Cash and Carry

Book excerpt: C.C."Cash and Carry" Pyle made several fortunes representing professional football and tennis players--before losing everything and disappearing into history's dustbin. This work reevaluates Pyle's fast life and times while analyzing his extraordinary and enduring legacy. In 1925, Pyle rocked the sports world by inducing Red Grange to abandon the leafy confines of the University of Illinois for pro football, in essence thumbing his nose at protesting academics who insisted the move would irreparably harm both the college game and Grange's career. The book continues through all of Pyle's successes, and more than a few of his failures, including his signing of controversial French tennis star Suzanne Lenglen and his near-bankruptcy following losses incurred staging the short-lived annual Bunion Derby, as newspaper columnists dubbed the notorious 3,470-mile transcontinental footrace first held in 1928.