Queens football evangelist Hank Steinbrecher has led the sport's passion as a top American official to the American mainstream, and popularising the ritual in which the winning player, coaches dows at sports drink coolers in his previous career in Gatorade's marketing, and died at his home in Taxon on Tuesday.
His death from degenerative heart disease was confirmed by the United States Football Federation, where Steinbrecher was executive director from 1990 to 2000.
Sunil Grati, the federation president from 2006 to 2018, said in an interview that Steinbrecher's greatest legacy was to “more respect for American football at the national and international level.”
In the fall of 1990, the Federation, the national governing body of sports, had little money and was run by volunteers. It desperately required specialized management expertise.
The US men's national team had just played their first World Cup in Italy in 40 years. The United States was recently selected to host the Men's World Cup in 1994. And the early women's national teams were about to manifest themselves as an outstanding international power.
Later that year, Los Angeles lawyer Alan I. Rotenberg, who was the soccer commissioner for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, became president of the Commonwealth and hired his best lieutenant general, Steinbrecher. (It will be played at the stadiums of the host country). And, important to bringing business and commercial sensibilities to the Commonwealth, he was Gatorade's Director of Sports Marketing.
Steinbrecher joined the company in 1985 when New York Giants nose tackle Jim Bart abandoned the Gatorade cooler as manager Bill Purcell's head after the victory. Bert's counterargument was intended as a recall for what Bart considered harsh treatment by Pulcel during practice. However, Gatorade Duesing became a celebration act for the Giants, especially throughout the 1986 season. Linebacker Harry Carson continued to soak Purcell after the victory, finishing with the Giants' first Super Bowl title over the Denver Broncos.
Bill Schmidt, then vice president of Gatorade's Worldwide Marketing, said in Steinbrecher's opinion that he was grateful to have kept the ritual that sent letters to the Parcells and Carson during the playoffs that season, giving Gatorade publicity. Surrounded by each were $10,000 gift certificates for the Brooks brothers and a tongue-tongued suggestion for them to lift their wardrobe.
“So it became synonymous with victory,” Steinbrecher told journalist Michael Lewis in 2021. “And you can't ask for better marketing than that.”
When Steinbrecher joined the National Football Federation in 1990, he needed all the marketing support that it could gain. At the time, Rosenberg said in an interview that the group's headquarters left Squirrel with a trailer for the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Steinbrecher was accused of moving his office to two historic mansions in Chicago to upgrade his federal image.
He quickly set up the country and sought to promote its passionate yet disrupted grassroots network. He spoke to the local and state football associations with a friendly, enthusiastic enthusiasm that Rotenberg gave him the name of the nickname Hank.
During his tenure as Steinbrecher's executive director, the Football Federation essentially evolved from the mama and pop tactics, helping to elevate the sport that many Americans once thought of immigration games. It helped laid the foundation for a professional league for men and women in the United States and secured a US location on the international football stage.
In 1994, the United States hosted the Men's World Cup in nine cities. This remains the largest attended World Football Championship with an average of 68,991 per match, with a crowd of 3,587,538 people. In 1991, the US team won the first Women's World Cup to play in China. And in 1996, the American woman won a gold medal in front of a large crowd at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
Then, in 1999, the US held the largest sporting event held for women, filling the NFL and college football stadiums for the Women's World Cup. A tense final match between the US and China attracted 90,185 fans to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
When Brandi Chastain scored a penalty kick for the Americans, she ecstatic her jersey, creating one of the most indelible images in the history of women's sports.
But under the celebration, under the tension between Steinbrecher and the American players, many of them did not believe they treated the women's team fairly despite their success. A fierce contract dispute led an American woman to lead the strike before the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, attacking again before the 2000 match in Sydney, Australia. The Federation seemed very unprepared for the success of the women in 1999, so the team players held their own victory tour.
“I think people lacked vision in that era about what women's soccer is,” Marla Messing, chief organizer of the 1999 Women's World Cup, said in an interview. To be fair to Steinbrecher, she said, “He was the majority, not the outlier.”
He was stabbed by criticism. He was thinking about the development of women's soccer in his most proud achievements. “I worked tirelessly for a women's program,” he told Soccer America magazine in 2000 to leave the Commonwealth.
Henry William Steinbrecher was born in Queens on July 11, 1947 and grew up in the village of Levittown, Long Island. His father, William Francis Steinbrecher, worked as a janitor. His mother, Helen Ida (Hammer) Steinbrecher, worked at a jewelry store and played in the softball league. Both died in the early 1970s.
Mr. Steinbrecher was survived by his 53-year-old wife, Ruth Anne Steinbrecher. his sons, Chad and Corey. stepdaughter, Shauna Moss; sister Mary Silakovsky; and five grandchildren.
Football instilled Steinbrecher on a wanderlust. He began playing at the age of six and was known to take the Long Island Railroad, the subway and buses to play with Brooklyn and Queens club teams. He starred at Division Avenue High School in Levittown and won the National Small School Championship in 1970 as a defender at Davis & Elkins University in West Virginia. He received his bachelor's degree in English in 1971, and a master's degree in education from West Virginia University in 1972, then coached at North Carolina and Boston University's Warren Wilson College and Appalachia.
Football for him was sacred. When the Costa Rica men's national team coach threatened to travel to Washington with a hingeless Tillard in 1997 with a missile, he said Steinbooker called the White House if the coach's strategy for the World Cup qualifying match against the United States was revealed by news media.
His most memorable football moment, at least for his family, happened in the 1980s while playing with his sons at a family home outside Chicago. On one Thanksgiving, Steinbrecher shot the goal in the yard, but it got higher. The ball crashed through the dining room window and landed on the table as if his wife had set up a turkey.
Everything was not lost. Chad Steinbrecher said of The Trekey:
