When singer/actor Mac Davis died this week most people talked about his hit songs that he wrote for Elvis (In the Ghetto, A Little Less Conversation), his own hits (Baby, Don’t Get Hooked, Stop and Smell the Roses), or his popular 70s Tv show The Mac Davis Show. But I flashed to his debut film as an actor—North Dallas Forty.
Davis played the footloose and fancy free quarterback in the 1979 film based on a novel by former NFL player Peter Gent. I don’t think I’d seen it since it came out when I was in high school. But I remember two key scenes in the movie.
I watched the film last last since it’s on Amazon Prime. It’s not a great film—and several scenes make you wince in 2020—but those two key scenes shined bright again. One deals with the politics in sports and the other deals with the violent nature of football.
The year before the movie was released was the year that wide receiver Darryl Stingley was paralyzed by a Jack Tatum hit in an NFL preseason game.
This afternoon I was digitizing some old files and came across a Sports Illustrated magazine I’d kept titled Brutality, The Crisis in Football. The date on the cover is August 14, 1978—just two days after the Stingley/Tatum him. Meaning the John Underwood article title An Unfolding Tragedy could not have been more timely. (The magazine would have shipped before the Stingley injury.)
One of the solutions to curbing head injuries in the Underwood article was to, “Make any flagrant foul involving the head punishable by immediate ejection of the offending player.” College football finally implemented a rule last year for a targeting with a helmet hit leading to the injection of that player. All it took was 40 years to take the needed action.
Head injuries are inherently dramatic as is seen by the one that paralyzed Jason Street (Scott Porter) in Friday Night Lights.
For years it was thought you were fortunate to walk away from the game without a limp. Maybe your knees still had enough life to allow you to play with your kids. But then doctors discovered brain damage in former pro players that would haunt players long after their NFL playing days were over. That is the story behind the 2015 film Concussion.
While changes have been made at the pro level down through youth leagues, I don’t think we’re through with football stories related to the drama of football injuries.
But just so I don’t end this post on a down note, here’s a Mac Davis reminder to Stop and Smell the Roses along the way: