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Papa Bear : The Life and Legacy of George Halas (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "On September 29, 2003, the Bears that George Halas conceived, built, and nurtured with loving adoration with every fiber of his being as long as..." (more)
Key Phrases: George Halas, Green Bay, New York (more...)

4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Halas was the longtime owner of the Chicago Bears and one of the driving forces behind the creation and growth of the NFL. He was an innovator both on and off the field, and his influence can still be felt in professional football, even 21 years after his death. While many football fans are familiar with the story about how Halas and some associates founded the league in 1920 in a Canton, Ohio, automobile dealership, far fewer are aware of the growing pains the NFL endured in its early years. In his laudatory look at Halas, Davis, a Chicago journalist, provides plenty of little-known details about the formative days of both the NFL and the Bears, offering profiles of players and explanations of Halas's coaching style and business strategy. His in-depth reporting, however, is the biography's strength and weakness. Bear fans who can't get enough of the early history of the team will revel in the many game accounts, but more casual fans may find the narrative slowed by such details, particularly in the book's final portion, where Davis extends the story of the Bears to 2003 and expresses his skepticism about the team's current owners.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Halas founded the Chicago Bears and the National Football League. Davis, a Chicago television producer, interviewed more than 60 former players, coaches, friends, and family as part of his research on one of the most towering but least understood figures in modern sports history. Halas was penurious to a fault yet could be remarkably generous, too. When Brian Piccolo succumbed to cancer in his playing prime, Halas volunteered to pay for the Piccolo children's education. But when he felt betrayed by George Allen, an assistant coach who tried to leave for a head coaching job without Halas' permission, Halas took Allen to court to prove a point. A biography of Halas is also a history of the Bears, and although Davis doesn't bog his account down with endless play-by-play game accounts, he does highlight the big moments in Halas' career as coach and owner. Davis offers the best and worst of Halas, but more significantly, he examines why he was the man he was, from his hardscrabble upbringing to his struggles with achieving solvency for the Bears and the NFL. This is clearly the definitive biography of a legendary American sports figure. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

Hardcover: 544 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (October 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0071422064
ISBN-13: 978-0071422062
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds

Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #515,035 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
On September 29, 2003, the Bears that George Halas conceived, built, and nurtured with loving adoration with every fiber of his being as long as he lived returned to a thoroughly redesigned and rebuilt space-age Soldier Field. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
George Halas, Green Bay, New York, Wrigley Field, Papa Bear, Chicago Bears, Notre Dame, George Allen, Los Angeles, Super Bowl, Hall of Fame, Mike Ditka, Soldier Field, Sid Luckman, Red Grange, San Francisco, George Connor, Charles Brizzolara, Bill Gleason, Bert Bell, Polo Grounds, Jerry Vainisi, Luke Johnsos, Rick Casares, Vince Lombardi

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Citations (learn more)

6 books cite this book:

The Wow Boys: A Coach, a Team, and a Turning Point in College Football by James W. Johnson on 7 pages
Bear Memories: The Chicago-Green Bay Rivalry (IL) (Images of Sports) by Beth Gorr in Front Matter
The Rise And Self-Destruction Of The Greatest Football Team In History: The Chicago Bears And Super Bowl XX by John Mullin in Front Matter
In Life, First You Kick Ass: Reflections on the 1985 Bears and Wisdom from Da Coach by Mike Ditka in Front Matter
The Football Wiz Trivia Quiz by Harry Patterson on page 53

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Customer Reviews

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4.6 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars King of the Grizzlies, January 5, 2005

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This is one of two books which I have read recently, the other being Let Me Tell You a Story: A Lifetime in the Game, John Feinstein's account of his close association with Arnold ("Red") Auerbach. Both Halas and Auerbach were obviously great coaches but also outstanding CEOs, each building a successful and profitable franchise while playing a key role in a multi-billion dollar professional organization. In this instance, the National Football League. Born and raised in Chicago, I was especially interested in what seems to be the definitive biography of Halas, the longtime owner and coach of that city's NFL team, Duh Bears. It must have taken someone with both his most attractive qualities (e.g. vision, generosity, perseverance, self-confidence) and his most unattractive qualities (e.g. duplicity, arrogance, stubbornness, and -- at times -- paranoia) to accomplish what he did...which was indeed a great deal.

For example, Halas played as a right fielder with the New York Yankees until replaced...by Babe Ruth. He then concentrated on a career in football, playing for as well as coaching the Decatur (IL) Staleys which he organized in 1920. It was one of the 11 original teams in the American Professional Football Association, of which Halas was a co-founder and its driving force. The APFA became the National Football League in 1922. Thirty-five (35) franchises folded during its first ten seasons. It was also in 1922 that Halas relocated his team to Chicago and re-named it the Bears. From 1920 until 1929, he was a coach/player and then concentrated entirely on coaching during three periods (1933-42, 1946-55, and 1958-68), during which the Bears won seven NFL championships and Halas was credited with a then league-record of 325 wins. Only Don Shula has won more.

With all due respect to his achievements as a coach, Halas deserves much (if not most) of the credit for keeping professional football alive. At least until the emergence of television, baseball really was the national pastime and college football was much more popular (and credible) than was the NFL and the All-American Football Conference which challenged it after World War Two. It is debatable when all this changed. Many cite the the Baltimore Colts victory in overtime against the New York Giants in the NFL championship game (December 28, 1958), others Pete Rozelle's leadership as commissioner (1960-1989 and especially during his first years in that office), and still others a program which CBS televised in 1960 as part of its Twentieth Century series, "The Violent World of Sam Huff." Having personally observed the NFL's exceptional growth throughout the 1950s and 1960s, my own opinion is that there were many factors which certainly include these three. Point is, there would have been no NFL as we now know it without the contributions which George Halas made.

That said, there are many (including several who played for Halas) who would agree with then Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko that Halas was "a tight-fisted, stubborn, willful, mean old man...[adding that] there isn't a famous Chicagoan in or out of jail who generates such intense dislike." Unlike Arnold ("Red") Auerbach who frequently claimed that he could forgive but never forget a perceived grievance, Halas often seems incapable of either. Davis examines this in several of Halas' relationships with various assistant coaches and players as well as with several owners. However, it is most evident in his relationship with son-in-law Michael McCaskey who married daughter Virginia. Near death, as Halas considered who would next head the franchise, he sighed "Anybody but Michael." That deathbed wish would be denied.

Davis cites numerous examples of Halas' generosity, notably the fact that he paid for nearly all of the immense medical expenses during Brian Piccolo's losing battle with cancer. In the Foreword, Gale Sayers observes, "I love George Halas. When I talk about George Halas on speaking tours, I always say that. I thought that way about him. He made me a better person. He made a young man a better man just by talking to him, offering his advice. I always listened to him. I will always remember him. I appreciate him." Many others share their own fond memories as well appreciation of Halas' often concealed kindnesses.

Davis's research seems exhaustive. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with those who were most closely associated with Halas, including many with whom Halas had serious, at times rancorous disagreements (e.g. Dick Butkus) This is probably the definitive biography of the Old Man but it also offers a wealth of information about the process by which professional football evolved to its current place in American society. As Davis asserts and I agree, no one played a more prominent role during that process than did Papa Bear.

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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.", November 22, 2004

By	WordDude (Jersey City, NJ) - See all my reviews

Some men stand on the shoulders of giants to get a good look at God. Not football legend George Halas. He was a God, and here's 534 pages of proof in Jeff Davis's stunning biography Papa Bear. Halas could play the game. Oh, man, could he play. He was an MVP at the Rose Bowl AND an outfielder on the New York Yankees in the same year. As offensive end with the Bears, he stripped Olympian Jim Thorpe of a ball, recovered the fumble, and ran it back 98 yards for a touchdown, a record that would stand for almost fifty years.

He could coach, too, an understatement Halas certainly would appreciate. During his forty-year tenure, he perfected the T-formation, won an astonishing 8 NFL titles and 324 games (second best record in football history), and pioneered innovations like holding daily practice sessions and broadcasting games on the radio.

If Jeff Davis's Papa Bear were simply a laundry list of Halas's accomplishments, it would still be a fascinating read. Fortunately, it's a lot more. Davis spoke first hand with Jerry Vainisi, Dick Butkus, Mike Ditka - the gang's all here - and what develops is a gripping narrative of a taciturn man who could be surprisingly philanthropic. He was a miser during contract negotiations, yet covered Brian Piccolo's astronomical medical bills during his tragic bout with cancer. Davis's skillful command of a story that virtually spans an entire century is an impressive feat.

Davis is a native Chicagoan and long time sportswriter. The Bears are his turf, and what you get is an unvarnished yet articulate summation of Halas's contributions to football, along with the tragic way Halas was unable to defend his legacy from the barbarians in the front office. In football's version of the Corleone saga, George Halas said on his deathbed, "Anybody but Michael (McCaskey)." Look at the way the Bears played for years after their triumphant Super Bowl Season in 1985 and you'll understand why. He knew the poetic simplicity of directness, and why his grandson Michael, a former Harvard Business School professor, was too flaccid and indecisive a leader to follow in Halas's gargantuan footsteps.

Halas's story is, in essence, football's story, and by extension the story of professional sports in America. How did the NFL become, in Davis's words, the "richest and most powerful sports organization on Earth"? Read this and learn why you go to two churches on Sundays.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Papa Bear's Legacy, Then & Now, January 1, 2007

By	Winslow Bunny "Winslow_Bunny" (Rockledge, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

George S. Halas was, depending on who wrote the piece that you're reading, either the cheapest, back-stabbingest skinflint who ever threw nickels around like manhole covers, or a visionary who had the foresight to see what the NFL could become and ran his family business and associations (read: NFL) to the top of the sporting world heap. You can find both sides in this book, which is a reason that it ranks as high as it does.

To understand the man, the book starts out with his parents, from the old country, Bohemia. As new immigrants, they worked in ways that we don't seem to do any more, like thrift, saving for something better, hard work at odd jobs to get that extra change. This is how George Halas operatered because he was "programmed" to do this at a young age. Subsequently, when he owned the Bears, that was how he operated his business. He saw the possibilities of growth of his team and the NFL through the media. He saw the wealth could be generated, mainly in terms of the league as a whole. He was determined to make his franchise the best, and that meant applying those principles that he learned when young (i.e., thrift). But he could also be extremely generous with his money, especially in family/business tragedies like Brian Piccolo, Willie Galimore and others. His line of succession, to take over the Bears, was also something learned from The Old Country, and thrown into pandimonium when his only son died and his son was estranged from Halas. Therefore, it fell to the McCaskeys to carry on the Halas-nurtured Bears into the 21st century, something G.S. Halas would conceivably be turning over in his grave about.

The book does no favors at all concerning the McCaskeys; they are depicted as rather ignorant of most things concerning football and especially about the Bears, and greedy, controlling the Bears only for the money and prestige. The accuracy of this, since it was laid on so thickly by the author, makes you wonder if it is really true, but the record and gaffes committed by the Bears over the last 20 years tend to bear the author's characterization out. "Papa Bear" is a good, absorbing book for the history of the Chicago Bears and how the league got to where it is today, and hits much closer to the heart, mind and soul of George Halas and how he lived that many other biographies and autobiographies that one may find.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Dnnna
I was very pleased with the condition of the book I ordered for my son it looked brand new but I got it at a such a great price. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Donna H. Mcmahan

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book for all who love the NFL
What a treat this book is, not only for Bears fans but also for anyone who loves the NFL. There wouldn't be an NFL without the tireless work of George Halas, the Papa Bear. Read more

Published 15 months ago by Al Bowers

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good book...
...though it's a bit long at 512 pages (excluding notes, index, etc).

The book does read pretty quickly. Not any particular chapter that I enjoyed the most. Read more

Published on February 20, 2007 by Bookworm

3.0 out of 5 stars Is it accurate?
As a Bears season ticket holder and lifelong fan who attended the same grade school (St. Emily's in Mt. Read more

Published on February 4, 2005 by SS in Aurora

5.0 out of 5 stars Just a marvelous biography
Pros: Everything you should know about Papa Bear (including everything the McCaskeys have spent years trying to hide from you)
Cons: None

I think it's safe to... Read more

Published on January 31, 2005 by Trevor

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