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Spying in Pro Football
Here is an inside look at The Men From F.O.O.T.B.A.L.L. and how they obtain opponent information -- by a man who once played undercover agent
By Lee Grosscup, SPORT, August 1967
At a time when college professors, union leaders, and possibly even your local playground directors are working for the CIA, it is no longer shocking to find spying going on anywhere. (This writer was once taken aback when he, entered the building in which SPORT is published with an editor who said, "Say hello to the spy," then explained there was a CIA office on the third floor.) However, in professional football, in this age of advanced scouting systems, exchanges of game films, computerized records of other team's frequencies, and files detailing the habits of every opposing player (including what toothpaste, shaving cream and deodorant be uses, even if he doesn't do TV commercials) spying might seem a little silly. Yet it goes on, very much so, as the annual cries of "spy" in both pro football leagues charge. Who are the pro football spies? Well, as one who has performed various spy functions, I can tell you that they come in all shapes and sizes. A team's equipment manager may also be a spy . . . That personable, smiling, obsequious public relations man may be expected to bring back information, about an opponent. . . Or a pro football spy can come in the form of an ex-teammate, ex-coach, a taxi squadder, a scout, a writer or a photographer. Newly acquired players often become spies inadvertently. Before a big game, a player placed on waivers by one team is. often picked up by the opposition for the sole purpose of "picking his brains." Bamboo shoots do not have to be driven under his fingernails to get him to reveal inside information about his former team's current attitude, philosophy, personnel, injuries and individual weaknesses. Such a player is particularly useful in tipping off new team members about special plays such as a fake field goal, double-reverse pass, a tricky punt or kickoff return. unusual screens or draws, or other so-called "gadget plays." In addition to interrogating former players, other football espionage techniques include: Watching practices. . . (Usually requires binoculars, sometimes a love of tree climbing.) Stealing notebooks. . . (One AFL coach, whose autobiography will no doubt be called "The Collector," has allegedly collected a notebook from every other team in the. league.) Bugging. . . Particularly scouting phones, locker rooms, training rooms and meeting rooms. (Most effective, though plantee had best not be caught with his insurance lapsed.) Filming practices. . . Requires a super spy plus special equipment. Spy-messenger . . . On game days this spy is usually disguised as a writer or photographer who snoops on one team and relays information to his employer. (Need a guy who looks like a writer or photographer; that is, disheveled.) Concealing injuries and taxi squad players about to be activated. . . . For obvious reasons. (Have to bar writers from practices, or make the injured players limp like they're healing.) As a former traveler in the NFL and AFL, I was interrogated many times. Each new camp I visited would want to know all about my previous team. (Sometimes my stays had been of such short duration I couldn't tell them.) In 1964 I ended up on the taxi squad of the Oakland Raiders. By then Raider coach and general manager Al Davis, after several years of collecting, had perhaps the greatest group of castoffs ever assembled. Thus Davis got a chance to sort through the brains of a player from almost every team in both leagues, something he does subtly but efficiently. The clinical term for a person with an acute spy fixation is scopophobia. Understandably, Al Davis had scopophobia in 1964. The Raiders were practicing at "Bushrod Elementary School, which had no fences and therefore had to be wide open to the public. Any of countless practice watchers could have been spies. When Davis suspected spies were watching he often put in plays involving 12 men to confuse the spies. I spent many afternoons standing out on the wing as Davis's 12th man, running funny patterns and huddling only when the mood struck me. Before one big game that year, Davis suspected that Kansas City had stationed a spy. in a near-by apartment building to view, or perhaps even film, his practice. Davis ordered his equipment manager, Dick Romanski, to scan the area with binoculars. Midway through practice Romanski spotted another man with binoculars looking down on the practice from the apartment building. Davis sent several "heavies" up to interrogate the spy. But when they arrived, .the woman who owned the apartment building refused to let them in. We spent the rest of the afternoon running bizarre plays from bizarre formations. If the binocular owner was in fact a spy, he had to have filed a bizarre report. Scopophobia becomes so pronounced with some coaches that they would rather not practice at all than take the chance that someone is watching. They fret over passing helicopters and, in the case of lakefront practice fields, boats.
During one of my taxi-squad seasons, I learned that coaches often make effective use of such people as spies during games. With this particular team my pre-game instructions usually went like this: "Wander down where they're (the other team) warming up and see which runs and passes they are using most," or "Check so and so and see if he's limping," or "You're an old teammate of what's-his-name, talk to him, see how he's feeling." Once during a game, a coach asked me to casually wander over to the other team's bench and check the seriousness of an injury to an opponent's cornerback. "You mean you want me to walk around the track and go right up behind their bench?" "Sure, you can do it . . . just act casual." "How will I get past the cop in the end zone?" "Just walk right by him like you're a writer or something. He won't bother you." So I walked around the track, right by the cop, and edged my way near the injured player. I was dressed in a top coat, hat, dark glasses and carried a rolled up game program. As the doctor moved away from the injured cornerback, I said, "How's the kid, Doc?" "Well, he won't play anymore today." With that piece of news I hurried back to my bench, winking through my shades at the cop. "He's hurt pretty bad,'" I told my coach. "The doc says he won't be back in the second half." "Good work," the coach told me, "that's our game plan for the second half--we'll go right to work on his sub, force one-on-one coverage and burn him." Early in the second half the coach had me make the same trip again to confirm that the player would not return to action that day. Sure enough, the coach concentrated on that sub cornerback, the quarterback burned him and my observation helped us get a tie that day.
In the case of Jencks--and in most spy charges--there is usually an element of sour grapes. One seldom hears winning coaches register spy accusations. However, there were grounds for Hecker's fears in the case of Allen, former top assistant to George Halas at Chicago. For years the Bears have been the most enthusiastic proponent of espionage. Halas fumed and even went to court to prevent Allen from becoming head coach of the Rams. As one writer put it: "Halas didn't want to lose his 'super spy.'" One of the first things Allen did when he joined Los Angeles last season was build a bigger fence around the team's practice field and hire a veteran detective, Ed Boynton, to make the Rams spy-proof. Boynton's job was to inspect cracks in the walls and watch for suspicious characters who might be loitering outside the walls, in rest rooms, etc. He was also expected to continually scan the area with binoculars to look for spies in trees, helicopters and so on during practice sessions. When I called the Ram offices to check on the authenticity of Boynton, assistant publicist Jerry Wilcox confirmed that it was all true: "Yeah, he's on the payroll full time. . . Man, that guy sure gets a lot of publicity." The Rams are now so spy conscious that even the owner has trouble getting in to watch practice. A friend of mine, Dan Miller, now an assistant basketball coach at Idaho State College, relates the following: "I was at a Ram practice one day, with proper credentials, of course, and the guy who was watching the gate, a buddy of mine, asked me if I'd take over for him for just a few minutes. He told me not to let anybody in. He was gone longer than I expected. While I'm watching this guy drives up in a shiny Cadillac and wants to get into practice. Naturally I tell him that he can't come in. So I hold this guy up till my buddy gets back. When he returns he says, 'Oh it's all right, Dan, you can let Mr. Reeves in.'" Finally team owner Dan Reeves got in to see the practice."
In one LA-Chicago game, Ram coach Bob Waterfield sent in a fake punt-run, a play so secret that it hadn't even been practiced. However, even as the play was being carried onto the field, Halas was dispatching a messenger to instruct his defense to watch for the run. The Bears didn't even put a safetyman back to receive the punt. Was it coincidence, a hunch, or was Waterfield's clip board wired? Today, says a Chicago writer, Halas' passion for CIA stuff has been relegated to keeping injuries secret and guarding the identity of names on his taxi squad. However, rival coaches still fear the wise old man and enforce maximum security measures before every game against the Bears. Of course, like every other team, the Bears are shocked to find anyone who thinks they would resort to spying. I spoke to Fido Murphy, for years Halas' personal talent scout and game scout, whom many people claim should wear a Bear jersey numbered 007. "Oh no, I've never been a spy," Fido said recently. "Halas isn't a spy either. . . but we use guys see. . . like in 1955 I was scouting the Rams for Halas. . . that's when Gillman was head coach for the Rams and Jack Faulkner. was handling the defense . . . they were all zone, but I wanted to make sure. . . so I had this kid watch their practice--he was kind of a hero worshiper. I told him just what to watch for. The Rams were practicing at the old Hollywood Park. This kid hid under the scoreboard, see--he didn't know what time the Rams started practice so he got there early--took his lunch and a thermos of coffee. Turns out he had to stay all day because they didn't start till late afternoon. . . He was so close to the players and coaches that he could hear 'em talkin'. He confirmed that they were still all zone by watching for what I told him. When I was sure they were still all zone, I got together with the offensive coach, Luke Johnsos, and told Luke how he could beat the zone-- Force 'em out of the zone by going to a double-wing set, which would necessitate man-on-man coverage. We killed 'em with it . . . every third-and-long situation we just killed 'em. . . and it was all from the information I gave 'em by us in the spy. "Another time I was on the phones at the Coliseum in the Ram press box, which is a long way from the field, as you know. : . Anyway, they were trapping Ed Sprinkle real bad and I started to explain to our guy on the field what was happening when I heard this tapping noise, so I figured we were being bugged. . . I dropped the phone and took off running. . . By the time I got to the field they had trapped Sprinkle five more times and scored on the damn play. . . but I became the first scout in history to compete in the half-mile run during a football game. . . They didn't hurt us with the trap anymore because I showed Halas what they were doing, but they won the game, 42-38 . . . and all because of that phone business." When I spoke to Al Davis recently about the present status of espionage in the American Football League, he said Kansas City was by far the worst offender. "The Chiefs are the Bears of the AFL," Davis said. "Lamar Hunt has come out publicly and admitted it." "You mean he's admitted he employs full-time spies?" "Yes, he's admitted budgeting for espionage. Of course, if you talk to him, he'll be just like all the rest of 'em--their favorite line is: 'We just don't do those things'--but ask anybody in the league and they'll tell you about Kansas City. Call Don Klosterman in Houston and ask him about the Chiefs." I spoke to Klosterman, a former Chiefs executive who is now general manager of the Oilers. "Oh yeah," Klosterman confirmed, "Kansas City spies, we caught 'em last year when we played them in their Municipal Stadium. See, the benches are on the same side of the field and they had this guy who was supposedly a roving photographer, but he was really a spy. . . He was snooping by our bench. Every time one of our coaches would say something important to one of our players, this guy would run over and relay the information to the Kansas City bench. I'm not makin' this up . . . we've got pictures of it." "So what happened?" "We registered a complaint with the league official. Kansas City got fined for it. That was their second offense with us. We caught 'em during preseason taking pictures of our practices with a Polaroid." The roving photographer-spy in question was a young college student who originally received a Kansas City sideline pass in 1963 as a representative of a local television station in Kansas City. The Miami Dolphins claimed that in one game last season, the youngster visited their bench five times and then rushed over to the Chiefs' bench. After the first four visits, the Chiefs intercepted Dolphin passes. According to one report, the most obvious incident occurred in the second quarter of the Dolphin-Chiefs game. Dolphin coach George Wilson conferred with receiver Bo Roberson and then sent him into the game. Supposedly the "photographer" then sprinted over to the Chief bench and whispered something to an assistant coach. The assistant yelled instructions to the defense which led to a Fred Williamson interception on the next play. The youngster when contacted, denied that he was a spy. He claimed he was a Kansas City gate-crasher who had been caught and was distressed about losing his sideline privileges. I tried to reach Lamar Hunt at his personal office in Dallas, but Lamar was unavailable for comment. Al Davis was the most direct person I interviewed on pro football espionage. "Oh I can't tell you lots of spy stories," Davis said. "But, it's like I told you, you'll never get them confirmed because everybody denies it . . . they all say 'we just don't do those things.' But you can take it from me, they do." Sure enough, he was right. The very next person I interviewed said he didn't believe in spying. "We don't. believe in spying here," Al Davis said. "And Sid Gillman at San Diego (Davis was once a Gillman assistant coach) doesn't do it either, but everybody thinks Sid does. "There have been some funny things happening in our league," Davis continued. "One year Buffalo paid a former Oakland player to scout the Raiders all season. Well, the guy didn't want to rat on his former teammates, but he needed money, see, so he warned his former teammates that he was a spy and everyone just treated him accordingly and he still collected his money from Buffalo. Then there was the famous 'paper cup episode' in 1962." "The what?" "The paper cup episode. . . Oh sure, didn't you hear about that? San Diego caught some Denver spies watching their practice. They were supposedly drinking Cokes out of paper cups, but when they got caught--the cups were empty and there were plays written all over them." Anyone in the espionage business always needs an answer. Probably the classic explanation of activities was made not by a pro football spy but by an LSU coach. He was discovered with a camera in a tree overlooking the Oklahoma practice field before the Sugar Bowl, game in 1950. A policeman was called to the scene. "What are you doing up there?" the cop asked. "Waiting for the Fifth Avenue bus," the coach said. At the time of writing this piece, Lee Grosscup was the sports director for KCPX-TV in Salt Lake City, a scout for the Houston Oilers, a color man for NBC-TV, a former pro quarterback. . . and one-time spy.
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