To Joey Harrington, the whole thing felt a little James Bond-ish. The invitation. The plane ticket. The mystique.
It was like, “Be at the corner of 24th and Broadway at 7:43 p.m. and somebody in a white leather hat will give you the information on where you need to be,” he recalls.
The Oregon quarterback was intrigued.
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Once in Arizona, surrounded by the best players in college football, Harrington relaxed. He returned to the resort from an event with Indiana quarterback Antwaan Randle El, his roommate for the weekend, and inquired about lunch. He was told to order room service.
Harrington dialed the kitchen and was invited to order anything off the menu. Randle El ordered ribs. Harrington ordered the filet.
“Would you like to try some Cristal with that?”
Caught off guard, Harrington said, “Just a moment, please.” He put his hand over the phone.
“Do we want to try some Cristal with that?” he asked.
“What’s that?” Randle El replied.
“I don’t know,” Harrington said.
He turned back to the phone and said confidently: “Yes, we’ll have two, please.”
Soon the food arrived, along with two expensive bottles of Champagne. Harrington guessed the bill must have approached $800. The server reminded the players that event organizers were covering the tab.
Word got out.
“Fast forward to the end of the weekend,” Harrington says.
As players exited the Arizona resort, they set down their luggage near the bus that would take them to the airport. Standing nearby, Harrington heard an unmistakable sound.
“The bus attendants are loading the bags on, and it’s guy after guy of just clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink from all the Cristal that they had stuffed in their bags,” Harrington says. “These guys had cleaned out the entire collection of bottles of Champagne.”
And with that, the 2001 Playboy All-America weekend was complete.
While it might be difficult to imagine an adult magazine having a place in college football, this was the case for more than five decades. The Playboy All-America preseason team was among the sport’s biggest honors. It had tradition. It had cachet. Said one long-time media relations director: “That’s the All-America team everyone wanted to be on.”
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Part of this stemmed from the photo shoot. Each spring, Playboy flew selected players to destinations such as Chicago, Dallas, Miami or Phoenix. On a beach or at a resort, players got to relax and hang out for a weekend on the magazine’s dime. In Chicago, they toured the original Playboy Mansion on North State Parkway. In Miami, they went deep-sea fishing. It wasn’t for everybody — some schools refused to participate, particularly during the early years when Playmates were involved — but those who attended remember it fondly.
“I got invited to a lot of banquets,” said former Ole Miss quarterback Archie Manning, a member of the 1970 Playboy team. “I went on kind of a banquet circuit, and I was honored to go to all those places. … But the (Playboy event) was pretty special.”
“You were treated like a rock star,” said former Florida State linebacker Derrick Brooks, a member of the 1994 Playboy team. “You have a limo picking you up at the airport. It was first-class treatment from the suites to the events to the photos. And then you had a little smack talk about who was the best this, who was the best that.”
How big a deal was it?
- Manning, who also played shortstop for the Ole Miss baseball team, worried that if the Rebels advanced to the College World Series he might have to miss the Playboy photo shoot. “I remember kind of sweating it out,” he said.
- Washington linebacker Jason Chorak held off on the NFL Draft and returned for his senior season in part because he wanted to make the 1997 Playboy All-America team, which he did. “There’s only a select few people who can literally say, ‘Hey, I’ve been in Playboy,”’ Chorak said.
- San Jose State defensive back Dwight Lowery nearly turned down his 2007 invitation because he had broken his jaw during spring practice. In the end, however, the Playboy publicity was too good to pass up, so he went to Arizona with his mouth wired shut. “I couldn’t even smile,” Lowery said.
Ricky Hunley this summer walked over to a wall in his office at the University of Arizona, where he coaches the defensive line. “Let me show you something,” he said. Hunley pointed to a framed photo. There he is, 21 years old, kneeling on a South Florida beach along with the rest of the 1983 Playboy All-America squad.
“It was a big deal,” he said.
The Playboy All-America team didn’t stand on its own. It was part of the magazine’s Pigskin Preview, which ranked the nation’s top teams and predicted conference winners, and it blossomed under an eccentric character named Anson Mount.
In the late 1950s, publisher Hugh Hefner wanted to expand Playboy’s content — more substance, not as much sex. For years, Collier’s had selected a preseason All-America team, but the magazine in 1957 went out of business. Hefner saw an opportunity. “Does anyone know anything about football?” he asked during a staff meeting in Chicago.
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Former Collier’s writer Francis Wallace produced the magazine’s first college football preview, but he felt uncomfortable with Playboy’s image and quit. The job then went to Mount, a World War II and Korean War vet from Tennessee whom Hefner liked to call “Smokey.”
(In 1964, Playboy actually spoofed this decision, publishing a cartoon of Hefner standing over Mount at his desk. “Smokey,” Hefner says, “we’ve been getting a lot of letters from readers requesting articles on outdoor sports, so I’ve decided to run an annual feature on football. We’ll play it up big, with plenty of full-color illustrations! I want it to be the best football feature ever published in a magazine … complete, detailed, exhaustive. …. We’ll photograph some naked girls wearing football helmets and …”)
In “Reaching for Paradise: The Playboy Vision of America,” author Thomas Weyr described Mount as a hulking man with the charm of a dancing bear and a gift of southern gab. Mount also worked as Playboy’s religion editor, conversing with the likes of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, but he made a name for himself in college football. The Paul Finebaum of his day.
Mount understood the best way to become an expert was to talk to those who were. He sent detailed questionnaires to sports information directors across the country. He had Dallas Cowboys vice president of player personnel Gil Brandt help with All-America selection.
“I don’t know if he was excited about it or indifferent, but it became a part of my childhood landscape because Saturday was head downstairs with the cigar smoke and beer and the yelling and the screaming and watching the teams,” said Anson Mount III, the second oldest of Mount’s four children, whose babysitter was Dianne Chandler, the 1966 Playmate for September.
Sportswriters mocked Mount, particularly his preseason top 20. After all, what could a hack from a nudie mag possibly know about football? “Anson Mount has more power than Superman, the Mafia and non-scented deodorant,” wrote the Orlando Sentinel in 1971. “But Anson has a weird kind of power — it works in reverse. If Anson says the sun will rise tomorrow morning, then you might as well make merry tonight because there won’t be any tomorrow.”
But Mount became quite good. In the late 1960s, a man named W. Judd Wyatt began monitoring preseason predictions to see which publication was most accurate. He called it “The Wyatt Summary,” and for the first 15 years, Playboy topped the list. The Sporting News was second. In 1974, The Washington Post called Mount the nation’s “most visible and possibly foremost All-America selector.” The Atlanta Constitution called him one of the “most sought-after people in sports.”
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But this is college football. No slight goes unnoticed. Every September letters from outraged readers, upset their favorite teams or players had been snubbed, flooded Playboy’s offices. Mount sent back a clever form letter that suggested readers shouldn’t take him so seriously. “I’ve had so many people tell me I’m crazy,’’ he said, “I started believing it a little myself.”
Working with Gil Brandt, Mount took pride in finding not only the best players for the preseason All-America team, but also the ones no one knew. Such was the case in 1968 with a defensive tackle from North Texas State.
“We had him before anyone knew who Joe Greene was,” Brandt said.
For years, newspapers reported Greene was so unsure of his place on the Playboy team that he called Mount to ask if he was certain he belonged. According to Greene, this is not entirely true.
In a recent conversation, Greene, who would go on to star with the Pittsburgh Steelers and earn induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, admitted he was hesitant. But it had more to do with his wardrobe than his talent.
“They were having the team come to Chicago,” Greene said. “And I think it was a two-day affair and I was excited about it. But then I wasn’t, because my attire was golf shirts, T-shirts and jeans. I thought I needed to at least have a jacket and some trousers and a pair of shoes. I needed to get really dressed for that and I wasn’t sure that I could do that.”
A local department store set up Greene with a jacket in North Texas State green, a turtleneck and everything else. Greene went to Chicago for the photo shoot and had a great experience. Although it’s been 50-plus years, he remembers eating breakfast in the hotel room with USC’s O.J. Simpson and others on the last day. “We all ordered steak and eggs — and a fifth of whiskey,” Greene said, laughing.
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One other thing from that weekend sticks out.
“On a college campus, I had seen some pretty ladies, beautiful women,” Greene said. “But I hadn’t seen so many in one spot until I got to Chicago at the Playboy Club.”
Those were the Playmates, of course. For the first couple decades they attended the weekend event as hosts, posing for photos with players. Former Alabama defensive lineman Bob Baumhower recalled visiting Hefner’s Chicago mansion in 1976. The Playboy publisher had a room next to an indoor pool that had a glass wall that made it possible to look right into the water. “And they just arranged to have a couple attractive ladies swimming in the pool,” Baumhower said.
“They used that whole brand for their purposes, obviously,” said former Notre Dame tight end Ken MacAfee, a 1977 Playboy All-America. “We had some pictures taken with (the Playmates), that kind of thing. Guys walked with a smile on their face the whole weekend, that’s for sure.”
This was an occasional hurdle. Not everyone embraced the Playboy brand. Over the years, Florida quarterbacks Danny Wuerffel and Tim Tebow, Oklahoma linebacker Rocky Calmus and others declined their All-America invitations. In 1986, an Arkansas sports information director refused to help Mount with the Pigskin Preview, explaining in a letter that “to cooperate with your publication is to turn my back on the will of God.” A few years later, Notre Dame quietly informed the publication that its athletes no longer would participate.
Once Playboy began publishing a college basketball All-America team, Linnea Weblemoe Smith, the wife of North Carolina coach Dean Smith, spoke out against schools letting athletes participate. Dean Smith, in “A Coach’s Life: My 40 Years in College Basketball,” wrote, “Playboy is a non-sports publication with an unorthodox selection process, so really, how much validity can its All-America Team truly have? … Where’s the validity except using popular collegiate athletes as a marketing tool for the magazine?”
My 1995 #Playboy All-American Team. Loaded with future #NBA stars. How many can you identify? #tbt pic.twitter.com/RkzQGrRBvl
— Gil Brandt (@Gil_Brandt) July 17, 2014
In these cases, Playboy had a choice: If it could find a player of similar talent willing to participate in the photo shoot, the magazine selected that player for the All-America team. But this wasn’t always possible. Leaving off a star would damage credibility. Such was the case in 1975 with Archie Griffin, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner.
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Ohio State coach Woody Hayes didn’t mind if Ohio State players made the Playboy team, he just wouldn’t let them attend the weekend photo shoot.
“Quite frankly, I had heard about the Playboy weekend and it was always pretty nice,” Griffin said. “I really hadn’t heard anything negative. But I just think (Hayes) looked at the brand and what he felt the brand represented. And he just didn’t want his players to go to something that he thought was not good, especially during that time, back in the ’70s.”
Playboy’s solution: It had a similar-sized person stand in for Griffin and then pasted the Ohio State running back into the photo. Griffin didn’t find out about this until much later. Through the years fans have shown him the photo. Griffin’s response never has changed:
“That’s not really me because I wasn’t there.”
The Playmates eventually disappeared from the football event. Players discovered this the hard way.
“We took a trip to Miami,” said Nathan LaDuke, a defensive back from Arizona State who made the 1990 Playboy team. “In my mind, I’m thinking, ‘Man, this is going to be CRAZY! There are going to be girls everywhere! There’s going to be Playboy bunnies picking us up!’ And that was not how it was. We showed up at the airport and it’s just your typical driver waiting with a sign.”
Players arrived on Friday and attended a welcome dinner. Saturday morning was for activities — deep-sea fishing, golf, swimming-pool volleyball or rodeo events.
“Me and Emmitt Smith were on the same boat (in Miami),” said former West Virginia quarterback Major Harris, a 1989 Playboy All-American, referring to the former Florida running back. “We caught some big fish. Growing up, I wasn’t really into fishing, but I knew how fishing line looked. Man, we were out there fishing with big cables! It was wild.”
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“We had like a quick-draw (contest in Arizona),” said former North Carolina cornerback Dre’ Bly, a Playboy All-America in 1997 and 1998. “Like in the westerns. Like we were cowboys. You have a holster on your hip and you had a gun to see who was the quickest. That was my signature event.”
Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning was the photo shoot. Offense in one shot, defense in another. Occasionally, Playboy brought both sides together for a gag photo. In 1986, Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth posed while wearing shades and holding a Texas helmet upside down. Ohio State receiver Cris Carter held a Michigan helmet on his lap. USC lineman Jeff Bregel wore his helmet backward, which made him look like a Viking.
“Players were sleepy, but there was a good humor to the whole thing,” said Gary Cole, who replaced Mount as Playboy sports editor in the 1980s. “I brought (the 1986 gag photo) back to Chicago and I showed it to the guys and then I showed it to Hefner, who was in L.A. And he said, ‘Let’s just publish it.’ We did it that one year.”
A year or so ago, a memorabilia collector contacted Tony Mandarich and offered to buy his copy of the 1988 Playboy All-America team. A former Michigan State tackle, Mandarich knew he had the magazine somewhere. He found it buried in a box of college alumni books.
“I dug it up and then I looked at it,” Mandarich said. “It’s just really interesting to reflect back and kind of see where people’s life paths have taken them.”
There was Oklahoma State’s Barry Sanders. At the time, sitting for that photo in Miami, Sanders was coming off a season in which he had rushed for only 603 yards. Who would’ve thought he’d turn into one of the best running backs in NFL history? There was UCLA’s Troy Aikman, who became a star with the Dallas Cowboys. He looked at Florida State’s Deion Sanders.
Deion!
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“One of the funniest guys was Deion Sanders,” Mandarich said. “We were on a bus trip going to a dinner event that I want to say was mandatory. You got a bunch of egos on that bus, including mine. But Deion was so loud and flamboyant and articulate and hilarious. I was like, ‘This guy is freaking awesome.”’
The recognition was nice. The gear (the NCAA allowed players to receive up to $300 in gifts) was appreciated. But what mattered most to the players was just the opportunity to get to know everyone. When contacted for this story, Manning spent five minutes naming guys from the 1970 team. Same for Greene and the 1968 squad and Clemson safety Robert Carswell and the 2000 team.
“LaDainian Tomlinson, Drew Brees, Carlos Polk, Reggie Wayne, Mike Vick,” Carswell said. “I could go on and on.”
My Playboy All-American Team, 1998, Tempe, AZ. Peyton was a Playboy alum and kind enough to make appearance.
— Gil Brandt (@Gil_Brandt) March 8, 2016
In 1997, Wyoming kicker Cory Wedel stood in line at an Arizona resort, waiting to check in. Behind him, someone said “Hi, Cory.” Wedel turned and saw Peyton Manning. Although the two never had met, the Tennessee quarterback already had figured out who he was.
That weekend, Wedel hung out in Archie Manning’s suite along with Peyton and his older brother, Cooper. Gil Brandt stopped in. “So right off the bat, I’m like, ‘Holy cow. These are legends, and I’m getting to talk to them?”’ Wedel said.
Then the rise of the internet changed the print industry. In 2009, for the first time in 49 years, Playboy did not do a photo shoot because of financial restrictions and lack of sponsorship. The magazine published an All-America team for a few more years and stopped after the 2015 season, ending one of college football’s preseason staples.
“What made Playboy different was you got to see (other players) in a different environment and not just in a suit or whatever,” said former Kentucky kick returner Derek Abney, a Playboy All-American in 2003.
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It was such an honor that Marshall offensive lineman Steve Sciullo keeps it on his resume to this day. Sciullo, the head football coach at Hampton High in Allison Park, Penn., wants to be an athletic director, so he makes sure everyone knows his biggest accomplishments. “Not too many people can put down NFL draft pick, Super Bowl participant and 2002 Playboy All-American,” Sciullo said.
At minimum, it’s a conversation starter.
“A lot of times people will say, ‘What’s something nobody knows about you?'” said former Virginia quarterback Scott Gardner, a 1975 Playboy All-American. “And many times I’ll say, ‘Well, I was a centerfold in Playboy magazine.”’
(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; photo: Patti McConville / Alamy)
