1
The Blond Bomber
 
 
That steamy August night in the faraway hills of central Pennsylvania, Bobby Layne stomped the ground like a man snuffing out a grass fire. His full-throated Texas twang sounded like the whine of a distant crop duster. He yanked the spent Marlboro from his lips and fired it into the grass.
Unfolding before his eyes was the horror of losing the biggest game of his coaching life. Never mind it was his coaching debut. On August 1, 1964, Layne’s team of Texas high school all-stars was faltering against a bunch of overfed, heavy-legged Pennsylvania boys by the score of 12–6. The scene in Hershey grew more hopeless with each tick of the scoreboard clock.
The Texas team had traveled fourteen hundred miles to participate in the Big 33 Football Classic. It was called the Big 33 because thirty-three players were selected for each team. Weeks earlier, the all-stars from both Texas and Pennsylvania had graduated from high school. The vast majority were about to embark on college football careers. The contest had been arranged by a group of Pennsylvania promoters who were dead set on proving their state played a better brand of high school football than the arrogant Texans. A few months earlier, Sports Illustrated had ranked Texas as the No. 1 high school football state in America, followed by California and Pennsylvania. This was not surprising. After all, Texas high schools bragged of more football teams than all of America’s colleges combined. Texas was known for cattle and oil, but the state’s most prominent identity was derived from the Friday night lights that glowed from Dalhart to McAllen, and from Orange to El Paso.
So much was at stake in the final two minutes of the inaugural Big 33 game between Texas and Pennsylvania that Bobby Layne had worked himself into a menacing mixture of foot stomping and foul language. Nothing revealed the madman inside Layne like failure. His longtime friend Doak Walker once said, “Bobby never lost a game in his life. Time just ran out on him.”
Just three years earlier, Layne had walked away from a legendary fifteen-year NFL quarterbacking career that included back-to-back championships in 1952 and 1953 with the Detroit Lions. From 1950 to 1955, Layne was reunited with Walker, his best friend since high school days at Dallas Highland Park. Fans in the Motor City once considered Bobby Layne bigger than General Motors. His worshippers compared him to Mickey Cochrane, the catcher/manager who led the Detroit Tigers to their first World Series title in 1935. In an era when stars were measured more by magazine covers than TV exposure, Layne was the first football star to grace the cover of Time. The story read, “The best quarterback in the world is Robert Lawrence Layne, a blond-haired, bandy-legged Texan with a prairie squint in his narrow blue eyes and a athletic paunch on his ample, 6-1, 195-pound frame.”
Before Layne, the pro game ranked just a notch above championship wrestling. There were only fifteen million television sets in America in 1952, and the players operated in a sea of electric snow. Those in the stadium, though, knew that Layne was cocky and fun to watch. He played with a constant chatter that pleased the crowd and angered opponents. More than anyone else, he delivered the pro game into the golden age that officially began with the 1958 Colts-Giants championship game that went into overtime and almost sent America into cardiac arrest. Johnny Unitas was standing on Layne’s shoulders late that afternoon as he drove the Colts down the field in the shadows at Yankee Stadium. Alan Ameche’s 1-yard touchdown burst in sudden death overtime won the championship for Baltimore and changed the game for all time. They all could thank Bobby Layne for wallowing in the muddy trenches before the game was finally delivered to the masses on a clear Sylvania screen.
Before retiring in 1962, Layne held NFL passing records for attempts (3,700), completions (1,814), yards gained (26,768), and touchdowns (196). He was also credited with starting the two-minute offense. If he had thrived during the sports TV boom of the 1960s, he would have been Roger Staubach with a drinking problem.
After leading the Lions to a third straight NFL title game in 1954, and losing to the Browns, Layne began to battle injuries that included a torn labrum in his right shoulder. Still, no one was surprised that he stared down the pain. By 1957, his loosely hinged throwing shoulder felt like it had been stuck with a hot poker. He often medicated himself in the locker room with shots of straight whiskey. Baltimore tackle Art Donovan once sacked Layne and upon smelling his breath asked, “Bobby, have you been drinking?” “Hell yes,” Layne snapped, “and I plan to have a few more at halftime.”
Bob Hope once quipped, “He’s the only football player who had a water bucket on the sideline with a head on it.”
As the late nights took their toll, Layne’s football mystique began to fade in 1957. Still, he led the Lions to the brink of yet another NFL title game before shattering his right ankle in a late-season game against the Browns. He was viciously high-lowed by tackles Don Colo and Paul Wiggin. The lower right leg and ankle collapsed with a cracking sound, three bones breaking at once. His replacement, Tobin Rote, steered the Lions all the way to the NFL championship game, where they pounded the Cleveland Browns 59–14. The third league championship of the decade should have belonged to Layne, but the toast of the town turned out to be Rote.
When Layne was no longer the brightest star in Detroit, his drinking accelerated. The wary Lions traded him to the Pittsburgh Steelers after the second game of the 1958 season. The Steelers were the doormat of the NFL before Layne arrived. Pittsburgh turned out to be no place to send a thirsty man like Bobby Layne. The town was cold and lonely, and the Steelers were a hopeless bunch. Boos roared down on Pitt Stadium like a blizzard off the Monongahela River. Still, Layne cobbled together three winning seasons in five years.
Layne’s drinkathons were as famous as the binges of Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle. Not surprisingly, Mantle and Layne hit the bars at full speed when their off-seasons overlapped back home in Texas.
When his controversial career ended in 1962, Layne still firmly believed he would become the next great head coach in the NFL. It was the same trap that Babe Ruth had fallen into during the mid-1930s. Ruth believed he could eat, drink, and chase women until dawn and still wind up a manager. He found out the hard way. “Ruth, you can’t even mange your own life,” Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert told him. “How can you manage a baseball team?”
Not a single NFL team was willing to roll the dice on Layne. He could not outrun his own reputation. His friendship with renowned football fixer Donald “Dice” Dawson had set in motion rumors that Layne bet on his team during the glory years of the 1950s. Dawson once admitted to fixing thirty games. There was no way that a competitor like Layne fixed games, but NFL players gambling on games in the 1950s was as common as helmets without face masks. Average salaries ranged from $8,000 to $10,000. Players could make mortgage money by betting on or against their own teams.
Layne’s friendship with Dawson was widely known. They spent time together in Detroit, and Dawson traveled to Lubbock during the off-season and stayed at Layne’s house.
During the late 1950s, Layne struck up a friendship with Green Bay running back Paul Hornung, who would be suspended by the NFL in 1963 for betting on games. Hornung and Layne were known for their carousing, and both lo