George Preston Marshall

Was he the first in the NFL or no?

George Preston Marshall?

Yeah, George Preston Marshall.

No, but he was forced to draft-

I got you

But I just found him fascinating, so he's on my list.

And look, there's a pretty good chunk in the story, in the chapter I wrote about Pete Rozelle, uh, about George Preston Marshall, and how Rozelle had to go get George Preston Marshall.

He had to go tell him, "Mr.

Marshall, you're gonna have to integrate your team." And George Preston Marshall starts ripping Rozelle up and down and telling him that, "You're, you know, you can't tell me how to run my business.

I'm an independent businessman," blah, blah, blah.

And Rozelle said to him, "Mr.

[laughs]

And then the, then the gap in when George Preston Marshall from the, from the great Redskins said, "Hey, man, they-

Mm

...

Elmer Layden had the very difficult assi- assignment of working with some very, very big personalities, some strong personalities.

You're talking about, uh, uh, George Halas, um, in, uh, uh, the, the Redskins owner, George, uh, was it George Preston Marshall?

George Preston Marshall.

Yeah.

Um, not to mention Lex Thompson and Bert Bell and Rooney.

They came to Washington from Boston.

In 1937, George Preston Marshall, at that time, was the principal owner of the team.

Second and eight at Jefferson on a left-

The hardest part was figuring out where to go.

And these are guys who've been around, you know, the George Hallis's and the Lombardi's.

I think George Preston Marshall is still around and, you know, Wellington Mara is second generation, but nonetheless, and Art Rooney, you know, guys like this who are, you know, want him to defend the honor of the NFL.

Frank Gifford, who had known Lombardi from his time as a giants with the giants in the fifties says he stands there interviewing Lombardi and Lombardi shaking after before the game, because he's so nervous.

And Lombardi, You can hear the speech that he gives to his team at the beginning of the game.

I mean, I added them to the update that I didn't have in the original manuscript.

Such as I want to say I want to note that the original owner, George Preston Marshall, he had this fascination with Native Americans.

He wanted to honor them in every way he could.

And so on a lot of their team's game programs throughout the years, he had drawings of famous Indian leaders and Indian chiefs, one of whom was Osceola, who was on the cover of a 1953 Redskins game program.

Yeah, wasn't that interesting that they had pictures of Native Indians on their programs and stuff? Yes, that's what I was thinking too.

I didn't even know that.

Well, I love that he clarified that the original owner honored Native Americans, and I love that he shed light on

that.