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Camera Crew Member #1:: Four-oh-seven.[slate]Interviewer:: Jerry, we're gonna talk about champions, about championship level sports. And we're gonna confine most of this to 1940 to the present. I'd like to start off by getting you to talk about the, the term, champion, championship level sports.Jerry Izenberg:: Hmm.Interviewer:: What do those terms mean to you?Jerry Izenberg:: Well, it's probably the only term that you can use in sports [phone rings]—in sports, that makes any sense. Because sports is competitive. I mean, if you're not competing against another human being, you're competing against a clock, you're competing against six corrupt judges holding up score cards, or whatever. You're com-, you're competing against something. And so, obviously to be a champion would make you the best. What it takes to be a champion is—people keep looking for slick, easy formulas, and I, there aren't any. Because, for example, what does it take to be a champion in college football? Well, cheating. That's what it takes. So—and which you can't do in professional football, you know, at least not to that extent. So there are ingr-, you know, different ingredients make different champions in different championships. But to me, a champion is somebody who, first of all—all the talk about the guys who play over their head, you know, it's great, and most of us wanna be over-achievers, 'cause most of us don't have any talents, so that's the only way we're gonna get anywheres. But the guy who really play-, plays over his head is not a champion. He may be a champion in specific moments. So, the first ingredient is talent. You have to be given an inordinate amount of talent, K? Then you have to be given, or someone has to show you, why y-, you wanna win. I mean, why, what i-, what is it about it that makes you take that talent and use it? You know, there's so many, so many enormously talented athletes in this country, you will never be champions at anything. That's cause something is lacking in here. Or maybe it's in here. You know, once Lombardi told me, shortly after he got the big computers into Green Bay, and he found, he ran out of questions to ask the computers, so it was about three in the morning, and he could, it was a great toy, he couldn't give up, so he asked it—I don't know what the question was, but the answer, he said to me, was, the computer told him, anybody with more than 125 IQ wouldn't hit. There might be some validity in that, I don't know, but certainly that's where this comes in. Sometimes you can know too much. We, we all know fighters, particularly, who think too much. You know, who just think too much. And so, to be a champion, it's a, it's a blend of talent, it's a blend of instincts, it's a blend of tremendous desire. And then, of course, it's got the one ingredient which goes into not only being a champion, but surviving, and that's luck. Gotta be at the right time and the right place.
Interviewer:: Outside the specific framework of any sport, not confining yourself to a particular sport, who are the people you think represent the things you've just been talking about? Who are the great champions of your, of your time? People you've seen, people you've heard—Jerry Izenberg:: All right. As a, as a, I, as a, I've been a professional sportswriter for thirty-four years. So, talking first about people that I actually wrote about and knew. Ali is a champion. He is the champion who was given the great, great skills. Much more desire than people thought he had, but it wasn't desire that carried him. It was a g-, I mean, he, he was just a, a freak. I mean, a, a, a, a type of skills that most people are not blessed with. Dur·n was the champion at the other spectrum. Dur·n had minimal skills which were developed. I mean, in regards to, worked very hard and developed, so he's intelligent, despite what people may think. But there was the animal in Dur·n that said, if I can't be the champion, then I'll eat everyone else, I'll be the only one left, and I'll be the champion. That was his type. I think when you get to basketball, Bill Russell was a champion. I guess, you know, in loose terms, a champion is a guy who's the best, but to me the champion isn't necessarily the best. He might even have a vital flaw. Russell had a flaw. Russell was not a great scoring machine. With another team, we would've seen a different Russell, and he would've been a great player, but he wouldn't be the way we remember him. But he took the skills he had and just got so much out of them. He was a champion. Lombardi was a champion. Lombardi was a champion because—well, Lombardi was a champion by suffering. Again, that's an ingredient sometimes that makes a champion. 'Cause I've always said anybody can be a champion at anything if he's lucky on the right night; if you have a crooked event; if the other guy isn't feel well; if—whatever. To win a championship is difficult, but not great. To HOLD a championship, or to, to BE the level of a champion in, after that, that's a real champion. I mean, look at some of the terrible heavyweight champions we've had. You know, winning it's a freak. And Lombardi had to struggle to be where he got, had to struggle; once he got there, the standards he set were so high that he had to keep on struggling. So his struggle made him. Intelligence—because after all, Lombardi was not, I mean, Lombardi was no genius. I mean, this is a, the Green Bay playbook, you know, is the smallest playbook in the history of pro football, it was—you know, here's seven plays, go out and do it. And, and, and they know what we're gonna run, but we're just gonna beat up on 'em, and we're gonna do it. And that was adversity, I think, that made him a champion. I think if you look at baseball champions—I think for one year—[phone rings] for most of his life, Maris was a great player, or a good player, but for one year, Maris was a champion. And it isn't the record, it isn't that he hit the sixty-one. Mantel [phone rings] could just as easily have hit it if he didn't get hurt, you know. But it was the adversity he had to go through to do it. Nobody wanted him to do it. I mean, he was spitting on the ghost of Babe Ruth. That was a big problem with some of the older folks. The only edge he did have was that he was white. I mean, if Aaron had been going after the sixty-one, that would've been much tougher for Aaron than, than the lifetime thing. But on top of that, the pressure that was—he was not a guy equipped to handle the pressure of the press. His whole lifestyle, the broken home, everything el-, I mean, did not equip him to deal with this. And yet he had to deal with that, and deal with more p-, media pressure than I have seen anyone in my life—in politics, anywheres else—deal with. I mean, Mrs. Ferraro thinks that the press gave her a hard time when she had diff-—I mean, sh-, she woulda been du-, reduced to a millimeter if she had to through what Roger went through. And that, to me, to, to do that and still hit the m-, hit the home runs, and do it, that's a champion.
Interviewer:: Jerry, I remember a story you told me. Some, some—you wanna change rolls now?Camera Crew Member #2:: Yep. Rolling out.Interviewer:: Oh, well, cut. Oh, this was the half-roll.Camera Crew Member #2:: Oh—[cut]
[wild sound]Interviewer:: The thing that made DiMaggio such a great outfielder was that he was so quick off the—Jerry Izenberg:: Oh, y-, oh, I see, oh, you mean the—Interviewer:: —and—Jerry Izenberg:: —yeah.Interviewer:: —that Mays was—Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah.Interviewer:: —not as quick off the ball but—Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah.Interviewer:: —his—Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah.Interviewer:: —middle range speed—Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah.Interviewer:: —enabled—Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah.Interviewer:: —him to catch up—Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah.Interviewer:: —to, sort of—if you put an overlap—Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah.Interviewer:: —you can see them come—Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah, and also they were accepted as champions for two different reasons—Camera Crew Member #1:: All set.Jerry Izenberg:: —I think. Are, are we—Interviewer:: —we, h-, he'll record—Jerry Izenberg:: Oh, is he, are you rolling now?Interviewer:: Yeah. Right.
Jerry Izenberg:: Oh, OK. Well, see [pause] DiMaggio was so quick, and picked up the ball so quickly, that instead of excitement or raw power, he was, he was the Nijinsky of the outfield. He represented grace, and so much grace and so much style that you looked at it and you said, this guy is a champion. Willie was a guy, you know, a great player--in a different way, you know. But the hat would fall off, there'd be the, he w-, he would be slower getting started, but he would run, he would outrun the ball to get to the ball. And the flair and the drama—I mean, Willie did everything with style. I guess, you know what the difference might be, I suppose, at the risk of getting, angering some of my friends who are psychologists, and some of my friends who read racial things into everything, I think i-, you can almost in a way break it down to ethnic tones, in that Mays was the [phone rings] kid at Hayes homes playground down the block who knows that if he puts the ball in the basket [phone rings], it's two points, no matter how he puts it in. But it's eighty points with the crowd that's watching him, if he puts [phone rings] it in with style, right? And DiMaggio was the, was the, the white kid out of Princeton, if you will, you know, who, who knows that it isn't the style on Wall Street that's gonna do it for him. I mean, with a real conservative house. It's the, the efficiency, the repetition, the lack of wasted effort. Get it done, go on to the next account, do the next thing. So in a way, they, i-, in a way, they almost—it's dangerous thing to say, I suppose, but in a way ethnically they re-, represented two types of champions, also.
Interviewer:: No, I very much agree with that, and I think the, the point that it makes is that people are champions for a lot of different reasons—Jerry Izenberg:: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the requirements to be a champion are different. The situation sometimes makes the requirement -- I think, if you look at a horse—all right, Secretariat was the best horse I ever saw. I'm sure that Man o' War mighta been better, or mighta been greater, but I, I get nervous about horses and athletes I haven't seen, you know. 'Cause I do remember some of these guys that I first covered when I first came in this business. And then they retire, and the longer they're retired, the greater they become. So an ordinary player becomes a Hall of Famer twenty years after retires, so I'll give Man o' War his due and let it go. But now Secretariat was the perfect champion because there was desire, but there was so much talent. I have never seen—if you said to pick the great single championship act you ever saw, I probably couldn't do it, but somewheres in there would be Secretariat at the Belmont, because, if you remember, at the start of it, I turned to the guy next to me, I put the glasses down, and I said to the guy next to me, he's lost control of the horse. He's lost control of his horse. And the horse is running, and he, he's gonna kill himself. But it was that nobody could control the horse.
Interviewer:: It was an incredib-—I saw that race. Was incredible. Yeah. I would put that at the top—Jerry Izenberg:: And yet, if you took a horse—are we recording?Interviewer:: Yeah.Jerry Izenberg:: Oh.Interviewer:: We're still rolling.Jerry Izenberg:: And yet, if you took a horse like CaÒanaro—Interviewer:: Mm-hmm.Jerry Izenberg:: —K, what CaÒanaro did in the derby, he never had to win another race. Now, CaÒanaro doesn't know, or didn't know that he was a champion, but I knew he was a champion, because he didn't realize—maybe if he realized how much he was carrying on his back, he would not have won a Kentucky Derby. He had the first black trainer to train in Louisville since slavery days.Interviewer:: Right.Jerry Izenberg:: He had a j-, a jockey who twice flunked outta the National Jockey School in Venezuela 'cause he couldn't stay on the horse. He kept falling off. The owner was, by the, by the Kentucky hard boots standards, was a black man, although who knows who makes what these standards are.Interviewer:: Right.Jerry Izenberg:: He was a Venezuelan, and he made toilet seats, which is unthinkable to the jockey club at Churchill Downs, right? And this horse actually had to fly to Miami twice, because the plane had plane trouble, came out of quarantine, lost a ton of weight, and went into this race, and was further, made up the most distance of any horse to ever win a Kentucky Derby. So CaÒanaro was a champion.Interviewer:: I agree. We set?Camera Crew Member #3:: Yep.Camera Crew Member #1:: Mr. Izenberg—[cut][camera roll 504]
Camera Crew Member #1:: Slate.[slate]Interviewer:: Jerry, I think we both agree that championships are about certain kinds of situations, which people may step outside themselves and may extend themselves in a very special way, for a particular situation. I'd like you to talk about some of the [pause] moments in championship play that are particularly memorable for you. Maybe not from great players especially, but at the championship level, when you saw some really special, unusual things happen. [phone rings]Jerry Izenberg:: I—can we cut, 'cause I, I think I'm waiting for a call.Camera Crew Member #2:: Cut.[cut]
Interviewer:: Jerry—Camera Crew Member #2:: Speed.Interviewer:: —unless you want me to, if you—OK, well—Camera Crew Member #2:: Slate it.Camera Crew Member #3:: Four-oh-nine.[slate]Interviewer:: You got it.Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah, I think probably if we all looked closely enough at ourselves, and can do it objectively, we'd even find championship moments in our own life. I suppose a championship, as opposed to a champion, a championship is the moment, the occasion, the, the instant when something, you know—Gianfriddo going into the, off the edge of the earth to catch the ball in the World Series; Don Larson—who could never remotely be mistaken for a champion, unless it had to do with who knocked down the most rounds in a particular night, you know, before closing time—the day he pitched the perfect game in the World Series against the Dodgers, that was his championship moment, and he knew it, and there was strug-—I mean, the, that's a, a moment that few people—it sorta stands off by itself, because baseb-, the pace is different. Then you—because pace is, has got a lot to do with—I think a championship performance, the first Super Bowl. You look at every player on those teams, you look at the, the American football league contender, and you see the, how much these guys, how badly they want it, how they want respect, and whatever. There were some great players on that team, if you remember. And you look at the Packers, and they were the Packers. And you say, gee, well, [phone rings] you know, who's gonna win this game? Willie Davis is gonna win it, Bart Starr—wait a minute, what? Max McGee. That's a championship performance. Here's a guy who knows he's never gonna play another game—in fact, went out, broke curfew that night, which is not to be confused with nights he broke curfew when he knew he was gonna play another game. But that routine he had down pat. But he went to b-, he didn't care. He went to bed three, four, five in the morning, figuring, I'm not gonna play, you know. Suddenly Boyd Dowler's down. Now here's Max McGee, who is not gonna play anymore football, who should not be playing football then, who's, who has worked hard after dark to give himself the body of a 173 year-old man, right? And he goes out, and he makes some catches that are just absolutely unbelievable. And people don't remember, but I was there. The Packers could have lost that game, which w-, it woulda been a mortal embarrassment. And, and that was a championship performance because there was no logic to it. I mean, that was a championshi-—he did that off memory. And I suppose that's a champion, when you can—Ali used to al-, look at the things Ali did off memory. I mean, that was—certainly—I'll give you another e-, example. Who is to say that on the night Joe Frazier fought Ali in Manila, it was not the greatest championship performance of Frazier's life? 'Cause, I mean, you don't necessarily have to get the gold—that's the problem, with all our Videoland commercials—go for it, and do, get the gold, right. You don't have to do that to be a real champion. If you think back to that night in Manila, I mean, it was the hottest imaginable, in an indoor gym with no air-conditioning, at high noon. Frazier almost was knocked unconscious in the first round, came back. Here's a guy that God sorta short-changed. He, the law of compensation, he gave him the biggest heart I ever saw, and one of the smallest bodies for a heavyweight. And so, as his eyes became more and more swollen, he had to straighten up to see, and that's where he lost the fight. But when you think of what this guy did for fourteen rounds, when they finally stopped it, I have never seen a greater championship performance, except one, and that would have been Ali, because he won that fight. So you really had two champions that night. That's championship. I think—a lotta people confuse recklessness with courage. I don't believe that, and I had a close friend who died in an auto crash named Eddie Sachs, many years ago. Eddie had a chance to win Indianapolis, which was his dream. He was in the last lap and a half. And racing cars are funny, they, they, they wear out in a straight, the tires wear out in a straight line, so as you're driving you can see that line, so you know your tire's going. Now, he's ahead, and he says, well, if I don't make a pit-stop, I'm gonna win it. And then he sees that line coming up. And he says, he calculates the difference between first and place money, first and second place money, the amount of money involved; what can happen if the tire blows out. He wants to win it badly. He pulls in and makes the pit stop, and gets second place. He's a champion to me. I don't know that the guy who keeps going and says, we'll force it, you know, it, that's not championship instincts, that's insanity. It's like Cus D'Amato, who died recently, said—I didn't agree with a lotta the things Cus said, but I really agree with this. He said, fear is the greatest catalyst in the world; fear makes champions. If you have fear, and you learn how to make it work for you, and you have the other ingredients, you will be a champion. If you have fear, and you ignore it, you will not be a champion, and you're also a lunatic, because only crazy people don't know the meaning of fear. That's, learnin' to handle fear is a championship ingredient that we didn't, you know, get into before, [phone rings] but I think that's a very important thing, 'cause there's fear in everything. Sometimes [phone rings], sometimes quitting is fear of failure. I'll give you a great example. I had a good friend named Freckles Brown, who was a rodeo bull rider from the, from Soper, Oklahoma, and lived on the upper Muddy Boggy river, so you have to love him going on. And Freckles never made any money. And he kept riding, because that's what he did for a living. Now, one night in Oklahoma City, Freckles was forty-five years old, and he gets up on a bull called Tornado, which no cowboy has ever ridden. Now, in retrospect we all say, oh, he wanted to be the first guy to ride Tornado, but it wa-—first of all, he didn't have the time for that. He's sitting in the chute, and he's looking down at this big red hump of a neck, on this creature that weights 1800 pounds. And it, and a bull, a rodeo bull is like a New York cab driver. Not only will he hit you, but he'll back up and make sure that he got you, OK? And, so the chute opens, and out he comes, and he's riding Tornado. And he rides to, he becomes the first man ever to ride Tornado to the whistle. He's forty-five years old. I don't know what the hell he got, $1200 that night, $1400 that night. And he walks that bow-legged walk across the arena, and he looks up, and in that second, when he's lookin' up, he's a champion. Nothing before or since, he, he, I don't believe he ever won the national bull-riding title, but that's a champion. Moments make people champions. And I don't know if I'm being redundant. But I mean, I don't think you can say it often enough. Great moments—Sonny Liston was a, was a great fighter. Forget the, the questionable way his career worked when he lost the fight to Ali, and forget the fact that he only held the title for a very short time. It's a great fighter. He was never a champion, because when he sat on his stool and didn't come out to answer the bell [phone rings], OK, he wasn't a champion. And if that fight—let me put it this ways, so that everybody's covered from all angles. [phone rings] If that fight were in any way suspect, if it were [phone rings], he would still not qualify as a champion, because a champion should know a better, more convincing way to lose.
Interviewer:: On that point, I agree with you about Roberto Dur·n from la-—I over, I saw Dur·n fight Buchanan in the Gardens--stunned by his performance. What in the world could happen to a guy like Dur·n that would make him quit in the championship fight?Jerry Izenberg:: Well, you say, what could happen? Lotta things COULD happen. He could, he could [phone rings] subtly be meditating, he could have been makin' up a shopping list. There, all kinds of things could have happened. [phone rings] He also could have met some very bad pe-—he COULD have, I'm saying—met some very bad people who taught him some very bad habits. That could have been a factor [phone rings], and it could have been non-related, non-boxing related habits. That could have been a factor. We're never gonna know why Dur·n quit that night. Never. Certainly he was not a champion that night. And by the same token, Ray Leonard was not a champion that night. And the great thing about Ray Leonard, the great thing about Ray Leonard was Ray Leonard's ch-—everybody has a championship [phone rings] night. I don't care how long you're a champion, or whatever, K? Ray Leonard's championship night was the night he fought Thomas Hearns. Let's forget Dur·n completely, because he was anything but a champion on, in the first fight. Anything but a champion. And all the excuses and whatever are irrelevant. He was totally mastered, and in awe of the, of, of a guy who pushed him around the ring. We don't know, because of the dramatic, and the ridiculous, ending to the second meeting, whether he would have been a champion that night. You can say, yes, he would've, or, but [stutters] we don't really know. But what we know is, despite all the complaints about the scorecards and everything else, if you watch the fight—I always kinda judge a fight, not on the scorecard. You gotta go by the rules. But in the back of my mind, when I think back on a fight, I think about, what did the two of them look like when it was over? 'Cause if you walk in front, if you go down here and walk to the, the V and J Bar and two guys stagger out at two o'clock in the morning, and they've had a fight, you know who won that fight. You don't need any judges, or referees, or whatever else. Ray Leonard was a loser when he got off his stool, and his eye was virtually closed. And the argument was, Tommy Hearns fought a dumb fight, which you could say is true, that he shoulda stayed away, that he wa-, shoulda jabbed, that he had to, the thing was to keep Ray Leonard outside, you know, not let him get inside of him. But that, none of that mattered, you see, because Ray Leonard was a champion that night, and, and Ray Leonard said, I will win the championship at whatever it takes, and the only thing possible, there were no options, there were no choices, there were no, there were no, there was no hesitation. He had to go to this man, and he had to knock this man out before this man closed his eye because—[rollout on camera roll][wild sound]Jerry Izenberg:: —they woulda stopped that fight. That was a champion that night.Camera Crew Member #2:: Cut.[camera roll 505]
Camera Crew Member #4:: Camera roll 505, sound 410, take one.[slate]Interviewer:: Jerry, I think we both agree that courage is an essential component in a, in a champion's art, champion's arsenal. And you have some particular examples, I think, of—Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah. Not only, the g-, the example I'm gonna cite is not only courage, but it's an idea that you know what your championship is, OK? In Super Bowl II, the, the, the Raiders never had a chance against the Packers. They were absolutely demolished. Going into that game, there was a defensive lineman—I don't remember his first name. His last name was Keating. Played for, for the Raiders. And he had fractured his ankle, and then he'd come back off the, with a cast, and then he'd, then he got rehabilitation, and then he injured it again. And now he comes into the Super Bowl with an, with an ankle that is in great pain, and which, they figure maybe he'll be able to give them two sequences on the field. He's matched up with a very, very tough young kid named Gale Gillingham, who alternated between guard and center for the Packers. Now, they went at each other from the start. By the second or third sequence, Gillingham had broken his nose, he had bled all over his jersey, Keating's ankle was about the size of a grapefruit. The banging never stopped. Now we get to maybe seven or eight sequences. Now the Packers have a-, already won the game, and the game is b-, has barely begun. And so the Super Bowl is over. But it's not over for Keating, and it's not over for Gillingham. And each sequence, Keating drags his leg off the field, almost dragging it behind him. And I know Gillingham is saying, well, there goes that son of a bitch, thank God I'm not gonna see him again. And then he looks up the next time, and guess who's out there. And Gillingham, with a broken nose, and blood all over him, and, and, and, and, and, and, an absolute mess, keeps comin' back, and neither guy backs off. Now, this is like a fourteen-point spread and it's never gonna change, and the Packers can make it as big as they wanna make it, and it's over. The Super Bowl is over in the first quarter, or early in the second quarter. But their Super Bowl is not over until the final gun goes off. Each guy was going to win his Super Bowl. And that's it, again, we're talkin' like champions. Sure, Gillingham wanted to win the game, but he hadn't become a champion till he defeated Keating, whom he couldn't defeat. And so they went on and played this hopeless, almost pointless, violent charade for four quarters. And afterwards, you look down there, we know Oakland won the game, but tell me that Keating is not a champion. I defy you to tell me that the guy's not a champion.
Interviewer:: Jerry, you know, as you, as you speak about that, it, it, it raises a little point in my mind. It seems that there, there, there's a game on the field, obviously, and there's a game between the individuals who are involved in team sports. In your view, what is the effect that television over, particularly over the past ten, fifteen years, has had on the quality that you're talking about just now.Jerry Izenberg:: Well, I think, first of all, it's, you know, it's made eavesdroppers of us all. You can watch the instant replay. And it's also made experts of us all. It has—obviously, it's done a service in a way, say, to the interior [phone rings] linemen, people like that, you know, faceless people that you really, 'less you know the game or whatever, you, you really don't know what's going on with these people. It's made them bigger, it's m-, in our eyes, it's made them more important. It's made us perhaps understand [phone rings] better what they do. My quarrel with television as a hero-maker is that once it decides, since it's so totally—well, let me put it this way, to—and I don't want to go into a tirade. But television is a great example of where the technology far, far, far outstrips the, the talent of the, of the, of the onscreen people. And therefore, they can show you magnificent—they can put cameras in people's navels when they dive off the high-board, and great, you know, beautiful, and whatever else. Unfortunately, a lot of people who make the decisions are quick to make ersatz heroes, and, and they've got footage which they will throw at you, and throw at you, so now they are making a champion or they are making a hero, or whatever else. I mean, perhaps classic example of that is Gerry Cooney, who's, arguably was not seen on television much, but those clips were, and they convinced an awful lot of people that Gerry Cooney could fight. I, I think that the, the impact of television is, when it lets you see, the impact is a plus; when it tries and endeavors to explain it to you, the impact is an enormous negative, and it's so devoid of inspiration and depth. For example, Mary Lou Retton. Mary Lou Retton did a marvelous thing. She's a great gymnast, all right? But when Mary Lou Retton, was clear she was gonna become the sweetheart of the games, in their experience they had Comanec, and the other little girls, so therefore they were gonna, now gonna make a star, but this star had to be like those girls. They began calling her—now I was at the thing, so I must admit, I didn't see a lot of it—but I used to go back to the, to the tape center at the press headquarters of the Olympics, and play back a lot of the events from the night before. And they began calling her an impish pixie. OK, well, Nadia Comanec was a pixie. She weighed, what, eighty-one pounds, and whatever else. Mary Lou Retton is a great athlete, she ain't no pixie. I mean, you know, she, she's got a neck like Ray Nitschke, you know, and, and, and it, that's not—so, th-, the-, maybe I'm wrong to castigate them for that, but it's, it's, it indicates to me that they can make anybody [phone rings] anything they want. And they do make a lot of ersatz champions. That's why, th-, they promote their own events, you know? And you listen, I mean, you listen to them, the little promos that they throw up on the screen, you know, and you, you, you, you're like, you know, let's say, Buffalo, the Buffalo Bills, mean, hungry, gonna play this real—of course they're mean and hungry. They won two damn games in thirteen tries, and if they, and if they'd let 'em play twice a week, they woulda won two damn guys in twenty-six tries, you know. And that distortion can give us, can be applied to make individuals something they're not. I'm sure that you, there a million children of television out there who, who, who became champions because television has created them. Hey - Any, any, any media, any medium that can make a competitive sport out of refrigerator pulling, can create anything.
Interviewer:: What's happening, do you think, to—you, you, you've seen athletes for many, many years, both as a profe-, as a professional journalist, and then before that. What's happened now? We see what in some senses seem like terrible things happening, particularly athletes, the, the college situation, the abuses there; the abuses of, of, of athletes, both physically and spiritually, in the professional game. Where do you see all this heading?Jerry Izenberg:: Total disaster. It's a very, this is a, it's showing itself in a very complex thing, but le-, le-, lemme tell you a story which I think will make my point. If you bear in mind when I tell you the story that all problems in athletics in this country, outside of boxing, stem from the college or very high competitive high school level. In other words, these kids are moulded and nurtured and everything else, so whatever they're gonna be—if they're gonna be bums, they'll be bums there. If they're gonna be cheaters, they'll be cheaters there. I made a trip to England once and stood in line for a bus, which was an experience in itself 'cause nobody stands in line here for anything. And there were five or six kids ahead of me, and they had track shoes with 'em. And I said, you guys going to the park to run? And they said, oh, yes sir. And I said, well, wha-, do you run competitively at all? And the guy says, we're the Oxford track team. Now here's four guys gettin' up, puttin' tokens in. Now I get a big picture, OK, of the University of Southern California track team going down to the corner, waiting for a bus, lining up and droppin' tokens in. I don't believe anything is going to save our—I believe our college programs could be saved. I do not believe they will be saved. And in answer to your question [phone rings], we are a nation of cheaters. Our, our colleges [phone rings], in large measure, and I'm, obviously I'm generalizing, but great many, a great, there are a great many cheating programs. And cheating begets cheating. And when you say to a kid, this is the way to do it, and then you're showing him how to bend the rules, then he's gonna be cheater all his life, you're gonna be a cheater, and the rewards are enormous, because to be number one—I, what is a champion? What is the AP or UPI poll champion? What does that mean? In alumni donations, in the general fund of the school—I could document it, if you had the time, g-, I could give you names of schools. But how do you get—Florida's got its nose bent all out of joint because nobody wants to vote for them for number one o' the AP poll, and the UPI pool doesn't recognize 'em. The poll doesn't recognize 'em. Well, great, 'cause they cheated to get there. And now they're saying, but we paid our penalty. But the kids who are recruited by cheating, and the successes which cheating created and then therefore encourage more kids to come to the school, all that is an overtone. Now you're gonna reward them and make them number one, and they don't understand why they can't be number one.
Interviewer:: Ron, when he stops, keep going, please, OK? Jerry, it sounds like you're saying we're looking at the, the death of the concept of the champion, if in fact you're talking about champions being created out of these sets of forces.Jerry Izenberg:: Yes and no. We're getting a different kinda champion. I mean, I don't think anything, even the money now that goes into [phone rings] the phony trust funds and whatever, I don't think anything is going to change the championship quality of the long-distance runner, 'cause there's no way to avoid paying the—the price is so enormous, he's gonna be a champion. I think when we talk about championship moments, championship teams, America will see a lot of champions in their mind. I will not. Just because I'm a little bit fussy about how you got there will spoil it for me. It doesn't spoil it for America. You know, a guy by the name of [phone rings] Hardin was once president of Southern Methodist University. He found [phone rings] his football program cheating. He turned it in to the NCAAA, NCAA. [phone rings] They got on probation. He got fired for turning his program in. He was the president of a school, allegedly the moral arbiter of it, OK? Nobody saw anything wrong in his firing, and [phone rings] none of the boosters stopped boosting and paying under the table after SMU had been on probation, like, six times [phone rings], all right? I'm sure the Arizona State boosters don't feel any compulsion. That's the only school that ever had [phone rings] five sports on disciplinary action at the same time. How do you get in trouble, in g-, in, in, in, in gymnastics? Point I'm making—[rollout on camera roll][wild sound]Jerry Izenberg:: —is that, but America accepts [phone rings] it. America will always accept it. And by America's [phone rings] accepting it, America will always have champions. See, because the one thing we want is the act. Don't tell [phone rings] us what it took to c-, to perform the act, unless what you're telling me is gonna be upbeat. [phone rings] Don't destroy my hero, you know.
Interviewer:: One last point. And we'll, we'll, we'll take this for, for voiceover Jerry, if you were asked, you're a professional journalist, you've seen, as I did for many years, you see these people for nothing [phone rings] which is a great way to see them, I [laughs] guess. But if somebody said, Jerry, we'll give [phone rings] you, we'll give you an opportunity to pay to see, two, three, four, or however, however many [phone rings] you want, but you gotta pay to see 'em, who would you pay to go and see?Jerry Izenberg:: I'd pay to see [phone rings], I'd pay to see [phone rings] high school football played on the level that it's generally played at in New York and New Jersey. I would pay to see two great fighters. I would have difficulty paying to see—I would not pay to see a Super Bowl. [phone rings] Absolutely not. I would pay to see a six-place baseball team when the right guy is pitching, and they happen to be playing on a Thursday afternoon, which will never happen again. Under the conditions that they're suppos'ta play in, I can six down there and be a part of this geometrically—this is the greatest law and order sport in the world. I mean, you get your three strikes, you get your nine innings, I mean, you can't be cheated, you get—I would pay to see that. I would, I would not pay the NBA finals, but I would pay to see the Rucker tournament. And I must admit that despite [phone rings] all the rotten things that I know about it, I would pay to see a great number of Olympic events. [phone rings]
Interviewer:: Who were the great fighters you'd pay to see?Jerry Izenberg:: Great fighters that I—Interviewer:: Who, who were the, who were the two fighter-, the great fighters, you said [phone rings] you'd p-, pay to see a—Jerry Izenberg:: Oh.Interviewer:: —couple o' great fighters. Who would they be?Jerry Izenberg:: I'd pay to see Sugar R-, R-, I'd pay to see Sugar Ray Robinson. [pause] I would pay to see Joe Louis. And I'll tell you something, I wouldn't've paid going in, but now that I saw it, more than anything I would pay to see the Holmes-Norton fight. That, champion fighting with one arm. Fighting with one arm, and winning the, and winning the heavyweight title from a guy who always was afraid of punchers, and didn't believe Larry could hurt him, and therefore fought the greatest fight of his life. Great fight. They were champions.
Interviewer:: Tell me a little bit about, if you will, you mentioned Rob-, Ray Robinson, you mentioned Joe Louis, who are particular favorites of mine.Jerry Izenberg:: Yeah.Interviewer:: Just, just give me a little bit on, o-, on what you think made them good fighters they were. You know, we're out of the reel.Jerry Izenberg:: Louis's charisma was in the ring, no matter what they try to make him into. I mean, he's p-, he, he was smarter than people thought, but that, but you didn't have to be very smart to be smarter than most people thought Joe Louis was. His charisma was in the ring. The devastation. He was the, he was the hunter. The classic hunter, yeah. Seldom panicked, seldom ruffled, whatever—plodding. He was, in a way he was a blue collar fighter. He plodded. I mean, you know, he had great reflexes and everything, but he, if it was gonna take him five rounds to do it, he was gonna do it. He was serious about it. He took everybody seriously. He was efficient. He was a, which is g-, I mean, he was aro-—he was the industrial revolution, OK? Now you're goin' from guys that are winging their arms from way back here, throwing punches and whatever. This guy was the industrial revolution. He is a machine. This is how it's gonna be done. He wasn't unfeeling, I know, but, but in action, he was a machine. I think his charisma outside the ring was minimal, despite the fact, people say, would say to me, how can you say that when he stops a whole room? Reason he stopped the room was several reasons. First, how to look at the makeup of a room. If the room was all white, and the time was right, he would stop it because everybody was grateful that he was the right kind of black guy to win this thing, see, Leon Spinks did not stop any rooms, right? He could also stop a room—I think for a lot of us, because of the Internal Revenue Service. I mean, who among us, not knowing any of the facts, would say Joe's gotta be right [laughs] in that matchup, right? So he [stutters] [phone rings], whereas Ray Leonard's charisma was—[phone rings] I m-, I don't mean Ray, I mean [stutters] Sugar Ray—th-, the re-, the real Sugar Ray, OK? Robinson. His [phone rings] charisma was, first of all, in the ring, because, if you knew what you were seeing, the man could do everything. He could box, he could slip, he could move, he could punch. He could carry a guy and make it look like the other guy was fighting. I mean, he was champion. Outside the ring, had a great flair for [pause] making people, people wanted to get next to him. Not like Ali. Ali was, I mean, Ali was a, people want to get—Ali w-, Ali was a sex symbol, among other things. I don't think Ray Robinson was. People wanted the—because he was the very best, they wanted to be able to touch him, they wanted to be—I suspect if the, if the Grand Dragon [phone rings] of the Ku Klux Klan were, had left his sheet home, or were outa uniform, and were with his son, he would ask Ray Robinson to please pose for a picture with his son. H-, he was, he cou-, he could stop—I'll tell you who else could stop rooms. DiMaggio could stop a room, which—see, DiMaggio's also was mystique. We knew about the grace on the field. Like I said before, he was not a raw power guy, he was the dancer. He was the magnificent, you know, ballet king. And then when you took him off the field, he handled the room in the same way. Nobody ever felt put off by Willie Mays. [phone rings] I mean, they might not like him, they might get angry at him, and I myself have on several occasions, but that, but you were not in awe—I mean, you weren't a—hey Willie, you, you know, the conversation, you know, people, cab-drivers, hey Willie, you know. But cab-drivers mighta signalled to Joe DiMaggio, but it wasn't, hey Joe, it was, it was, it wa-—they said Joe, but they were really, but they meant, Mr. DiMaggio. And that same grace could stop a room when he walked in, into a room, see. And that's a championship quality. I, I suppose that's maybe the ultimate championship quality in a way, because how many guys do we know that could stop a room?
Interviewer:: Good point.Camera Crew Member #2:: Stop a room?Interviewer:: Yeah, stop a room. [laughs][cut][end of interview]