Bert Bell Casts a Long Shadow

“The circle has ended. The statue will be here. Bert Bell lived here. He died here. And now today … he truly came home.”

So said Upton Bell during the statue unveiling of his late father Bert Bell C1920 in the East concourse of Franklin Field in late October.

One of the most important people in the history of football, Bell was the second commissioner of the NFL from 1946 until his death in 1959, modernizing the league and putting it on television screens, paving the way for it to become America’s most popular sport.

Before that, he played college football for Penn, starting at quarterback for the 1916 Quakers team that finished the season playing in the Rose Bowl, and captaining the 1919 squad to a 6–2–1 record. He went on to become an assistant coach at Penn and Temple and an owner of the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers, before transforming the NFL as its visionary commissioner [“Alumni Profiles,” Sep|Oct 2009].

At the statue unveiling, Penn athletics director Alanna Wren called Bell “a man clearly ahead of his time, just thinking about television and attendance, and protecting players and their rights.”

“He’s someone that obviously we’re incredibly proud to call one of Penn’s own,” Wren added of Bell, who was part of the inaugural class inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Bell died at 65, suffering a fatal heart attack at Franklin Field while watching a 1959 game between his two former teams, the Eagles and Steelers, inside the stadium where he was once a star player at Penn.

Bell’s statue is the latest to be erected at Franklin Field, joining legendary Penn coach George Munger Ed’33 and Chuck Bednarik Ed’49, the two-way great of the Quakers and the Eagles. —DZ

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    1. P. T. Clark

      SIXTY MINUTE MAN

      By

      P.T. Clark

      A giant turns his back to the field of play
      There is a time when body, game, and play
      Turn whatsoever he may have done, his past,
      Now, silence permeates Franklin Field.
      Time, vanished for him, and the natural turf:
      “Things which I could see I can no more!”

      “From self and from the game; and, growing,
      I walked off the field between them.
      A timely utterance gave a thought of grief.
      No more grief is mine,
      The season and the game are over.
      Shout round me, let me hear the words
      My number will be mine forever more.”

      Indifference growing resembles death
      Sitting on a table with a smile puffing
      A cigar lit in celebration of a job well done.
      Resembles life that’s left as a symbol:
      A symbol perfected for fourteen years
      Including thirty missions over Germany
      And “MOTHER” tattooed on his arm
      For the B-24 crash in remembrance.

      At length he knew his playing days were dying,
      A splendor on the turf of glory known.
      Darkness gathered round his setting sun
      The offensive line of scrimmage center and linebacking on defense,
      Thanks to the embrace, the tenderness.
      “Their joys, and fears to me I’ve heard the meanest,
      Left thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

      At Yankee Stadium the line of scrimmage
      Collided November 20, 1960, in the fourth quarter.
      He knocked the running back unconscious
      With a chest high body and arm tackle.
      Neither from nor towards; at a still point
      The play was over!
      There he stood where past and future gathered,
      Nor movement from nor towards at the collision point
      He stood with arms raised in triumph.
      Amazed with compassion for the man he tackled
      There passed away the glory of the game for a moment.
      A timely utterance gave thought released
      The echoes through the stands begged survival
      The single field everyone looked upon:
      “Does the same tale repeat itself?
      Whither is gone, the visionary dream?
      Where are they now, the glory and the dream?”

      You, whose exterior resemblance does belie
      Your imagination’s immensity.
      A new league commissioner who yet does keep,
      The game’s heritage, his eye among the blind
      That, deaf and silent, reads the eternal deep
      Haunted forever by the eternal mind—
      Mighty visionary, seer blest!
      On whom those truths do rest
      Which fans toil all their lives to find,
      In darkness lost, the darkness of the game,
      You a figure of immortality
      Broods like the day, a Master over a slave
      A presence which is not to be put by,
      You master glorious in the might
      Of global free enterprise on your being’s height,
      Why with earnest pains do you provoke
      The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
      Thus, blindly with your good intensions at strife?
      Soon, you’ll have the custom and its weight
      Heavy as the weight of ice and snow and deep as life!

      Moving about Earth not realized
      High instincts do breed
      Perpetual benediction: with new-fledged hope in his breast—
      Of sense of outward things
      Tremble like a guilty thing surprised
      But for those first affections
      The shadowy recollections
      Which, be what they may be
      Are yet a fountain-light of all our seeing,
      Uphold the notion of the game
      What noisy venues seem moments in the being
      Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
      To perish never,
      Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
      Can utterly abolish or destroy!
      Hence, in all global seasons we can see
      That immortal sea which brought us together
      And hear the mighty cheers roll ashore.

      Feel the gladness of the Fall!
      What through radiance which is so bright for players
      Be now for ever present in our sight.
      The splendor of the gridiron, and the glory
      Has captured wagers, advertising, and collegiate football
      Though parity has pleased us all,
      Injuries are threatening to the outcomes.
      Advertising includes collegiate value approved by the NCAA.
      Name, Identity, and Likeness is worth a bundle
      More than tuition makes us wonder
      Who among the players goes to class and earns a degree?

      In years that bring a philosophic mind
      Human suffering looks through death and a lifetime injury
      And, Oh ye parents, coaches, schools and plain fools
      Does money cancel rational thinking?
      It forebodes severing our lives!
      Yet, in my heart of hearts I feel its might,
      I only have relinquished one delight
      To live beneath your more than habitual sway,
      I love my Eagles which all their games I fret
      Even more with seconds left to test
      Defeat is something I cannot abide
      “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing!”

      The clock keeps ticking as time expires.
      Do I take a sober coloring from my eye,
      That took stock of every play and team triumph.
      Thanks to human talent and heart by which we live
      To me the meanest flaw that gives
      The receiver drops the winning pass in the end zone!

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