Most of you know that the brilliant Jesse Owens won an astounding four gold medals as a sprinter-long jumper, to the anguish of Adolf Hitler, in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. How many know what he did the following fall in and around Kansas, making doggone decent money in the process? I didn’t.
There was no television or big advertising or endorsement campaign, particularly for a black man in the 1930s — no matter how great his track and field feats or how much he’d tormented that stinking Nazi paperhanger.
The Olympics ended in mid-August of ’36, and Owens immediately announced he was going professional, in anything that could make money because “first of all I’m busted and know the difficulties encountered by any member of my race in getting financial security.”
According to William Oscar Johnson in a 1996 Olympics history book for Sports Illustrated, a Harlem club owner said Jesse could earn $10,000 for a one-night stand. Entertainer Eddie Cantor told him he could line up a personal tour that would garner $50,000. But the best offer came from a source you’d never guess: The Republican presidential campaign of Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas, who took a mighty flogging from Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Owens grabbed the offer and made a number of speeches for Landon. When the vote report showed the state count was 46-2 in favor of FDR, Jesse quipped: “Poorest race I ever ran. But they paid me a lot — I won’t say how much, but a lot. I was the guy who was the beginning of the celebrity stable in political campaigns, I guess.”
Marketing and social situations being what they were then, Owens struggled a long time before he wound up fairly comfortable as an inspirational speaker. He’d grown up in poverty in Alabama; making ends meet had always been a fierce ordeal. One of the early gimmicks was in December of 1936, after the Landon disaster. Jesse got $2,000 for defeating a horse in a footrace in Havana. They show movies of that now and then, but Owens admitted it took a little rigging, even if he was the world’s fastest human.
“There’s no way a man can beat a horse, even over 100 yards,” he explained. “The secret is, first, get a thoroughbred because they are the most nervous animals on earth. Then get the biggest gun you can and make sure the starter fires that big gun right by the nervous thoroughbred’s ear. By the time the jockey gets the horse settled down, I could cover about 50 yards and win, which I did.”
Chided for “stooping” to such a level, he replied: “People said it was degrading. I had four gold medals but I couldn’t eat them. I had to do what I could and there weren’t any of the benefits they have today, particularly for people of my color.”
Considering some of the cheap stunts so many jocks engage in today, like those paid autograph sessions, racing a horse doesn’t seem so bad, huh?
Poor old Alf Landon never escaped the periodic derision that his loss to Roosevelt generated. Fast forward to the 1948 Orange Bowl football game in which Georgia Tech edged Kansas, 20-14. KU had driven to the Tech goal line, with Ray Evans, Bud French, Frank Pattee and Forrest Griffith as ramrods, and victory was in the bag because guard Don Fambrough certainly would toe the winning extra point — as he did in the recent varsity-alumni scrum.
But there was pileup, a late whistle and a Techster was able to rake the ball from quarterback Lynne McNutt. I think it was Henry McLemore of the United Press who wrote something like: “Lynne McNutt, the Kansas quarterback, today may feel as bad as another Kansan, Alf Landon, when he learned he had lost the 1936 presidential election by some 46 states.”
Truth is, the ball should have been ruled dead and the snatch-and-grab feat by Tech’s Rollo Phillips never should have been allowed. It was KU’s first bowl game, ever; except for a referee rooking, Kansas would have won.
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Not long ago, I bungled when I wrote that Kansas got basketball whiz C.J. Giles from Miami after the coach he signed with got fired and that Alex Galindo came to KU from Texas-El Paso when the coach there got booted. Scratch that UTEP deal. Galindo shifted to KU after UTEP coach Billy Gillispie, who once assisted Bill Self at Tulsa and Illinois, left for the Texas A&M job. Little wonder. His salary at UTEP was $147,000. At A&M, his coaching plus radio and TV contracts, camps and such create a package well in excess of $600,000. I’m the one who deserves the boot for the blivvy. Sorry, Billy.
We Jayhawk fans have good cause to wish Gillispie the very best in Aggieland. If he triggers a big resurgence the coming season, maybe the TexAgs can knock off touted Texas both times they meet. That wouldn’t do a bit of harm to KU’s chances of winning an outright Big 12 title. Bill Self would appreciate such an assist from his former aide.
Early indications are that Gillispie has been effective at signing good, big, able men for the Aggies. The fact he was able to get Galindo to El Paso is a solid indication he’s an effective ivory hunter.
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You’ve doubtless heard it, but it was new to me during a recent conversation with a Missouri U. product who’s not the least bit pleased with how the Laurie and Kroenke financial clout has altered the athletic climate in Columbia. They’re married to Wal-Mart heiresses, you know.
“There’s a feeling that big ‘M’ for Mizzou is slowly being turned upside down to become a ‘W’ for Wal-Mart,” snarled my source.
Am I pure evil for enjoying a little misery in Missouri? Nyuk, nyuk, as Curly and the Stooges would say. I’m awful.
