Schoenke built himself a one-man political operation. He handed out campaign literature at training camp. He got rosters from the league office and worked the phones every night. Several hundred NFL players “were looking for an opportunity to get involved,” including twenty of his Redskins teammates. Almost every position group chipped in—“linemen, running backs, defensive backs, linebackers, ends, kickers …. But no QBs.” In a moment that seemed to Schoenke to explain that situation, when Schoenke and Johnny Unitas ran into each other at BWI, Unitas yelled, “stay away from me, you commie bastard!”
But most “guys were eager to talk” to voters, he says. Players who’d grown up on farms spoke to farmers in their own language; the Dolphins’ Marv Fleming, who’d taken one of the NFL’s USO-organized trips to Vietnam, talked about “guys dying over there.” “We’ve done something about destroying the generalization of the dummy in shoulder pads,” the Chiefs’ Ed Podolak, who put in more than 10,000 miles on McGovern’s behalf, told a UPI reporter. Columnist Jeannie Morris described the Chiefs as “a hotbed of McGovernites.” Football players could make converts where your typical McGovern-loving long-hair wouldn’t dare go. Podolak, for instance, fit in at “bar areas and construction sites,” said Mark Reza, who took over much of the detail work for Athletes for McGovern once the NFL season began, because “nobody’s gonna call him a sissy.”
A “total novice” at political organizing, Schoenke took politics seriously as a contest of ideas. He thought of it as his moral duty, a “commitment toward decency,” he told the Washington Post, to be at once football player and citizen. “The time when the jock was king is gone, when you just had to stand up and everybody’d swoon,” he added. “Now you better have something to say, or they’ll boo you right down.” He didn’t consider himself a celebrity and didn’t want fellow players to high-hat the voters. “These guys aren’t just props,” he argued. “They are citizens with convictions.” Redskins defensive tackle Bill Brundige, who had never done anything even remotely like this before, explained to the Post the day before the election that “I did what I thought was right because I felt an obligation. I believed in my candidate.” Schoenke introduced players to McGovern and let the candidate’s principled sincerity sway them. Having been given no direction from the campaign, Schoenke told the players to keep it simple. “Speak from the heart,” he remembers saying. “Tell the people why you support him.” “I was raised on a family farm in Iowa,” Podolak said at a McGovern rally in Milwaukee, “and saw my father, who dearly loved the profession of farming, forced off the land. Senator McGovern was the first and loudest voice to speak of the small farmer.”