially when we put ourselves in Donaghy’s shoes and we imagine how desperate he had to be in his efforts to salvage his reputation after being the lone NBA official convicted of throwing games.

Corroborating Outrage!

In the absence of corroborating evidence, outraged Kings’ fans can find solace in the corroborated outrage that followed by a number of outside sources, including consumer activist Ralph Nader, the announcer of the game Bill Walton, and the numerous, prominent sportswriters who watched the game. Bill Walton called Game 6, 2002 one of the poorest officiated important games in the history of the NBA, and that characterization is almost unanimous.

At the conclusion of the game, consumer advocate Ralph Nader wrote an email to then-NBA Commissioner David Stern:

“You and your league have a large and growing credibility problem, Referees are human and make mistakes, but there comes a point that goes beyond any random display of poor performance. That point was reached in Game 6 which took away the Sacramento Kings Western Conference victory.” [My emphasis.]

As evidence of his charge, Nader cited Washington Post sports columnist Michael Wilbon who wrote that too many of the calls in the fourth quarter (when the Lakers received 27 foul shots to the King’s nine) were “stunningly incorrect,” all against Sacramento.

After noting that the three referees involved in Game 6, 2002 “are three of the best in the game”, Wilbon wrote:

“I have never seen officiating in a game of consequence as bad as that in Game 6 … When [Scott] Pollard, on his sixth and final foul, didn’t as much as touch Shaq [Shaquille O’Neal]. Didn’t touch any part of him. You could see it on TV, see it at court side. It wasn’t a foul in any league in the world. And [Vlade] Divac, on his fifth foul, didn’t foul Shaq. [These fouls] weren’t subjective or borderline or debatable. And these fouls didn’t just result in free throws, they helped disqualify Sacramento’s two low-post defenders. And one might add, in a 106-102 Lakers’ victory, this officiating took away what would have been a Sacramento series victory in 6 games.

“I wrote down in my notebook six calls that were stunningly incorrect,” Michael Wilbon continued, “all against Sacramento, all in the fourth quarter when the Lakers made five baskets and 21 foul shots to hold on to their championship.”

Wilbon discounted any conspiracy theories about an NBA-NBC desire for Game 7 etc., but he later wrote that:

“I still consider [Game 6] the single worst-officiated game in the 28 years I’ve been covering professional basketball. It was egregiously, embarrassingly bad … Stern and the NBA had better deal with it quickly, lest they appear completely unaware of a condition that will threaten the credibility of the league.”

“It’s the only time, I think, I’ve ever written an entire column about refereeing for the purpose of being critical.”

In his letter to Stern, Nader also cited the basketball writer for USA Today, David Dupree, who wrote:

“I’ve been covering the NBA for 30 years, and it’s the poorest officiating in an important game I’ve ever seen.”

Grant Napear, the Kings’ radio and TV play-by-play man the last two decades, still labels Game 6:

“Arguably the worst officiated playoff game in NBA history.”

When LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke asked Commissioner David Stern about Game 6, 2002, in person, during the NBA Finals that year, Plaschke states that Stern turned defensive:

“[Stern] looked at me,” Plaschke wrote, “pointed his finger, and said, ‘If you’re going to write that there is a conspiracy theory, then you better understand that you’re accusing us of committing a felony. If you put that in the paper, you better have your facts straight,” Plaschke wrote, quoting Stern. Plaschke alluded to the fact that he [Plaschke] didn’t have any facts, and as a result he did back off, but that he had just wanted to ask Stern about aspects of Game 6, 2002, that Plaschke had witnessed.

Bill Simmons, of ESPN, called the game:

“The most one-sided game of the past decade, from an officiating standpoint.”

Nader concluded his letter to Stern:

“There is no guarantee that this tyrannical status quo will remain stable over time, should you refuse to bend to reason and the reality of what occurred. A review that satisfies the fans’ sense of fairness and deters future recurrences would be a salutary contribution to the public trust that the NBA badly needs.”

The point to which Nader and Wilbon alluded is that there has long been a conspiracy theory among NBA fans that the NBA wants the Lakers to win. The Lakers are showtime. They are West and Chamberlain, Magic and Kareem, and Kobe and Shaq, and the reasons that the NBA might favor a Lakers team in the championship begins with the word money and ends with a whole lot of exclamation points. This point is not debatable among conspiracy theorists, and non-conspiracy-minded fans, but how much the NBA would do to make that happen has been the core of conspiracy theories for as long as I’ve been alive.

Conspiracy theories exists in all sports, of course, but they are more prominent in the NBA, because most officiated calls in the NBA are so close, and so subjective, that they invite more scrutiny, more interpretation, and more conspiracy theories than any other sport.

What was Stern’s reaction to Nader’s letter?

“He spoke like the head of a giant corporate dictatorship,” Nader said.

The Point Beyond the Random

Some might see it as a populist play for a consumer advocate and presidential candidate, like Nader, to cover a sporting event in such a manner. I do believe, however, that Nader was right to warn Stern that public sentiment could turn away from his product, when it reaches a point where the normal conspiratorial whispers crank up to screams of indignation. I know that those whispers gained more prominence for me, after Game 6, 2002, and in every game I watched thereafter.

“There comes a point that goes beyond any random,” Nader wrote.

There comes a point that no fan can pinpoint when disappointment becomes outrage, and outrage progresses into conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theory becomes an outright lack of trust. There comes a point when those who still believe in a fair NBA where outcomes are not predetermined, and victories are granted based on merit, are laughed off, in the same manner WCW fans are laughed at for still believing in the integrity of their sport.

“The Kings could’ve won that game,” is the usual response to charges that the officials decided the game, “and if they secured a couple more rebounds, made a couple more field goals, and free throws, they would’ve. The Kings had numerous opportunities to win that game, no matter how many free throws the Lakers were awarded in the fourth quarter (27) of game six. And … and, if the Kings won game seven, at home to boot, this whole matter would be moot. They didn’t, and the rest is history, Lakers’ history!”

This response often quells further talk of bias and conspiracy theories, because it is true. It’s also true that the two teams in the 2002 Western Conference Finals series were so evenly matched that that the series went seven games, and of those seven games, one game was decided by more than seven points, and the two games that preceded Game 6, 2002, were both decided by a single point, and the final game of the series couldn’t be determined until overtime. It’s also true that when two teams are so evenly matched, anything can provide a tipping point … including officiating.

As I wrote, the “C’mon” smile often follows this line of thought, and what follows that is a statement like: “Your team’s job is to make it so the refs cannot determine the outcome.” Again, this is all true, but outraged Kings’ fans would admit that their 2002 team wasn’t that much better than the 2002 Lakers, and if they were better, it was by a smidgen, and that smidgen was wiped out in game six by the Lakers having twenty-seven free throws in one quarter –the fourth quarter–after averaging 22 free throws throughout the first five games.

Author Brian Tuohy adds an interesting asterisk to this discussion:

“The Sports Bribery Act was passed in 1964 and that [law] specifically states you cannot bribe (my emphasis) a player, coach, or referee to alter the outcome of a sporting event,” Tuohy says. “Well, if the NBA says to its referees, ‘Hey, we want you to do this, that, or the other thing out on the court,’ they’re not bribing them to do it. That’s an employer telling the employee how to do their job. And if this is how they want the job done, they’ll go out and do what their employer asks. There’s no law that prevents the NBA from fixing the outcome of one of its own games.”

So, when Stern attempted to intimidate Plaschke out of making an accusation, by saying that Plaschke was implicitly accusing the NBA of a felony, did Stern do so with the knowledge that it’s only a felony if the NBA paid the referees to make it happen? My interpretation of Tuohy’s comments, based on what he said about the NBA Draft Lottery is, “It’s their league. They can do with it what they will.” In other words, if the NBA were to fix a game that action might break the social contract of fair play with the fans, but as far as the law is concerned, Brian Tuohy states, “[T]hey have total control and can do whatever they want with these games [to] feed into their entertainment industry, which is professional basketball. There’s nothing out there that stops them from doing it, so if they want to, they could.”

Anytime we hear conspiracy theories, our first impulse is to dismiss them. The best way to dismiss a conspiracy theory is to call it a conspiracy theory. How many foolish notions have just enough juice to be interesting? There are so many that when someone dismisses another one as nothing more than another conspiracy theorist, most of us join them in dismissing it on that basis, and we don’t listen to another word the conspiracy theorist has to say. The next easy dismissal is to suggest that in order for a true conspiracy theory to work, there would have to be so many players involved. There would have to be various people at various levels who knew about it and have remained silent about it all these years. “How come there have never been any leaks regarding game 6?” is something they might ask. As we’ve written throughout this piece, there is no substantial and corroborated evidence to suggest that the NBA, or its officials, decided this game. At best, we have a boatload of circumstantial evidence that we think would convince a jury to award Sacramento a Larry O’Brien. On the specific topic of the number of people involved, however, we think it could be as minimal to three to four people. It could involve nothing more than a simple call from David Stern to the referees who worked this game to do whatever they have to do make this wildly popular series between two evenly matched teams last one more game. As Tuohy suggests, Stern might have viewed it as good business.

On the topic of dismissing a conspiracy theory on the basis of being a conspiracy theory, Brian Tuohy adds:

“If you look outside the United States right now, today, we know soccer matches are being fixed. We know tennis matches are being fixed. Cricket matches are being fixed. Rugby matches are being fixed. People are being arrested and convicted of fixing those sports. So it’s amazing that in the United States, none of this happens. What other crime happens worldwide that doesn’t happen in the United States? Apparently, game-fixing is it, which I don’t understand. How is it happening everywhere else but despite billions of dollars being gambled on American sports nobody’s fixing a game? Well, I don’t believe it. It’s only considered a conspiracy theory because people don’t want to believe it potentially could be true.”

Those of us who prefer to be on the other side of this argument often inform our conspiracy theorist friends that there isn’t more than meets the eye. Most of the time, the truth is the truth, the facts are the facts, and scoreboard is scoreboard, but facts are stubborn things, and they’re also pretty boring. It’s boring, and anti-climactic to say that one common, ordinary man could take down a president. There’s little-to-no literary value in the suggestion that a bunch of ragtag losers could take down one of America’s greatest monuments to commerce without conspiratorial assistance, and it does nothing to ease our pain to admit that a team beat our team based on superior athletic talent alone. Raised in a pop culture that feeds into our idea that there has to be more than meets the eye, we end up believing that there is, as we stare at those zeroes on the scoreboard, and we watch the other team celebrate, and we listen to the post-game interviews with a lump in our throat. This dream season can’t just be over, we think. There has to be more to it, but most of them time there isn’t. Most of the time one team loses and another wins, and the conspiracy theorist becomes more ridiculous every time they attempt to say that there has to be something more to it.

Having said all that, those of us who try to avoid the ‘C’ word as often as we can, ask those who offer bemused smiles to our conspiracy theories if it’s just as ridiculous to suggest that such moments never happen? Especially when, as Brian Tuohy suggests, they happen all the time, all over the world. “I’m not going to say it’s never happened,” the rational reply, “but it didn’t happen here.”

If it didn’t happen here, even the most objective analysis would find that two of the three officials involved in Game 6, 2002, made an inordinate amount of calls in favor of the Lakers, and because these two teams were so evenly matched, those calls provided an insurmountable advantage for the 2002 Lakers. We’ll never know whether or not these “best officials in the game” were just incompetent for one game in their careers, or if they were acting in a nefarious manner, but those of us who watched every second of the May 31, 2002 game –and slammed the “off” button as hard as we’ve ever slammed an “off” button before, or since– believe that it was a point beyond the random that damaged the social contract we had with the NBA, and its integrity, in a manner that is irrevocable.

A Review of The Last Headbangers: NFL Football in the Rowdy, Reckless 70’s

September 23, 2012April 15, 2015 RilalyLeave a comment

Ken Stabler, Terry Bradshaw, “Mean” Joe Green, Steve Bartkowski, Jack Tatum, Jack Ham, Jack Lambert, Bob Griese, Larry Csonka, Franco Harris, Jim Otto, Roy Blount, George Atkinson, John Matuszak and Phil Villapiano gave birth to something in the 70’s that we call the NFL. They didn’t start the league, of course, but by most definitions it is the premier league it is today based on the sacrifices they, and the many others who played the game, made.

It was an age of sloppy, weather drenched, and poorly maintained fields. It was an age that involved “legalized” use of steroids, which involved some using horse testosterone that was equivalent in dosage to that which is given to a 1,200 lb. horse before a race. The result of this is the now well-known ‘roid rage’ that most certainly affected the hits involved in the game. Steroid usage was so prolific in the game, during these years, that some players admitted that they could tell who was on steroids and who wasn’t by the look in their eyes.

It was an era that not only allowed, but encouraged late hits, hitting receivers in a vulnerable position, and exacting head-to-head hits that caused massive migraines and concussions. It was an age of stick ‘um, touchdown dances, and toothless, sweaty linebackers that would cause a normal citizen to walk to the other side of the street to avoid them. It was a game that involved none of the genteel, poetic resonance attributed to the strategic nature of baseball. Yet, prior to the 70’s, professional football was baseball’s broad.

In the 70’s, Baseball had Reggie Jackson and the Yankees, The Red Machine, the A’s, The World Series, and a tradition so rich it achieved the moniker “The National Pastime”. The NFL players mentioned above, the Monday Night Football guys, Pete Rozell, Al Davis, Don Shula, and a number of others took professional football from a proverbial backyard sport to the heights of the national stage. They were so successful that the number two sport is now football’s dejected broad.

GEORGE CARLIN: “Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, blocking, piling on, late hitting, unnecessary roughness and personal fouls. Baseball has the sacrifice. Football is played in any kind of weather – rain, sleet, snow, hail, mud, can’t read the numbers on the field, can’t read the yard markers, can’t read the players’ numbers; the struggle will continue. In baseball, if it rains, we don’t come out to play.”

Baseball played well to the prolific sports writer that could artfully and poetically lift its magnificence with an analysis that called upon its rich history and place in American tradition. It has a subtle strategy that can be brought to life through careful and leaned analysis from a great play-by-play and color commentator team on radio. Newspapers also favor baseball in that they can provide a daily recap of each day’s games in a manner deemed almost inconsequential in other sports. Football, however, has a special, visual quality that no other sport can match throughout an entire game. Basketball may provide more visually tantalizing highlights, but the game of football has a more irresistible appeal from start to finish. “It is for this reason,” writes author Kevin Cook, “that the rise of football occurred in conjunction with the proliferation of television sets across the country.”

This was proven out by a risky move that the NFL and the ABC network agreed upon called Monday Night Football. What was once a rising sport, became “the” sport, the new national pastime, with dynamic personalities, such as Howard Cosell, selling it to millions. Monday Night Football also produced the first moment of “must see” TV for one enthusiastic, young football fanatic in a city of Nebraska: “Halftime Highlights”. Cook details, in his book, that Cosell’s initial “Halftime Highlights” were totally unscripted, and they were “by today’s standards” poorly produced. Yet, anyone who was privileged enough to watch those 70’s, Cosell highlights, knows the profound effect they had on the game and the national psyche. Some of us still run imaginary plays, calling them out in Cosell’s staccato.

Football also had one thing that baseball did not: scarcity. This aspect is not covered in Cook’s book, but I believe it was one of the determining factors in the battle between baseball and football. Baseball had 162 games, sprint training, the playoffs, and The World Series. If a team was successful, they could’ve played 176 games a year at that point in history, and that’s a lot of games for one to maintain acute focus. Baseball did have events; they had opening day; the All-Star game; a few weeks of pennant chase games for those involved; and The World Series, but for the most part baseball was/is basically a six-month marathon. Baseball is equivalent to NASCAR in one aspect, as my friend said: “In NASCAR, everyone pays attention to the first five laps, and the last five laps, but you talk and eat dinner in between.” One can forget about baseball for months at a time, in other words, but just about every football game means something. The NFL only played fourteen times a year for most of the 70’s, seventeen times if one counted the playoffs and The Superbowl. One game was played on television, on Sunday, between noon and three, fourteen times a year, and then there was Monday Night Football. We now have Monday Night, Thursday night, Sunday night football, and Saturday night football once the college season is over. But in the 70’s, the NFL only appeared on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights, and this provided a regular season NFL game an “event” status that baseball, basketball, and Hockey could only dream of attaining..

Author Kevin Cook expands: “It seems to me that things were accelerating so much, we were looking for something faster. The NFL was more the counterculture, more a rock ‘n’ roll kind of sport compared to sedate, old baseball. And I think that’s why it appealed to a generation that was looking for something newer and more exciting. And they found it in football, especially on TV.”{1}

Kevin Cook’s The Last Headbangers provides all of the details of the teams, and their games, that precipitated the rise: The Immaculate Reception; The Dolphins undefeated season, and the games involved in that season; and the instrumental battles between the Raiders, the Steelers, the Dolphins, and the Cowboys. He also talks about the end of that era with “The Catch” by Dwight Clark in the corner of the end zone against the Cowboys. The era began with a catch, the Immaculate Reception, and it ended with a catch “The Catch” in Kevin Cook’s narrative. He talks about how that 49ers offense called the “west coast” offense took advantage of the many rules changes that favored the passing game and changed the game from the sloppy, smash mouth, and run oriented offenses to the clean, crisp, and almost machine like precision that modern day NFL teams have copied, revamped, updated, and instituted in their offensive strategies.

In a broader sense, The Last Headbangers brought a “nothing new” approach to those avid NFL fans who have been inundated with the rich tradition that the 70’s and the early 80’s produced. ESPN, MNF, the NFL network, and others have all captured these elements hundreds of times before, but Kevin Cook does unearth some nuggets that we longtime fans didn’t know. Shula’s competition committee, for instance, narrowed the hash marks from the traditional, college width to one they hoped would open up the passing game, but it only allowed running backs more room lateral room, and the running game flourished for a time. Most football fanatics heard sketchy details about Larry Csonka leaving the NFL in his prime for the WFL, but when he was asked to summarize his tenure in the WFL, Csonka replied: “It was nice to make money playing football.”

On that note, Cook reports that most of the top NFL players of the early 70’s still had to have part-time jobs for their existence, as they only made between $18,000 and $22,000 a year on average. Number one draft pick Terry Bradshaw had to sell cars in the offseason, and Franco Harris had to hitchhike to games.

It was also fascinating to learn that what drove Bill Walsh to accomplish much of what he did in the early 80’s, as a result of being passed over for the Cincinnati Bengals job by Paul Brown when Brown retired from that position. Apparently, Brown had been damaging Walsh’s prospects throughout the league by calling every owner in the NFL to tell them that his assistant coach was inept and a trouble maker. Another thing that Brown informed NFL owners about, a fact we learned from the NFL Channel’s exposé on Bill Walsh, was that Brown believed Walsh was too mercurial to handle the rigors of coaching at an NFL level. His highs were too high, and his lows were too low. After seeing what Walsh would accomplish with the San Francisco 49ers, most of these owners probably wish they had never listened to Brown, but Brown’s characterization of Walsh would eventually bear out.

When Walsh was passed over for the Bengals’ head coaching job, and he found out that Brown had muddying the waters for Walsh and his career prospects in the NFL, he was crushed. Walsh would eventually exact his revenge, of course, by taking two Super Bowl trophies from his former mentor’s Bengals. The book, The Last Headbangers, also details that Walsh had something of a Noll/Bradshaw relationship with his quarterback Joe Montana that culminated in Montana saying: “(F-bomb) you, you white-haired (person who sucks on … roosters).”

In the promotional interview with NPR for the book, author Kevin Cook talks about the suffering that a lot of the players are now enduring for playing the game, “A friend of mine calls them sport’s greatest generation, because they had an inkling that they were risking their futures.” When we hear players, like former Rams DE Fred Dryer, say, “I would have to roll off the bed onto the ground in order to lessen the pain enough to be able to walk around for a day.” When we hear former Vikings running back Robert Smith say that he retired prematurely, after seeing the former Houston Oilers’ great Earl Campbell in a wheelchair, and when we read Cook document that some former NFL stars can’t drag a pocket comb through their hair, at the age of 45 or 50, we are forced to realize what these players foresaw and played through. It’s a point Cook elucidates when he points out the few players, like Franco Harris and Phil Villapiano, that were able to escape prolonged and debilitating injuries in their post-football careers.

The thing is, as Cook’s friend said, these players did “have an inkling” that they were doing long-term damage to their bodies every time they took the field, every time they woke up the morning after and heard a doorbell that didn’t ring, and every time they covered up an injury, because they “weren’t injured they were hurt,” as Don Shula was known to ask the players who groaned on the sidelines that they couldn’t go in for the next play. Very few twenty something males consider the long-term health consequences of their actions, so it’s debatable whether they considered this or not, but most of we naysayers haven’t put our bodies through a quarter of what they did.

Reliving the moments that made the NFL the premier game that it is today with Cook are thrilling. The man describes the players, and the plays, with a flair that one cannot help but notice comes from the perspective of a fan. This is the book’s great selling point for much of the book, but it is its downfall in others. As Cook warns: “This book isn’t meant to glorify the uglier aspects of NFL football in the 1970s and early ’80s. The drugs, the booze, the cheating and headhunting, the occasionally seamy sex, and the risks the game posed to players’ health.” As that statement entails, there is some discussion that will satisfy prurient interests, but there’s not enough. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying a book of this nature must delve into the seedier side of the game to satisfy me, but this book almost seems to respect the game too much. It doesn’t feel rounded out enough.

The book Sweetness by Jeff Pearlman explored the entirety of Walter Payton’s career. Some may say it was too negative and disrespectful, but that author complained that those who said such things simply haven’t read the entire book. The point is that a writer has a duty to report both sides of the story to his readers if he is going to produce a worthwhile book. We all hate to have our heroes diminished in any way, but a writer can do it in a responsible and journalistic manner to produce material that we didn’t already know, isn’t that why we purchase such books in the first place. One gets the feeling that Cook saw how the NFL brotherhood ganged up on Pearlman, and he didn’t want any part of that.

Kevin Cook does conclude The Last Headbangers with some reporting, but he does it in an ESPN-style “Where are they now” human interest type stories on Franco Harris and Phil Villapiano. As with all of those tedious, ESPN-style stories created to fill time, most readers don’t personally care that Franco’s son unsuccessfully ran for office and Phil’s son unsuccessfully trained to make a Division I football team, and we don’t care that Villapiano eventually gave Harris a noogie over the Immaculate Reception.

It is a well done book, and Cook has created a real page-turner for any avid fan of 70’s football, but you do finish the book with the feeling that there is something more to the story than we’re being told.