C.C.
Cash and Carry
Pyle was a true American original. A dreamer and a schemer, Pyle made several fortunes by representing professional football and tennis players before quickly losing everything and disappearing into history’s dustbin. To some, Pyle was a visionary. Others called him a villain, a phony, and a fraud. Either way, sports as we know it today owes a considerable debt of gratitude to C.C. Pyle, who gave the Golden Age of Sports a good dose of its color, its flair, and its chutzpah.This work reevaluates Pyle’s fast life and times while analyzing his extraordinary and enduring legacy. It begins in 1925, when Pyle rocked the sports world by influencing Harold
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. It continues through all of Pyle’s successes, and more than a few of his failures, including his lucrative signing of controversial French tennis star Suzanne Lenglen and his descent into 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.