Dusty, Deek, and Mr. Do-Right: High School Football in Illinois (review)

American football has grown from its nineteenth-century roots as a barbaric ritual to one of the most popular national pastimes. While Sundays are for the National Football League and Saturdays for college, Friday night lights are reserved for the 14,445 high school football teams in the U.S. Taylor Bell details these in Dusty, Deek, and Mr. Do-Right: High School Football in Illinois, not a work of oral history but rather a collection of stories that shares “the stories of the greatest players, toughest coaches, most memorable games, and fiercest rivalries” that “date as far back as the 1890s” (back cover). Bell puts his more than forty years covering high school sports to good use in presenting both a “best of” list and a comprehensive overview of Illinois high school football. While not quite achieving the ambitions set forth, Bell’s work is a document of bygone times, of men who participated for a love of the game in an era of genuine fans cheering for community pride.

The biggest overall strength is balance. Chapters 1 and 2 cover players and coaches, respectively, Chapters 3 and 4 cover teams and games, and Bell is inclusive of all corners of the state. These first four chapters present what can be considered a set of puzzle pieces—players, coaches, teams, and games—without showing the big picture. Chapters 5–7 cover the schools, proceeding from small to large schools. Within these chapters, the players, teams, and games previously detailed begin to emerge as pieces not just of a small puzzle, but a larger mosaic. The aptly titled Chapter 8 (“Fourth Quarter”) includes the story of the formation of a state playoff system; the history of the Prep Bowl, the series that pits the public school champion against the Catholic school champion; and some Chicago-centric material on the city’s Catholic and Public Leagues.

While mainly appealing to a local constituency, by book’s end the characters—the coaches, players, and schools themselves—have become familiar enough that even a distant reader can follow the narrative thread. Bell evinces a strong regional bias when describing players’ post–high school careers: those who played for Notre Dame, schools in the Big-10 conference, or the National Football League’s Chicago Bears he features prominently; those who left the region become side notes. Beyond this bias, historians in general will note a lack of historical or social context throughout the work that had the potential to elevate its readability on a national level. For example, Coach Murney “Mr. Do-Right” Lazier coached the racially mixed Evanston High in the late 1960s when the school “experienced its share of student and parental unrest.” Former players recalled that he “taught them to be teammates, no matter if they were black or white” (39). Instead of setting the school in either a national or regional context of student unrest during these years, Bell summarizes student discontent at the school in one paragraph. Another example is describing the 1970 state championship game that occurred between the all-white Glenbrook North and the all-black East Saint Louis. Other than one line describing the game as being “the rich kids from the North Shore pitted against the poor, hardscrabble ruffians who lived by the Big Muddy” (112), Bell leaves this very significant issue unexplored.

In addition to the content shortcomings, Bell breaks no new ground in interviewing. There is no mention of methodology: the book lacks any sort of introductory or concluding material—no what, when, where, or why—that might make items relevant to an audience of oral historians, such as interview subject selection, times/locations of interviews, length of interviews, or any similar data. There is no mention of archiving the interviews or sharing the documentation, which goes against the oral historian’s notion of sharing information in as broad a fashion as possible. When interviewing took place for this work...