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David Fleming, "A Big Mess in Texas: The Miraculous, Disastrous 1952 Dallas Texans and the Craziest Untold Story in NFL History" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Marshall Poe
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- [00:52]
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Marshall Poe
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:41]
Keith Rathbone
Hello and welcome to New Books and Sports, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Keith Rathbow and I'm coming to you from Sydney, Australia, where I'm a senior lecturer at Macquarie University. And I'm absolutely thrilled today to be speaking with Dan David Fleming. Now, you may have heard of David before because he's a Peabody nominated correspondent for Meadowlark Media, a longtime ESPN senior writer and author of a range of books including who's your founding father, Breaker Boys, Noah's Rainbow, and most recently out this year from St. Martin's Press, a big mess in Texas, the miraculous disastrous 1952 Dallas Texans, and the craziest untold story in NFL history. Thank you very much for joining me, Dave.
- [02:32]
David Fleming
Oh, I'm so glad to be Here. Thanks for having me, Keith.
- [02:36]
Keith Rathbone
Now, this really is the craziest untold story. I have to say. I read this book and often I'm reading different kinds of sports history. Some of them very dry, some of them very interesting. None of them, after podcasting and doing this now for quite a long time, hundreds of interviews. This is the funniest one.
- [02:58]
David Fleming
Well, I, I appreciate that because I, I thought so too. And I, I think readers do get accustomed to, oh, the sort of over the top subheads or headlines to books, but when we say the craziest untold story, it, it actually is, that might be an understatement. Having done this and covered the NFL and sports in the States for decades, when I stumbled upon this story, I just could not believe that I had no idea about this team or this crazy season that they went through in 1952.
- [03:32]
Keith Rathbone
So that, I mean, that brings up, I think, the. My usual first question, which is effectively like, how did you find this story? This is a crazy story. And I feel like I know a decent amount of NFL history and spent a decent amount of time in Dallas and I really had never heard about this. So tell me about how you discovered it.
- [03:52]
David Fleming
Yeah, and I. That's really interesting that you bring that up because I found that I can't believe, first of all, in. In a, In a football crazy city like Dallas and a football crazy state like Texas, I've. I just have been blown away by the fact that people don't know about this team. People who consider themselves, you know, diehard football fans just don't know that this team even existed. And neither did I until I was researching sort of the niche that I had carved out at ESPN was sort of like stranger than fiction. Weird, bizarre stories that are only sort of tangentially related even to sports in general, that that's kind of what I love to do and what I love.
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Keith Rathbone
To.
- [04:40]
David Fleming
Love to sort of investigate and research. And I think it was the Cleveland Browns. I'm probably bringing up a bad topic for you.
- [04:48]
Keith Rathbone
Yeah, that's okay. Us Browns fans have thick skins. Oh, good.
- [04:53]
David Fleming
Well, no, I have a lot of. I have a lot of family from Ohio. And when the Browns went, I think it was 0 16. When they went winless in 2017, I started trying to be a good son, a good cousin, a good nephew. I just started looking around to see were the Cleveland Browns truly the worst team in the history of the NFL. And that's when, And I think you can appreciate this, all the best stories are the ones that you just Stumble upon accidentally. And so here I am doing research about the Browns, and I'm like, the 1952 Dallas Texans. Like, who is that? And you know, that was eight years later. Here we are talking and talking.
- [05:42]
Keith Rathbone
Typical research and writing story. You find something and you're like, oh, yeah, I'll do this quick. I'll figure this out. And it gets. You go down that rabbit hole and years pass and you're right. Still writing because it's so much of a good story.
- [05:56]
David Fleming
Oh, and that's. For me, that's the most fun. The ones where it's never ending. It's like this. You just start peeling back layers and you're in each time. You're like, oh, that can't be true. Or that guy can't. That can't be real. And that you're just like it. For me, that's the whole fun of it is sort of like just. Just going down that rabbit hole.
- [06:19]
Keith Rathbone
And for people, for, you know, people are listening who haven't had the opportunity to read the book. And obviously I encourage everyone to go out and buy a copy and read the book. But people, this is not just a bad team. And we'll get to a moment and maybe in talking about maybe why this is a uniquely disastrous collapse, but it's not. It's not just a bad team. And in this book, it's not about losses in the sense that you're not. You're not narrating activity on the field very much. It's really about the set of circumstances in which the team can emerge, can rise so dramatically and fall so dramatically. So it takes on issues like Southern patriarchy, racial prejudice, financial mismanagement, all kinds of other issues. Is actually in surrounding that is just the absolutely insane hijinks of an NFL football team unleashed on Dallas. I think that's. Is that a fair description, you'd say, of all the. And probably some other issues too.
- [07:29]
David Fleming
Oh, yeah. I think that's what really. You'll notice in the book. I mean, there isn't a lot of. Really. There was no reason to write about the football because they were so bad. I mean, and they were. And they lost so many games and they were just blown out. There really was no great action or interest in a lot of the football that they played. And so you're absolutely right. The story becomes the context, the era, what the team went through, the real reasons why the team. Why a football team of all place. Of all places in Dallas, Texas, went bankrupt in less than five months. I mean, that's really becomes the fun and the entertainment and the interest of the Texans overall story. And I think what immediately attracted me to the story was people know the NFL in today's context. Context as it just. They print money and it's a corporate entity, and it's very buttoned down, and it's just a part of, you know, sort of the American zeitgeist. And. But those fans, I think, would have a really hard time understanding that the. Before the TV money kicked in in the 1950s, the NFL was just the Wild West. It was chaotic, it was violent, it was always on the verge of bankruptcy. And this team is such a perfect example of kind of that great era that I wish more NFL fans knew about. The 1950s were just it. I would like to. I would definitely like to get a time machine and go back to Dallas, Texas, and watch this team operate, but.
- [09:17]
Keith Rathbone
You definitely, if you had one, you could just go back and hang out with them. You know, I mean, they were. They were. They would probably come hang out with you. You know, that was.
- [09:27]
David Fleming
I would have to work on my alcohol tolerance, but, yeah, I would definitely. Yeah. Before going into that time machine, I would have to build up my tolerance to hang out with the Texans.
- [09:37]
Keith Rathbone
So I think that's a good. I think that's a good point of departure to talk about some more of the content of the book, which is more or less the place where you start, too, which is, what was the NFL like in the 1950s? Can you give us some of the. Some of the contours of the league? And you also trace out a cast of characters that includes people who aren't on the Texans, like Burt Bell. So can you tell us a little bit about what the NFL was.
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David Fleming
Yeah. In the 1950s. So the people don't realize that 31 of the first 43 NFL franchises went bankrupt, and the Texans were the last team to go bankrupt. And what happened was, until the TV money kicked in in the late 1950s, the only revenue stream was gate receipts, ticket sales. And what that meant was that from week to week, from year to year, from town to town, the NFL was essentially a Ponzi scheme, because they didn't know which teams would survive which teams were going bankrupt, and they were basically just bringing in new owners to pay the debts of the old owners. And like I said, it was the game was. That was one aspect. And it's kind of fascinating to know that in the Beginning of the 1950s, less than 10% of American households owned televisions. But by the end of that Decade, it was above 90%. And it was the sort of violent, colorful entertainment of the NFL that really filled that vacuum for television entertainment. And so it's incredible that the NFL starts out in 1950 as barely holding on and then by the end of that decade, it's practically the American pastime. So there's a fascinating aspect with the sort of entertainment value of football. But for me it was. There were 16 million soldiers that survived World War II and came home. And these, the ones that then went on to the, to play in the NFL, they, they never thought they would even be alive. And so the fact that in 1952 they were getting to play football for a living, it infused the league with this, like, they just didn't take themselves too seriously. And so the game was fun and it was loose and it was, it was colorful and people would try anything and people would on and off the field. And I think it's such a great contrast between today's sort of corporate game and what was going on in 1950s. And really the Dallas Texans just sort of embodied that attitude of sort of like, let's just have fun. None of us thought we'd even be here. Let's just have fun. And maybe they embodied it a little too much, but that's sort of the setting for 1952.
- [12:42]
Keith Rathbone
Okay, so we have this NFL. It's a raucous, uncertain place. And we might think of some of the old owners, the Rooneys, Demar's, and you think of them as kind of these standards. Tell us a little bit about the people who decided to bring a team to Texas and why they wanted to bring a team.
- [13:01]
David Fleming
Yeah, well, and you had asked me too about the commissioner and I had sort of wandered off and not answered that question. So sorry about that. But I mean, Bert Bell, Burt Bell was this sort of like iconic. Just, he had a voice that was like, that was, you know, like a, like a foghorn. And there's a great story about him. He, he converted to Catholicism and he was giving his first confession in church until his family started knocking on the confessional door. And it was. Bert couldn't lower his voice. He literally just had this booming voice. And, and they knocked on the conventional and they were like, dad, dad, everybody in Philadelphia knows what your sins are because you're yelling them out loud in the middle of church. But he was just this sort of larger than life person that sort of single handedly kept the NFL alive. And one of his, when the New York, the 1951 New York Yanks went Bankrupt. He knew that he needed a 12th team quickly to continue sort of scheduling balance and geographic balance and all of that. And that's when he found Giles Miller, who is the. At the time, I think he was 31 years old, he was the son of a man who was known as the textile king of the South. And it was really Giles Miller's dad who was the. The financial backing to the team. But Giles Miller was, again, this sort of like perfect 1950s American man. He was the youngest millionaire in America at the time. He was. He. He constantly was failing, failing upwards. You know, every business venture he tried, he failed at, but he somehow survived because of his dad's money. And he was a huge football fan. And this. I mean, in 1952, if you had a lot of money and you loved football and the NFL was desperate, it only took a few meetings and the. And the. And the right sort of, in the right circumstances and you could own an NFL franchise. And that's kind of how Giles stumbled into it. I mean, he was a guy who got kicked out of law school, got kicked out of his golf country club because he yelled at a Methodist bishop who had hit his ball too close to him. He was an amateur boxer. If you're writing a book about a football team in Dallas, Texas, he was the perfect person to be an owner for this team.
- [15:52]
Keith Rathbone
He was.
- [15:53]
David Fleming
And just. Yeah, and just in the best possible way. Was completely naive about all of the obstacles that he would face.
- [16:02]
Keith Rathbone
I have to admit, he was such a fascinating character in the book. He was maybe almost the most interesting character for me. And you kept wanting him to succeed and fail. You're like, I don't know if I like him or I dislike him. It was really. It was. It was. It was tough because he was so unprepared for the task that he set himself to do and failed so spectacularly with such aplomb at the same time. And Bert, the Bert loud voice story that I love from the book is that basically, Giles woke up every morning of those five months with Bert yelling at him on the phone.
- [16:42]
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David Fleming
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- [17:13]
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- [17:38]
David Fleming
Yeah, every time the phone would ring, he'd be like, well, I know that's Bert. And Giles used to say, you know, Bert was in Philadelphia. And Giles, the joke, the running joke was, Bert, why don't you just open your window and yell at me, and I'm sure I'll be able to hear you here down in Texas. But it was like every morning, Giles would answer the phone and he would get yelled at by the NFL commissioner for. For doing something wrong. But I. I really appreciate hearing the way you felt about Giles, because I struggled with that as I was reporting and writing the book. I. I think as a reporter, you want to sort of, like, definitively you want to define this character. And what I realized halfway through was that. No, that what defines Giles is you can't define him. Sometimes he was an amazing person who was very progressive and ahead of his time, and other times, he was just completely clueless to a dangerous degree. And it really helped me knowing that it was like, no, let's just let the readers experience this full spectrum of him and let them decide for themselves what they think about him. And I. I've heard back from enough people that are sort of like, you are sort of like you're rooting for him to get it right, knowing that he probably never will.
- [19:04]
Keith Rathbone
Yeah, you're. You're. You're fight. I won't. I won't spoil. But your final chapter, that explains a bit more of his relationship with his own father and what this. Where their company was. And you're like, oh, he literally stood no chance. I mean, he had no. He was set up. He was set up to fail. But, yeah, he was, in his own ways, very problematic. And rep. Read the book. Read the book. Find out some of the details. So Dallas, football town, America, basically, like, how do you. How do you fail? What was Dallas like in 1950? Why was it actually maybe not as receptive to an NFL team as we might think?
- [19:46]
David Fleming
I think you've locked in on the reason why this team has been allowed to sort of fade from memory by the NFL, conveniently by the NFL, because one of the. One of the main. One of the most important threads of this story has been, over time, has always seems to be sort of nostalgically whitewashed by NFL historians, or just historians in general. And that was the fact that this team, the team that came from New York, had two. Their two best players were black. And at the time, in 1952, in Dallas, I mean, it was. It was Jim Crow, you know, to the 11th degree. And it was something. I think Giles had hoped that maybe Dallas was ready for a team with an integrated roster, but he was probably two decades ahead of that happening. If you remember the Texas Longhorns, they didn't integrate their roster until 1967. And so imagine you are in Dallas, which for a long time in the 30s, mostly in the 30s, was the epicenter of the Ku Klux Klan and was strictly and violently segregated in the 1950s. And now Giles Miller brings them a professional football team, and people are referring to not just the black players, but players who weren't born, who weren't from Texas. They were calling them foreigners because they didn't like that. They weren't. They were wearing. They were representing Dallas, but they weren't from Texas. And that was. That doomed the team almost from the get go, was the fact that this team was so progressive in a town that was in 1952, so opposed to stuff like that.
- [21:56]
Keith Rathbone
Yeah, well, I was really surprised in reading the book, to learn just how ahead of their time they were. I mean, you point out they were the first southern team in the NFL, the first integrated team in Texas, the first team with female ownership, and all of these things you'd think the current NFL would want to shout from a rooftop. But it isn't, as you point out, something that fans know, and I do find that very surprising. And you have some arguments at the end of the book about why that was and why the town of Dallas wanted to bury the Texans as deep as they could.
- [22:35]
David Fleming
Yeah, because I think ultimately this is sort of a touching aside because we were just talking about Giles Miller and Giles Miller as a. As a. Who grew up super wealthy in Dallas. And at the time, this was fairly typical. He was raised essentially by the family's black butler, a man, a great man, by the name of Earl Goins. And so when Giles brought the football team to Dallas and his two best players were black, even though all of his friends were probably in the KKK and were definitely sort of supportive of the Jim Crow rules in Dallas, you know, Giles Miller said, I have to be able to look Earl in the eyes. And so we are going to put the best players on the field, regardless of race or creed or religion. And I think it was, it's a wonderful sentiment, but he didn't understand that his best friends and the entire city would basically turn their back on him and bankrupt his family for taking that progressive stance. So it's a shame, really. And I feel like that's why, that's why NFL fans and the NFL in general should remember and honor this team because of what they did. And sort of the, sort of the pioneering role they were from a race standpoint in Texas is it deserves to be remembered.
- [24:11]
Keith Rathbone
Yeah. And this, I mean, readers, this story, I mean, these, these black players, Buddy Young, Talofiero, like, they were living in, in, in a very difficult place. Like, you know, what is it? Talo Fiero moved into a house that, like, on the same block, another black family's house had been bombed just right before they moved in, more or less.
- [24:35]
David Fleming
Right.
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Keith Rathbone
Right.
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David Fleming
I mean, imagine, imagine trying to. Teleferrell was their best player. And, and he wasn't, they weren't allowed. He wasn't allowed to live with the rest of the, with the rest of the team. He had to live in South Dallas. And it was in a place where there had been 12 unsolved house bombings by the KKK. And that. And that's why his family says that the season that he spent in Dallas was horrific. And it's almost hard to imagine what he had to endure.
- [25:11]
Keith Rathbone
Well, I think we could talk a lot about, and I think the story of racial segregation and Young and Talapiera's efforts and the whole team, in some instances, efforts to challenge that status quo. We could talk a lot more about that, but I don't want to exhaust all the anecdotes and all the stories in the book. I want to talk about a couple of other things, which is effectively how unprepared they were. And you have one chapter in particular that just had me kind of bent over and telling my wife story after story, which is their training, the chapter where they're talking about their preseason training. And so I wonder if you can kind of just for readers, give us a couple of the funniest highlights of the Dallas, Dallas team getting ready for their, their season in 1952.
- [26:06]
David Fleming
Oh, boy. I'm not sure where to start, but it was first of all, there. They picked, they picked the hottest place in Texas for their training camp. And it was the, the, it would regularly go up to close to 120 degrees. And this is where they decided to train. And back then it was a month. So they spent a month in the hottest place in Texas trying to train in a place where they would notice that there would be, there would be ant hills and even the ants would go underground during, during practice. They picked for, for their equipment guy. They picked a guy who had never seen a football game and never even seen a football. And the first week of training camp, he decided to try and cool the players down. He soaked all of their equipment in water before practice. And so if you can imagine, imagine like the New England Patriots coming to training camp and their equipment is all in the middle of the locker room and it's all soaking wet and they have to sort of like pick out a sock and pick out some shoulder pads and pick out all of that. And so they looked like the Bad News Bears, you know, they just looked like, they just looked like a neighborhood rec league football team. And then they go out onto the field and they're, every day before practice they would have to go out and clear their practice field of rattlesnakes. So that was even before they got onto the field to even try and begin practice. They had to deal with dying from rattlesnake bites.
- [27:53]
Keith Rathbone
And all of this of course, at a time when it was considered unmanly to drink water. Exactly right.
- [28:00]
David Fleming
It was. You had to toughen yourself up by going without water. It was also funny. They went, they picked the Texans of all teams, which I think the Texans, the Texans finished first in NFL history with alcohol consumed per day during the NFL season. The, the Texans picked the one dry county in, in Texas to hold their training camp. And so they spent a lot of effort trying to hide and sneak in all the alcohol and booze that they were going to consume during camp.
- [28:37]
Keith Rathbone
Now I, I, I, I've written in my notes here many times, like alcohol drinking, you know, big problem, you know, and it strikes me that the person on the team who might have had the biggest problem with drinking is Jimmy Fallon. So who, who is, I mean, probably many people heard Jimmy Fallon is a, is a decently well known person. Patel, for people who don't know who's Jimmy Fallon and what was his role at the team.
- [29:02]
David Fleming
He was their coach. And the running joke was Jimmy Fallon had actually retired in 1951, but still decided to take the Texans job in 1952. He was a famous Notre Dame quarterback. And Knute Rockne actually said that he was one of the smartest quarterbacks who had ever played for Notre Dame. But by the time we get to 1952, Phelan is sort of at the end of his coaching career, and he's become sort of this, like Casey Stengel. He's almost like a standup comedian, right? He's got a flask during practice. He's got the. He's got the. The Racing form in his back pocket. He's not watching the offense at all. Somebody said that Jimmy Fallon explained the Texans playbook to a new quarterback. And they said, well, how long did it take? And the joke was, they said it took a half an hour. And they said, oh, just a half an hour and they will know he went over it twice. Um, so he just. The players said he was the only coach they knew who hated practice more than the players did. And a lot of times he would just tell the players to, like, play volleyball or run their own practices. And that was funny.
- [30:23]
Keith Rathbone
When the other team sent a scout to spy on the practice and they shows up and they're playing volleyball, that coach. The other team sends them back a second day, they're still playing volleyball, and.
- [30:35]
David Fleming
The poor guy is trying to report he's trying to spy on him, and he reports back to his coach, and the coach doesn't believe him. That, you know, a professional football team would basically either. They would drink beer, go fishing, or play volleyball over the crossbar for their, for their training. I mean, a lot of times under Jimmy Fallon, the, The most exercise the Texans ever got was on Fridays. They would all run together to the banks to make sure that their. Their checks didn't bounce. And so there would be like this parade of Dallas Texans through the streets of Dallas in their. In their practice uniforms, running to the bank to make sure their. Their. Their checks didn't bounce.
- [31:18]
Keith Rathbone
I. Some of these stories, I mean, when you're listening to them today, you're just like, how is this. And it's worth. I mean, I think it's worth noting because we're making it seem like they're entirely unserious. The players wanted to win, they played hard, and there were. They had a lot of good players on the team, and they even started off their preseason looking pretty good. But once the season started and a few key injuries happened, they pretty much were down almost every game until the fourth quarter. But they. So they, they had a lot of trouble. And I think that I'm just narrating a little bit to move ahead. That had a lot of problem. That created a lot of problems in terms of generating interest for the team. And so eventually, they do kind of run out of money, Right? What. What happens then when they run, when they're. When they're out of cash and. And. And Giles Miller's writing checks to the other team out of his own pocket?
- [32:17]
David Fleming
I mean, yeah, you make a really good point, though, because it's easy to make fun of all the things that went bad, but the team was loaded with talent. I think there were something like 12 people associated with the Dallas Texans went on to become hall of Famers in either college football or the NFL. Gino Marchetti, who is probably the greatest defensive player of all time, was a Rookie on the 1952 Dallas Texans team. And you're right. So they were loaded with talent, and maybe in a different circumstance, they could.
- [32:53]
Keith Rathbone
Have got a quarterback. They needed a better quarterback.
- [32:56]
David Fleming
Yeah, they practically went without a quarterback because their quarterback was so interested in dating American Airlines flight attendants that he didn't really study the playbook or the opponents or anything like that. He was known as the most eligible bachelor in Dallas at the time. So, yeah, the quarterback was terrible, and he didn't like getting hit, so he would, a lot of times on, you know, fourth down, fourth down, just back up and throw the ball, you know, downfield. He would Hail Mary was basically the Dallas Texans best.
- [33:31]
Keith Rathbone
Their.
- [33:31]
David Fleming
Their best pass play. So they had potential. And then, um, also, too, I think we talk about the racial aspect. The other thing that really insulted Dallas Texans fans was that they were terrible, right? They were like, it's bad enough that they're doing all these other things, but they're also terrible at football. And so you're absolutely right. What happens is almost immediately, nobody shows up to watch them. Nobody show, nobody buys tickets, nobody shows up. And they're playing in the Cotton bowl, which is like 75,000. It's huge. And photos from that from that season, it looks like the team is playing on the moon, because in the background, it's just. It's just an entire horizon of empty Cotton bowl bleachers. And I mean, literally within a month, Giles Miller realizes that it's going to take maybe 10 times the money that he thought to just even keep the team afloat. And, gosh, by the time they even get to. They haven't even gotten to Thanksgiving. And Giles Miller is so. Has lost so much money and that Dallas. All of his friends in Dallas have turned their back on him. He has to. He has to basically turn the team back over to the NFL in less than five months.
- [35:00]
Keith Rathbone
And so then what happens to them? They. They have to Play out the rest of their schedule. Right. So how did. How does that happen?
- [35:06]
David Fleming
I know. It's so a crazy story. Just continues to just unwind and get even crazier because. So the NFL takes them over and decides we're going to move the Dallas Texans to Hershey, Pennsylvania, for the rest of the season. And that's where they're going to be based out of. And they're going to play as a road team for the. For the rest of the season. And, you know, first of all, the team is so angry at this point, they go on an even bigger bender and basically drink Hershey dry for a month while they're playing as sort of this traveling sideshow road team for the rest of the.
- [35:49]
Keith Rathbone
Bring some new bark bar games. I'm not sure I would play them with creme de men.
- [35:57]
David Fleming
Oh, I know that. So the Texans biggest partier was a guy named Chubby grigg. He was £350. And what Keith is talking about is he liked to line up 17 shots of grasshoppers, which is basically cream to mitt and cream to cocoa, I think. And then he would force a teammate to race him toward the middle. And whoever drank the ninth extra shot won the drinking contest. So you can imagine what would happen after that.
- [36:28]
Keith Rathbone
Yeah, there's another detail about them basically spending so much money. It was. I think it was something like $100,000. And Burt's calling over again. Probably could just roll down the window from Philadelphia, but is calling again to, you know, get them to cut their spending, even when he was like, let's stop spoiling.
- [36:49]
David Fleming
Stop spoiling those boys. But, you know, but at that point, I think the last month of the season, they. They were. They were averaging something like 2,000 miles a week in road trips. So. And the players were angry, right? They were fed up.
- [37:04]
Keith Rathbone
They.
- [37:05]
David Fleming
They had been mistreated by Dallas, they had been mistreated by the NFL, and they were now a laughingstock for most of the NFL. And at some point, they just decided that enough was enough.
- [37:19]
Keith Rathbone
And I guess that day was Thanksgiving. Right. So what happened? I mean, this is another one of the chapters that was just kind of amazing to read. And it's one of the few chapters in which you give us a little bit of play by play as well, because the game actually has. It matters. So walk us through that Thanksgiving miracle, you might call it.
- [37:42]
David Fleming
So now the Texans have been returned to the league. They've been moved to Hershey, Pennsylvania, and they're supposed to play the Bears on Thanksgiving, but they can't play in Dallas, and they can't play in Chicago because the Bears have an agreement with the Cardinals, who were in Chicago at the time, not to play games at home during the same week. So at the last second, the NFL decides, oh, we'll have the Texans play the Bears in Akron, in Akron, Ohio, at something called the Rubber Bowl. And they will be the second part of a doubleheader that begins with a high school football game. So the Bears, imagine this. This is the NFL on Thanksgiving Day in 1952. The Bears and the Texans show up. 30,000 fans show up for the high school game, and then when that game ends, essentially 29,500 of those fans went home to have Thanksgiving. And now the Bears and the Texans have to play each other in front of basically nobody in this sort of freezing cold, windswept Rubber bowl in Akron, Ohio.
- [38:56]
Keith Rathbone
Yeah. And Phelan tells the Texans to go up and introduce themselves to the fans. That's how few people. People are there. He's like, just go say thanks to the people here.
- [39:08]
David Fleming
I love that. And it was one of those. It's one of those things where you're like, that could not have happened. But it absolutely did happen. He was like, we should thank the few dozen fans who were. So instead of warming up, the Texans go up into the. Up into the stands, and they personally thank the people for sticking around. But those people, you know, were able to witness another wrinkle of NFL history courtesy of the Texans on Thanksgiving.
- [39:33]
Keith Rathbone
So how do these. I mean, what is it that the Bears do to piss off the Texans so much? Like, why is it that, you know, this team had been kicked and beaten and, you know, basically could have rolled over, maybe should have rolled over, but didn't.
- [39:50]
David Fleming
Yeah, it was weird. Okay, so George Hallis watches the Texans warm up, and he knows that they're 0 and 9 and they're last in every category. And as a gesture of goodwill, he puts his second and third stringers out on the field to start the game. But the Texans take that as, like, the final insult. I think the Texans were like, again, you know, they. They had been through the ringer. They. They were mad at Dallas. They were mad at the NFL. They were mad at everybody. And now George Hallis insults. Insults them as professional football players and men by not even putting his second stringers on the field. And it almost unfolds like a. Like a. Like a sports. Like a cliched sports movie. And there's this moment where the Texans go, enough.
- [40:42]
Keith Rathbone
We.
- [40:42]
David Fleming
We've had enough and in one magical afternoon, the. Everything comes together for the Texans, and they. They actually end up beating the Chicago Bears on Thanksgiving in a game that the Chicago Tribune called the greatest upset in NFL history.
- [41:02]
Keith Rathbone
Yeah, you include. I can't remember exactly, but you include some of the telegrams that the Bears reporters were sending back the. Desperately to Chicago. Like, oh, and I could have someone at the Trib office looking at it like, this can't be right.
- [41:20]
David Fleming
Yeah, it was like they were trying to remind them that this was actually happening. And I do think one of the. One of the telegrams was, oh. Or, you know, hold the presses, because Halas is going absolutely ballistic. And another wrinkle of that that I wanted to mention, too, that I. I always forget about is early in the game, Buddy Young, the other. The other black player on the Texans, he got tackled in the end zone for a safety, and he had sort of conceded the safety, but the Bears crushed him violently. Right. And it seemed to the Texans to be racially motivated. And that was another one of those moments where they were like, enough. You know what I mean? We, our players have been mistreated by Dallas. Now they're getting. Being attacked by the Bears. And it was kind of this great moment where it was like they all stood up for each other and rallied to embarrass the Bears, who had sort of gone over the top to try and embarrass them.
- [42:26]
Keith Rathbone
So the final bit of the book, you not only kind of trace the histories of many of the major figures, so you find out what happened to Giles Miller, we find out what happened. You know, we trace many of these figures to their end, but you also talk about the legacy of the team. And I wonder if you can tell us a bit about the legacy of Texans, because part of. I think your argument in the book is we need to know more about this team, and not just because actually, it's a really interesting story by itself is an interesting story. It's fun to read. But the book is really excellent because it makes this other, bigger point about why we should care. And I guess I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about that legacy. Why do these Texans deserve to be remembered not only in Dallas, but in. In the NFL more generally and maybe even, you know, among sports fans who aren't that interested in the NFL.
- [43:19]
David Fleming
Yeah, it's. So I think most people are familiar with the fact that the thing that really turned. Turned the Corner for the NFL was the 1958 championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the Giants. And it's it's often referred to as the greatest game ever played. And it was on television. It was a sudden death victory by Johnny Unitis and the sort of like all American, you know, the all American sort of shining example of NFL excellence that is the Baltimore Colts. Something like 45 million people saw that game. And after that, the TV revenue really took off. And so there really are two. There are two histories of the NFL. It's sort of before that game in 1958 and afterward. But what people don't understand is that Johnny Unitis, all American, button down, shiny example of NFL excellence. That team originated as the Dallas Texans. So it's this great. I love it personally that the savior of the NFL started out as this incredible disaster in Texas. I think the NFL wants people to forget that connection. But in, in essence, the Dallas Texans are the ones who helped save the NFL.
- [44:48]
Keith Rathbone
Yeah. And I think for fans of the Dallas Cowboys too, like, there's a lot of things they need to look back to. And I think you make a very, a very good case for the way in which, you know, the Texans embarrassed Dallas, like, pointed a finger at Dallas, and that was a uncomfortable thing for a lot of people, but it helped give some impetus for change as well. And the Texans basically inaugurated a lot of things that the Cowboys. Like, I'm reading and I'm like, wait, that's the Cowboys color. Wait, that's the. You know, everything about the Cowboys is in some ways a little bit, A little bit the Texans.
- [45:27]
David Fleming
No, you're absolutely right. And I think I didn't even realize until sort of you looked at the one great thing about the Texans was they had awesome uniforms. But you don't realize it's one of those things where you're looking at it and then you go, oh, my gosh, the Dallas Cowboys stole the color palette, the logo, basically the entire uniform from the Dallas Texans. And they've never given them credit, never worn like a throwback jersey or anything like that. And they really should.
- [46:01]
Keith Rathbone
And also that you should get. You should get a finder's fee if they do that, because that's a great idea. Yeah.
- [46:08]
David Fleming
I mean, and I think one of the Texans had navy blue helmets, and then they had like, it was like this spartan plume white stripe down the middle. Super cool. And I think those would look so good on, you know, like a third jersey on a Monday Night Football football game. And one of the, one of the Texans oil men that almost, almost helped save the. The Texans from bankruptcy was the guy who then eventually, eight years later, purchased the Dallas Cowboys and, and, and, or, you know, brought the Dallas Cowboys to, to Texas. So in a lot of ways, and I think that's what's so hard for the Miller family is they had the right idea. They were just this close from actually being America's team. They were just a couple years ahead of their time.
- [47:04]
Keith Rathbone
And probably I was reading some of that, going not only a little early, but lacking so many of the necessary skills.
- [47:17]
David Fleming
And I will originally, you know, the Texans, Giles Miller wanted to sew what looked like six shooters into the pants of his team's uniforms. They, the NFL wouldn't allow it, but boy, imagine if the Cowboys had those on their uniforms.
- [47:37]
Keith Rathbone
The other thing I just point out too is your book does a really excellent job of resuscitating or rediscovering telefiero for people who don't know him but know Jackie Robinson, for example, you don't really know much about the integration of the NFL. This is a great and a very important story about sport integration in the U.S. in the south as well. Like, so not just the first, he's not the first black player, but he did, he did break this post 30s color barrier that had been erected in many ways and was the first major NFL, black NFL player in the South. Right. Does it give much credit?
- [48:19]
David Fleming
Yeah, and it's, yeah, he's referred to by people like Tony Dungy, who's a Hall of Famer, as the Jackie Robinson of the NFL. He was the first black player drafted by the NFL. He was in my mind, the first modern day black quarterback. He was an incredible passer, although he played halfback and, and, and again and.
- [48:43]
Keith Rathbone
Defensive back and return kicks and did. Took punts and he played seven positions in one game.
- [48:50]
David Fleming
Right. And yeah, and I think he's the only player to ever do that. And the timing is great because he was maybe until this year the greatest player in the history of Indiana Hoosier football too. So yeah, he sort of deserves to be remembered for what he did there as well.
- [49:12]
Keith Rathbone
But not in Canton. You said he's not in Canton yet.
- [49:15]
David Fleming
No, it's, yeah. Again, it's kind of a disgrace that the NFL is not seen fit to honor somebody like him. But he's in the College Football hall of Fame, but not in Canton.
- [49:28]
Keith Rathbone
Well, I really want to say, Dave, this has been a fascinating conversation and this is a fantastic book. Now this is normally where I ask, ask people, you know, just give us a little preview of anything they have coming up next. But you not only write about sports you write about lots of other topics, but. And obviously you write a lot of journalistic articles about sport too. Is there any kind of book length work you have percolating that you're working on that you'd want to tell people about?
- [49:58]
David Fleming
Yeah, right. Right. Now, the episode for Meadowlark Media that we were nominated for a Peabody was about the fact that there are so many sports fans on death row in Texas. It's this fascinating thing that it sounds crazy and weird at the beginning, but the more we studied it, you realize that sports means everything to these men who are isolated from society and basically go through something known as social death before they're actually executed. And so they use sports to sort of, sort of stay connected to the world and to their own sort of humanity while they're on death row. And I'm definitely interested in exploring that and exploring more about that, that connection between those two worlds.
- [50:59]
Keith Rathbone
Well, that sounds fascinating too, and I'm, I'm looking forward to reading it and I will hopefully get an email from you when you finish it. All right, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dave, for joining us, everyone. You've been listening to new books in Sports Channel on the New Books Network. We've been speaking with David Fleming, who's P.E. body nominated correspondent for Meadowlark Media, a longtime ESPN senior writer and the author of a fantastic book, A Big Mess in the miraculous disastrous 1952 Dallas Texans and the craziest untold story in NFL history. Thank you very much for joining me, Dave.
- [51:45]
David Fleming
Thank you. My pleasure.
- [51:46]
Keith Rathbone
And I am Keith Rathbone coming to you from Macquarie University. Thank you all for listening.
- [52:08]
David Fleming
And Doug, here we have the Limu emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera.
- [52:27]
Marshall Poe
They see us.
- [52:27]
David Fleming
Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Savings. Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.