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 Believe It Or Not: Bob HanslickI couldn't let the season go by without reporting on an interview I conducted with Bob Hanslick, a curious figure (one might say legend) in the annals of college football. These commentaries give me an opportunity to pretend I'm a sportswriter, something that seems, from the outside, to be just about the greatest job in the world. But the sportswriter illusion wears pretty thin; it is difficult to actually come up with anything terribly original, and almost impossible (with the exception of my game reports) to come up with first-hand material. But I had a brush with it this year, in late October, when I happened to bump into, and meet, Mr. Hanslick. The meeting may not be quite as noteworthy as my dad - BioSaint - getting to play a round of golf with a future Heisman Trophy winner (Chris Weinke), but the meeting gave me some interesting insights into the old boy network and the "good old days" of the student athlete. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Portland, and I was taking Kathryn to the park. Fortunately, it was cool enough that I was wearing my Wisonsin Badgers sweatshirt. It was that that Hanslick noticed. He was walking up the path with a small dog at his side. The dog had Kathryn fascinated (of course). Hanslick was a tall man, broad in the shoulders, clearly could have been an aging athlete. He looked to be 60-ish, but after hearing his story, he must have been older than that. He approached me and asked me about the sweatshirt. I told him my brother had gone to school there and that I had lived in Minnesota for a number of years. We got to talking. He did most of the talking, I did the listening, watching Kathryn's interactions with the little dog out of the corner of my eye. He introduced himself, and told me his story. Hanslick had indeed been a college football player, and not a bad one. He had played two years at the University of Wisconsin. In those days, freshmen played on a freshman team, but in his second year, he lettered and started. After that, though, World War II came along, and so Hanslick enlisted in the Marines and went to an officer's training school. Wisconsin did not have a program like that, but the University of Michigan did, so Hanslick transfered there and lettered for the Wolverines. Remember, back in the 40s, Army was still a power house program, so I suspect the Wolverines benefitted quite a bit from recruiting star Big Ten athletes who were joining the miltary. Hanslick said he knew Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch, a halfback who is in the college football hall of fame, on that Michigan team. From what I can piece together, it looks like they would have been team-mates on the 1942 Wisconsin Badgers and the 1943 Michigan Wolverines. Hanslick finished the 43 campaign and then served in the Second World War. He took a job in the Twin Cities upon his return, and was recognized one day by the track and field coach of the University of Minnesota. Hanslick reminded me that in the early days of college football there was no such thing as video tape, and the football coaches essentially ruled their athletic departments with everyone else - the track coach, the baseball coach, the swimming coach - working under the football coach. The spring sport coaches in particular, as part of their normal duties, scouted opponents games for the football coach. As it happened, the track coach had seen Hanslick play years before, and recognized him. He said to Hanslick, "Don't you still have a year of eligibility left?" Hanslick said that he did, but that he was no longer enrolled in school and in fact had graduated. Now that's no problem for coaches today, and that was even less of a problem in the good old days of the student athlete. When news got to legendary University of Minnesota head coach Bernie Bierman, that there was a powerful lineman to be had, Bierman got the ball rolling and made Hanslick an offer he couldn't refuse. In those days (I like using that Grandpa Simpson expression) - in those days, when the football coach got the ball rolling, the ball rolled. No doubt. Especially if you happened to be Bernie Bierman. And so, although admission to the Law School of the University of Minnesota required rigorous completion of undergraduate pre-Law course work, and although Hanslick had no pre-Law training and mediocre college grades, he suddenly found himself accepted to the University of Minnesota law school. Moreover, Bierman had arranged summer employment for Hanslick at a boys' camp in Brainerd, Minnesota. The boys' camp would pay Hanslick $300, a fairly sizable sum. And to sweeten the deal further, Bierman offered Hanslick 12 tickets for each Gopher home game. (Seniors were granted 6 tickets per game, juniors 4, and sophomores 2, so this was a double allotment.) Finally, Bierman offered Hanslick the captainship of the games of his choice. Captains rotated among seniors for each game, so Hanslick was honored and of course selected the captainship when the Gophers played the Badgers and the Wolverines. Hanslick told me that the 12 tickets was an especially pleasing inducement. Hanslick took the $300 he earned the summer before his senior season (from the job arranged by Bierman) and invested it in buying still more Gopher tickets. It turns out that most college players sold their free tickets, it was their primary source of revenue. The scam was so lucrative that Hanslick could find no better investment for his own money than that, and so he ended up being well compensated financially during his final year of eligibility. As a bonus it turned out he was sweet on another counselor in Brainerd (I can't help using the 40s lingo), and, it turned out, had met his future wife there. And so that's how it came to pass that one man lettered and started for three different Big Ten schools - an oddity that, as far as Hanslick knew, has never been duplicated. He said the Big Ten adopted a rule to prevent it - "The Hanslick Rule" - which may indeed have been the predecessor to the NCAA rule that transfers must sit out a year. It was astonishing enough that Hanslick was interviewed in Portland, Oregon (his post-college home) by a reporter for the syndicated news feature "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" and thus, on September 7, 1951 (Hanslick proudly recalled the date), Hanslick was featured in the column. Hanslick was happy to talk, and I was happy to listen, but he did pause in his story to occasionally praise Kathryn ("What a happy little guy" he mistakenly said of her several times, ignoring my corrections) and to ask me my background. When I told him that I had graduated from the University of Florida, he floored me by saying "They had a coach down in Gainesville named Ray Graves. I bought a dog from him." I never got the full details, but it sounded like the old boys network made all the advantaged white athletes in those days pals, and so a trip to Florida for Hanslick meant an invite for dinner to Ray Graves' house, and during the evening Hanslick became enamored with a puppy and bought it. Hanslick was successful enough in college to enjoy an 8 year professional football career with the Philadelphia Eagles. He told me that he was paid $275 per game. The Eagles won one NFL championship during his tenure. After his pro career he settled in Portland and raised a family. Hanslick bragged to me that he got Elroy Hirsch his job as Athletic Director at the University of Wisconsin. Hanslick had a son who played for the University of Washington, and went to Seattle to watch the Huskies play the Badgers (this must have been late 80s, and I'm not sure if his son was still on the Huskies or not). Hanslick met with some of the UW big wigs, who confided in him that the current AD was hitting the bottle and was on the way out. Hanslick was still good friends with Hirsch and asked them if they had considered him for the post. They responded they hadn't, given that Hirsch seemed happy with his current job with the San Diego Chargers. Hanslick informed them otherwise, initiating what would be a fairly unsuccessful tenure for Hirsch as Wisonsin's Athletic Director. Hanslick admitted that the post-Hirsch hiring of Barry Alvarez as UW football coach had been genius. He seemed like a happy man, and he certainly was friendly. You wonder about people like that that end up meeting people of importance in every corner of the country. Undoubtedly college football had been good to him. I thanked him for the stories, pleased for myself too. I finally had a real interview to publish on the SJS College Football Extravaganza. |
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