Football hasn’t enjoyed the same literary tradition that baseball has. Classics like The Natural, Bang the Drum Slowly, Eight Men Out, Ball Four, and Moneyball are just the peaks of the vast range of baseball literature. But I’ve noticed several new books this year that I think will start to fill the gaps in the football library — something more compelling and serious than the ubiquitous player autobiographies and coach-speak management/leadership/inspirational/motivational titles.
The first one that made it home with me, though, was Peter Richmond’s Badasses, about the 1970’s era Oakland Raiders. It struck me that for football fans of my age (I’m 28), the Raiders have really only existed as a joke of a team: perennially terrible, with an elderly owner nobody wants to play for and a string of failed draft picks and free agent signings. Casual mentions on Monday Night Football about John Madden’s coaching success with the Raiders almost seemed apocryphal, and any modern success was precarious and short-lived (exemplified by Rich Gannon leading the Raiders to the 2002 Super Bowl only to throw 5 interceptions in a brutal loss).
Additionally, it can be difficult to gain the context of an era you didn’t experience first-hand. One hears about the 1970’s Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Miami teams and wonders how many “dynasties” a single decade is allowed to host. But sometimes what gets lost in a bare factual summary of an era is that a team can transcend the statistical comparison in the way that it captured and held the public’s attention, the way that it dominated the thoughts and plans of other players and coaches. John Madden’s Raiders were just such a team. It wasn’t just that they won — it was the way that they played, and the way that they celebrated, and the way that every other team was just afraid of them — that’s what Peter Richmond set out to capture and record in Badasses.
I haven’t finished it yet. This is a book that I’ve enjoyed just picking away at occasionally, relishing the chance to experience John Madden as something other than the BOOM-TOUGH-ACTIN’-TINACTIN spokesman, and to understand why the Raiders’ lack of recent success isn’t so much laughable as it is pitiable.
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