Last Team Standing by Matthew Algeo

the 1922 Rose Bowl, where they played California to a scoreless tie. In 1930 he coached the Ironton Tanks, an independent pro football team that beat the Chicago Bears, the New York Giants, and the Portsmouth Spartans (later the Detroit Lions) in exhibition games. He also played one game for the Tanks, a few weeks shy of his 39th birthday, again using an assumed name, this time so Genevieve wouldn’t find out. (Shedid, when he came home with a black eye.) He was the head football coach at six different colleges, compiling a cumulative record of 78-55-11. Along the way he invented the man-to-man pass defense and the fake reverse, and he championed “subsidization,” i.e., the awarding of athletic scholarships.
    In 1934, Neale was offered the head coaching job at Yale. It was a prestigious position but there was a problem: Yale had never had a coach who wasn’t an alumnus. Greasy Neale, of course, was not a Yalie, and the school’s alumni, who wielded a good bit of influence, objected to his guiding their football team. A compromise of sorts was reached: Yale hired Raymond “Ducky” Pond, a Yale graduate, as head coach. Neale was made his assistant. It seemed like a step down for Neale, but in reality Pond was merely Neale’s front man, a head coach in name only. Greasy ran the show and everybody knew it. For seven seasons he was the power behind the throne at Yale, a situation that was less than ideal for both men.
    â€œI told Ducky my interests were the same as his—to see that Yale had a winning team,” Neale later said. “Once this difficulty was ironed out, we got along fine.” Privately, though, it must have been difficult for Neale to accept his new role. He had always been the head coach, even back at Parkersburg High.
    Then, one day in 1940, Neale’s secretary told him that a Yale grad named Alexis Thompson wanted to meet him for dinner.
    â€œI’ll be glad to have dinner with any alumnus of the school,” Neale answered, “but who is Mr. Thompson?” When the two men met for dinner at a New Haven restaurant called Mori’s, Neale learned exactly who Thompson was: an extremely wealthy young man who planned to purchase an NFL team and had been advised (by New York Giants head coach Steve Owen) to hire Neale as head coach. Neale was surprised, but he was also inclined to accept the offer. He missed being a head coach in name as well as function. Besides, Yale’s athletic department was $100,000 in debt and looking for ways to cut costs. It was a good time to go.
    Neale told Thompson he’d take the job, but said he wanted a three-year contract for $12,000 a year. Thompson counteredwith $10,000. “We settled on my figure with a minimum of bickering,” Neale later said. As soon as Thompson purchased the Steelers in December 1940, he named Neale head coach. When Thompson swapped franchises with Bert Bell and Art Rooney the following spring, he brought Neale along to coach the Eagles.
    When he became the Eagles’ head coach, Greasy Neale was nearly fifty years old. His brown hair had turned silvery gray, though he was still trim and fit enough to run pass patterns as well as his best receivers. He and Genevieve had been bouncing around football outposts most of their lives. It was time to settle down. Greasy promised Genevieve the Philadelphia job would be his last.

    I N 1926, O LE H AUGSRUD, a twenty-something wheeler-dealer from Duluth, Minnesota, bought an NFL franchise for one dollar. The franchise was the Duluth Kelleys (also known as the Kelley-Duluths), who were named after a local hardware store. Haugsrud, who also agreed to assume the club’s debts, immediately signed the biggest prize coming out of college that year: Ernie Nevers, a handsome all-American fullback from Stanford. Nevers had captured the nation’s imagination by recovering from two broken ankles to rush for more than 100 yards against Notre Dame in the