November 13, 2008
Readers of NJ Jewish News sports have become familiar with Lenny Friedman, a hometown product who has enjoyed a lengthy career in the NFL.
The same readers might not be as familiar with Benny Friedman (no relation), a college gridiron star in the 1920s who revolutionized how the game is played.
Author Murray Greenberg is trying to correct that slight in his new book, Passing Game (Public Affairs).
Greenberg, an alumnus of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., got the idea several years ago at a tribute dinner for Friedman, who had been the school’s first football coach and retained a loyal following among his former players.
“I was quite stunned to learn all about [him] that night,” said Greenberg in a telephone interview from his home in Floral Park, NY. “Ever since that night I was taken with the story…and it stuck with me.”
Benny Friedman’s parents had emigrated from Russia to the Cleveland area and — like many of their contemporaries — frowned upon their child’s preoccupation with a rowdy sport.
“Jews were considered intellectually strong, physically weak,” said Greenberg, a former attorney. But in those days, “a lot of young Jewish boys were looking to break out of that way of thinking and smash that stereotype and [escape] the insular upbringing of their immigrant families.
“One popular way of doing that was through sports, and football — with its obvious physicality — was perhaps the most popular sport of all.”
At the beginning of his athletic pursuits as a teenager, Friedman had to overcome a good deal of prejudice, not because of his religion necessarily (although that probably had some impact), but because of his small size. He took up body building, and by the time he was finished with high school, he was a strapping specimen.
Friedman, who spent the bulk of his college career with the University of Michigan, made his mark by focusing on the passing game. “Before Friedman came along as the game’s first great passer and really opened up everybody’s eyes at how exciting a game football could be, it was really a very dull and grinding kind of game,” Greenberg said.
Teams utilized running plays that, in addition to “dull and grinding,” could be dangerous in an era without much in the way of protective gear. Yet Friedman was not without his critics, who argued such maneuvers bordered on unsportsmanlike behavior.
His success had the residual effect of helping a nascent National Football League gain in popularity. Greenberg said it was difficult in the face of football’s massive success “to realize that it wasn’t always that way. In its first decade in the 1920s, it was really on the precipice of extinction many times. They just couldn’t get fans to come. Friedman was a spectacular sensation because he could pass the ball like no other player in his day could, and fans came to the park to watch him do it,” said Greenberg, who played soccer and baseball at Brandeis.
Kvelling over Benny
“Benny was a hero to the Jewish community, as was [Hank] Greenberg,” the author (no relation to the baseball superstar) said. The Jewish press of the day took every opportunity to kvell about those accomplishments. But Friedman considered himself an athlete who happened to be Jewish, rather than a Jewish athlete.
After graduating from college, Friedman enjoyed an eight-year career in the NFL with the Cleveland Bulldogs, Detroit Wolverines, New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers, where he was a player/coach. He worked at the City College of New York and Brandeis after retiring as an athlete.
But those years were not as pleasant as they should have been for a player of his stature. Since its inception in 1963, Friedman had been passed over by the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Some, including Greenberg, believed it was because he was too much of a self-promoter, using letter-writing campaigns to compare himself to those he considered less talented who had been inducted.
“As each year that went by, I think he became a victim of being of a bygone era that became increasingly difficult to recall for some writers,” Greenberg said. “People from the ’20s and ’30s were looked on as prehistoric and fell completely off the radar screen.”
After being overlooked for more than 40 years, Friedman was finally elected in 2005. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there to enjoy the festivities: Despondent over deteriorating health issues, including the amputation of a leg, the once-hale athlete had committed suicide in 1982.
Friedman and his wife, Shirley, had no children; his nephew, David Friedman, gave the acceptance speech at the ceremony in Canton, Ohio, in August 2005.
“He chose to be a passing quarterback in an era when the pass was generally accepted as a last-ditch option; it was a move of pure desperation. Benny, basically, is responsible from changing football from a running game to a passing one,” David Friedman said.
He called his uncle “an example of excellence. Being enshrined in the Hall of Fame not only validates that fact but also guarantees that his legacy, his example of excellence, will survive for as long as there is a Hall of Fame. His name is now permanently etched into the game’s honor roll.”
Murray Greenberg agreed. “I’m excited about the ability to educate a lot of people along those lines. I don’t think it’s very well-known, and I think it should be,” he said.
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