By John Turney
Eternal Flame: Grange's Barnstorming Odyssey Ignites a Century of Gridiron Glory
Historians Chris Willis and Darin L. Hayes—authors of eight and five prior volumes on early pro football, respectively—have crafted a masterful scrapbook that doesn't just tell the tale of the NFL's inaugural superstar, Red Grange, and his legendary barnstorming blitz; it resurrects it back to life.
The work entitled "Red Grange & Chicago Bears: 1925-1926 Barnstorming Tour–100th Anniversary Scrapbook" and it is outstanding, with excellent writing, visuals, and perhaps most importantly: Unwavering accuracy. Willis and Hayes see to that.
In the pantheon of American sports icons, few burn as brightly or endure as steadfastly as Harold "Red" Grange, the humble halfback from Wheaton, Illinois, whose audacious leap to the pros catapulted the fledgling league from obscurity to national frenzy. Some, including Willis, believe that Grange was the NFL's first superstar and took the professional grid game to a higher level, much like Babe Ruth did for baseball.
This 2025 centennial tribute doesn't merely recount history; it resurrects it with the roar of sold-out stadiums, blending vivid biography, cultural snapshot, and financial forensics into an appreciative letter to the game's scrappy, Roaring '20s dawn, the Wild West days, if you will.
At its heart, the book chronicles Grange's whirlwind odyssey: a 22-year-old phenom, fresh off a Heisman-caliber senior season at the University of Illinois, signs with George Halas's Bears and launches a 19-game, cross-country gauntlet spanning two blistering months.
From the frozen mud of Cubs Park to the sun-baked expanse of the L.A. Coliseum (drawing a record 75,000), the "Galloping Ghost"—Grantland Rice's poetic coinage after Grange's five-TD evisceration of Michigan in 1924—hauled the nascent NFL into the spotlight. Hayes and Willis frame this not as rote athletics but as the blueprint for modern celebrity: early college exit, agent wrangling, endorsement windfalls, Hollywood flirtations, and a rookie payday eclipsing era norms.
What catapults this scrapbook beyond nostalgia is its archival alchemy. Sourcing from private troves—Sternaman family ledgers, Coolley's contracts, even Pyle's curt telegrams—the authors dismantle myths with surgical precision.
The book explains how Grange wasn't a solo act; he boasted three managers (the flamboyant promoter C.C. "Cash and Carry" Pyle; "Doc" Coolley, his college confidant; and theater maven Byron Moore), a bombshell substantiated by a full facsimile of their six-page 1925 "power of attorney" pact. The initial cut: Grange at 40%, Pyle 25%, Coolley and Moore 17.5% each—until post-tour haggling shrank the latter pair's share, ending in a "divorce" where Pyle shelled out $25,000 to buy them out.
Gate stubs (e.g., $49,669 from Grange's Thanksgiving pro debut) and expense tallies morph the narrative into a ledger of greed, exposing how Pyle's avarice (eight games in ten days) nearly felled his golden goose with the breakneck speed tour, one in which Grange did get injured.
The chronicle races through the tour's triptych—frenetic East (injury-riddled), sunny South (sparsely attended), triumphant West—with per-game vignettes fusing play-by-plays, crowd fervor, and epochal vignettes.
Rain-lashed Shibe Park swells to 35,000 in Philadelphia; Miami's half-built Coral Gables draws a mere 8,000 sweat-soaked souls. Yet Hayes and Willis infuse humanity amid the havoc: Grange's boyish blush at the White House with Calvin Coolidge, his raccoon-coat bravado, or the Bears' equine escapades in California. (Read the book for details)
Celebrities abound—Babe Ruth dispensing fame's hard truths; Douglas Fairbanks mid-huddle—evoking an era when Grange eclipsed Dempsey and Ruth as a media leviathan. Yes, he was that popular.
The authors' prose crackles with wry understatement—"Pyle's motto: 'Let's get the money, boys'"—debunking some exaggerations, such as: the tour didn't "save" the NFL (post-Grange dips proved that), but it validated pro football's star-powered viability, luring All-Americans like Ernie Nevers into the fray.
Visually, this volume treasure trove, full of things I love: Facsimile tickets, reproductions of game program covers, yellowed clippings (e.g., Rice's "Galloping Ghost" poem), team photos, and even a 1926 "divorce" contract adds tactile heft. One standout: a telegram from Pyle to Coolley, curtly settling scores. It's a hoarder's delight, being one myself, I'd know.
More than a biography, the book doubles as a legacy and review of Grange's accomplishments later in life—as coach, broadcaster, charter Hall of Famer, and pension crusader—prefigures today's polymaths.
The emotional apex: a 1985 missive from Halas anointing him the "Eternal Flame of Professional Football," a sobriquet that underscores the thesis: enduring greatness lies not in stats but in unassuming grace.
Willis and Hayes don't merely commemorate; they rekindle the pulse—the Polo Grounds' 70,000-strong thunder, press-box clatter, a Wheaton iceman forging football's inaugural icon. Grange feared oblivion, but this luminous scrapbook will ensure the Ghost gallops into the consciences of younger NFL fans.
As far as structure, it's basically logical and chronological, with each chapter covering one of the 19 games of the tour, going from Chicago to St. Louis, then the northeast -- Philly, the Big Apple, D.C., etc. Then the what is now called "Rust Belt" cities, followed by dates in Florida and the Big Easy. And finally, the major West Coast cities from San Diego north to Seattle. For me, that makes it particularly enjoyable.
At under 200 brisk pages, including an exhaustive bibliography, it is a page-turner for NFL diehards, Illinois faithful, Bears fans, or Roaring '20s romantics, all for about $20.
I give it 5/5 stars: A gridiron gospel of grit, gall, and grandeur—fire up the grill, pop a cold one, and hear the roar of fedora-clad gents and Panama-hatted swells, flappers draped on their arms, cheering the Ghost's eternal gallop.
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