Published: July 20, 2009 12:41 am      

Lasting legacy

Cronkite, Huff helped popularize pro football

MORGANTOWN — All that could be said about Walter Cronkite, who died at age 92 over the weekend, was said … except for one thing.

Yes, he changed the course of history when he ended a trip to Vietnam with the proclamation that the war could not be won. Yes, he gave America first word that President John F. Kennedy, Jr. had died from an assassin’s bullet that November day in 1963, brushing aside a tear. Yes, he shared America’s joy when man stepped upon the moon.

Those were Cronkite’s legacy, the broadcast tributes told us.

But they neglected his role in turning the National Football League into the nation’s No. 1 sporting attraction and popularizing defensive play by joining with former West Virginia University great Sam Huff in presenting “The Violent World of Sam Huff.”

The show, featuring Huff in West Virginia, in the locker room and on the field and narrated by Cronkite, was part of the ground-breaking “The Twentieth Century” documentary series that had debuted on CBS-TV on Oct. 20, 1957, with the show “Churchill: Man of the Century.”

There were 107 half-hour documentaries produced in the series, with “The Violent World of Sam Huff” appearing on Oct. 30, 1960.

CBS understood the power of the documentary and gave it an hour.

To put this in perspective, Huff was probably as well known as Cronkite at that time, having already played the 1958 NFL championship game that has been called “The Greatest Game Ever Played” and having adorned the cover of Time magazine.

Cronkite had not yet founded the “CBS Evening News”, although he was the face of that network’s news department.

After the show Huff’s fame soared beyond belief. Don Smith, the New York Giants’ public relations man, got into a conversation in Los Angeles with Hall of Fame receiver Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch over a few cocktails about Huff’s fame and that of his number 70 uniform.

Smith said he could put nothing more than a No. 70 on the address side of a postcard and it would get to Huff in New York.

“Hirsch thought I was crazy,” Smith said, relating the story.

So it was that Smith mailed such a postcard.

It arrived at the Giants office in New York several days later.

On the strength of the two men, the show was on one in every four television sets in America that night.

The show changed the way professional football was looked at it in America.

“When Sam Huff was outfitted with a microphone and transmitter in ‘The Violent World of Sam Huff’ the landscape of television documentaries shifted,” according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications’ history of “The Twentieth Century.”

Until then, no one had ever wired a football player during practice or a game.

NFL Films, in fact, did not come along until two years later, after Huff being wired paved the way for all of their work that turned football into a ballet in shoulder pads.

The show began with Cronkite uttering these words:

“Today you will play pro football, riding on Sam Huff’s broad back. We’ve wired him for sound with a tiny transistorized radio transmitter. It is not allowed in regular league play and it’s the first time it’s been done on television.

“You’re going to be closer to pro football than ever before. This is our story, “The Violent World of Sam Huff.”

Huff has often talked about the roots of the program.

“They approached me during the offseason about the idea and had offered me five-hundred dollars, which was big money for an NFL player in those days. The idea was to give TV viewers a feel for what pro football was like, and I was to be wired during an exhibition game against the Bears,” Huff told author Jack Cavanaugh for his book, “Giants Among Men.”

The show was presented in three segments, the first being right down the road here as Huff was shown at home, walking out onto his high school field in Farmington, standing in front of the mine where his father worked and where 78 miners would die a few years later.

There were also locker room scenes with linemen Rosey Grier playing his guitar and Dick Modzelewski singing Polish folk songs and there was Huff in action in practice and against the Bears.

The action was eye-opening, the violence of the hits and the byplay among the players. At one point the Bears’ wide receiver Harlon Hill hit Huff after a play was over.

“Harlon, for God’s sake, you never hit anyone in your life, so what the hell did you do that for?” Huff said.

“Aw, Sam, I was just trying to get on TV,” answered Hill.

Until this show, the football heroes were mostly offensive players. Before games the offensive units were always introduced. The game had no need for the Fearsome Foursome or the Purple People Eaters or the Steel Curtain.

“There was quite a lot of jealousy around the league toward me but I realized I was probably picked because I played for the New York Giants in the media capital of the world,” Huff said. “Then, too, there were guys like Art Donovan of the Colts, who told me every defensive player in the league owed me a debt of gratitude for showing what it was like to play on defense. After all, for a long time, all the glory went to the offensive guys.”

Today, of course, the football world is different.

Players and coaches are often wired for sound. Defensive players are every bit the equal of their offensive counterparts. The game has become America’s game.

And much of it has to go back to “The Violent World of Sam Huff.”

“It came out perfect. It was well photographed, well written and Cronkite was Cronkite,” Huff said.

And Huff was just being Huff, too.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.