Passing Game
November 27, 2008
The name of Benny Friedman is not particularly well-known today. Nevertheless, as author Murray Greenberg demonstrates, the Jewish athlete made an important contribution to college and professional football. Moreover, during the 1920s and 1930s when there was a good deal of overt anti-Semitism in America, Friedman and others — such as boxers Benny Leonard and Barney Ross — contradicted the negative image of Jews as physically weak. They were heroes to American Jews of their generation just as were Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax to later sports fans.
Friedman was born in Cleveland in 1905 to Orthodox Jewish parents who were working-class Russian immigrants. He attended public school and, reluctantly, afternoon Hebrew school, which cut into time for football and bodybuilding. At the age of 12, he left Hebrew school and soon entered high school, where he tried out for the football team. Seen by the coach as too small for the team, Friedman transferred to another school where he led the team to a national championship.
He entered the University of Michigan, where he enjoyed enormous success as all-American quarterback and captain of the team. Practically each game he played is detailed in the book, featuring especially Friedman’s prowess as a passer and his rivalry with Red Grange, star of the University of Illinois team and another gridiron legend.
After graduating in 1927, Friedman began his professional career with the Cleveland Bulldogs. The team moved to Detroit a year later, and was then bought by the owner of the New York Giants who had noted the large turnout of Jews when Friedman played in New York.
Friedman was a big hit in the Big Apple where a sports writer called him the “greatest football player in the world.” During the off-season, he worked on Wall Street and also served as Yale’s backfield coach.
He was eager to become a full-time coach, applying unsuccessfully at several colleges. Finally, in 1932, he accepted a job as player-coach for the Brooklyn Dodgers. However, his performance on the field began to slip, and when new owners bought the team they installed someone else as coach yet retained Friedman as the team’s quarterback. But his desire to coach surpassed the desire to play, and he retired as an active athlete in 1934 to become the coach at City College of New York.
The playing field was not very good and football was overshadowed at City College by basketball under the popular Nat Holman. Moreover, athletics were clearly secondary to education. Friedman kept looking for other coaching jobs to no avail.
Friedman joined the Navy in 1942 and saw combat in the South Pacific. After the war, he moved to Detroit, where he ran an auto dealership. In 1949, Friedman accepted a job as athletic director, football coach, and fund-raiser at newly established Brandeis University in Massachusetts. When the school began to gain academic respectability, the administration and faculty questioned the necessity for a football team and eliminated it in 1960. Friedman stayed on as athletic director for two years and then resigned. He ran a summer camp in Maine and also taught high school quarterbacks how to improve their performance. In addition, he was an insurance executive and an occasional TV commentator on football games.
Friedman’s health began to deteriorate, and in 1979 he had a blood clot in his leg that necessitated amputation. Finally, in despair that he might lose his other leg, he shot himself.
In 2005, Benny Friedman was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The story of his becoming a celebrity and then descending into relative obscurity is nicely told in this biography, reminding us about a man who was once hailed as a Jewish hero.
Dr. Morton I. Teicher is the founding dean of the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University and dean emeritus of the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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