Carlisle vs. Army: Jim Thorpe, Dwight Eisenhower, Pop Warner, and the Forgotten Story of Football's Greatest Battle [Paperback]

Lars Anderson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 12, 2008

In this stunning work of narrative nonfiction, Lars Anderson recounts one of college football’s greatest contests: Carlisle vs. Army, the fateful 1912 gridiron clash that had far-reaching implications both real and symbolic.

The story centers on three men: Glenn “Pop” Warner, who came to the Carlisle Indian School in 1903 and saw beyond its assimilationist agenda, molding the Carlisle Indians into a football juggernaut and smashing prejudices along the way; Jim Thorpe, who arrived at Carlisle as a troubled teenager–only to become one of America’s finest athletes, dazzling his opponents and gaining fans across the nation; and a hardnosed Kansan back named Dwight Eisenhower, who knew that by stopping Carlisle’s amazing winning streak, he could lead the Cadets of Army to glory. But beyond recounting the tale of this momentous match, Lars Anderson reveals its broader social and historical context, offering unique perspectives on sports and culture at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Filled with colorful period detail, Carlisle vs. Army gives a thrilling, authoritative account of the events of an epic afternoon whose reverberations would be felt for generations.

Praise for Carslisle vs. Army:

“Richly detailed and gracefully written . . . In an often overlooked football era, Anderson found a true Game of the Century.”
–Sports Illustrated

“[A] remarkable story . . . Carlisle vs. Army is about football the way that The Natural is about baseball.”
–Jeremy Schaap, author of Cinderella Man

“A great sports story, told with propulsive narrative drive . . . Anderson allows himself to get inside the heads of his characters, but as in the best sports-centered nonfiction (Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit and Frost’s Greatest Game Ever Played, for example), the technique is based on solid research.”
–Booklist (starred review)

“A masterly tale of the gridiron.”
–Neal Bascomb, author of Red Mutiny

“A magnificent story that’s as rich in American history as it is in sporting lore. Carlisle vs. Army is a dramatic and moving book, told with an unrelenting grace.”
–Adrian Wojnarowski, author of The Miracle of St. Anthony

“Gripping, inspiring coverage of three powerful forces’ unforgettable convergence: the sports version of The Perfect Storm.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* "Remember that it was the fathers and grandfathers of these Army players who fought your fathers and grandfathers in the Indian Wars. Remember Wounded Knee." Now that is a pregame pep talk. It was delivered by legendary coach Pop Warner to the Carlisle Indian School football team minutes before the squad took the field against Army in 1912. Carlisle was led by Jim Thorpe, still basking in his gold-medal performance in the 1912 Olympics; Army's emerging star was a gritty, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust halfback named Dwight Eisenhower. Sports Illustrated writer Anderson reprises the landmark game in gripping, play-by-play fashion, but it is really the backstory that gives this thoroughly engaging book its bite: how Warner, college football's first superstar coach, found himself at an unheralded Indian school, and how he came to nurture Thorpe into becoming the greatest athlete of the first half of the twentieth century; how Thorpe struggled with family tragedy and the identity-crushing regimen common to the Indian schools of the era; and how a tough, street-fighting kid from the wrong side of the tracks in Abilene, Texas, landed on the gridiron at West Point, where his determination to knock Thorpe out of the game with a bone-crushing hit almost derailed the future president's military career. Anderson allows himself to get inside the heads of his characters, but as in the best sports-centered narrative nonfiction (Hillebrand's Seabiscuit and Frost's Greatest Game Ever Played, for example), the technique is based on solid research. A great sports story, told with propulsive narrative drive and offering a fascinating look at multiple layers of American popular culture. Ott, Bill --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Lars Anderson is a Sports Illustrated staff writer and a graduate of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. He is also the author of The All Americans. He lives with his wife in Birmingham, Alabama.


From the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (August 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812977319
• ISBN-13: 978-0812977318
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #278,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Lars Anderson's CARLISLE VS. ARMY-What Does it Tell us about the Way Things Used to Be? February 11, 2013

By eslkevin

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I was back in the three state region--Kansas, Missouri, & Oklahoma--this past week taking care of my mother who has just gone a knee replacement surgery in Joplin, Missouri. Mom received a knee called Triathlon. The Triathlon brand for new knees would certainly have been welcome in bygone centuries. Some many people have suffered debilitating knee injuries--for example, the famous Kansan Dwight D. Eisenhower. The name Triathlon rings of championship, hard work, and overcoming pain and difficulties to gain victory.

This concept of pain, overcoming injury, and love of athleticism fit in well with the legends I was busy reading about upon my arrival in the town of Carl Junction, Missouri this very October 2007. The book I was enjoying while helping my mother out was entitled CARLISLE vs. ARMY: Jim Thorpe. Dwight Eisenhower, Pop Warner, and the Forgotten Story of Football's Greatest Battle.

The book is by Lars Anderson is not only a form of homage to the characters recalled in its lengthy title, but it is a book that reminds American readers how far the country has evolved and changed since the days when Indians ran the plains and U.S. armies marched Indians off to reservations. It also is a reminder of how defeat can be snatched from victory and victory transformed from defeat (made into a positive gain for a nation--even after individual mistakes have ruined the day for some).

Glen "Pop" Warner, the legendary coach who wrote the book on how college football could be used to build a school's image coached a total of 14 years at the tiny Carlisle Indian school in Pennsylvania and also rewrote permanently how the game of football would be played in the USA., is one of the three main characters in Anderson's novel-like history book.... Like me, he spent a number of years in North Texas' Wichita Falls before becoming a football player and coach back out east where his family was from originally.

At the time he arrived to coach the Carlisle Indian School football players in the last years of the 19th century, Warner was certainly still full of the biases against which Native Americans had to confront from the day they were born. These included the belief that they were an inferior race or form of human being who could not compete with the world that the Western Europeans had built in North America.

Lars Anderson determines to remind the readers from the very beginning of his boot that almost every Indian boy or girl in America in those days knew of the disaster that had faced many native Americans in the years leading up to the Massacre at Wounded Knee in the 1890s in the Dakotas. It was, however, these very same offspring of these demoralized peoples whom Pop Warner agrees to coach--and, in fact, tries so valiantly on many occasions to make these native American youngsters recognized as the national football champions for the whole USA.

The author, Lars Anderson, and the actual protagonist of his story, the football coach "Pop" Warner, both portrayed the battle really being fought by the Carlisle football players in 1912 as a battle to balance integration within American society with Native American offsprings' own developing desire to continue to have identities as native tribesman--which included their own centuries-old senses of tradition and destiny. The match-up in 1912 of the cadet team from West Point against the Indians of Carlisle is thus portrayed as a battle to balance the historical narrations of prior decades which indicated that Native Americans were not capable of beating "white men" at their own games (and culture).

GLEN WARNER--"POPS"

At a personal level, "Pop" Warner, who himself had failed two decades earlier in his entrance exam to attend West Point, this match-up with Army was a chanced to have some sweet revenge. Moreover, as Warner sought a national championship once again that same 1912 season, Warner saw the game with the Indians-facing-off-against-Army as a way to demonstrate his own personal cunning in planning new ways to play football. (In that game, for example, his Indians presented the double wing offense for the first time in college football history.) That is, with the right strategies and techniques, his small group of Indian football talent--who were outweighed against by 25 pounds per--could and would prove victorious.

Anderson writes that this particular game in 1912 was not just any game, "this was the chance to prove that his [Warner's] new style of football was superior to the power game that Army played. Warner's players had wowed crowds all over the country with their great speed and agility and with their deception and their cunning. In this game Warner was going to use all his tricks to confuse the bigger Cadet players.

Warner, who understood what made Indian athletes tick better than any other white man in America in that era, knew exactly how to fire up his boys before the game.

He reminded them loudly just before the game that it was "the fathers and grandfathers of these very Army players who had killed their fathers and grandfathers in the Indian Wars. They were the ones who murdered innocent women and children at Wounded Knee. They were the ones who spilled Indian blood all over the plains."[p. 278]

JIM THORPE AND CARLISLE

Anderson adds that Pop Warner ended his pre-game speech on the day of the big game with Army to his players, who represented so many different North American tribes that "[I]t was the Indian's time to fight back. It was time to make their ancestors proud. It was time to beat the living daylights out of Army."[p.278]

It is surprising to read such strong language from a white man, but--as noted above--no coach in the USA knew the psyche of Native American athletes better than Warner--who had recently taken two of his Carlisle athletes to win several Olympic medals in Sweden earlier that 1912 summer. These two Carlisle athletes included the "World's Greatest Athlete" James Thorpe of Sac and Fox heritage from an Oklahoma reservations and the Hopi Indian tribesman & long-distance runner, Lewis Tewanima, from an Arizona reservation.

Before that second decade of the 20th Century was over, Thorpe would have demonstrated his skills in professional boxing, horse-riding, baseball and several other sports before helping found the predecessor league to the NFL in 1920. Already, in 1912, James Thorpe found himself recognized as the greatest athlete in the whole world after winning most of the events (and finishing lower than 4th in any) of a total of 15 (decathlon and pentathlon) events he took part in at the Olympics in Stockholm.

Naturally, Thorpe was also already well-known as possibly the best college football player in the entire nation by the start of the 1912 college football season. The many cadets and Army fans could only applaud him when the Carlisle team under the captainship of Jim Thorpe defeated their West Point team 26 to 7 that October date.

Although the emotional Oklahoman, Jim Thorpe fell far too often into the stereotype of a drunken Indian at times during his various sports careers, in that autumn of 1912, Pop Warner was often able to get Thorpe back on track that fall. He reminded Jim constantly, "You've got to behave yourself. You owe it to the public as well as your school. The Olympic Games have made you into a public figure and you've got to shoulder the responsibility." [p. 265]

Jim, as did all of his Carlisle Indian teammates, recognized that very many Native Americans looked up to him. He regularly demonstrated an ability to reflect on his own mistakes and renewed his pride throughout that final season as the Indians finished 12 and 1 (falling only to Penn State).

However, there was a tendency for young confused Indians caught between (1) modern society and (2) historically important facets of Native American culture to wander off away from the particular disciplines required by the modern world. Many young natives ran away from Carlisle over the 3 decades of the school's existence. Others, like Thorp, ran from all the attention of the media and the control of Pop Warner in Pennsylvania.

For nearly 2 years, Thorpe actually had gone missing or AWOL from Carlisle--in both 1909 and 1910 --turning up in Oklahoma at his sister's home every autumn after spending time barnstorming with minor league baseball teams in the Carolinas. Eventually, a fellow Indian from his days at Carlisle--who Thorpe looked up to as a big brother--finally successfully persuaded the ever stronger young athlete to return to the discipline of the football gridiron and college life in both 1911 and 1912.

That wasn't the case for his fellow Olympic medalist, Lewis Tewanima, though. Even as Tewanima successfully medaled in the Olympics in Sweden, he determine simply to return home to herd sheep on the Hopi lands of his ancestors in Arizona once the Autumn 1912 school year was under way.

KANSAS' EISENHOWER

Although as a whole, Anderson,tells a fairly sanitized version of the lives of Thorpe, Warner and Eisenhower, he is less romantic or sympathetic to the boy from Abilene, Kansas who fought on the gridiron for Army in the greatest match-up of its day. Unlike Thorpe, who lost both his twin brother and mother at an early age, Dwight Eisenhower grows up in a very full house with other Eisenhowers in the working class section of Abilene. Both his parents see him off to the day he leaves the home for the train east to join other new cadets at West Point.

Like his Oklahoman football nemesis Thorpe, "Ike", as he is called by all, was a sometimes moody fellow who could show great determination when he so desired--and he often was very determined. Even though, Ike was not very fast or as huge as Thorpe, Eisenhower could carry quite a few tacklers or barrel them over as he charged down field.

Anderson notes that Ike grew up in a town where his neighbors would tell stories of the wild days of Abilene, Kansas--two decades earlier--when gunslingers, cattle, brothel's and saloons ran the streets of the city. The young Eisenhowers were mesmerized with first hand accounts of what the prairie boomtown was like when Wild Bill Hickock was the sheriff of the town (when Abilene was the original end of the line or railway head for the Chisholm trail coming out of Texas).

Eisenhower was obviously more gifted academically than was the Oklahoman, Jim Thorpe, however, he had several character flaws just as Thorpe did, and these were flaws which often got him into grave trouble or fights.

Abilene legends include the hour-long fist-fight he had with a bigger and older boy when he was just 13-years old. In short, as his mother warned him often, Ike needed to learn to not let anger control his actions or thoughts. After the Army loss to Carlisle, in which Cadet Eisenhower severely injured his knee for the first time, Ike would become very depressed and do several things that almost ended his military career before it got started. For example, despite being told by doctors that he should not ride a horse, Ike not only rode a dangerous horse but jumped off the horse. This jump-off a horse on an already-bad knee effectively ended his football career in late 1912.

Thorpe had only done such a dangerous jump after being basically called slacker by the officer in charge of the horses. The pride and anger in Eisenhower was such that he felt that he had to stand up to the challenge. However, in his rage that day, Ike had ignored all the retreats of fellow cadets to back off.

The depression that followed this loss of his sporting ability almost led the young Eisenhower to leave West Point later the following spring. Later, near the end of his time at West Point the future commander of U.S. Armed Forces in Europe and later the two-term President of the USA needed to receive fudged results of his physical to be allowed to continue in the military. (The West Point doctor knew Eisenhower, his health, and character well enough. The doctor, however, ignored the army regulations and despite the weak knee allowed Ike to continue his military career in 1915.)

The fact is that Ike's injury in the Carlisle and Army Game of the Century occurred because young Ike was out of control and trying to undertake too much. That is, he was seeking to take on the Greatest Athlete in the World in the second half of that game. On that game day, Ike was so angry and desiring so badly to win the game at all cost that he and his peers tried to hit, knock, or tackle Jim Thorpe so hard that Thorpe would have to leave the game. However, eventually it was Ike who ended up having a severe injury on the gridiron.

This is how it happened.

Ike and another football playing cadet twice intentionally tried to injure Thorpe. In the first tackle they were partially successful--leaving Thorpe looking a bit dazed after the hardest hit of the day.

However, a few minutes later when Ike and his comrade on the field once again tried the same double hit on Thorpe, Thorpe simply juked them both. Juke stopped and then shifted. This led the two Army players to hit each other so hard that they both were immediately sidelined--Eisenhower for the rest of the game--while Thorpe continued running down field.

PICKING UP THE PIECES

Anderson called Eisenhower the "Huge Kansan" because Ike played like a giant and was considered the most hard-working player the Army coach had ever seen.

Unlike Thorpe, though, Ike got his life back on track a year later. Ike would never play football again but he became a greater leader after that. He volunteered in 1913 to lead Army fans in cheers. At the same time, Ike also learned to lead men as he became a coach for the junior varsity for the cadets of West Point's Cullum Hall.

Lars Anderson, without stating so specifically in his narration, reveals that there were, in fact, a lot of similarities between Thorpe and Eisenhower. For example, they both came from large families and learned to fight and do various sports on the plains in Kansas. (Thorpe was attending Haskall Indian College in Lawrence, Kansas when he first learned to play football.) The two also both played minor league baseball before returning to their first loves: football

.

This fact concerning how they both major American figures of the 20th Century had had semi-professional baseball stints is where the key differences between the two men's lives are also to be found.

The young Eisenhower cheated--as many players did in that era. Eisenhower played under the name "Wilson" while Thorpe played under his own name.

The point is Eisenhower had more adult counsel and American cultural information than Thorpe had about how to succeed in a white man's world.

Eisenhower knew that if he wanted to play college football some day, he would have to protect his identity. Thorpe, who had grown up part of the time as either a ward for the state at Indian schools (in Oklahoma, Kansas and Pennsylvania), motherless, or simply dropping out of school before heading often out to rural Oklahoma again-and-again, never fully comprehending until after the scandal of his professional status hit the nation's newspapers in the winter of 1912-1913 that he had done anything wrong by accepting money to play baseball (before running in the decathlon and the pentathlon at the Olympics in Europe).

In short, although Thorpe had not always demonstrated the best judgment in trying to make his own way in the world--i.e. leaving Carlisle for two years and playing baseball over the objections and the opinions of his coach, his teammates, the state, or the American cultural icons of his era. Nonetheless, Thorpe had never intended to break certain rules and bring dishonor to himself or his people while he played semi-professional baseball. He had seen it as simply a way of earning money at doing what he loved sport while trying to figure out what to do with his life in a fast changing America, which was never quite his home.

In any case, as anyone knows today (and it was already true for Pop Warner's Carlisle sports squads) in America college athletes get paid either (a) under the table, (b) through scholarships, (c) aid from booster associations, or (d) indirectly in other ways to play sports.

This was already a very confusing fact about college sports life and boosterism at Carlisle in Thorpe's time their under Pop Warner. For a young poor superstar Native American from the prairies to have comprehended in 1910 or 1911 that accepting any money for playing sports would bring disgrace to him, his teams, and his peoples would have taken tremendous insight.

In short, as Pop Warner would say about the American Press and politicians who closed down Carlisle Indian School less than four years after Jim Thorpe left the school, there were people in America who were out to get the Indians at every turn. The system was not set up to be fair too all.

RECOMMENDED

I certainly recommend Lars Anderson's narration. It does a good job of telling and intertwining three, four or more major histories simultaneously in one work.

There have been books, for example, about Eisenhower--as leader, general and president. There have also been many books about Thorpe and Pop Warner over the decades. However, never before has a book tried to tie together the lives of these three individuals so well.

Anderson shows how these three individuals' lives came together on a single field on a single date in time. By placing the shadow of Wounded Knee over this narration of a football match between Army and Carlisle, Anderson does a great service to the American reading public by indicating how history needs to be told.

Good history writing must be broad enough to:

(1) Link the past with modernity.

(2) Connect dots in a way that dots have not been connected before.

(3) Fill in the blanks where previous narrators have trod but not extended their research..

(4) Introduce new sources that extend the research presented by prior good scholarship.

(5) Provide either an example of how the past fits into the future or indicate where future researchers need to go to find out more about the past

It is only on the second and fifth point that Anderson seems to occasionally falter often. For example, I have noted above that Anderson was reticent to explicitly note that Eisenhower was favored by both knowledge of culture, historical context, personality, personal connections, and race in his day. This is in contrast to Thorpe, who represented Native American peoples whom were mistreated in fact and fiction of the day. (Eisenhower's connection were cultivated over time. He was not born into wealth and connections as some recent U.S. presidents were. Interestingly, though, Ike's older brother Arthur once shared an apartment with Harry S. Truman in Kansas City, but such connections never led to a presidency for Eisenhower. It was his leadership that got him there.)

Many other players played semi-professional sports or baseball under assumed names throughout the 20th Cetnury, but it would be Thorpe who would have his name, reputation, and Olympic medals mistreated for decades. Moreover, it would be Jim Thorpe and Carlisle who would suffer for the success of their training and for their somewhat poor indoctrination into the sports world at the turn of the century.

By 1917, Carlisle would be closed by the U.S. government and turned over to the Army to open as a hospital for U.S. troops coming home from WWI. Meanwhile, Caucasian Warner would get a slap on the wrist by the media world and went on to get for national titles coaching for Pittsburgh State.

On the other hand, the Greatest Athlete in the World would get little respect and advice from a society which continued to try to force Indians to either assimilate, go on a reservation, or die throughout the first half of the 20th Century.

It would have been helpful if Anderson had indicated what institutions one might turn to in order to further help Native Americans make their way in a Caucasian dominated world. All of us need to donate money, time and service to help integrate and empower the many native peoples who are still marginalized in the USA. My family has donated money to Indian missions and projects for decades. I would like to do more and see more done--especially by successful Native Americans in the area of creating awareness of continuing needs in Native American communities, too.

My mom just sent a check upon her return from the hospital with her new Triathlon knee to the St. Labre Indian School in Montana. Looking on-line, I see that there is a Jim Thorpe Association in Oklahoma that helps Native American Athletes. That appears to be a great cause to support. I've donated to Hopi and Navaho projects through the Mennonite Central Committee and Quakers. Look around America! See what can be done and do it!

On the hand, I would certainly recommend the book by Lars Anderson on CARLISLE VS. ARMY. It is a good read and could certainly be used in ethnic studies programs and American studies programs around the world. I'm sure that Bedouins and marginalized peoples around the world have similar tales to tell. These should be encouraged, collected and published.

NOTES
Anderson, Lars, CARLISLE vs. ARMY: Jim Thorpe. Dwight Eisenhower, Pop Warner, and the Forgotten Story of Football's Greatest Battle , New York: Random House, 2007.

Jim Thorpe Association, [...]
New Narratives in Olympic Sports, [...] Read more ›

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Three stories come together powerfully February 22, 2008

By Steven A. Peterson TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In 1912, one of the classic American football games was played--between Carlisle and mighty Army. A book published in 2007 covers much of the same territory, "The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation" by Sally Jenkins--and covers it well. But Lars Anderson's book, approaching the issues differently, likewise has created a wonderful examination of that game and events leading up to it.

The structure of Anderson's book weaves the story of three people together, culminating in that 1912 context. First, legendary coach Pop Warner; second, the great Indian athlete, Jim Thorpe; third, a gritty undersized football player and future military leader, Dwight Eisenhower. What was at stake in the Carlisle-Army game might be summarized by a segment of the pep talk Warner gave his team just before the contest began: "Remember it was their fathers and grandfathers who destroyed your way of life. Remember Wounded Knee. Remember all of this on every play. Let's go." And so the Indian team from Carlisle took on the Army team with those words ringing in their ears.

How did we get to this point? The book describes the arc of Warner's life, his childhood, his becoming an attorney, and the strange voyage leading him into coaching. Early on, he was a vagabond, moving from team to team (even leaving the position at Carlisle a bit before returning). He was an innovator and could inspire his team.

Then there was Thorpe, from the American Southwest. Growing up, he was always restless, would run away from school routinely. He ended up at Carlisle, but ran away from that institution, too. The book illustrates his foray into professional baseball during one such hiatus (which, of course, was to come back to haunt him).... Upon his return to Carlisle, he led them ably. The story of his Olympic heroics are also recounted.

Then, Ike, who--paradoxically enough--also played professional baseball under an assumed name ("Wilson"), but he was never caught for that behavior. The story of the undersized, hot tempered youth who ended up going to West Point, desperate to make the football team.

The three narratives come together with that game on November 9th, 1912. The story of the game itself is well told (no sense giving away all the elements). Then, the story of the aftermath for all three protagonists.

This is indeed a spellbinding historical tale. The book is well researched and well written, filled with details that provide depth to the subjects of this work. Highly recommended for those with an interest in the subject. . . . Read more ›

19 of 28 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Subject, Flawed Research September 29, 2007

By Edmond E. Seay III

Format:Hardcover

As much as I appreciate the need for a book like this, and as much as I wanted to like it, I felt let down by the sloppy research into the game of football which Lars Anderson conducted.

Anderson writes this:

"In the huddle, Gus Welch told the Indians that they were finally going to use their secret weapon. Carlisle broke the huddle. At first the Indians settled into their standard power formation with two halfbacks and a fullback lined up behind the quarterback. But then Welch called out a signal, prompting the players to shift into the double-wing formation. Thorpe, who was at left halfback, moved closer to the line and crouched in a three-point stance to the outside of the left offensive tackle. The right halfback, Alex Arcasa, did the same thing and aligned himself to the outside of the right offensive tackle. A nervous chatter rose from the crowd as the Indian players shifted into new positions. No one was sure what Carlisle was doing or what Warner, the great football magician, was up to."

This is simply wrong in several ways. First, a double wing formation has two wingbacks aligned outside the offensive ENDS, not tackles. Next, the "standard power formation" which Anderson describes was, of course, the T formation which all teams had used up to 1905. However, Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner had been using variations of the single wing formation since 1906, and had forsaken the T completely by 1910, according to an interview he gave that year to a Philadelphia newspaper.

It is true that Warner unveiled the double wing against Army; but his standard formation by 1912 was the single wing, and shifting one back to the weakside of the single wing to create the double wing formation was hardly the gasp-inducing tactic that Anderson describes.... In fact, I doubt most of the fans observing the game even noticed the difference between the standard Warner single wing and his new double wing at first.

To non-students of the great game of football, this probably seems like a quibble, but it actually strikes at the overall credibility of Anderson's work. The Booklist review by Bill Ott (above) notes that Anderson indulges in a technique common to modern biographers -- pretending to know his subject's thoughts in an effort to liven up the narrative. However, Ott, continues, "the technique is based on solid research."

Is it, though? If Anderson got basic points of football history wrong, how "solid" could his research have been on other aspects of the book? And how entitled is he to pretend to know the thoughts of Thorpe, Eisenhower or Warner?

After all, he writes: "A nervous chatter rose from the crowd as the Indian players shifted into new positions." Were all football fans, or even all Army fans in 1912, so keen-eyed that they could spot a back lining up six or seven yards away from his normal single wing position when the huddle broke? Or is Anderson just creating fiction here, and calling it biography so that it matches with his flawed research?

Writers who attempt sports biography have a burden placed upon them to understand the nature and history of the sport which forms the context to their book. And in at least one significant instance, Anderson fails in this task. Read more ›