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Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever

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On the strength of Jim Dent's other books, I preordered "Monster Of The Midway". The story of Bronko Nagurski, the early years of the Chicago Bears and the NFL is fascinating. However the book is much more. Dent's exhaustive research is evident. He has artfully woven the Nagurski story with a lot of the history and characters of the day. The birth of the NFL, George Halas, prohibition, Al Capone, gambling, the depression, Red Grange, college football and much more are included. Each page creates vivid word pictures that take you back in time and let you experience places like International Falls, Minnesota and Wrigley Field of old as you become acquainted with legends, their incredible stories and a captivating portion of upper Midwest history. Highly recommended.

Readers looking for objective history here will be disappointed. Dent is not interested in presenting a critical biography of a public figure. Rather, *Monster of the Midway* is hero worship in its grandest form. Bronko Nagurski is depicted as the toughest man in a world of tough men. Even when hobbled with arthritis in his mid-30s, Nagurski is shown as a intimidating, powerful football player capable of dominating younger, better-conditioned men through sheer force of will.

Dent's use of voice in this book adds to both its realism and its characterization of Nagurski and his cohorts. The author's voice is very formal, disdaining the casual language often found in sports biographies. On the other hand, when quoting football men, Dent uses the gruff, unpretentious, occasionally crude dialect that we usually associate with aggressive, masculine athletes. The contrast here is effective. Dent does not try to be "one of the guys", and his implied acknowledgement of the distinction between authors and football players is refreshing.

Dent also makes good use of liberal tropes in presenting Nagurski and his Bears as heroic figures. The Bears' 1943 quarterback, Sid Luckman, endured disgusting Anti-Semitic epithets from both opposing fans and players. Dent shows Nagurski and the other Bears exacting retribution for these taunts, with Nagurski himself facing down a bench full of Anti-Semitic spectators in Henry Ford-era Detroit. Their fight against bigotry adds a moral thread to Dent's heroic portrayal of Nagurski's Bears, and it plays well here.

Through all this idealization, Dent is never overtly dishonest. He quotes Nagurski as brushing off the more grandiose tales of his prowess, including his shattering of Wrigley Field's brick wall and giving directions in rural Minnesota by pointing with his plow instead of his finger. According to Nagurski, the only thing anyone ever saw him plow was the defensive line. Through all the adulation, one gets the sense that Dent's superhero is not too far removed from the real Bronko after all.

Bronko Nagurski's comeback with the Chicago Bears in 1943 is just one of the greatest sports stories ever--reading the chapter in which he wins the final regular-season game for them to get into the championship game gave me goosebumps, I swear to God. But I also loved the wonderful atmosphere of the period Dent evokes here, and the many colorful characters--even Al Capone plays a part.

If you've ever read the great Junction Boys, you know what a wonderful writer Jim Dent is. This is his best since that book. I highly recommend it.

Whether all minor details of Jim Dent's biographical retelling of Bronko Nagurski's career are accurate is as difficult to verify as it is inconsequential to the story. Nagurski was Paul Bunyan in a helmet, a wrecking ball running back standing 6ft. and weighing 225 lbs. - average offensive linemen of the time weighed slightly less and were considered overweight at 235 lbs. He was legendary from the moment he was "recruited" to play for Minnesota, where his future coach would tell tall tales of a man with extraordinary strength and drive who could lift a plow with vise-grip hands full of fingers requiring 19.5 sized rings. Bronko Nagurski was a man who lived up to the reputation, and often exceeded it.

The greater majority of Monster of the Midway chronicles how the Bronk terrorized the NFL as a Chicago Bear. Read as a historical account, many commonplace changes and advances of the game took place during his era. The T-Formation, the forward pass, the draw play, all intricately connected to Nagurski. Bizarre substitution rules, leather helmets, and two way players were all common during his rugged playing days that favored a heavy dose of between-the-tackles running. Then more of the same. Men were men; wimps and part time players need not apply. Blood is just uniform decoration and some bones don't really need to be straight. During the Bronk's eight seasons, Dent provides game-by-game highlights of the highpoints, concentrating on the feel and the result rather than the minutiae of yards per carry, time of possession, and the cybermetrics of today. Revealing details about Nagurski's personality and relationship with many on the Bears' team (good friends with the great George Musso), Dent delves into what it meant to be a player in an NFL landscape where Bears owner George Halas having difficulty profiting. From Red Grange to Musso, Bulldog Turner to Sid Luckman, the Bears' greats are given ample descriptions and are linked in their own way to Bronko.

In an era that provided us the "Tennis Shoe Game" and the "Paper Blizzard Game," it comes as no surprise that men such as Halas gained notoriety for their one-upmanship while berating officials and opposing coaches yet avoiding ejection. Less surprising are the bitter rivalries borne of that time. More than one punch led to the Chicago versus Green Bay hatred fueled on twice a year still today. It's not so much about the various stats, and Dent doesn't dwell in that domain. But, instead, it's Bronko Nagurski's gridiron dominance for eight seasons, his destruction of opponents during a six year wrestling hiatus, and his triumphant return in 1943 at 35-years old that serve as the building blocks of a Hall of Fame career (charter member) and legend.

Jason Elin

Jim Dent's Monster of the Midway is less a biography of Bronko Nagurski, and more of a historical look at the era in which Nagurski dominated the National Football League.

If you are a sports fan, you may enjoy this book; if you are an NFL fan you will love learning about the story of one of the league's most endearing names and a charter member of the pro football hall of fame. If you are a sports history afficianado like myself, you will enjoy the stories Dent has to tell and appreciate the way he makes this book read like a novel at times. In some ways I even feel this book will translate well to a television movie -- like the Junction Boys.

It took me about two weeks to finish this book which is my average pace of about one chapter per night. Where Jim Dent fails to deliver to the reader is an inside look at the life of Bronko Nagurski. After completing this book, I did not feel as if I had spent those two weeks with Bronko himself, rather, I felt I had just spent the entire time watching old films of the Bears against the Packers and reading old newspaper clips from the Chicago Tribune.

Jim Dent is a good writer, but I would not put his Monster of the Midway in the same league as Jane Leavy's biography of Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy -- one of my favorite sports books. Leavy's work made me feel as if I had spent a September evening at Dodger Stadium sitting next to Sandy Koufax reliving his glory days. I did not get that type of feeling when I read Monster of the Midway.

Perhaps this is an unfair comparison. Part of the problem that Dent may have faced, primarily is that Nagurski is no longer with us, but also, there probably was not a whole lot said or heard about Nagurski for him to work with. The National Football League at the time was in it's infancy and nowhere near the media monster that it is today, or what Baseball was in the 1960's for that matter.

Regardless, I added this book to my collection because it is a good book. As a football fan, and a Bears fan in particular, I enjoyed this book and will cherish what I learned.

Jim Dent tells the story of Bronko Nagurski's football career. "Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever" is not a biography. It is about a football player and why he became among the greatest players ever, with special emphasis on one season (1943). Dent, however, can't help but to provide the background of Nagurski's early life.

Bronko Nagurski was the Babe Ruth of football. No one was greater, more dominant, more powerful at their sport than Nagurski. Others have played well: We all know about Michael Jordan, Mickey Mantle, and Lance Armstrong, but few have embodied the essence of their sport with such successful excellence. I should mention Muhammad Ali. He often bragged he was the greatest, and he was.

Someone needs to make a movie of this story. Bronko began the Hollywood/Horatio Alger as a hardworking, not too complicated future football hero. He had heart and the physical strength size to back it up. Good true football movies are sparse. There's "Rudy" and "Brian's Song," but that's it. A Bronko Nagurski story could add to this short list.

Most of the book reads like a docudrama, utilizing storytelling techniques rarely found in sports books.

If I were a high school football coach, I would have my players read this book. Bronko Nagurski played the game before the lights shone brightly on the pocketbooks, when the swagger and dance of endzone celebrations were still years away, and the game was still played by big, tough men not pretty enough for white-toothed smiling products endorsements. Nagurski was the kind of player the NFL needs today.

I fully recommend "Monster of the Midway: Bronko Nagurski, the 1943 Chicago Bears, and the Greatest Comeback Ever" by Jim Dent.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

The name Bronko Nagurski. You know this man was not a ballet dancer. This is more than a book about "The Nag" and the Chicago Bears. It is also a book about a number of other old football names I have heard of, but knew nothing about. Sid Luckman, Hunk Anderson, Don Hutson, Johnny "Blood" McNally, Clyde "Bulldog" Turner, Beattie Feathers, George Preston Marshall, Curly Lambeau, Slingin' Sammy Baugh, and, of course, the Papa Bear himself, George Halas. This was a period of players playing both on offense and defense, no hash marks, the fat ball, the quarterback being fair game until a play is blown dead by an official, and other rules that had not been placed into the game. George Preston Marshall, owner of the then Boston Redskins who played in Fenway Park, spoke to the conservative owners about the need to change some rules to jazz up the game to make it more exciting to the public. He was lucky to have a sympathetic listener in George Halas as support for his ideas. The demise of the fat ball made it possible to throw more passes, and put an end to the endless amount of running plays. One of Marshall's best ideas was to split the league into two conferences, and setting up a championship game each year. For all his good ideas, he stated he wanted Negroes out of the game. Black players had been part of the game since 1920, but Marshall's appeal banned black players from further play. Bronko Nagurski played for the Bears throughout the 1937 season, and left the team over a difference of $500 that The Nag and Halas differed over. Nagurski made money wrestling, and eventually came back to play for the Bears during the 1943 season. What surprised me was the number of college coaches such as Amos Alonzo Stagg and Knute Rockne who discouraged college players from entering the professional ranks. In 1990 Nagurski traveled to the Mayo Clinic to fuse bones in his ankles. A doctor asked for an autograph for his son, and The Nag wrote, "To Jeremy--Do Not Play Football. Bronko Nagurski." This is a book filled with colorful anecdotes, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I am a long time member of PFRA (Professional Football Researchers Association), and have read (on microfilm) the actual Chicago Tribune newspaper stories of all the games covered in this book. My sense from reading these is that Bronko Nagurski was not treated in his own time as the legendary player he has since become. For example, I don't recall in my reading of the newspapers any accounts of Nagurski carrying the ball on 19 of 21 plays (or some such) as is reported in this book, though of course the newspapers didn't report every game detail. Nagurski's season and career stats also don't necessarily support that he was the dominant runner usually depicted. His career stats indicate he carried the ball on average less than ten times per game, and in 1931, for example, this book itself states that teammate Red Grange outrushed him 599 yards to 401 (not counting one game with incomplete stats). To me these facts call into question the "Bronko as Superman" thesis.

A lack for me in the book is, though the book does include some statistics, it does not summarize Nagurski's career statistics anywhere. Personally, as a reasearcher, I would have liked to have seen Bronko's career summarized game-by-game in an easy to retrieve format; in effect, a more scholarly book.

On the other hand, this book includes much personal interest information not usually found in newspaper stories, but I would have preferred that the author not use so much "salty language" in quoting players to report this info. Perhaps this is realistic reportage, but I feel it makes the book unsuitable for young people, particularly if we are trying to teach the sportsmanship much lacking today. I am also dubious that the many direct quotes in the book were all actually spoken.

I also didn't like the author's habit of jumping around in chronology, even within the same season, as it made the sequence of events often hard to follow. And though the author clearly has done more research than is usual for books of this type, I still picked up on the ocassional questionable statement. For example, the author states that Red Grange ran 94 yards on the second play of the 1924 Illinois-Michigan game whereas every other source I've read says Red returned the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. (Interestingly, the book spends quite a lot of space on Red Grange. Since I am interested in Red's career, I often found this the most useful part of the book!)

In sum, if you like personal interest stories from the early days of pro football, you will undoubtedly like this book; if you are primarily interested in facts and statistics, as I am, you my be somewhat disappointed, as I was.

The book includes some good stories about the early days of pro football, the Chicago Bears and some of the legends of the 20s, 30s and 40s in general, and Nagurski in particular, but I didn't find it an enthralling read. Many (most?) of the quotes in the book seem to be fabricated by the author as there is no one still alive that could possibly have substantiated what was said by the participants on the field, in the huddle, on the sidelines, on the bus or in the bar. It's possible that these quotes came from previously written material but I can't help but believe that most of them came from Dent's imagination. Some people no doubt enjoy this type or writing but it made the book seem to me like it was semi-fictional and that's not what I was looking for.

The title of the book is also somewhat misleading as I expected the focus to be on Bronko's 1943 comeback but just as much space is spent on the other years of his playing career as on the 1943 season.

This is the first book I have read by Jim Dent but I am interested in the subjects of his other football books. Sadly, I don't think I will go out of my way to hunt them down unless I see them in a discount bin (where I found this one) or cheap at a used bookstore.

Before multimillion dollar contracts, television and injured reserve lists, professional football players often played while hurt for little money with no motivation other than the desire to win. Monster of the Midway traces the history of a fledgling league struggling to survive through the exploits of one of its toughest competitors.