Customer Reviews

Crash of the Titans: The Team that Became the New York Jets

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For some reason, there has never been a major oral history of the American Football League. It is shocking when you realize that this is the only upstart league to merge as an equal partner to an established league with all of its franchises accepted. The AFL won as many Superbowls as the NFL did. And the busts of quite a few players are permanently on display in Canton, Ohio.

One of the weirder franchises of the AFL was the NY Titans. Most fans know the New York Jets, but the Jets was originally known as the Titans. They played their games in the decrepit Polo Grounds. The team was owned by an eccentric man named Harry Wismer who operated the team on a shoestring.

Despite all that, they were a pretty decent team and that is what this book is about, a chronicle of the Titans. While it is not the most entertaining book in the world, it is very well researched and it deserves to be read by every serious football fan.

Now we need an oral history of the entire AFL, as good as Terry Pluto's "Loose Balls", his hysterical oral history of the American Basketball Association.

The Crash of the Titans represents good, solid sports reporting. It's fun reading. It recalls the first 3 seasons (1960-62) of the New York Titans franchise of the American Football League, now known as the Jets. It reminded me of the more wide open style of football the old AFL played and those late Sunday afternoon games on ABC with Curt Gowdy and Paul Christman. The buttoned up, corporate NFL was never as much fun. The central character is Harry Wismer, famous broadcaster of the 40s and 50s and the original owner of the Titans. Harry was a George Steinbrenner of an earlier day, with all the bombast but sans the dough and without a Yankee Stadium. The old AFL had some extremely wealthy owners; Harry was not one of them. The Titans played in Manhattan's ghostly Polo Grounds just waiting for Nirvana to rescue them. "Nirvana" was the construction of Shea Stadium, which opened too late to save Wismer. The baseball Mets survived 2 seasons in the Polo Grounds, 3 for the Titans were too many. This is sad because the Titans were NOT losers but respectably mediocre with a high scoring offense, albeit no defense. The author's research is impressive, almost impeccable. He interviewed over 50 former players, coaches and other reporters. He had the obvious cooperation of multiple sources. He ably balances the on field action with the off the field. There are some notable omissions. For one, there is an absence of any individual statistics, standings or rosters. There is also a dearth of photos. Since Ryczek had so many contacts, their inclusion should have been easy. The one back cover photo left out LB Larry Grantham of Old Miss (Ole?), a future hero of Super Bowl 3! Four of the SB lll Jets once were Titans ( FL Don Maynard, RB Bill Mathis, K Curly Johnson and Larry). Jets fans, here are your roots! Read Crash of the Titans and discover them! Super Bowl lll began here. We should not look back in life but after reading CT, I regret now I never went to a Titans game. With all those empty seats in the Polo Grounds, I certainly could have gotten in. We Jets fans can easily add a 5th star to the above rating.

The author has done a great job in covering not only the early days of the under-financed Titans but the rest of the AFL as well. Well written and including interviews with some of the old Titan players and coaches that made it a fun, entertaining and informative reading experience. A highly recommended book for AFL fans as well as football historians.

Like the other reviewers I would rate this book 4-star. If you're a Titans or early AFL fan you should read the book. I was a big AFL fan an enjoyed their late Sunday games (eastern time). Where I grew up in the midwest (eastern time zone), you didn't get many late games unless either Detroit or Cleveland played on the west coast. I remember many of the AFL games discussed in the book.

It has many interesting stories about the early Titans including Sammy Baugh & Clyde "Bulldog" Turner. It talks about their troubled times and told me many things that I had ever heard before. I didn't know that the SF Gaints continued to pay their lease on the Polo Grounds, or that there was a ground lease under the stadium. Sammy Baugh went home during the off-season. If you read When Pride Still Mattered you'll learn that Lombardi let all his assistants go home during the off-season and Vince had relatively little to do in the off-season besides making speeches and "negotiate" (defined rather loosely as there wasn't much negotiating) contracts with the players.

Like the other reviewers, I also found "Crash of the Titans" to be an entertaining as well as informative book. It is very well written and the many interview quotes offered up by the author are woven into the story quite nicely.

It is amazing that the AFL's franchise in the most important city in the league, New York, could have been operated in such a slapstick fashion and on such a shoestring budget for three years. It's a wonder the Titans lasted that long and didn't drag down the whole league with them.

Harry Wismer... what can you say? He was one of a kind, and reading about his exploits will set your head to shaking continuously in disbelief.

I'm glad the author was fair enough to point out that Wismer's presence as an owner was at least in one way beneficial to the infant AFL; by using his connections in the industry he helped the league secure a five-year television contact with ABC. The agreement, which called for all eight teams to share broadcast revenues evenly, was one of the biggest reasons the league was able to succeed.

The author does a nice job contrasting the game as played then and now. Pro football in those days was just as brutal as it is now, but players didn't enjoy the huge financial rewards that exist today. Those guys truly played 'for the love of the game'.

I recommend this book for readers interested in the early years of the AFL and in what pro football players had to put up with then compared to now.