We received the opportunity to take a look at a new book titled "Bigger than the Game," by Eric Weinreb, which is an excellent new book about the athletes of the 1980s who made sports as big as they are today. We also had the chance to ask Eric a few questions about the art of writing – which can be found at this link.
Here’s the interview with the book's author, Erica Weinreb:
1. What made you decide to write a book about the athletes of the 1980s?
A few things: First, those were my formative years, so for some reason all of my memories of that era feel particularly vivid and rich in detail. But I think there’s a reason for that—I suppose the athletes of that era were the first ones to really embrace the camera and the lens. The rise of entities like ESPN and Nike helped create a new kind of celebrity, so you had the '85 Bears, and you had Brian Bosworth, and you had Air Jordan and Bo Knows. It was fascinating stuff about excess, and there’s nothing more fun than talking about excess. Nobody had really looked at the period through the lens of sports. So I figured I should probably write a sports-heavy version of Bonfire of the Vanities or The Wonder Years.
2. Was there a specific athlete from the 1980s that inspired you while writing the book?
There were several: Bo Jackson is a key figure, simply because his story hadn't been told in-depth beyond some autobiographies, and also because he’s such a compelling character. There were years in the late '80s where Bo was the most famous player in the world, and he’s probably one of the greatest real-life figures of the 20th century—at least, he was the first person to do all these amazing things on camera. And he would do it all, which is a perfect metaphor for the era; then he got injured and started living and just faded into mythology.
I also really enjoyed tracing the story of Mike Ditka, as he was essentially the catalyst of the '85 Bears dynasty, which is one of those cultural moments we’d never seen before and likely won’t ever see again, because the opportunities for sports marketing and imagery were just starting to be widely understood. And Ditka was such a natural, authentic punk rock persona, which turned him into a superstar because he fit that Chicago ethic.
3. Do you think the death of Len Bias woke up players regarding drug use among athletes?
In a straightforward way, I think it did (as did the death of Steve Rogers a week later). Somehow, it woke up much of America, for better or worse—Bias’s death also led to some overreaction concerning drug laws passed by the federal government and press coverage of the rising epidemic. Regarding athletes, I think drug testing probably had a significant impact too, which ended drug use as a glamorous substance; however, it felt like Bias was another man whose mythology—even though it’s revisited year after year, as I looked into when writing the book—does somewhat overshadow the entire narrative. On the other hand, steroid use ramped up around the same time, which posed an entirely different ethical dilemma. So there’s always something.
4. How did ESPN change the way America viewed professional and college athletes?
Once SportsCenter started hitting its stride in the mid-80s, I think it changed many things. It changed the perception of athletes, since we were now able to see them every day; and it changed athletes' ideas of themselves, because they were now able to play into the SportsCenter highlights, nicknames, and the rest. Without all this television exposure, sports would be totally different today. Athletes would conduct themselves differently. Fans would probably act differently. It’s paralyzing for players, and it’s hard to imagine us without it. If someone said they'd pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to go back to watching a few football games a week, I don’t know if I could do it.
5. Did you have a favorite football player in the 1980s? Did that opinion shift while writing the book?
Well, I was a Penn State football fan, so I write about Penn State partly as a kind of polar opposite of what happened in this era. Specifically, the quarterback named Mark Shaffer, who lost one game in his college career but was otherwise pretty mediocre. Shaffer suffered a neck injury giving a high-five. I kind of liked that as a contrast to, say, Brian Bosworth, whose whole schtick involved embracing excess.
I also loved Randall Cunningham, but I didn’t get a chance to write about him. There’s no doubt that he and Bo Jackson both brought a style and verve to professional football that was almost unmatched.
6. Looking back, what person do you think had the biggest influence on the 1980s?
In terms of overall impact, it’s Jordan's. Everyone else is a distant second. But I think that at the time, Bo Jackson had a very big relationship to one’s destiny, as well. I’m talking about—his Tecmo Bowl persona alone deserves a book.