[ Plimpton / Paper Lion ]
George Plimpton (1927 - 2003) was an American writer, journalist, editor, and actor.
Arguably Plimpton's most well-known work, Paper Lion features no dogs at all. A detailed, compelling, and amusing look at Plimpton's very brief stint as 3rd-string quarterback for the Detroit Lions football team, Paper Lion is widely regarded as a classic sports book — it was made into a film in 1968, with Alan Alda playing Plimpton — and is in one sense a follow-up of sorts to Plimpton's earlier book on his brief stint as a pitcher with the New York Yankees baseball team. (Plimpton wrote other "participatory sports journalism" works involving boxing, ice hockey, and golf, as well as a second book about his time with the Lions, Mad Ducks and Bears. He also is the subject of a documentary, Plimpton, the Great Quarterback Sneak, in which he trained with the Baltimore Colts, even facing his prior team the Detroit Lions in an exhibition game. Plimpton kept a diary during the filming of that documentary and included it in the first edition of Mad Ducks and Bears, though he removed it from the second edition as he felt it distracted from the discussion of the Lions players who were the principal focus of that book.)
So why is a dog-less book about American football mentioned here at The Cultured Newf? Here's why: Plimpton wanted his book to be an inside look at life on an American football team, and to that end he sought to keep a low profile, wanting to be seen as just another rookie vying for a spot on the team. (Only team management and the coaches knew Plimpton's real purpose, although his cover was quickly blown because one of the players had read Plimpton's account of his baseball experience.) Part of Plimpton's never-used "cover story" was that he had, in the past, played for a (fictitious) semi-pro Canadian football team. The name of that team? The Newfoundland Newfs.
Here is Plimpton's own explanation of his cover story, from the opening of Chapter 6 of Paper Lion. ("Cranbrook" is the Michigan boarding school where the Detroit Lions are holding their summer camp.)
The movie version of Paper Lion departs so far from the book it may reasonably be regarded as telling a different story than the one that Plimpton wrote, but the film does include two mentions of and one visual reference to the fictitious "Newfoundland Newfs" football team that was part of Plimpton's cover story.
