Athletes - Harry Wismer

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	Athletes - Harry Wismer

Harry Wismer (June 30, 1913 – December 3, 1967) was a sports broadcaster and charter owner of what became the New York Jets franchise in the American Football League.

Early years

A native of Port Huron, Michigan, Wismer displayed great interest and prowess in sports at an early age, earning letters in football, basketball, and baseball at St. John's Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin. He later played college football at both the University of Florida and Michigan State University, his playing career ending at the latter school when he damaged a knee severely during a game against the University of Michigan. He then began broadcasting Michigan State sports on a campus radio station in a position arranged for him by his coach, Charlie Bachman. In 1934 he was hired as the public-address announcer for the Detroit Lions, who were then owned by the same man, Dick Richards, who owned Detroit radio station WJR. Wismer soon began doing a ten-minute daily radio show covering the Lions in addition to his PA duties, while continuing as a student at Michigan State.

Broadcaster

After the 1936 season, Wismer was encouraged by Richards to abandon his studies and come to work for WJR on a full-time basis as the station's sports director. He stayed until 1941 when he was hired by the NBC "Blue" network, the predecessor to ABC. However, a subsequent management change at ABC led to a new regime that was hostile to sports, and Wismer became a free-lancer, selling his service to the highest bidder. Wismer became known for an enormous ego and developed a reputation as a "namedropper", preferring to announce the names of celebrities of his acquaintance who were in the audience to the actual game action, and was alleged at times to include them in the crowd of games which he announced when they were in fact elsewhere.

In the late 1940's he provided the voice talent to numerous 16mm college football films. Wismer often added the sound commentary long after the games were over, and added a radio style commentary with sound effects such as referee whistles to recreate an authentic sound. He was owner of HarFilms, a short-lived New Orleans based sportsfilm production company.

Wismer achieved the height of his fame as the voice of the Washington Redskins. His first game for the Redskins was a most inauspicious one, their 73-0 loss to the Chicago Bears' great "Monsters of the Midway" team in the 1940 NFL Championship Game. At one point Wismer was a 25% owner of the club as well, with the majority of the stock being retained by founding owner George Preston Marshall. However, the relationship between the two had greatly degenerated by the mid-1950s over several issues, not the least of which was Marshall's steadfast refusal to sign any black players. The relationship dissolved in claims, counterclaims, and litigation, and Marshall then set out to destroy Wismer's future as a broadcaster, with some success. Wismer was also involved for a time in the broadcasting of Notre Dame football. In 1953 he was involved in an early attempt to expand football into prime time network television, when ABC, now with a renewed interest in sports, broadcast an edited replay on Sunday nights of the previous day's Notre Dame games, which were cut down to 75 minutes in length by removing the time between plays, halftime, and even some of the more uneventful plays. (While this format was not successful in prime time, a similar presentation of Nore Dame football later became a staple of Sunday mornings for many years on CBS with Lindsey Nelson as the announcer.) Also that season was the first attempt at prime time coverage of pro football, with Wismer at the microphone on the old DuMont Network. Unlike ABC's Notre Dame coverage, DuMont's NFL game was presented live on Saturday nights, but interest was not adequate to save the DuMont Network, which had by this point already entered what would be a terminal decline (although it did mount a subsequent 1954 season of NFL telecasts, minus Wismer, which proved to be one of its last regular programs).

AFL owner

Wismer was a charter owner in the AFL, which was announced in 1959 and began actual play in 1960. His New York franchise was nicknamed the "Titans". Wismer devised a plan in which the proceeds from the broadcast rights to league games (initially with ABC) would be shared equally by all teams, very innovative at the time but setting the standard for all future professional football television broadcasting contracts. As Wismer owned what would seem to have been the most potentially lucrative franchise, especially with regard to broadcasting rights, in the nation's largest media market, the act seemed at first blush most generous for a self-described "hustler". However, Wismer realized that the fledgling league needed for all of the eight franchises to be successful in order to survive long-term. Unfortuantely for Wismer, his own team, despite being located in the nation's largest city, was probably the most problematic in the league in its initial years. For one thing, the team was relegated to playing its home games in the rotting remains of the old Polo Grounds, which had been abandonned years before by the New York Giants baseball team for San Francisco and was never a particularly satisfactory football venue; in contrast, the NFL football Giants played in prestigious Yankee Stadium. Additionally, the New York media for the most part was derisive and dismissive of the Titans, when it deigned to mention them at all; for most New York sports reporters of the era professional football in New York City began and ended with the Giants. Wismer's volatile personality was of little help in this area; he resented not only other media figures but also Dallas Texans owner Lamar Hunt, whom Wismer saw as a rich boy whose father had bought him a football team as a toy; Wismer also had an ongoing feud with the first AFL commissioner, Joe Foss, and had at times a far-less-than-warm relationship with the Titan's first coach, the legendary former Redskins quarterback Sammy Baugh. (In fact, Baugh had been the losing quarterback in the 73-0 debacle back in 1940 that had marked Wismer's debut with the Redskins as noted above.) Wismer also lacked the truly "deep pockets" of some of the other early AFL owners, particularly Hunt, possessed; for the most part their wealth had come from sources outside the field of sports, which although already quite popular in the U.S. were not the major industry they were shortly to become. Wismer's wealth, such as it was, had come entirely from his sports involvement.

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