He was an original Marlboro Man, a cigarette model whose built-for-Hollywood persona played out on big-city billboards and inside magazines across the country. 

But that’s just a chapter to the Bill Farrell story. 

He played football in college and he was a wrestler, too. He took up the sport at the age of 26 and, incredibly, placed sixth at the World Championships six years later before going on to coach one of the most decorated Olympic freestyle squads in American history. 

But that, too, is just a fraction of Farrell. 

These days, he’s perhaps best known in the wrestling community as the namesake of the tournament that begins Friday in New York, where Olympic hopefuls gather for the Bill Farrell International. 

Still, though, athletes, coaches and spectators pass through the tournament each year without ever fully grasping Farrell’s massive impact on the sport. Perhaps the simplest way to put it is this: Bill Farrell was one of the most fascinating figures wrestling has ever known. 

“I don’t think a lot of young people even know who Bill Farrell is,” USA Wrestling director of communications Gary Abbott said. “He was always a person you wanted to talk to and listen to his stories, share ideas, pick his brain.”  

Farrell was the founding father of modern-style wrestling shoes in the United States. He was a well-connected businessman who butted heads with Phil Knight at times and nearly kept the Nike empire from ever getting off the ground. 

He was a Hall of Famer. Twice, in fact. He was inducted into both the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and the National Sporting Goods Industry Hall of Fame. 

If you’ve ever purchased a pair of ASICS wrestling shoes in the United States, you’ve felt Farrell’s influence. 

“It all traces back to him,” said Nick Gallo, Farrell’s longtime ASICS associate. 

I knew bits and pieces of the Farrell story and had an opportunity to visit with him months before he passed away in 2012 at the age of 82. I called him for a story about Dan Gable — Farrell was the 1972 Olympic coach when Gable won gold — and a short interview turned into a lengthy conversation. 

It wasn’t until recently, though, that, unintentionally, I learned a lot more about the man. 

I picked up a copy of Knight’s memoir Shoe Dog in August at a bookstore in O’Hare on my way to Estonia for the 2019 Junior World Championships. The Nike founder chronicled the challenges he faced in building his shoe business. 

Knight got his start by selling Japanese-made Onitsuka Tiger running shoes from the trunk of his car at track meets along the West coast. His operation was in its second month in 1964 when he received a letter from a wrestling coach in New York claiming he owned exclusive rights to distribute Tiger in the United States and ordering Knight to stop.

I mentioned the passage to Abbott during the Estonia trip. I said something about Tiger shoes — which later became ASICS — and a wrestling coach from New York who Knight repeatedly refers to in the book as “The Marlboro Man.”  

“That’s Bill Farrell,” Abbott said.

Farrell and Knight “didn’t like each other,” according to Gallo. 

Knight never mentions Farrell by name in the book. 

“It’s kind of insulting,” Gallo said. “Call the guy by his name. He was a Marlboro Man, yes, but he had a name and it wouldn’t have hurt that book to just mention his name. But he was mad at Bill because of a lawsuit that happened and the Japanese kind of took Bill’s side over Phil’s side.” 

Farrell’s partnership with Tiger began in the late-1950s. According to Gallo, Farrell formed a friendship with Shozo Sashahara after meeting the 1956 Olympic gold medalist at a tournament in Japan. Sashahara, the Japanese flag bearer at the Melbourne Olympics, was close with Tiger founder Kihachiro Onitsuka and their relationship opened the door for Farrell to become the lone Tiger dealer in the United States — at least until 1964. 

Then Knight entered the picture. Fresh out of grad school at Stanford, the former University of Oregon runner set out to change the athletic shoe market in the United States. He started with a $50 loan from his father and an idea that he could build a business by importing high-quality, low-cost running shoes from Japan. 

Knight was just getting started when he received the letter from Farrell explaining that he’d met with top Onituska executives and they’d tabbed him the exclusive dealer of Tiger shoes in the United States. In his book, Knight wrote that the ordeal made him consider getting out of the shoe business. 

Instead, he decided to make a trip to Japan for a last-ditch meeting with Onitsuka. He pitched his case and the head of the company ruled that Knight could sell Tiger running shoes in 13 Western states, while Farrell could continue selling them along the East coast and remained the exclusive distributor of Tiger wrestling shoes across the country. 

Farrell stayed deeply involved in the business side of wrestling for decades. He also sold singlets, Resilite mats and Universal Gym weight-training equipment. He was a five-term president of the New York Athletic Club. 

“Bill was highly intelligent, very funny,” Abbott said. “He was somebody you enjoyed spending time with. He wasn’t successful by accident.”

Gallo said Farrell dabbled in acting, real estate and travel. He took extravagant vacations to tropical islands. He made an appearance on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.  

“Bill was a very amazing, accomplished person,” Gallo said.  

In the late-1960s, Farrell took over as the national freestyle coach for the United States. The 1969 squad placed second at the World Championships, the highest an American team had ever finished up to that point. It set the stage for one of the best Olympic performances ever in 1972 when the United States racked up six medals, including golds from Gable, Wayne Wells and Ben Peterson. 

Gable said Farrell had an ability to take wrestlers with different personality types and backgrounds and mesh them together within the team framework — which later became a hallmark of Gable's dominant 21-year coaching run at Iowa. 

“He implemented the adaptability to work with just about every athlete,” Gable said. “He brought everybody together a little bit. It wasn’t like two divisions. We didn’t have divisions. We had respect, you know, unlike what’s going on in the world today. He developed respect.”

He developed it by leading without ego, by utilizing his personal strengths but also entrusting those around him. 

 “I don’t think he died a millionaire. In fact, I know he didn’t,”  longtime Farrell associate Sonny Greenhalgh said. “But I do know he died with a hell of a wrestling family that was very loyal to him.”