As
editor of Vietnam GI (VGI), his underground antiwar paper,
Jeff Sharlet traveled the country constantly and even occasionally went abroad
seeking stories to run in the paper. In the States, he most often sought out
GIs just back from Vietnam, but he also met with antiwar activists. Aside from
his charisma, Jeff had the additional cachet of being an ex-Vietnam GI – Been
there, done that.
One
of the most unusual people Jeff encountered was Dave Meggyesy, a pro football
player. Meggyesy was then a star linebacker for the Cardinals, the National
Football League (NFL) team in St Louis. He was one of the very few players in
the NFL who was also an activist. Even more unusual, he was the rare political
radical in the ranks of pro ball.
Dave
Meggyesy had been a poor farm boy from Ohio whose stellar performance as a high
school player earned him a football scholarship to Syracuse University, a
football power in upstate New York. The previous season, Syracuse had won the
national championship.
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One of the most unusual people Jeff encountered was Dave
Meggyesy…the rare political radical in the ranks of pro ball
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Meggyesy
fulfilled the coaches’ expectations, being named All-American honorable mention
in his Sophomore season, although from the outset he was also something of a
maverick on the Syracuse squad.
Dave Meggyesy tackling
a runner, Syracuse-Notre Dame game, 1961
Football
players were expected to take so-called remedial courses, the easiest possible
to ensure their academic eligibility to play under NCAA rules. However, Dave
bucked the coaches and insisted on taking regular, more demanding courses of
his choice. Then, as he proved himself in the games, he was offered cash under
the table for his ‘services’ to the team – a standard illegal practice in big
time college football – but as an athletic purist he was taken aback and
initially refused.
Further
worrying the authoritarian head coach was his non-conformity – Dave lived
off-campus with his girlfriend instead of in the team dorm. To make matters
worse, the two of them hung out with irreverent arts students the coach
regarded as ‘beatniks’. They also read
‘subversive’ literature by Aldous Huxley, Ernest Becker, and Jack Kerouac,
America’s ultimate rebel.
After
a standout gridiron career at Syracuse, the St Louis Cardinals drafted him for
the ’63 NFL season. A tackle in college, the pros converted him to linebacker,
a key position on the defensive team requiring speed, agility, and
intelligence. Dave had a very good rookie season in St Louis and was considered
a player of promise, but he nonetheless continued his free-spirited ways to the
distress of the coaching staff.
During
the off-season, Dave enrolled in grad school at Washington University, a very
distinguished institution in St Louis. Intending to eventually become a doctor,
he took pre-med courses, but later switched to Sociology where he came under
the influence of a noted politically active mentor. Professor Irving Louis
Horowitz put him on to the writings of recently deceased C Wright Mills,
arguably the most radical, intellectually combative scholar of the day.
Dave Meggyesy,
St Louis Cardinals
Once
the football season got underway each fall, Meggyesy was all business,
constantly perfecting his game and making significant contributions to the Cardinals.
Off-season however, he began taking an interest in politics. Although he was Caucasian,
in ’64 he was asked by the St Louis chapter of the NAACP to lend his name for
fund-raising.
He
momentarily hesitated, worrying what the team owner might think of him stepping
out of his purely jock role, but then gave his consent and retrospectively
considered the decision to get involved his first political commitment.
During
the following year, 1965, as President Johnson dramatically escalated the war
in Vietnam, Dave became politically active. As antiwar opposition heated up on
the nation’s campuses, he attended Washington University’s ‘teach-in’ against the
war where he made contact with the campus Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS) chapter. Although he didn’t formally become a member, he attended SDS
meetings and found himself in agreement on the war issue.
His
new SDS friends at the university introduced Dave to the radical press – the
hard-hitting magazine Ramparts, published in the intensely political
San Francisco Bay Area; and the left paper, The
Guardian, out of New York. That fall the march on Washington conflicted
with his daytime job as linebacker, but his wife made the trip to the capital.
Football
was the singular focus and all-consuming passion during the season for most of
Meggyesy’s teammates. Dave, however, was privately conflicted about his
profession. He disliked the coaches’ treating adult men as juveniles, the many
petty rules such as bed check, and the fact that players were often compelled
to play injured – shot up with painkillers by the team doc.
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Dave was privately conflicted about his profession, disliked
being treated like a juvenile, petty rules, and players compelled to play
injured shot up with painkillers
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Dave Meggyesy,
linebacker
Most
of all he was shocked by the racism in the St Louis organization – for road
games Black players were segregated in accommodations and eating arrangements. On
the personal side during annual training camp, Meggyesy – to some degree a
straight arrow – wasn’t particularly keen on post-scrimmage rituals of boozing,
brawling, and philandering. Although he got along with his teammates, who respected
him for his ability, he never ‘fit in’ with the culture of the outfit.
In
effect, Dave Meggyesy was not in sync with his peers. His innate intellectual
curiosity alone set him apart, but it was his progressive radical activism that
began to open up a growing divide between him and the politically conservative
owner and coaches.
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Dave’s intellectual curiosity alone
set him apart, but his activism opened a divide between him and the
conservative owner and coaches
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He
had given an antiwar talk at nearby Southern Illinois University, which
elicited an outraged letter from a Cardinal fan to the owner. Then, in April of
’67 Dave took off for New York to be part of the huge march against the war and
later that fall helped organize and finance buses to Washington for St Louis
activists participating in the great demonstration at the Pentagon.
During
spring ’68, brother Jeff was on the road again for VGI, visiting GI antiwar coffee houses where he’d meet with combat
veterans and men training for Vietnam. On this tour, his itinerary took him
down to the Mad Anthony Wayne GI coffee house outside the giant infantry training
base at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
A
meeting was arranged between Jeff and Dave Meggyesy in St Louis. Unfortunately,
with the passage of time when I contacted Dave in recent years, he couldn’t
recall their conversation, but presumably they rapped about the war and the
emerging GI protest movement.
That
spring Dave and his wife were in the thick of the antiwar movement, often
hosting large SDS meetings at their house. By then, his political resume was
nearly as impressive as his football feats, and he had attracted FBI
surveillance.
Cardinals’ management had grown quite
uncomfortable with his dissidence, which was attracting many letters from angry
‘patriotic’ fans. The bottom line for management was of course the gate and
profits.
Just
before the ‘68 summer training camp, Meggyesy received an oblique but clear
indication that management was going to ask him to make a choice – politics or
football, never the twain will meet. He was only saved from the ultimatum when
the team’s racism finally broke in the news, and the owners felt they couldn’t
handle a political scandal as well.
Undeterred
by the threat looming over him, at training camp in northern Michigan Meggyesy
circulated a petition among his teammates in support of Senator Eugene McCarthy
of Minnesota, the peace candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
He
collected a surprising number of signatures from teammates and after practice
drove down to the Chicago convention to lobby the Missouri delegation on behalf
of McCarthy. To no avail however – Missouri was firmly in the camp of the
mainstream candidate, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey.
In
’69, which would turn out to be Dave’s final season in pro ball, he publicly
irritated fans, management, and teammates when he consistently refused to
salute the flag during the National Anthem before games. During one game, a
belligerent fan heckled the maverick linebacker unremittingly, shouting that he
was a ‘commie’.
During
the season, the St Louis organization finally lost patience when Dave gave an
extensive interview to a major Philadelphia daily criticizing the Cardinals’
management, the culture of football in general, and, of course, the war. The
coaches no longer spoke to him, and he was benched, sitting out most of the
games.
In
the highly divisive and charged atmosphere over the war in the country in the
late ‘60s, activist politics and pro football – his conscience and his
profession – proved a toxic mix for Dave Meggyesy. By that point, he was
thoroughly disenchanted with everything about football, and being punitively benched
for lesser players was the final straw for him. At the height of his career, he
quit the game at the end of his seventh season, packed up his wife and kids,
and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area.
There,
with the help of a Berkeley professor, Dave wrote his controversial
autobiography, Out of Their League (1971). One reviewer called it “the first
critical look at the dehumanizing aspects of pro football,”* and the book soon
became a best seller.
Subsequently,
in addition to a personally rewarding stint coaching high school football, Dave
devoted the rest of his working life to following his conscience. He went on to
teach courses on the sociology of sports at Stanford University, founded
‘Athletes United for Peace’, co-founded the Esalen Sports Center, and
eventually headed the western region of the NFL Players Association, the labor union of pro ball,
finally retiring in 2007.
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*San Jose Mercury News, date unknown
