frantic francis
Reviewed by Julian Meldon D'Arcy, University of Iceland
JULY 28, 2009 archive
Brett Perkins' Frantic Francis is the story of Francis Schmidt (1886-1942) and his football-coaching career at a Kansas high school and at the universities of Tulsa (1916-22), Arkansas (1922-29), Texas Christian (1929-34), Ohio State (1934-40), and Idaho (1940-42). Perkins' argument is that, while a nationally known figure as a coach in the late 1920s and 1930s, Schmidt's "razzle-dazzle" philosophy of football completely opened up the college game and led to the fast-paced, offensive, pass-oriented football we are so used to today, especially in the NFL. His teams sometimes had rave reviews in the contemporary press of the 1930s, especially for their speedy and spectacular plays, including long and short passes, shovel and rugby-style lateral passes, fake punts and double, triple reverses, and some memorable, if occasionally almost farcical, trick-plays (the "tower play" involved a receiver on the shoulders of another player!). He was also well-known for his caustic and imaginative sarcasm ("If brains were shit, you wouldn't even stink") and folksy sayings, his most famous relating to Ohio State's arch-rivals Michigan: "They put their pants on one leg at a time, the same way we do," which spawned the still existing Golden Pants Club for OSU players who defeat the Wolverines. But in the beginning of the twenty-first century, Schmidt's reputation seems virtually forgotten and he's hardly ever mentioned in any survey of 1920s and 1930s coaches who helped develop the game, such as Pop Warner, Amos Stagg, Knut Rockne, Fielding Yost, and Bob Zuppke. He doesn't even rate a single reference, for example, in John Sayle Watterson's massive College Football (2000). If Schmidt had been such an important influence on the development of modern football, how could he have become so neglected or ignored? Perkins gives several convincing possible answers to this, not least the obsessive, eccentric, paranoid, maniacal character and behavior of Schmidt himself. His folksy talk turned to gross profanity and obscenity on the training field and gridiron, causing faculty and administrators acute embarrassment, and he was sometimes so absorbed in creating new plays, he would ignore important people in social situations and even in press interviews, coming across as rude, arrogant, and brusque. His paranoia meant he could hardly trust even his assistant coaches, and students' playbooks only had their plays in them. He had his squads practice many attacking plays (any given team had up to 300 of them) but disdained emphasizing such basics as scrimmaging, tackling, and blocking. He often failed to establish a good scouting system, so missed out on star recruits (OSU became increasingly irritated by the prevalence of players from Ohio on OSU's rival teams), and the stars he did have he sometimes failed to mentor properly off the gridiron, thus losing them to academic ineligibility, if not expulsion. Although his players reportedly loved him, they also were sometimes confused and unhappy at the frequent substitutions and myriads of complex plays they had to learn. Perkins' assessment that Schmidt's unpredictable and manic behavior (hence the "frantic" soubriquet) might have been caused by a condition now called hypomania (related to bipolar dysfunction) is interesting and possibly correct, but needs more solid medical evidence. Ultimately, however, two things in particular, Perkins argues, caused Schmidt's neglect in later years: very poor PR due to his failure to nurture a good relationship with the press, which labeled him "Shut-the-Gates-of-Mercy" Schmidt, referring to his rather unedifying habit of running up huge scores against much weaker teams, and his apparent inability, when the chips were really down at OSU, to win the big game of the season, often losing it in the last quarter and through squandering a lead; most memorable of these losses would be those against Notre Dame (1935), Pittsburgh (1936), USC (1937), Cornell (1939), and Minnesota (1940). Even his winning the Big 10 Championship in 1939 with a 6-2 record was virtually by default, rivals opportunely losing key games.
There are two main criticisms that could be leveled against Frantic Francis, one concerning its structure, the other its argumentation. Though not strictly a biography, the book is sometimes rather unevenly structured, even as a history of a coaching career. While about forty pages are devoted to Schmidt's eighteen years of coaching at high school and colleges in the south, 1916 to 1934, well over 300 pages are dedicated to his seven-year career at OSU, and his last three years at Idaho and his death are dispatched in just nine pages! Moreover, Perkins rather coyly reports the rumor that Schmidt's death in 1942 at 58 was really from a broken heart, as he was unable to coach football any longer due to the war. Surely most readers would like to know what was stated on the official death certificate. The twelve pages used to explain why Schmidt's predecessor at OSU was sacked is really irrelevant (or should be more briefly stated) as there was no direct link to Schmidt's own appointment, and Chapter 4 on the history of football tactics from the 1890s onwards might have come earlier. More disconcerting is the twenty-page plus Chapter 8 on the history of Sammy Baugh, the forward pass, and the NFL (without any explanatory introduction), which interrupts the history of Schmidt at OSU; wouldn't this have been more appropriate as part of the final argument?
As for the book's main thesis, both in his introductory and closing chapters, and intermittently throughout his text, Perkins passionately argues that Schmidt's exciting use of fast, deceptive and imaginary plays and especially his reliance on the forward pass, opened up college football and led to the modern game we know today, both at college level and in the NFL. Perkins "connects the dots," as he calls it, between a direct line of influence from Schmidt through coaches and players like Dutch Meyer, Sammy Baugh, Sid Gillman, and Al Davis, to Bill Walsh's West Coast Offense and recent offensive-minded coaches, such as Mike Holmgren and Mike Martz. He even suggests that Vince Lombardi's instigation of the Green Bay Packers' famous power sweep was an indirect development (via Gillman) of a Schmidt concept. Moreover, three thrilling plays executed by Boise State at the 2006 Fiesta Bowl, we are informed, were "part of Schmidt's standard repertoire." As persuasive and attractive as Perkins' argument is, it does have its drawbacks, notably Perkins' way of either playing down or ignoring other contemporary coaches' innovative programs or influences. Thus, little is made of Rockne's use of forward passes at Notre Dame (though this has, admittedly, probably been exaggerated over the years), and Bob Zuppke's early use of razzle-dazzle trick-plays at Illinois ("The Flying Trapeze," "Whirligig," "flea flicker") is rather deprecatingly referred to as "zany," and Zuppke later became very conservative in play choices anyway. Perkins has no real discussion of Pop Warner's part in the advance of fast, open-style football on the west coast, or, an even more telling point, of Ray Morrison and his SMU teams' early 1920s "aerial circus" in the very same Southwestern Conference where Schmidt himself coached for many years! Thus, Raymond Schmidt's (no relation) assertion that "[w]ith the close of the 1920s, the forward pass was firmly entrenched within the legitimate offensive philosophies of college football" (Shaping College Football, 2007, p.107) would seem to contradict some of Perkins' claims and suggest that Francis Schmidt's influence on opening up college football was not quite as exclusive as Perkins would like us to believe.
The above criticisms apart, I would nonetheless like to stress that Frantic Francis also has two very positive features in relation to its form and content, which make it an interesting and fascinating book. Regardless of whether the reader is convinced of Perkins' ultimate argument, his research has achieved one worthy aim: it has rescued the life and reputation of one of college football's most extraordinary coaches from neglect if not oblivion. Just how definitive Francis Schmidt's influence on football was in pre-World War II America may remain debatable, but from now on Schmidt's teams and plays should always at least be involved in any such debate. Brett Perkins' work convincingly shows that Schmidt's career at TCU and OSU in the 1920s and 30s, and his approach to football tactics, hypomanical or not, deserves more serious consideration and thus, whatever the reader's final view of Schmidt may be, Perkins has certainly made a valuable contribution to the history of football in the twentieth century. Moreover, Perkins' personal convictions exude from the text with energy and passion. His claim in his Introduction that it was no "wishful thinking" of a rabid fan but his "love of football history" that brought him to Francis Schmidt seems sincere and clearly manifest in his writing; his very readable style, and enthusiasm for his subject are infectious and stimulating. One may quibble over the order of some of the material, but there's never a dull page in the book! And finally, as with any work of non-fiction, I always ask myself three questions: is it engaging, is it informative, and is it a pleasure to read? And on these counts, Brett Perkins' Frantic Francis scores three indisputable touchdowns.
Brett Perkins, Frantic Francis: How One Coach's Madness Changed Football.
Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, September 2009. 504 pp. 10
photographs. Paper. $28.95.
Copyright © 2009 by Julian Meldon D'Arcy.