"A Man's Game"

'A Man's Game' (See Cover) The quarterback snaps "Let's go," the eleven burly men clap their hands in a single, sharp crack, and the offensive huddle dissolves. Then, taking his place behind the looming rump of his center, the quarterback looks with narrowed eyes across the line of scrimmage at the most formidable sight in professional football.

The four blue-jerseyed men facing him are mountains of muscle. Alert and agile as jungle cats, two linebackers crouch outside the ends. Ranged in an arc behind them are four lean, whippet-fast backs.

And a bare 2 yds. away from the quarter back, returning his stare in challenge, waits the key man of the proud New York Giant defense: Middle Linebacker Sam Huff (6 ft. 1 in., 230 lbs.), a confident, smiling fighter fired with a devout desire to sink a thick shoulder into every ball carrier in the National Football League.

Rugged Red-Dogging. Sunday after Sunday, pro quarterbacks have learned that whatever play they call, Huff is likely to be in front of it. Sam Huff is strong enough to flatten a plunging fullback such as the Chicago Bears' Rick Casares (6 ft. 2 1/2 in., 225 Ibs.), swift enough to recover from a block in time to nail a halfback sprinting around end, smart enough to diagnose pass patterns and throw an offensive end off stride with an artful shoulder. But Huff is at his rugged best when he knifes through the line and "red-dogs" a quarterback as he fades to pass.

The crash of Huff's tackle can stir the Giant bench to bellowing glee, set the rabid fans in Yankee Stadium to rumbling out their own rapid-fire cheer like the chugging of a steam engine : "Huff-Huff-Huff-Huff-Huff." When Sam is on the field, the toughest fans in the U.S.'s toughest sport see what they came to see.

As thousands of new fans are happily discovering, pro football is a game of precise and powerful virtuosity --incredible catches, runners who break away from swarms of opponents just when they seem stopped, crunching tackles and jet-powered blocks. No experienced pro fan ever leaves a game in its last five minutes when his team is only two touchdowns behind--any club can, and may, explode in those five minutes and win. Pro football is a game in which every carefully selected, battle-tried man seems larger than life, not only in skill and speed, but in sheer brute strength.

Eruptions & Clusters. Around the league this season, the pros are displaying a variety of play that college football cannot match. Canny, veteran quarterbacks such as Philadelphia's Norm Van Brocklin, 33, and Pittsburgh's Bobby Layne, 32, still dominate their teams. With a tricky, lateraling attack, the Chicago Cardinals can erupt for clusters of points. Last year's champion Baltimore Colts can field a covey of stars led by young (26) Johnny Unitas, a onetime reject from the Pittsburgh Steelers who is rated the best quarterback in football, throws touchdown passes from the shelter of the league's finest offensive tackle, mammoth (6 ft. 3 in., 275 Ibs.) Jim Parker, 25. If a man does get by him, Parker contritely reassures Unitas in the huddle: "Johnny, it won't happen again." The Colts also boast End Raymond Berry, who is slow and small (6 ft. 2 in., 190 Ibs.) as pro ends go, so near-sighted he wears contact lenses during a game, but has proved so twinkle-toed a faker that he has caught a league-leading 48 passes in eight games.

Not since the 19303, when Bronko Nagurski was crumpling lines for the Chicago Bears, have football fans seen such a numbing fullback as the Cleveland Browns' young (23) Jimmy Brown. Magnificently muscled (6 ft. 2 in., 228 Ibs.), Brown has a sprinter's speed, strength enough to carry along a brace of tacklers. When he hits defensive backs with a low shoulder, he can send them cartwheeling. Last year Brown smashed 1,527 yds. in twelve games to shatter the league ground-gaining record by a fabulous 381 yds. And even the lowly Los Angeles Rams, at the bottom of the Western Conference, can offer Halfback Ollie Matson, 29, whose stride is rated the most beautiful in football, a smooth flow of power that whisks him through the frantic flurry of broken-field blocks and tackles with deceptive ease. On a team that is going nowhere, Matson has broken loose so often that he averages 5.4 yds. per carry.

No Lard. But this is the year of the defense. The mighty Cleveland Browns are as good at stopping touchdowns as making them. Even with its league-leading offense, the champion Baltimore Colts have wallowed badly at times this season because its faltering defense failed to back up the N.F.L.'s most formidable tackle: Gene ("Big Daddy") Lipscomb (6 ft. 6 in., 288 Ibs.), who riffles with heavy hands through enemy backs ("I keep the one with the ball"). Last week, once again tackling hard and low, the Colts hit the San Francisco Forty-Niners so hard that they allowed only three first downs, put balding Quarterback Y. A. (for Yelberton Abraham) Tittle in the hospital with a possible fractured knee. Final score: Baltimore 45, San Francisco 14. The victory moved the Colts into a first-place tie in the Western Conference with the Forty-Niners, who have themselves bounced back from a 6-6 season last year largely because of a revamped defense.

With the rapid evolution of the defense into a system as complex as the offense, pro fans are realizing what the experts have known all along: the defense epitomizes the raw strength and subtle scheming that lies at the heart of football. Says one pro coach: "In college football, all you really need for a defense is a few big tubs of lard in the line. They can't move, and they can't be moved. In pro football, size isn't enough; everybody has it. Defense becomes a game of chess."

The Middle Man. Key man of the defense is the middle linebacker, and from coast to coast, he is getting the hero worship that was once reserved for the touchdown-happy backs. In Detroit, Joe Schmidt can do nothing wrong, although his Lions (2-6-1) can do nothing right. In San Francisco, small boys speak in awe of the thundering tackles of Jerry Tubbs. At a banquet in California, Les Richter of the Los Angeles Rams diagramed defenses for a solid hour and enthralled U.C.L.A. Physicist Joseph Kaplan, chairman of the U.S. International Geophysical Year Committee.

In Chicago, rabid Bear fans pass up seats on the 40-yd. line to sit in the end zone, where they can get a head-on view of the intricate mayhem of line play. They know what they are seeing. "Chicago's hittin' inside the tackles, and Frisco's stacking the defense inside," complained one end zoner at the game eventually won by the Bears, 14-3. "Look at those corner linebackers pull in, and how close the tackles up front are playing! I mean, how can you run through that ton of beef?"

Mezzanine Jungle. Best of all pro defenses is the New York Giants', and Linebacker Huff is the acknowledged best in football. Last year Huff's defensive team gave up the league low of 3.6 yds. per opponent carry, hoisted the team into the championship playoffs, where it finally lost, 23-17, to the Baltimore Colts in an overtime period. This year the Giant tacklers are tougher than ever, have yielded a grudging 3.0 yds. per rush (league average: 4.1 yds.), given up only eight touchdowns in the past seven games (longest scoring run allowed: 2 yds.).

Last week, matched against the speed of the Cardinals, the Giants' rookie-studded punting team gave up two touchdowns on long runbacks of kicks. But on the line of scrimmage, the Giants allowed only 96 yards by rushing, none by passing, on one series of downs spilled Cardinal backs for losses of nine, thirteen and six yards. Final score: Giants 30, Cardinals 20. The victory gave the Giants an undisputed lead in the Eastern conference despite a ramshackle offense that stands an abysmal ninth in scoring in the 12-team N.F.L.

Huff and his wrecking crew have inspired a fanatic band of followers who stand four deep in the mezzanine of Yankee Stadium to cheer them on. To get a look at the field, they build platforms out of anything handy--beer cans, stray cartons, or trash baskets. And when the Giant defensive behemoths take over--particularly deep in their own territory, where the tackles are roughest--the mezzanine turns into a howling, back-pounding jungle.

Standing Room Only. With such support, the Giants are drawing an average of 65,026 (capacity of Yankee Stadium: 67,101), running 33% ahead of last year. But enthusiasm is not confined to the Giants. Last year league attendance increased for the seventh season in a row to hit 3,006,124 for a twelve-game schedule (major-league baseball attendance for a 154-game schedule: 17.5 million). This year's attendance seems likely to go higher yet, although the stands in many cities simply cannot be jammed any fuller; e.g., Detroit, which has sold out 54,000-seat Briggs Stadium since 1953, this year peddled 42,000 season tickets.

Such crowded stadiums are understandable, for the calculated skill and violence of pro football is a sight to be seen. "No team from the past could take the field against the brand of football we play now," says Owner George Preston Marshall of the Washington Redskins. "The game has never been finer or faster."

Rowdy Beginnings. Professional football is now so respectable that even such ingrained skeptics as big-time bookies are convinced of its integrity. The Giants are not even allowed to swear in their locker room. "We don't enjoy living with people who eat like pigs," Cleveland Coach Paul Brown annually tells his players. "Please don't keep your head lowered in the soup or otherwise conduct yourself in an offensive manner."

Today's air of gentility is far removed from the rowdy beginnings of pro football. For years, pro football was a wildcat game played in the coal-mining camps of Pennsylvania and the factory towns of Ohio by former college stars who seldom gave their right names. The sport was the refuge of the tramp athlete. After World War I, the terror of the game was a grizzled, aging halfback named Jim Thorpe, sometime star of the Carlisle Indian school, who thoughtfully reinforced his shoulder pads with sheet metal.

Booked for New York. In 1920, pro football seemed promising enough for a group of men to meet in an auto agency in Canton, Ohio and organize eleven of the game's strongest teams (Canton Bulldogs, Massillon Tigers) into what later became the National Football League. Franchises were selling for only $2,500 in 1925 when an enterprising New York bookmaker named Timothy J. Mara started the Giants. That year, playing the Chicago Bears and Red Grange, the Giants drew pro football's first big gate: 74,000. But two years later, when the Giants beat the Bears, 13-7, to gain the league championship, the Polo Grounds held only 80 paying spectators.

Through the years, as the pass and the T formation opened up the game and the fans began to pack the stands on Sundays, the Giants stubbornly stuck to a tradition of rib-cracking defensive play. This year, as usual, the Giants' attack is plodding, depends almost entirely on the passing of elderly (38), leather-faced Quarterback Charlie Conerly of Mississippi ('48). When Conerly is on target and versatile Halfback Frank Gifford (University of Southern California, '52) is sound of wind and limb, the Giants can move the ball. With Conerly out with a sprained ankle, the Giants ignominiously failed to score a touchdown in two successive games.

But Linebacker Sam Huff and his colleagues have proved that the defense can win ball games. All year long. Giant tacklers have been setting up touchdowns for their own offense, then digging in to stop enemy drives. When the Steelers were moving for the winning touchdown in an early game, the line held twice with 3 in. to go. The man who scored the deciding touchdown that beat the Steelers, 21-16: Sam Huff (on a recovered fumble).

Patterns & Plots. The mind behind the Giants' muscle is Defensive Coach Tom Landry, 35, a sharp-featured, whisper-voiced Texas back who learned his trade in the Giants' defensive backfield (1950-55) under Coach Steve Owen. Using the pro's basic 4-3-4 "umbrella" formation, Landry has plotted a score of basic defense plays, each capable of several variations tailored to the particular enemy's offense. The defense plan is called in a defensive huddle before each play, can be changed on a shouted code word if the offense lines up in an unexpected pattern.

To carry out his schemes, Landry has swarthy End Andy Robustelli (6 ft. 1 in., 230 Ibs.). who loves to dismantle quarterbacks. Wreathed in sweat and steam, Tackles Dick Modzelewski (6 ft., 260 Ibs.) and Rosey Grier (6 ft. 5 in., 285 Ibs.) block up the middle. Boss of the defensive backfield is gritty Jimmy Patton (5 ft. 10 in., 180 Ibs.), a fleet (9.9 sec. for the 100) ball hawk who has suffered concussions batting down passes.

Behind Landry's complex system of blitzing linebackers and slanting linemen is a single master principle: funnel the play to the inside so that Sam Huff can make the tackle. Says the Los Angeles Rams' Line Coach Don Paul: "We hold a special meeting to plan how we're going to get Sam Huff." Huff has perfected the linebacker's risky technique of guessing where the play is going and meeting the runner head-on in the hole. From hours of study, he knows what plays may be run from any formation. To discover which one is coming, he searches the offensive players for telltale clues. "If the center has his weight off the ball and is back on his haunches, it's going to be a pass," says Huff, "because he's getting ready to move back fast and pick up the red-dogging linebackers. If the guards have their weight off their hands, it's a run around end. They're already thinking about pulling out and leading the play.

"A back like Paul Hornung of the Packers, if he's coming straight ahead on a handoff, he'll have more weight on his hand and be more in a sprinter's position, so he can really blow into the line. So if I see that, I cheat over a little bit so that I can be right in front of him when he gets the ball. Ollie Matson, when he's coming straight ahead, he has his feet cocked, and when he's going to the outside, he has both feet even and no weight on his hands."

Intuition & Muscle. "It's uncanny the way Huff follows the ball," says the Green Bay Packers' Coach Lombardi. "He ignores all the things you do to take him away from the play and comes after the ball, wherever it is thrown or wherever the run goes. Sure, sometimes he goes with the fake. But that's when the ball is there."

If need be, Huff can do the job with brute force alone. Item: after San Francisco's Hugh McElhenny took a screen pass and set out behind two 250-lb. blockers, Huff knocked all three out of bounds with one grizzly-like shove. Item: Huff can handle the Browns' Brown better than any linebacker in the league; in the playoff game for the Eastern Conference championship last year, Huff held the greatest back in football to a total of 8 yds. rushing. Their jousts, now the most famous in the sport, started in college when Huff was at West Virginia and Brown was at Syracuse. In one game, Brown gave Huff a scar across the bridge of his nose and four shattered teeth. Says Huff: "You've got to hit him straight-on below the hips and with all the power you've got, or he'll knock you over and run right up your face --he really will."

Blind-Side Day. By nature, Sam Huff is a friendly sort with the widest smile in football. But he has no trouble working up a cold-eyed mean streak as game time approaches; by the kickoff, he hates everyone on the other side of the scrimmage line. "You play as hard and vicious as you can," says Huff. "You've got more chance to get hurt when you're loafin'. If you're going all out and you hit a guy, you hurt him instead of him hurting you. One day, Bob St. Clair of the Forty-Niners blind-sided me when I was standing there by a pile-up and like to cut me in half. When that happened, I figured if I was on top of the pile I wouldn't make such a big target."

Sam makes no bones about the fact that the opposing quarterback is his prime target. "You rap that quarterback every chance you get. He's the brains of the outfit. If you knock him out clean and hard on the first play of the game, that's an accomplishment. For that matter, we try to hurt everybody. We hit each other as hard as we can. This is a man's game."

Recalls the Forty-Niners' Guard Bruce Bosley, a friend from college days at West Virginia: "Sam came to visit me before a game--that's the way he is--and he gave me a big smile and said, 'We're going to beat you guys until you can't stand. We got it worked for Rosey to kick hell out of you.' I got a little concussion in that game, and after it was over, I said to Smilin' Sam, 'If I'd been in there long enough to hit you, you'd still be on the field.' We're real good friends, Sam and I."

What's Dirty? Huff's rough play is openly admired by pros. Explains Rams Coach Paul, who himself once enjoyed the title of meanest man in the league: "This is a contact sport, and it's played for pay by huge, finely trained animals. Rough play is what every coach wants. It causes fumbles, it causes touchdowns, and it stops the other team from scoring." The pros speak with respect of how Lion Fullback John Henry Johnson can throw his shoulder into a man's chest, then bring it up under his chin ("There's no better weapon in the game"). The elbow is also fancied. "I'd rather land one six-inch punch with my elbow," says one Ram, "than a roundhouse haymaker with my fist." As for tripping, holding, or pushing, no pro considers this dirty. Says one coach: "You get penalties when you get caught and touchdowns when you don't. On pass plays, the pushing and shoving and holding between defender and receiver is ridiculous. You look at the films after a game, and you'll see, time and time again, the key block was actually holding."

Yet the professionals' very capacity for hard play, and the game's increasing demands on their skill, have imposed a kind of unspoken code. Basic rule: there should be no deliberate intent to maim. Any pro violating the rule knows that sooner or later he will be playing the same team again, and someone will get him in retaliation. Occasionally, a hotheaded rookie will break the rules, but the hotheads do not last. Says Huff: "Sure, I get mad at certain players. But if I'm looking to get him on the next play, the ball carrier runs somewhere else. So I may get the man I'm after, and we lose the game."

Run for Fun. Even at its cleanest, pro football is a game of awesome violence. "Sometimes after a game you're so dragged out, so beat, especially if you've lost a close one, you can hardly raise your arms," says one Forty-Niner back. "You sit there naked on a dressing-room bench, maybe smoking a cigarette in hopes it will pick you up, but it doesn't. Every bone seems to creak, and every muscle seems stiff. If you think at ail, you're saying to yourself, 'Why the hell am I in this game? My wife is right: it isn't worth it. This is my last year.'

"Then you get into a team bus, and a friendly lineman shoves a pint bottle in your hand. Well, what the hell--a short drink won't hurt, or even two. Mostly, we guys just get a nice jag on, but I confess I've been roaring drunk. Well, next day you ache a lot--but at least you were able to sleep through your dreams while replaying the game. The headache goes away, and by Tuesday, you're back for more. Hey, this is good! It's fun to run. The hell with retiring, at least until next Sunday."

Running for fun is not for Sam Huff, who gets $11,000 from the Giants (plus a $1,000 bonus if they win the championship), plus another $12,000 for testimonials, speeches, and an off-season job as a Philip Morris salesman. "It's too tough a game to play for nothing," says Huff. "I enjoy being with the fellas and all, but without the money, boy, that happiness is over."

The Mines. Sam Huff knows the value of a dollar. He was born in 1934 in a West Virginia mining camp called Edna Gas that was caught tight in the squeeze of the Depression. Sam and his five brothers and sisters spent their early years in one of a row of identical five-room company houses. Sam's father worked as little as one day a week in the mines, often had to queue up for free flour. The specter of the mines and a sooty lifetime behind a No. 3 shovel hung over all the boys in the coal country. Sam decided early that he was going to finish high school, no matter what, and there he found football. When Sam made the Class-B all-state team as a 200-lb. tackle for Farmington High School, Coach Art ("Pappy") Lewis of West Virginia University began dropping by to watch him play. "He was hunting all over the field for people to knock down even then," says Lewis. With a full scholarship to West Virginia, Huff majored in physical education (C plus grades) to get ready for a coaching career, dutifully plowed through such classes as Ballroom Dance, Fundamentals of Basketball, and Wrestling, got creditable B's in advanced biology and history courses. In his senior year in 1955, Huff had made All-America, was the third-draft choice of the Giants.

The Job. At first, the Giants did not quite know what to do with him; at 230 Ibs., he seemed a little too light for the defensive line, a step too slow for offensive guard. But in the third game of the season, the Giants' middle linebacker was hurt, and Sam Huff got the job. He has been behind the Giants' line ever since.

Football has been good to Sam Huff. When he married Mary Fletcher, his classmate sweetheart, in their senior year of high school, his friends were heading for the mines. Now the Huffs and their two children, Robert Lee ("Sam") Huff Jr., 7, and Catherine Ann, 2, live in their own house in Rock Lake, W. Va. Last year Sam bought a 25-acre farm in nearby Farmington to raise Shetland ponies. "When he was a kid, we couldn't afford a pony," says his father, who lives on the farm. "Sam wants every kid in the area to have the chance to ride a pony."

Off the field, Sam Huff is an unassuming extravert with a reputation as a waitress kidder, a dislike for liquor (two beers make him woozy), and a quiet determination to get to bed around 10 every night. But the game has left more of a mark on him than the slightly twisted nose in his handsome, square-jawed face. Sometimes he worries that the mean streak he works up for his profession of violence will affect him permanently. "You've got to watch that you don't take it off the field with you," says Sam. "You get guys who say, 'Oh, you're a big football player. Well, I don't think you're so tough.' You feel like poppin' them, but you can't."

The game has also left Huff with strong pride in his playing reputation and a fierce desire to become one of the great defensive players in the history of the game. "There's no telling how good Huff can become," says one Giant official. "He's still far from his potential."

Power to Spare. So is pro football. Already solidly in the black (projected profits this season for San Francisco: $500,000), the N.F.L. is eying the growing national interest in the game (CBS's pro-football TV audience: some 20 million) and planning to expand to Minneapolis-St. Paul and Dallas next year. What is more, the newly formed American Football League, headed by Dallas Oilman Lamar Hunt, has high hopes of playing next year in Houston, Dallas, New York, Denver, Boston, Buffalo and Los Angeles. Says Hunt: "Unless the N.F.L. folds, there will be two professional football leagues next year."

What the new league needs far more than big talk is big players like Linebacker Sam Huff. Down in Consol No. 9, back in Farmington, W. Va., a monster engine pulls loads of coal out of the mine, and still has enough power left over to do half a dozen other jobs. Nickname of the engine: the Sam Huff Special. "By jingo," says the proud father of the finest linebacker in the world, "it pulls an awful load."

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