Papa Bear

To hear him tell it, the old footballer is too tired to stick at his job for another year. It is hard to believe. This week, while his Chicago Bears squeaked past the Detroit Lions 21-20, Owner-Coach George Stanley Halas, 60, raged along the sidelines with the energy of a rookie. He might just as well have put himself back in the lineup. When Fullback Chick Jagade lowered his head and bucked upfield on the first play from scrimmage, Halas dug in and drove with him. Then Jagade fumbled. Halas stopped in horror. His foot came back and he kicked an imaginary ball right out of the field in disgust. Nervous substitutes kept a careful eye on their coach. They can still remember when Halas tried one of those phantom boots and place-kicked a 240-lb. guard right off the bench.

Wise Decision. For the better part of his long career, George Halas has been following a football with the same furious enthusiasm. For a short time after he graduated from the University of Illinois in 1918, he seemed well on his way to becoming a big-league baseball player. He signed with the Yankees in 1919, and was slated to become their regular rightfielder. Then he broke his leg running out a spring-training triple. While Halas mended, the Yanks made do with an ex-pitcher named George Herman Ruth. Halas watched his substitute play and wisely decided that he would never get his job back. After that he stuck close to football.

In those days, pro football was a catch-as-catch-can collection of part-time players. Men like George Halas took over the tough job of turning the game into a moneymaking proposition. When the A. E. Staley Starch Products Co. of Decatur, Ill. decided to give up their team, Halas, who was the coach, bought the franchise and moved to Chicago. Now Halas was a triple threat: owner, coach and player all at once. Times were so tough he also doubled as trainer, ticket-seller and publicity man. Not until he signed the great Red Grange in 1925, was Halas able to get off the financial hook.

Slowly, gate receipts went up. Halas was always ready to help please the customers. His teams opened up the game by revising the "T" formation and adding a man-in-motion. Then George jazzed things some more by engineering a couple of rule changes: goal posts were moved from back of the end zone to the goal line, forward passes were made legal from any point behind the line of scrimmage. It was easy enough to rewrite the rule book: George, among other things, was chairman of the rules committee.

New Tricks. Halas himself quit playing in 1930, but with such great stars as Bronko Nagurski, Beattie Feathers, Joe Stydahar and Sid Luckman, the Bears earned the nickname "Monsters of the Midway," and won more than their share of divisional titles.

Coach Halas, never satisfied, was always practicing new tricks. He was one of the first to make a fetish of studying post-game movies. "I never realized how thorough those movie sessions are," said one Chicago sportswriter, "until I saw the Bears' staff screening a film. They ran one play over and over--30 times--without saying a word. Finally Assistant Coach Luke Johnsos said, 'It's the goddam guard,' and the meeting was over."

In the early '50s, the Bears' fortunes sagged. Owner Halas, however, stubbornly refused to fire Coach Halas until he had built another title contender. Last season the Bears finished second in the Western Conference; this season they still have a chance of going all the way. They have won seven, lost four, and are running fast in a close race for the Western Conference championship. Coach Halas is satisfied at last. He is ready to step down and devote more time to his other interests--real estate, oil wells, a laundry and a mail-order house. But Millionaire Halas will never get over his pigskin heart. "You know," he said sadly last week, "there is no greater thrill in life for me than winning a National League game. Other men may get theirs from liquor, or dope, or girls or golf. For me, nothing can equal winning a football game."

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