Stephen Guinan - We Are the Troopers: The Women of the Winningest Team in Pro Football History

I grew up in Toledo in the 70s, watching my dad slap his knees and shout at the TV as his beloved Detroit Lions were getting shellacked. A devout football fan, he rooted with extreme prejudice for the teams of his youth, having grown up in Detroit, as well as those of his acquired hometown of Toledo. On weekends he left the Toledo Blade sports pages strewn about the kitchen. As I was learning to decode those headlines covering all manner of football from the NFL to college to the short-lived World Football League (WFL), one day I read about a team called the Toledo Troopers stomping the Detroit Demons. I asked my dad about it. Theyre a womens team, he said. And theyre the best team in the country.

One can never trust a fathers appraisal of his sports teams, but my dads tone was reverential. And the more I read, the more coverage I saw from the likes of Orris Tabner on Channel 11 sports, I came to understand that Dad was right. Toledo could pride itself as the home of the best.

And just as they were emerging in my consciousness, the team disappeared. No Blade stories. No nightly news segments. No championships. They were simply erased from existence.

Years later, by blind chance I sat next to a stranger in my high school cafeteria. My dad is the winningest coach in football history, he said.

Your dad is Don Shula? I asked. Tom Landry?

His name is Bill Stout, he said. He coached the Toledo Troopers.

Winningest? I asked.

Best winning percentage all-time, he told me. I know, he said. I was the waterboy.

The headlines came flooding back to me, as did the images of women in green and gold on the gridiron. But the picture was incomplete. In my mind the team had played for so long and had accomplished so much. There must be a history there.

Over the years, I would learn it. The waterboy and I became friends. Guy Stout would introduce me to the winningest coach himself, a barrel-chested force who related to others through bluster and busting chops. Later, I met the coaches Carl Hamilton, Jim Wright, Jerry Davis, and Mike Stout. When they spoke about the Troopers, I could hear an echo of my own dads pride: It was the best time of my life, Carl said.

And then I met the players.

Throughout the 70s, eighty-two women suited up for the Troopers. Some played only a season. Many played for several years before injuries or pregnancies or career paths took them away from the game. Two players, Jackie Allen and Pam Schwartz, played all nine seasons. Together the Troopers represented the most diverse demographic you could draw up, except for three common traits: They were women. They were from Toledo. And they were football players.

In researching the book Ive been touched by their stories, as well as those of their opponents in Detroit, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Dallas, Columbus, Middletown, Fort Worth, and Oklahoma City.

As the movement for womens equality reached the halls of Congress in the form of Title IX, these women took to the most violent of American sports. They understood the game at a primal level as only one who has suffered its brutality can. They bore scars and sprains and broken bones. They did not see themselves as agents of change, but surely they were part of it.

Today they share an inspired reverence for the memory of their playing days and of a camaraderie found only in football locker rooms. They speak with misty-eyed pride about what it means to be a champion, and how the lessons they learned playing football and preparing for it would impact the rest of their lives.

I was a Toledo Trooper, Gloria Jimenez told me. And it was the greatest thing Ive ever done.

I hope that telling this story honors what they did.

When my dad told me about the Troopers, I asked him who he would root for in a contest between his favorites Toledo and Detroit. He didnt hesitate.

Toledo all the way, he said.