How Football Explains John Coltrane

From "How Football Explains John Coltrane and Jackie Robinson," in Sal Paolantonio's new book, How Football Explains America:

The seamless connection of the game of football to African-American culture has roots that go back to America's only truly original musical art form: jazz.

Here's Harry Edwards, sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of The Revolt of the Black Athlete: "Most of what you see on the football field is timing and rhythm and beat. You could literally take a piece by Miles Davis with John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley and I think Red Garland on piano [Paul Chambers on bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums], a piece called 'Striaght, No Chaser.' Put that music to a play being run by the San Francisco 49ers and you see the rhythm that's involved."

"Straight, No chaser," is a Thelonious Monk composition. Monk always lived on the edge of life, wrote his music around the edges of jazz. He always found the cracks in the diatonic scale. In other words; Monk mastered the fundamentals, but then he found those shades of chromatic deviation. A perfect football metaphor.

"I Have been sitting on the sideline listening to that Miles Davis cut while [watching] the 49ers with Joe Montana and Roger Craig and Jerry Rice and John Taylor and Tom Rathman and you hear that piece, that 'Straight, No Chaser,'" Edwards said. "Then, all of a sudden Cannonball kicks in and you hear Montana: 'Hut, hut, hut.' Then everything starts to move, and you see that rhythm. It's like Coltrane coming in and picking up the pieces after Cannonball leaves off. And you hear that bass in the background. You hear Garland carrying the whole thing on piano and you see Joe handing the ball to Roger or Tom. It's all of one cloth. That's why some of the greatest American musicians are some of the greatest sports fans. They understood the game. They understood the risk. They understood the practice. You're not just getting ready to run a play during a game, you're downloading the rhythm of the play, the timing of the play, the purpose of the play, the spirit of the play into your automatic response system. So, when that play is called, you go up. You're not thinking now, you're just running the play."

Coltrane's groundbreaking solo with the Miles Davis sextet on "Straight, No Chaser" was recorded in 1958.

"Coltrane would go into his flat and practice for like 72 hours straight," said Edwards, "and it's the same way with plays. I watched the 49ers run play after play after play. It wasn't practice for practice's sake. It wasn't practice to get the play down. It was practice to make the play automatic. And it's the same way with music. That is shared. The risk, playing without a net, getting out there, trying to make it happen against competition. Competition in music being the piece itself. Asking yourself, 'Can I get this done?'"

This gives me a great idea. From now on, instead of being forced to listen to the idiots on ESPN who do Monday Night Football, I'm going to listen to some Monk and Trane and Dolphy while watching the game.

Change We Can Believe In

New York Jets 34 - New England Patriots 31.

The Jets go up to Foxboro, Mass, and defeat the AFC Champion Patriots on their own home turf, in a dramatic overtime game, for sole possession of first-place in the AFC East. A very rare and gutsy win for the Jets in an important game.

Why we love Washington. (In 39 seconds.)

The Trade

In a stunning turn of events, the Green Bay Packers have traded quarterback Brett Favre to the New York Jets.

Favre is a future Hall-of-Famer, winner of Super Bowl XXXI, the only three-time MVP of the National Football League, and holds every major NFL passing record. The New York Jets are . . . . well, the New York Jets.

Personally, I think Favre can be overrated as a quarterback, and I get sick of the hype over him from a disgustingly fawning sports media who think the guy can walk on water. But I have to admit, I actually let out quite a laugh when I heard the news last night. It all seems so improbable.

For one thing, I was totally shocked that the Jets managed to pull off the trade. I didn't think they had the tenacity, or would be wiling to spend the money, to accomplish such a feat. As of yesterday afternoon, reports were coming out that Favre would probably go to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Evidently, the Jets made a final bid in the middle of the night (literally - the news broke around midnight.)

Whatever the soap opera of the last month between Favre and the Packers, from a purely practical standpoint, the guy immediately gives the Jets a better quarterback than either Chad Pennington and Kellen Clemens, the two choices they had for the coming season. And they really didn't give up that much to get him. If he plays more than 50% of the season, they give up a 3rd-round draft pick next year. If he plays 70% of the time and the Jets make the playoffs, they give up a 2nd round pick. If they actually make the Super Bowl, they give up a 1st round pick.

Will the Jets make the Super Bowl with Favre? Very unlikely. After going 4-12 last year, I'd be happy to see them go 8-8 and stay in the wild card hunt for most of the season. Though Favre may be overrated, the guy did have one of his best seasons last year, and I think he can still play at a fairly high level. Also, after what went down with Green Bay, the revenge factor - the "I'll show you I can still play" factor - may be a good motivator.

Favre can be a drama queen. And personally, I thought he should've stayed retired. But, hey, if he wants to play football, and the Packers don't want him, I welcome him to the black hole of the New York Jets. We'll see if his greatness and stature as a player are any match for the long, sad and psychologically twisted history of Gang Green.

Whatever the outcome of the season, Favre is one of those rare athletes whose obvious love of playing football makes watching him a lot of fun. (Except, of course, when he's throwing those terrible interceptions in key moments.) One of my favorite football moments ever was watching him play in the snow against the Seattle Seahawks in last year's divisional playoffs. (Sorry, my Seahawks fan.) His youthful enthusiasm took me back to my own childhood and the sheer exhilaration and enjoyment of play.

Sadly, his arrival means the immediate departure of Chad Pennington, who will be released by 4 PM today. There are few professional football players I've admired on a personal level as much as Pennington. The man suffered two serious shoulder injuries, one of which would've been enough to end the careers of most players, but through hard work, determination and a great attitude, he came back and continued to play. When his father suffered a major heart attack, Pennington slept on a chair in the hospital room on his off-days during the season. He's one of the most intelligent, likable and quality players in football. Despite tremendous adversity, he always seemed hopeful, and in a realistic, determined way. But as much as I liked him as a person, he wasn't the answer for the Jets at quarterback. I'm sorry he's leaving the team, and I hope he lands in a good situation somewhere else.

Broadway Joe Namath's sad end in LA

The NFL is full of sad tales of great players who should've retired sooner and wound up on other teams at the end of their careers. I think immediately of the most famous Jets quarterback, Joe Namath, who spent one last pathetic season on the Los Angeles Rams. Or Johnny Unitas, considered by many to be the greatest quarterback of all time, in a dismal final season in San Diego, after 17 years with the Baltimore Colts.

On the other hand, Joe Montana, after 13 seasons and three Super Bowl victories with the San Francisco 49ers, played his last two years for the Kansas City Chiefs and led them to the AFC Championship Game.

Though he's 38 years-old, I think Favre is in better shape than most of the players in these sad stories. Namath was hobbling around on knee braces at the end of his time in New York. Favre, on the other hand, holds the NFL record for Most Consecutive Starts by a Quarterback at 253 games, a truly amazing feat. To give you an idea of the significance of that number, the previous record - held by Eagles' quarterback Ron Jaworski - was only 116 consecutive games. Favre is also playing better late in his career than either Namath or Unitas were before they were traded. Unitas was already riding the bench by the time he went to San Diego.

It's a strange situation, and I'm not sure how a self-admitted "country boy" like Brett Favre is going to deal with the bright lights of New York, not to mention the crazy and often brutal media scrutiny. The fact that the Jets don't really play in the city, and that the new team headquarters will open in New Jersey at the end of the month, appealed to Favre. There are woods and hunting in New Jersey, which, from one report, did bring him some comfort.

Favre will be 39 in October. He's gone to a team that went 4-12 last year. And he's suddenly having to learn a new system. Things may not go very smoothly. (But, then, they never do for the Jets. So what did they have to lose?) All in all, it should be fascinating to see how the story unfolds. I know one thing, my interest in the coming season, which was pretty low before last night, has suddenly increased.

Favre's coming to the Jets!

Some Different Views

At Aun Estamos Vivos, Jeff and I have been exchanging comments about various subjects, including football, anarchism, the Catholic hierarchy, and Spain, especially Toledo and Castille. He included a recent photograph of his son in action as a linebacker. It reminded me of a similar photo of myself when I was young. Unfortunately, after digging around in the basement for an hour, I still couldn't find the picture I wanted. I did find one from the same time period and in the same uniform, though. Here's a young Texas boy who dreams of being the great (and mean) linebacker LeRoy Jordan, #55 on the Dallas Cowboys .

I'm not exactly looking "Texas football tough" in this photo, am I? More like I'm getting ready to go to church. I couldn't even manage a good scowl. Something tells me my grandmother was in the room and I was trying to look like a "nice young boy."

Man, that helmet definitely dates me.

Anyway, while going through photos, I came across a picture from my first trip to Toledo, Spain, in December 1989 or early 1990. It's a photograph of a young American couple that I happened to meet while in Madrid. My girlfriend and I had gone to the Prado Museum, and, exhausted after a full morning of taking in Goya, Velázquez, etc., we wound up in the Museum cafe. It was packed, so we actually sat down on the floor and leaned against a wall. Soon, another young couple came in and sat down on the floor next to us.

I heard them speaking English, so I asked the tall, gawky guy, "Hey, do you know where the Bosch paintings are?"

"Sure," he said.

It was fun to meet another young couple from the U.S., so we ate our lunches together and got to know each other a bit. Then he led us through the museum to Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights." By the time we had reached that astounding and disturbing painting, he and I had figured out that we both were poets, we both were named William, and that we both loved the work of Frank O'Hara.

The four of us wound up hanging out a few times in Madrid, and we had a lot of fun, but then my girlfriend and I left for Salamanca to study Spanish. At one point, she and I took a car trip with some other students from the school. It was a wonderful journey through the region of Extramadura, and then over to the towns of Toledo and Segovia. While walking through the streets of Toledo, I noticed a young couple hanging out in a small plaza. I was stunned. It was the same young couple we had met back in Madrid a month or two before!

So, Liam, bet you haven't seen this picture in a while. Hah!



Those are the steps of a building across from the entrance of the cathedral in Toledo. And though it may be hard to see in this version, that wine bottle next to Liam is completely empty.

Anyway, I had a strange feeling that day that the cosmos might have more in store for this other poet and I. It was just a little too bizarre to run into him and his girlfriend the way we did.

Liam stayed in Spain and I went back to Denver. I got engaged to my girlfriend, got dis-engaged, and then esacaped to New York. Six years later, I finally made it back to Spain, and Liam was there to meet me at the airport. I crashed at his place. Before I had even been in the country 24 hours, he mentioned this American poet he gotten to know. She was from New York, he said. She was really good and I had to meet her.

"Does she have dark hair?" I asked.

She did.

When I finally met her, I liked her, but she didn't want anything to do with me. Incredibly, this beautiful poet from Rye, New York had met a guy from Austin, Texas while she was in grad school in Seattle, Washington. They had been pretty serious and had lived together for a couple of years. Now, suddenly, in Madrid, Spain, she meets another guy from Austin, Texas. To make matters worse, her ex and I had even gone to the same high school. And, finally, to top it all off, it turned out that he and I actually knew each other! It was just a little too much deja vu for her.

"I also thought you were kind of arrogant," she tells me later. "With your cowboy hat and your cowboy boots."

For the record, I was wearing hiking boots when I met her. But it was still too much.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I pursued her and she resisted. I pursued more, and she resisted more. She was already dating someone else, she said. Etc, etc. I gave up on her. She finally showed up one morning at the cafe where I used to hang out and write. I was literally writing in my journal about how everything was over with her, when she walked up that Sunday morning. I never even finished my sentence.

I eventually proposed to her in the Gardens behind the Royal Palace in Madrid. Liam had gone there ahead of time with a bottle of champagne and a boom-box so she and I could dance (to Fats Waller and Ben Webster.)

And Liam finally got to see his two friends get married and live happily ever after. . . .






















Yeah, right.

The bride's not even sure what's she's doing with this guy!
















He, on the other hand, seems enraptured by the whole spiritual nature of the occasion, the great and powerful love he feels for this amazing woman. Who doubts him. Who can't believe he wears cowboy boots. Who can't believe he watches football!

We had a bilingual ceremony, with an American priest performing the mass in English and Spanish, and the choir singing in Spanish. It was held at Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, in the village of Chinchón, Spain. Chinchón is famous for its anis and for its beautiful, circular plaza. The bullfighting scene in the original Around the World in 80 Days was filmed there. Orson Welles lived in Chinchón briefly. And Goya would go there to see his brother, who was the parish priest. One of the few religious pantings by this great Spanish artist hangs over the altar in the church. (That's probably what the groom was staring at while the bride showed her concerns about him.)

Here's the circular plaza, looking up at the church.
La Reina and I actually lived in Chinchón for almost a year. We were in the big house on the right-hand side, with the three green windows. It was a wonderful experience, with a number of tales to tell, but those will have to wait for another day.

100 Yards of War and Peace - And a Poem

It seems a little early - no autumn leaves falling yet - but the National Football League kicks off its new season on Thursday night. I love football, what can I say. The Texas thing, perhaps. For some reason, I don't remember why now, I once wrote: Basketball is like a video game, baseball like a Whitman poem on a lazy summer afternoon, and football is Napoleon’s march into Russia. It’s War and Peace over 100 yards. I thought of that line again just a few days ago, as I was reading through various predictions for the upcoming season. Then, this morning, I see New York Jets head coach Eric Mangini refer to Tolstoy’s masterpiece in an article in the New York Times: “The positive thing about game-planning is the playbook goes from War and Peace to something a lot more manageable, because it’s so opponent-specific.”

What’s great about football is how it combines the gracefulness of dance, the intelligence and strategy of chess, and the sweaty, grunting, primordial struggle of one human body against another. It's the beautiful, acrobatic catches of Hall-of-Fame wide receiver Lynn Swann, who “took several years of dance lessons that included ballet, tap and jazz. They helped a great deal with body control, balance, a sense of rhythm, and timing." In 1980, he danced on stage with Gene Kelly and Twyla Tharp. It's Curtis Martin and Shaun Alexander, who have been the leading NFL rushers for the last two years, and who are also avid chess players. Alexander has even set up a chess-in-the schools program. It's the brilliant strategizing of Bill Belichick, head coach of the 3-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots. And it's the goal-line stand, a powerful archetype of: “You shall not cross this line and defeat us.” Or: “We will, by whatever means necessary, cross this line.” One of the greatest football games of all time came down to a massive pile of bodies at the goal line - on an icy field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, New Year's Eve, 1967, with the wind chill at -40 degrees. The Ice Bowl. My childhood team, Tom Landry's Dallas Cowboys, losing a heartbreaker to the Vince Lombardi-led Packers. (Landry had been the brilliant offensive coordinator and Lombardi the brilliant defensive coordinator for the great New York Giants teams of the 1950s.) With time running out, Green Bay quarterback Bart Starr slammed through a massive defensive wall to barely cross into the end zone.

Bart Starr (#15), barely over the goal line, as time ran out.

I can't go away without mentioning James Wright. One of the greatest American poets of the 20th century wrote what I think is the best poem ever about football:

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

From The Branch Will Not Break by James Wright, published by Wesleyan University Press. Copyright © 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963 James Wright.

Luckily the Academy of American Poets (poets.org) has both the poem and a 1964 recording of Wright reading it at the Guggenheim Museum.

I don't know what will happen this season. Most so-called experts pick the Jets to be one of the worst teams in the league this year, finishing at 4-12 or 5-11. That's okay - I prefer the low expectations. Last year, many people (including yours truly) thought they were legitimate Super Bowl contenders, and they wound up 4-12. In a space of 5 minutes, they lost their #1 and #2 quarterbacks for the season. Future Hall-of-Famer Curtis Martin, who holds an NFL record (with Barry Sanders) for rushing over 1,000 yards for 10 consecutive seasons, and is one of the classiest guys in the sport, as well as one of the toughest, was seriously injured and couldn't finish the season. Kevin Mawae, another classic warrior, who once played for weeks with a broken hand (the guy's a center and had to learn to snap with his left hand, no small feat), tore his pectoral muscle and was out for the year. It all went downhill fast. So, fine, let's say they're going to be 4-12. Then maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

But whatever happens, I know that an epic narrative will slowly unfold week after week over the course of the next 5 months. There will be tragedy, comedy, drama, pathos, and euphoria. Like the best of all sports - and literature - there's a great story waiting to be told. And we don't know what will happen next.