The list of premier NFL historians has for a long time included Peter King as a contributor, and his new book titled “The Game” is a journey that gives color to the growth of America’s sport from the 1980s, when baseball and the NFL were still sports landscape peers to the current day in which football simply dominates.
King, the former Sports Illustrated writer and founding author of the Monday Morning Quarterback column, has delivered 40 chapters about King Sport.
“The Game” is a journey that details everything from the perfect NFL career authored by a Steelers’ player not part of the early-day Super Bowl titles, to the rebirth of the New York Giants in the 1980s, to the painful last stand of Bill Walsh, to the sad end of Al Davis in 2007 – with much in between and beyond.
The book is a sprawling, colorful ride through four decades in forty chapters.
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Sitting down with the writer allowed me an opportunity to explain to King how wrong he was about his Mount Rushmore of Pro Football.
Fine, so I didn’t actually tell a legendary scribe he’s wrong about his stuff. But it’s fair to say I probed him about the water cooler conversation segment of the book, which he patterned after Mount Rushmore.
Having known King for decades, I reminded him that Mount Rushmore has four presidents on its granite cliff and his Mount Rushmore boasts 100 people, then adds another 10 just because, then includes an honorable mention section.
“Armando,” King retorts, without missing a beat, “as you know, I always wrote long.”
Fair enough.
Time to prod.
King did not include either Bill Belichick or Don Shula among his top 20 names on his Mount Rushmore.
Belichick, who has more Super Bowl championships than any other coach in NFL history, is No. 24 on King’s mountain.
“Well, my Mount Rushmore is about the people who have been most significant in making the NFL the monstrous game and product that it is today,” King explains. “So, like I have Joe Carr, former NFL commissioner, as the 4th most significant guy in pro football history.
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“I think it’s hard for somebody, unless you’re absolutely like the best who’s ever done it, for me to say that he’s more important in football history than, say, Lamar Hunt, or Pete Rozelle, or John Madden or Vince Lombardi … And those are guys I have, obviously, in the top 10.
“There are so many people, and I went through so many iterations of this, but I just tried to stick with the sort of the tried and true approach of people who were most responsible for this game being as gargantuan as it is.”
Before this gets out of control, understand that King was a Pro Football Hall of Fame selector for decades and thought it was a mistake not to induct Belichick as a first-ballot candidate.
So he is not anti-Belichick, folks.
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Shula, the winningest coach of all time and the architect of the NFL’s only undefeated Super Bowl champion, is outside King’s top 25.
“I just don’t think of Don Shula as a more important figure than the people I put above him,” King said. “I think the reason is, and look, the undefeated season is obviously, that team is without peer in modern NFL history without any question. And that was an incredible accomplishment, especially because they beat some incredible teams in that season. They had a great year.
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“But I think the way I kind of look at it, other than the number of wins, which is paramount, when I look at Don Shula, I am left asking the question, ‘What other contributions to the game did he have that should put him higher on this list? What are they?’
“And I am left not convinced that he made the kind of contributions that guys like Madden and Lombardi made. This is more than just your win total. It has to do with everything you contributed to the game.”
King is a good sport allowing me to thrust and riposte with him a bit. Any book that can set off such an exchange over football is worth the time.
