Paper Lion - George Plimpton
The motivation to call something influential may either be driven out of the recognition that sweeping changes in culture, sports, commerce or the arts are occurring because of a game changing innovation, or it’s simply hyperbolic praise that only serves to stroke the ego of the innovator. Paper Lion, the 1965 book by George Plimpton that recounts his 1963 training camp adventures with the NFL’s Detroit Lions, is an example of the former, giving way to a new genre of mass market football books that the public couldn’t help to love.
Many sports writers have cited Paper Lion as one of the books that inspired them to become a writer. It was a book that was so ahead of it’s time that it even gained the respect of many literary circles, as it was released in a time when journalism itself was transforming from being a solely removed and objective experience to being immersed and active in the words, actions and lives of the subjects. Many would call this form of creative non fiction as “New Journalism” that made the writer themselves a character in their articles or books. Plimpton’s so called“participant journalism,” where he not only travels side by side with his subject’s during their escapades, but does as they do, getting a more authentic sense of the preparation, processes and challenges a professional or craftsman endures than the average spectator can appreciate.
Plimpton, having quite the body of work in his career as a writer and as a co-founder of The Paris Review, has dealt mainly with capturing and replicating the experiences of athletes, and first tried this experiment when he wrote about his turbulent experiences pitching in Yankee Stadium in a post season All Star Game against the National League. The book was called Out Of My League, and afterward, Plimpton followed up on his pitching experiment by boxing three rounds with the welterweight champion Archie Moore for an article that he was writing for Sports Illustrated.
Paper Lion was his next foray into experiencing the struggles and routines of the athlete, this time on the gridiron. Having originally lobbied the Baltimore Colts and then the New York Titans of the American Football League, Plimpton finally received permission to join the Detroit Lions with the goal of playing quarterback in a team scrimmage. Having done what he set out to do, he therefore launched a new kind of football journalism, where a writer embeds themselves with a football team of some kind and chronicles the adventures (and misadventures) of that team for a duration of time.
These books are usually set in the world of pro football, and have many similarities between them: the writer clings to two or three players more than anyone else on the team, a couple chapters are dedicated to explaining the intricacies of football, and most will offer their personal opinions on the sport, be it the inherent violence present in football’s DNA, or the culture surrounding pro football, their commentary on the plights of the players, so on and so forth. By now, I’m sure you’ve either read my reviews or heard me talk about some of the quintessential books within this genre; The Last Season of Weeb Eubank by Dr. Z, Three Bricks Shy of A Load by Roy Blount Jr., or The Forgettables by Jay Acton, just to name a few. And while these kind of sports books have fallen out of the mainstream because of the hyper secretive nature of major league sports today, they were exciting reads at the time because it peeled the curtain back on pro football in the pre internet era. Alternatively, reading them today is exciting because you get a sense for what some of the most iconic players and teams were like behind the scenes.
As I was reading Paper Lion, however, I became increasingly disappointed that I didn’t read this before the subsequent books that were inspired by it, as it failed to get me invested in the players and the coaches as the other books had. Plimpton does refer to himself in the first person, though he seldom offers any unique or introspective commentary. Given that his time with the Lions was only four weeks, it lacked the in season drama that comes with the futility of a team’s hard work and effort as they continue to lose week after week, and there were no players vying for an opportunity to play in the NFL for a better life and career. Because of how the other books in the genre were, I was left unsatisfied with the one that started it all.
After finishing it, however, I was reminded that Plimpton’s entire purpose wasn’t to be a casual observer to the world of pro football, but rather to be a participant to pro football. The entire schtick was to walk in the same shoes as these players and to experience the game in the way they do. In essence, the book is iconic not because it aims not only take the reader inside the team, but to take them inside the game itself.
Given that playbook style television programs and pregame shows that dissected the strategy of the game were still a few years away at the time of Plimpton’s book, there were rare opportunities for the laymen to go into the specifics of the game outside of coaching books, Sports Illustrated being one of them. Therefore, it’s appropriate that Plimpton, a columnist for the famed sports magazine when he embarked on this book, spent more time writing about the finer points of each position and how it factors into the overall strategy.
The initial chapters cover the most common curiosities of football. Plimpton gets an education on the staggered cadence that’s used to trap defensive lineman into offsides, and also learns the nomenclature and number system that designates the backfield position and the gaps between the offensive line. Assistant coach Aldo Forte breaks down the convoluted jargon of a football play:
Our off tackle run to the right side, for example, is called as follows: ‘Three right, forty seven, near oh pinch. Those last three words indicate to the offensive tackle and end that they double team and block in the defensive end, which will clear the seven hole for the four back to get to.’
Furthermore, Plimpton also takes a look at the defensive playbook, calling it “much more interesting.” He writes in detail:
Besides the usual admonishments about penalties, and the importance of the third down, and playing superior football for the last two minutes of each half, the book included page after page of statistics, graphs, and charts, and a long section showing assignments for individual players against specific offensive plays. The young football fan may have no understood most of what was in it, but it would have suited his confidence that pro football is a complex and heady business.
The book is often talked about for Plimpton’s experience as a quarterback, but he actually attempted to play multiple positions before becoming a QB, including defensive back and wide receiver. There’s multiple chapters where Plimpton sits down with different players at various positions and asks them about their role on the team and what their responsibility is on a given play. For instance, Plimpton has a conversation with Hall of Fame corner back Dick “Night Train” Lane where Lane discusses his approach to baiting quarterbacks to throw against him in zone coverage:
I set the fellow up by baiting him just a li’l bit, giving him too much to the outside on the red coverage maybe, until this fellow goes back to his quarterback and tells him in the huddle ‘Lawd Almighty, I can beat Night Train to the outside…Joe Schmidt calls the blue coverage, which is what I hope he does, and where before I don’ move, I’m there, and that boy, who runs out there looking to make a touchdown easy, why he’s like to be in bad trouble. Maybe a Night Train interception.
Night Train goes on to tell Plimpton what angles he has to maintain as to avoid getting beat deep, and even tells him how his game has to be adjusted depending on how short or tall the receiver is, and that looking at the receiver’s waistline is best for a corner to decipher what direction he’ll break out of when he’s running his route.
Plimpton goes on to have conversations with some of the lesser known members of the squad and ask them about their role on the positions. Gail Codgill, a Wyoming native and starting receiver for the Lion, shares his thoughts on the best physical attributes for a receiver:
Speed is important, but it’s overrated: you’ve got to be able to handle it. You have to learn how to shift speeds, which is more effective than just being able to travel at a terrific clip like those guys they call the World Fastest Human who last in the league a while and then disappear. Then you have strength. Part of your job is to hold up against big ends. Then you have to arm fight your way through the secondary, mainly against the linebackers …Then you have have to have great hand-eye coordination. Basketball is the best training for that.
And then, of course, you have the catch itself. The ability to catch is not something you’re born with. It’s self taught. The fact is, I taught myself wrong. I catch the ball goofy. I don’t cradle it, like holding water in my palms, which is how a normal person catches it. My right hand is always on top, over the left, to clap down on the ball, no matter where the ball is. Sometimes it look from the stands like I’m trying to make it difficult for myself.
Gail adds on by commenting that the air in different towns affects the way the ball arrives at the receiver, and how a receiver has to compensate for a slower speed after he catches the ball.
Though the book’s strength is breaking down the game for the reader who doesn’t understand football chess match, this isn’t to say that there are no memorable moments or that there is a shortage of characters on the team. In addition to guys like Night Train, there’s some other recognizable names that get involved in locker room hijinks, such as offensive guard John Gordy, who in the middle of the night would put on a fright mask and scare cornerback and eventually hall of fame Steelers defensive coordinator, Dick Lebeau, out of his deep sleep and into a panic. Plimpton writes about the dynamic between the veterans and the rookies, and even participates in a talent show put on by the rookies that are just as humiliating in jest as it was hilarious.
But as the amount of familiar names appear through each chapter, the reader who is familiar with football history will also pick up on the sense that Plimpton’s training camp adventure is not only him living out his literary curiosity, but it’s also him capturing a team in transition. Plimpton joins the team about 8 years after the Lions were in the upper echelon of the National Football League. Legendary franchise quarterback Bobby Lane is gone by the time Plimpton arrives, though there are plenty of stories told about him that makes him a sort of translucent secondary character in the book, even though he isn’t present. Lions legends like Doak Walker and Alex Karras (who was suspended for that season for gambling) are remembered in passing as well.
Through multiple conversations, one gets the impression this is an organization that is hooked on their glory years from the 1950s. It’s strange to say because when reading this book through a contemporary lens, with all the memories of the Lions being this bottom tier franchise that you can’t help but feel sympathy for, you’re shocked to discover as you read that this sentimentality and nostalgia for championship football didn’t happen long after they were the cream of the crop in the NFL.
A few years after Lane was traded, the Lions didn’t perform horribly on the field. They won a couple “Playoff Bowl” games, which was a contest to determine third place in the NFL, but nonetheless, I got the sense that there was a real fissure in the franchise amongst the players especially, that when Lane was traded that it ushered in a new era. One of the men that Plimpton meets upon his arrival is the equipment manager, Friday Macklem, and one of the first conversations they have is about how Lane started the hazing tradition where rookies stand up and sing their alma mater’s fight song, and other veterans like linebacker Joe Schmidt talk about Lane’s leadership and how intimidating he was if you didn’t carry your weight on the team. Plimpton hears of a time when Lane called for a club rush (where the offensively line deliberately allows the defense to enter the backfield) to lay a lick on a disobedient rookie running back. Plimpton obviously didn’t set out document the new era of Lion’s football, as no one could have predicted how the franchise would collapse the way they did, but reading it with hindsight, it’s interesting to see the beginning of a once proud franchise’s end.
Many fans Paper Lion have approached Plimpton to voice their praise of the book (Plimpton even reports that a man on a bus told him Paper Lion is the only books that he’s ever read). The book at first may fail to bring about this same praise satisfaction for a contemporary audience that had the chance to read similar books that came after it was published, but nonetheless, it’s an interesting product of its time that set the stage for many football books that came after it.