Blue-Eyed Soul Brother: The Versatile Football Life of Super Bill Bradley

Sports biographies typically focus on figures whose athletic performances and colorful personalities make them easily recognizable. “Broadway Joe” Namath and Jesse Owens, for instance, should require little introduction. If the athletes are relatively unknown, then the historical and social context might nonetheless make for a riveting story. While the names of the British track stars who participated in the 1924 Olympics were not to be found on the lips of many Americans in 1981, the film Chariots of Fire still managed to win four Academy Awards. Nearly everyone jogging through a college campus in the early 1980s had their Walkman playing the theme from that film.On the other hand, what if the athlete was never a superstar on the level of a Jim Brown, Magic Johnson, Gordie Howe, or Simone Biles? What if they never played for a team that sat atop Mount Olympus—the Detroit Redwings, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Boston Celtics? And what if the boundary between being colorful and being obnoxious is not clearly discernable? Blue-Eyed Soul Brother provides the answers to these questions.Bill Bradley was born in 1947 in Palestine, Texas. (Texans pronounce it Pal-es-teen, though no one knows why.) It was a small town in the Piney Woods some 108 miles southeast of Dallas. Palestine, like many Texas towns, was divided by class, race, and railroad tracks. For many kids like Bradley, regardless of ethnicity and race, sports was a possible escape from the economic margins.At the beginning of the twentieth century, Pennsylvania drillers had taught Texans how to find oil and play football. They learned their lessons well. Friday Night Lights was more than a book, film, and television series—it was a Lone Star profession of faith. The Texas-born actor Jamie Foxx once recounted a high school football game where he had made a terrible play. The loudest voice coming from the stands denouncing him as an irredeemable moron was that of the pastor of his church.Bradley’s gridiron experience was not much different from Foxx’s, though his biggest critics were family members. Once, after he considered giving up football at the University of Texas, his father shouted: “The hell you are! The Bradley’s don’t quit. Your teammates voted you captain, so you go out there to practice and show ’em what you’re made of. If you quit now, you don’t have a home here!” (3).As a Baby Boomer, Bradley lived through the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. He navigated integration very well. Of course, the dirty secret most Yankees did not know about many southern towns was that the color line often bent whenever it interfered with business and recreation. There was plenty of integration at vacant lots where teenagers could play baseball or football—and drink cheap beer until they discovered their limitations. It was not for nothing that a young African American man (and future National League Football star) gave Bradley the nickname, “Blue-Eyed Soul Brother.”Although Bradley became discouraged when he found himself shifted from the position of starting quarterback to defensive cornerback for the Longhorns, he made a good enough showing to be recruited into the NFL. Unfortunately, as he lamented, leaving the Longhorns to play for the Philadelphia Eagles “was like going from the penthouse to the sh—house” (126). The age of Chuck Bednarik was past, with the Eagles’ only recent moment in the national spotlight taking place in 1968 when Philadelphia fans booed an actor dressed as Santa Claus and nailed him with snowballs.Bradley’s adventures with the Eagles were varied. He set league records for successful interceptions in 1971 and 1972. Given how badly the Eagles played, Bradley’s punting prowess often turned humiliating routs into embarrassing losses. He also acquired a measure of fame when, during a 1972 match against the Chicago Bears, Bradley screamed, “Kiss my butt [Dick] Butkus! You fat f---!” (171). Butkus, who had 55 pounds and 4 inches on Bradley, ran after the Texan with murder in his eyes but failed to catch him. Nearly everyone, except for Butkus, agreed that it was the best part of a boring game.In an age when professional football players earn tens of millions of dollars and are awash in endorsement money, it is hard to imagine that only a few decades ago athletes made far less. In 1971, the Eagles paid Bradley $21,000—or $175,000 today if adjusted for inflation. However, that was nearly three times higher than the average US income and on a par with early career white-collar professionals. Since Bradley had left the University of Texas without a college degree, his compensation was comparatively generous.Bradley boycotted Eagles training camp and staged a salary protest. Citing the need to increase his income, Bradley opened a concession stand near where his teammates were practicing and sold sandwiches and soda. To his credit, Bradley knew that the Eagles management would harass him. When an official came by and demanded to see his vendor’s license, Bradley immediately produced it.Income aside, many professional football players had a nonmonetary benefit that most Americans lacked—a workaround the Vietnam War draft. Bradley, for instance, received a 4F Selective Service designation, meaning that he was physically unfit for military service but in good enough shape to play collegiate and professional football. Joe Namath also received a 4F designation while all the players for the Baltimore Colts and the Detroit Lions either had occupational exemptions from the draft or postings in the reserves where deployment to Vietnam was off the table.Blue-Eyed Soul Brother is not a scholarly work, though the oral interviews and secondary sourcing are praiseworthy. There are amusing anecdotes, and it is interesting to see how the cultural ambience of Philadelphia was similar to Palestine. That is not a compliment, though it makes Bradley’s seamless transition from one to the other understandable. As the philosopher Buckaroo Banzai observed, “No matter where you go, there you are.” That sums up Bill Bradley’s life and times.