Mike Richman | Author, Washington Commanders Historian

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It's the true story about a fake story about a real life. Magnificent Jerk is an Apple original podcast produced by Pineapple Street Studios. All episodes are available now. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. We are thrilled to welcome to the show for the first time Mike Richman, a journalist, an author, an editor. He's got a brand new book out which we will talk about. Mike, I would love to hear your reaction to not just the new ownership with the commanders, but also the moves made at the trade deadline that seems to signal they're heading into rebuild.

Yes it does, Amy, and thank you very much for having me on. I think that it certainly is a signal of a rebuild. I wish they had gotten a little more from Montez Sweat, a second round pick. I think he's worth a lot more than that. Maybe even a first rounder. I think he's not an elite pass rusher at this time, but I think they could have gotten a little more. Chase Young is a different story.

He's missed 22 games in his career. I would have liked to have seen them get more for him too, but there's no way they could have kept both of those on and pay both of them with this other top defensive lineman they have. Jonathan Allen and Daron Payne and so forth.

In the salary cap era, it's just not conceivable they could do that. How do you feel about seeing this team start over again? I was watching the Eagles game on Sunday and reading all the comments. We got robbed of a call in the second half. There was a drop pass by the Eagles on a critical drive that the Redskins didn't challenge. I'm thinking, OK, yes, the Eagles complain about that.

All these different complaints. It's just total monotony and repetitiveness regarding things that have happened over the years with this team. They just don't have the firepower. They don't have the players.

They haven't had it consistently since the Joe Gibbs I era. This is the same story over and over again. What happened against the Eagles, I'm not surprised. They just don't have the depth to compete with organizations like that.

This is the same story that's happened over and over again. It doesn't matter the ownership under Dan Snyder. Yes, they had their problems under him, but we're seeing the same thing now. You can't blame it on the new owners. They're going to put their stamp on the organization.

Well, they already are with this trade, but in the postseason as well with a new coach if not before that. It's just the same story over and over again. To respond to your question, it's very disheartening for a lifelong fan of the organization such as myself. For somebody who saw the glory years in Joe Gibbs I and also of course knowing about the George Allen era was a very successful era in the 1970s.

Mike, you've mentioned a lifelong love affair with the team so you understand the various iterations. I hear the frustration, but what hope do you see or feel with the new owners? I said this as soon as the ownership swap happened when they came on board.

They don't necessarily define the success of a team. Of course, it starts with the owners. They need the new front office people, the correct front office people. They need the right players and those players have to gel. It's not just the owners though. It's going to take a little bit of time, but I'm not just putting it on the owners. It's got to be the entire organization.

You need that front office as well, getting the right players in there and the right personnel decision makers. I hope that addresses that question. Mike Richman is with us joining us from the DC area. He's a journalist. He's a biographer. He's an editor and he's an author. He's got four books including a brand new one entitled George Allen a Football Life. He also wrote the Redskins encyclopedia.

He wrote about Joe Gibbs. How much has your passion for the team fueled your writing? I've got a lifelong passion for the organization.

I grew up in the Washington DC area, Montgomery County, Maryland. Around the age of 10, I really became fixed on the George Allen coach Redskins. 1971 was his first season in Washington. I lived vicariously through those players and George Allen himself. That's when my love of the team really first started. It just grew from there. I followed the team to the Joe Gibbs one era, three Super Bowl wins.

They were one of the elite franchises in the league at the time. I chose journalism as a career. I combined those two interests in terms of pursuing all this literary work. This is my fourth book that I've written and this one is a biography on George Allen. Mike, we're so glad to have you with us here after hours with Amy Lawrence, CBS Sports Radio. The book comes out today, Wednesday, November 1st.

What's your emotion like right now? I am very excited about it. Yes, today is the official publication date of the book and it's been a long time coming. I started this several years ago. I've had it in my mind for a long time that I wanted to write a biography on George Allen. I wanted to do the definitive biography.

Through my other literary work, I wrote the Redskins Encyclopedia. Of course, there was a bio on George Allen in the book, but he deserved a lot more. His life needed to be explored. He was one of the top coaches in the league at the time in the mid-60s through the mid-70s. He was up there with Lombardi and Shula as one of the elite coaches in the league. I thought his life needed to be explored and I wanted to be the person who did it.

It certainly has come to fruition and I'm extremely excited right now. Congratulations on publishing another book and one that you're very passionate about. You're also a storyteller. What's one story that embodies who George Allen was as a coach? There were a number of eccentricities about him and a number of traits that really defined him. He wasn't the first workaholic coach in the league, but he was a 24-7 coach.

Back in that era, there weren't a whole lot of them. He learned from George Hallis and Sid Gilman. Hallis was his top mentor and that really defined him. He would work so hard. He was such a detail-oriented coach. As the saying goes, he would want to know more about his opponents than they knew about themselves. That's impossible when you come to think of it, but that was his goal.

He really wanted to know so much. That approach played out so often on the field. In so many different interviews with his players, they would tell me they just knew the tendencies of the opposing team so well. They knew the signals and the positioning of the opposing players. That was in large part because of George Allen.

I think that's a characteristic that really, really defines him well. Mike Richman has a brand new book out today, so we congratulate him on the release of George Allen, A Football Life, a representation of a passion for not just a franchise, but also an admiration for this coach who's a Hall of Famer and never had a losing season in the NFL. When you were researching and trying to decide what stories to tell and what aspects of his life and his coaching to include, how did you navigate that process as you put this book together, considering that you could write two or three volumes? How did I break it down?

I pretty much knew from the start how I had it outlined in my mind, how I wanted to approach this. It was a chronological look at Allen. I went all the way back to his youth. He's from the Detroit area. Interestingly, I'll touch on one thing from his youth, which I think you asked me about what defined him as a person. Back in his very young days, you could tell that he was a hard worker back then. He grew up during the Great Depression, and he had to make money for his family. His father struggled. His mother really didn't work, so he had to make money for the family. He went out and he did what he could. He would try different types of work to bring in money, and he was very successful at it.

You could tell that he had a Type A personality in him that was actually starting to form even back then. In terms of the structure of the book, I looked at it from then and his college coaching years, which started at Michigan. His first pro coaching stint was as an assistant. He was with the Chicago Bears as an assistant. First as the head talent scout and then as the defensive coordinator.

This was from the late 50s through the mid-60s. His first head coaching stint was with the Rams and then came on board with the Redskins in 1971. He coached in the USFL. He was chair of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports under Reagan. His very last coaching season was at Long Beach State in 1990.

He died doing what he loved doing as a head coach of Long Beach State. In that respect, yeah, it was just a full chronological look at him. You're right. I could have written a lot more. There is a lot in there anyway.

It's a 560-page book. I really did dive into the life and coaching exploits and the eccentricity of George Allen. Back to his detail-oriented nature, he wanted every minute of the day to be able to focus on football. For instance, he consumed a lot of ice cream because he wanted something that was easy to swallow and would not take up a lot of time so he could focus on football. That was George Allen. I like the man more already.

I would read the book just based on that, considering his love for ice cream, although I suppose we have two different reasons for loving ice cream. Mike Richman is joining us here on After Hours, CBS Sports Radio. The brand new book is out today, George Allen, A Football Life. To bring it back to your lifelong love affair with this franchise, it sold for a record number going back a few months ago, over $6 billion. It's obviously a franchise with a rich history, part of that George Allen. You mentioned Joe Gibbs.

It goes way back. How confident are you the Redskins slash commanders can find that same glory again? I'm hoping. Like many, all other Redskins fans like myself, we're holding out hope. The Dan Snyder era was very, very frustrating for all of us.

We are just hoping that they're going to regain that flair that they had during the Joe Gibbs I era. You know very well, Amy, that the game is different today. You have to have that correct chemistry on the team. There's a science that goes into it. I'm not saying that the chemistry didn't exist back in the Joe Gibbs I era either.

Of course it did. But there's a different process that goes into it today. The players aren't around as long on the teams.

I think that's the major difference. They've got to get the right players in there. Back to what I was saying in the loss to the Eagles on Sunday. They just don't have the right bodies right now. They have talent on the team.

Tara Mclaurin, Jonathan Allen, the young quarterback today, he's promising. But they need all those players. Everybody's got to gel in that squad. I'm holding out hope. I'm hoping that this new ownership group will get the right player personnel people in there, will get the right decision makers in there to draft and get the correct free agents in there that they need. I think based on Josh Harris's history in ownership of other teams and other sports, you can at least know that he will make that a goal.

All right. So this is an awesome opportunity. If you are a commander slash Redskins fan for a long time to pick up this new book, George Allen, a football life brand new from Mike Richmond just published today.

It's the fourth of his books that revolve around this franchise for which he has an incredible passion. The website is Mike Richmond journalist dot com, a veteran journalist and author and biographer Mike Richmond journalist dot com. Mike, it's great to have you with us. Thank you so much for listening to the show. We're really cool to be able to talk to you. Congratulations on the book. Thank you very much, Amy.

I certainly appreciate you having me on and I really enjoyed the conversation. Get your free daily analysis today. That's bet q l dot com. You gotta get rid of this old Backstreet Boys T-shirt. Tell me why. Because it stinks, boys. Tell me why. I've watched it so many times, but the odor will come out.

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