Three-Week Professionals: Inside the 1987 NFL Players' Strike

by Ted Kluck

Overview

In 1987 the players of the National Football League went on strike, demanding better pay and the right to seek free agency. Determined to keep the league going, team owners pulled replacements from wherever they could be found, from the semi-pro leagues to bar stools, in order to create makeshift teams. For three weeks, “regular” men—truck drivers, school teachers, stockbrokers—were able to put on NFL helmets and jerseys, play in professional stadiums, and live their dreams. The replacements had to dodge thrown food and endure catcalls while they played in nearly empty stadiums, but for three weeks they could call themselves professional football players.

Ultimately, the replacements’ days as professional athletes were all but forgotten by fans and the league. Ted Kluck changes that in Three-Week Professionals: Inside the 1987 NFL Players’ Strike, sharing the stories of the replacements alongside the strike experiences of NFL veterans. The innocence and joy experienced by the replacements stand in stark contrast to the high-stakes negotiations being waged by striking NFL players, negotiations that would spike the pay scale and change the face of the NFL.

Three-Week Professionals includes original interviews with both the replacement players and the professionals who went on strike, bringing to life these brief but unusual days of football. Football fans and sports historians alike will find this book a fascinating glimpse into three of the strangest weeks in the NFL—and come to realize the impact those weeks had on the world’s most lucrative sports league.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442241558
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	08/06/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Ted Kluck is an award-winning author and sports writer whose work has appeared in ESPN the Magazine, Sports Spectrum Magazine, and ESPN.com. He is the author of eleven books, including Facing Tyson: Fifteen Fighters, Fifteen Stories (2006), Game Time: Inside College Football (2007), Paper Tiger: One Athlete’s Journey to the Underbelly of Pro Football (2007), and Robert Griffin III: Athlete, Leader, Believer (2013). Kluck played a season of professional indoor football and coached high school football.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Here I Go Again: Football in France
Introduction: Land of Confusion: Tape, Turf and the 1987 NFL Player’s Strike
Chapter 1: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: The Football Nomad (Mike Hohensee)
Chapter 2: Didn’t We Almost Have It All: The Meat and Seafood Guy (Joe Bock)
Chapter 3: Full Metal Jacket: The Coach (Les Steckel)
Chapter 4: Who Will You Run To?: The New Irving Fryar (Larry Linne)
Chapter 5: Yo, Bum Rush the Show: From Suge Knight to Steve Dils
Chapter 6: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Leigh Steinberg)
Chapter 7: You Keep Me Hangin’ On: From First Round to Replacement (John Reaves)
Chapter 8: Stand by Me: The Regulars (Keith Butler and Jeff Kemp)
Chapter 9: The Last Emperor: Montana and the End of the Strike Part I
Chapter 10: The Lost Boys: Adrian Breen and the End of Strike Football Part II
Epilogue: Over the Top: 1987 and Beyond
Afterword: The Running Man: On Walter Payton and Boyhood Idols
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

08/03/2015
Veteran sportswriter Kluck recalls the drama and miscues of the 1987 NFL Players strike, when the owners put anyone who could suit up on the gridiron to give the fans their Sunday spectacle. As a boy of 11, he worshipped the National Football League mystique and its legendary players, and was stunned by the 24-day work stoppage as the teams demanded a better wage and the right to seek free agency. Kluck's wandering narrative captures the true spirit of the hapless recruiting methods of the "scab" squads, the union's hardball tactics, the public's refusal to accept the game's amateurs, and the owners' reluctance to negotiate. Kluck profiles some of the strike breakers, including football vets Mark Gastineau and Lawrence Taylor and even future rap exec Marion "Suge" Knight, and concludes the quality of play was "painful to watch, with fumbles, bad punt snaps and dropped passes." This very slight read, with its sketchy recaps of poorly played replacement games, will leave the typical NFL fan cold. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

I grew up a few blocks from the Metrodome where the Minnesota Vikings played for over 30 years and have been a fan since I first saw John Randle with his crazy war paint. I knew that in 1987 there had been a strike and that replacement players were involved, but that's about all I knew. Turns out it's a fascinating story featuring a slew of interesting, admirable, and hard-working men. As a former football player in various professional and semi-pro leagues, Ted Kluck writes as someone who knows the lives of these players and respects their stories. Kluck has done the archaeological digging and artful telling of this important and little-known era of NFL history. It's a wonderful read for anyone who takes joy in pro football.

Barnabas Piper

The story of the 1987 National Football League replacement games is one that deserves to be told, rather than swept under the rug. These were NFL players for a time, no matter if you or I or anyone likes how it happened. Ted Kluck is telling a story of professional football history that needs to be preserved.

Dusty Sloan

Three-Week Professionals is significant because it evaluates the players’ strike through the voices of those who lived it, recognizing oral history as an important methodology for the study of sport.. . .In the end, Ted Kluck’s Three-Week Professionals: Inside the 1987 NFL Players’ Strike, like The Replacements, makes us want to know more about this bizarre moment in NFL history. A period in which Sean Payton, now a Super Bowl winning coach, would become a Chicago Bear and previous NFL coaching great Mike Ditka would applaud such men and replacement play as the embodiment of the American Dream. Nightmare or dream, stain on the NFL or surprisingly interesting football, Kluck must be applauded for humanizing those who participated in this event. In a time when American pop culture is perhaps more interested in creating villains than upholding heroes, his work is a refreshing reminder of how NFL players – then and now – are foremost everyday people.

Sport in American History

Ted Kluck has captured the essence of one of the most important, and least understood, parts of professional football's history. His human examination of the replacement players and his honest appraisal of the union relationship with the league and blue collar America are fascinating. Great read!

Nick Eyde

Ted Kluck has researched this three-week time frame back in 1987 and written one of the most comprehensive books on this brief interlude of the NFL history. Mr. Kluck combines many interviews with former players and by watching actual TV broadcasts of those games to develop this analysis of those three weeks. His interviews with former players were an exceptional read as we were brought back in time to understand more fully what was actually happening between the players and the owners.. . .This book was written in a crisp and concise manner. It also presented the true human face and condition of the replacement players and their quest for legitimacy for their brief careers in the NFL. This part of true NFL history has been overlooked for many years and in my opinion been kept quiet for too long. This book is an essential read for anyone who enjoys football and the NFL.

Gridiron Greats

In Three-Week Professionals, Ted Kluck pulls back the curtain on a time that the NFL would like everyone to forget about: the 1987 players strike and the use of replacement players for three games. For those of us who remember that time, the book takes us back to a simpler time in sports when there was no NFL Network or 24-hour sports coverage on television or the Internet. For readers who are too young to recall the ‘87 strike themselves it will open their eyes to a disturbing chapter in NFL history. By viewing game footage from that three-week period and interviewing players who actually played in the replacement games, Kluck pieces together the long-forgotten events of October 1987 and sheds new light on the effects the games had on those who played, and those who walked the picket line.

Randy Snow

08/01/2015
After a players' strike in 1982 cut seven weeks of the season, NFL owners decided not to allow that to happen again. When players went on strike in 1987, owners used "replacement" players, or "scabs." These three weeks of replacement player football were among the strangest times in NFL history, according to Kluck (coauthor, The Drop Box), resembling a second preseason with regard to the quality of play. The author tracked down hard-to-find videos of the games and several participants who tell a tale of fleeting fame and, for some, a tangible career. Replacements ranged from men brought in from tryouts to players cut in training camp and veterans who crossed the picket line because they didn't believe in the strike. In his interviews, Kluck reflects on the experiences of the players, while also exploring the differing approaches of various coaches and teams. The author, a former minor league football player, goes far afield at times, inserting his own experiences and perceptions while decrying today's environment of social media, the NFL Network, and fantasy football compared to the less cluttered sport of 1987. VERDICT A short, enjoyable book on a niche topic of interest to professional football fans.

Library Journal