Bruce Dowbiggin
Bobby Hull Was An Imperfect Icon. Some People Can’t Get Past That
“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones” —Julius Caesar, Shakespeare
Bobby Hull died last week at age 84. For several generations of hockey fans you don’t have to say Hall of Fame or legendary scorer or the man who popularized Stan Mikita’s curved stick blade. Or the man who launched the WHA by telling Chicago owner Bill Wirtz to go do something rude to his hat. Or Brett Hull’s dad. These things are baked in. Bobby Hull is enough to summon it all up.
To comprehend how brilliant he was just look at his doppelgänger today, Connor McDavid. That’s how much he was a force of nature in a game that tried to clutch and grab him, to slow him down, to get him off his game. He scored 913 regular season goals in the NHL and WHA (plus 179 in playoffs). That’s how you get the nickname The Golden Jet. He was an alpha man. And that makes some people uncomfortable these days.
But there’s more. There was another Bobby Hull I met while working on the story of the 1993 pension lawsuit filed by the former stars of the Original Six— like Hull, Gordie Howe and especially Carl Brewer— against the league that exploited them for pitiful pensions. (You can read about it in my book The Defence Never Rests at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.)
Bobby was not among those doing the grunt work on the legals, but he understood the power of his name— and Howe’s and Frank Mahovlich’s— in backing the lawsuit, appearing in court and speaking out on my CBC TV show about how he and Howe were worth more than the $13,500 a year pensions the league gave them. When those men sat in the courtroom, staring at the judge, the Crown understood this was no crank complaint against the league.
Hull didn’t have to do these things. It would have been easier, safer, if, like other retired NHLers, he stayed away to protect some pathetic sinecure they had with the league. It was what an alpha man does. And Bobby was an alpha man in every sense— for both good and not good.
As fans will tell you, Bobby was legendary for his charm, signing autographs and remembering the ordinary people he met. For example, ten years later I passed him sitting in the lounge of the Calgary airport and, with a smile, he growled, “I was wondering how %$@*^ long it would take you to come up here.” I gave him a copy of my latest book Money Players— about the labour history of hockey players like Hull— to read on the plane we were both taking to Chicago.
At the other end in Chicago he asked me to walk him to his flight for his winter home in Sarasota. His knees were killing him, but he didn’t want anyone to know. I’ll never forget walking together with Bobby— his hand on my shoulder— through O’Hare to his gate for a flight. The rapturous looks from his fans seeing a Chicago legend on a par with Gale Sayers or Ernie Banks. Holding himself erect when his body was pain-racked. The smile. His firm handshake as we got the gate, saying “Thanks for walking with me, pal.” He was very real.
And that means that the kind of people who revel in these things immediately sprung into action about Bobby’s failings. A domestic assault in the 1960s. Questionable quotes to a Russian journalist about the Nazis. His penchant for being the last guy to leave a party. One online troll called him “a terrible person”.
They’re entitled to their opinion. As Marc Antony said of Caesar, Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.”
I’ll let Bobby’s grandson Jude make the point. Jude Hull: You’re allowed to have whatever opinion you want of my Grandfather and his past. To air it all out not 12 hours after he passed makes me want to puke. I hope those tweets help you sleep better at night.”
Indeed. The usual suspects wallowing in Hull’s personal failings from 60 years ago are the first jacknapes who conveniently skirt JFK’s moral failings because he was a Camelot liberal like them. Who gave murderer Teddy Kennedy a pass in the U.S. Senate for 50 years because he played for their team. Who soft-pedal Martin Luther King’s serial infidelities, because he had other work to do in their narrative.
Like them, Bobby was a man of his times with failings. Ones he owned. But he was also a colossus as a cultural figure. Imagine if all the actors, athletes, musicians and artists we revere today were purged for their moral failings, their addictions, their infidelities, their chumminess with tyrants, their racial attitudes. There wouldn’t be many left, would there? Why does David Crosby get a loving obit but the same people slime Bobby Hull.
So, sure, list Bobby Hull’s failings. Dig deep into them to make a point about the kind of alpha male who rarely exists anymore. And how much more virtuous you are sitting at your keyboard spilling garbage incognito. List those who third-hand get the vapours from seeing everything he did as a victim culture thing.
In a world that needs a smile, wants a distraction from the awfulness of a bureaucratic existence, Bobby Hull distributed happiness by the ton. He changed the business of hockey to make it a better livelihood for players by going to the WHA, supporting NHLPA reform. He showed up. His HOF son Brett said his father gave his family and others “a tremendous amount of great memories…Those of us who were lucky enough to spend time with him will cherish those forever.”
“The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.”
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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
MLB has seen parity and proclaimed, “We don’t give a damn!” Okay, they didn’t say that. In fact they insist the opposite is true. They’re all about competition and smaller markets getting a shot at a title. But as the 2024 offseason spending shows, believe none of what you hear and half of what you see in MLB.
Here’s the skinny: Juan Soto‘s contract with the NY Mets — 15 years and guaranteeing $765 million, not a penny of which is deferred. Max Fried signed an eight-year, $218 million deal with the New York Yankees. Later, Nathan Eovaldi secured a three-year, $75 million contract to return to the Texas Rangers. Blake Snell (five years, $182 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Matthew Boyd (two years, $29 million with the Chicago Cubs) added to the splurge.
There’s one more thing that stands out. MLB has no trouble with the financial big boys in New York, Los Angles, Texas, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago shelling out money no small market dare pay. In the MLB cheap seats, Tampa, Pittsburgh and Miami can’t send out quality players fast enough. But MLB is cool with that, too, as those paupers get a healthy slice of TV money.
So yes, they’re all about talking parity with their luxury tax system. But to keep the TV, digital, betting and marketing lucre flowing they have to have large media markets swinging the heaviest bats come postseason. The question is, do MLB fans care the way they used to about parity? It says here they don’t. More want to seed best-on-best more often. Which is brutal but refreshing.
Their sister leagues, married to draconian salary cap systems, are still pushing parity, even as they expand beyond recognition. In our 2004 book Money Players, legendary Boston Bruins coach/ GM Harry Sinden noted, “The problem with teams in the league, is that there were (then) 20 teams who all think they are going to win the Stanley Cup and they all are going to share it. But only one team is going to win it. The rest are chasing a rainbow.”
And that was before the expansion Vegas Golden Knights won a Cup within five years while the third-year Seattle Kraken made a run in those same 2023 playoffs. There are currently 32 teams in the league, each chasing Sinden’s rainbow of a Stanley Cup. That means 31 cranky fan bases every year. And 31 management teams trying to avoid getting fired.
Maybe we’ve reached peak franchise level? Uh, no. Not so long as salary-capped leagues can use the dream of parity to sell more franchises. As we wrote in October of 2023, “If you believe the innuendo coming from commissioner Gary Bettman there is a steady appetite for getting a piece of the NHL operation. “The best answer I can give you is that we have continuous expressions of interest from places like Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City, Salt Lake City, but expansion isn’t on the agenda.” In the next breath Bettman was predicting that any new teams will cost “A lot, a lot.”
Deputy commissioner Bill Daly echoed Bettman’s caution about a sudden expansion but added, ”Having said that, particularly with the success of the Vegas and Seattle expansions, there are more people who want to own professional hockey teams.” Translation: If the NHL can get a billion for a new team, the heck with competitive excellence, the clock might start ticking sooner. After all, small-market Ottawa just went for $950.”
It’s not just the expansion-obsessed NHL talking more teams. MLB is looking to add franchises. Abandoned Montreal is once more getting palpitations over rumours that the league wants to return to the city that lost its Expos in 2005. Recent reports indicate that while MLB might prefer Salt Lake City and Nashville it also feels it must right the wrong left when the Expos moved to Washington DC 19 years ago.
The city needs a new ballpark to replace disastrous Olympic Stadium. They’ll also need more than Tom Brady to fund the franchise fee and operating costs. And Quebec corporate support— always transitory in the Expos years— will need to be strong. But two more MLB franchises within five years is a lock.
While the NBA is mum on going past 30 teams it has not shut the door on expansion after seeing the NHL cashing in. Neither has the cash-generating monster known as the NFL where teams currently sell for over six billion US. The NFL is eyeing Europe for its next moves.
The question that has to be asked in this is, WTF, quality of competition? The more teams in a league the lower the chances of even getting to a semifinal series let alone a championship. Fans in cities starved for a championship— the NFL’s Detroit Lions or Cleveland Browns are entering their seventh decade without a title or the Toronto Maple Leafs title-less since 1967— know how corrosive it can be.
Getting to 34, 36, maybe 40 teams makes for a short-term score for owners, but it could leave leagues with an entire strata of loser teams that no one—least of all networks, carriers and advertisers—wants to see. Generations of fans will be like Canuck supporters, going their entire lives without a championship.
In addition, as we’ve argued in our 2018 book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports and How The Free Market Can Save Them, watering down the product with a lot of teams no one wants to watch nationally or globally seems counter productive. The move away from quality toward quantity serves only the gambling industry. But since when has Gary Bettman Truly cared about quality of the product? So long as he gets to say, “We have a trade to announce” at the Draft, he’s a happy guy.
When we published Cap In Hand we proposed a system like soccer with ranked divisions using promotion and relegation to ensure competition, not parity. Most of the interviewers we spoke to were skeptical of the idea. But as MLB steams closer to economic Darwinism our proposal is looking more credible every day. Play at the level you can afford. Or just watch Ted Lasso. Your choice.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Headline: Josh Allen sets NFL mark with 3 TD passes and 3 TD runs, but Matthew Stafford’s Rams hold off Buffalo Bills 44-42
Canada has no NFL teams to its name. But different parts of the country have a fervent rooting interest in a team. Often it’s because of the local American markets that have been piped in by cable TV companies. The Lower Mainland of B.C. is fertile Seattle Seahawks territory. Alberta is partial to the Denver Broncos (owned for a long time by an Albertan). Manitoba and Saskatchewan get Detroit stations on their cable but are equally invested in the Minnesota Vikings.
In the East, Quebec and the Maritimes have plenty of New York Giants (older) and New England Patriots (Tom Brady) fandom. In southern Ontario, where the locals grew up on a diet of Buffalo TV icons Irv Weinstein and Tom Joles, there is little question that the Buffalo Bills are top of mind. As many as 20 percent of the crowd on game day comes south across the Peace Bridge. TSN and Sportsnet closely cover the Bills closely.
Not so long ago Rogers thought playing Bills games in Toronto might be a thing. For reasons ranging from ticket prices to the Bills ineptitude the gamble flopped. So they gave up the plan just as the franchise’s fortunes were to take a great leap forward in the name of quarterback Josh Allen, a raw talent from Wyoming, of all places. Opinions on whether his athletic ability and size (6-foot-5, 240 pounds) would translate in the NFL were many.
After all, while his QB rivals played in the Rose Bowl or the Orange Bowl, Allen had starred in the Great Idaho Potato Bowl. Using a pick obtained from Tampa, the Bills got him seventh in the loaded 2018 draft behind more heralded prospects Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold. He was considered the riskiest pick in the top seven. While none of the players taken before Allen have flopped, Mayfield and Arnold have wandered in the wilderness before finding success. Saquon Barkley has finally reached superstardom with a second team.
But not one of that septet has had quite the career arc of Allen. In just two years he took them to their first postseason since 1995. The next season he led them to the AFC Championship game where he lost to his future kryptonite, Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. During his Buffalo tenure, he has led the team to a total of six playoff appearances, five consecutive division titles, and five postseason victories. Only a Super Bowl trip has eluded him.
But statistics don’t capture Allen’s dual-threat impact on the NFL. He’s not been alone. In our in 2022 column NFL Run/ Pass Maestros: Can’t Catch This, we wrote about the move to more mobile, improvisational QBs . Players such as Allen, Mahomes and Lamar Jackson of Baltimore, the two-time NFL MVP. Stick-in-the-pockets like Jared Goff, Kirk Cousins and Matthews Stafford are still viable threats, but it’s clear that to stay one step ahead of defensive coordinators a QB needs the option of rolling out, isolating a defender and making him choose between the run or pass.
Where it was rare for QBs to gain more than a few years running it’s now common to see six or seven QBs in the Top 50 rushers in the NFL. Currently six QBs are in the Top 50 rushers in the league. But where the competition have been race cars, Allen has been a snow plow, going through, not around, defenders.
His feats of strength would impress George Costanza’s father. Week after week he makes single-handed plays that deliver the Bills victory. His weekly highlight reel of mad dashes and bazooka-liken throws had led the Bills to six straight wins before’s Sunday’s loss. Two weeks ago it was a hook-and-ladder TD lateral in the snow from teammate Amari Cooper in which he received credit for a TD pass and a TD reception on the same play. On Sunday in Los Angeles, he added 82 yards rushing to a mighty 342 yards passing.
This has led his fans to cover their eyes as he smashes into opponents or the turf. Bills fans know that their success is untranslatable without Allen, who’s now considered the favourite for MVP with four games left. Career backup Mitch Trubisky sits behind Allen, which is like Pete Buttigieg backing up Elon Musk.
Allen has been the beneficiary of the NFL taking the target off QBs as the 2020s dawned. “In act of mercy or perhaps to juice offence, the NFL took pity on the athletic QBs. ‘It feels like the NFL is in a moment when a defender can get called for roughing the passer or unnecessary roughness simply by breathing hard on the QB,” writes Joe Mahoney of SB Nation. “It’s a reason why the career longevity for running QBs like Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts, Justin Fields, Josh Allen, and Taysom Hill should be much longer the career lengths of some of the previous elite dual-threat QBs’”.
This was all written before Sunday’s epic personal offence total in a losing effort against the Rams— just the third defeat all season for the Bills. At one point they trailed by 17 before rallying to lose by just two.
Perhaps the only thing holding back Allen from a title now is the game strategy of HC Sean McDermott and the coaches of the Bills— as their fans know only too well since the last-second disaster against KC in the 2022 AFC final when McDermott couldn’t kill off 13 seconds at the end of the game. Allowing the Chiefs to come back for a win and a trip to the Super Bowl.
Sunday he and his OC Joe Brady wasted a time-out at the conclusion of a monumental comeback that prevented the Bills getting a shot at a game-winning field goal. It was not the first time the seventh-year head coach had muffed game-ending strategy this season. Losses to Houston and Baltimore also featured faulty game management. Otherwise the Bills might be undefeated in 2024.
But we won’t know for a month, at least, whether that’s enough of a drag on Superman’s cape to prevent a Super Bowl appearance. For now, Bills fans in Canada and the U.S. can only marvel at what’s happened to the farm boy from rural California who is both irresistible object and unstoppable force in the same body.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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