Striking While the Owners Are Cool
By Tom Callahan
At its best, pro football has become a beastly game, overgrown to the point that last season's 263-lb. center for the Washington Redskins was summarily judged too small for the post this year. "Strength" coaches credit the Nautilus exercise machines, but not even Jules Verne could stand beside a modern lineman and imagine this is a product of natural nutrition. The rate at which these superhuman beings injure one another has gone beyond the level of an epidemic, and the extent of the owners' compassion was expressed last week by the wife of Jack Kent Cooke. Asked if her husband gets upset when a Redskins player is injured, Suzanne Elizabeth Martin replied, "Certainly, yes he does, just as if one of our racehorses was hurt."
Over the past two weeks, of course, pro football was not at its best. Nine- tenths of the regular players remained on strike for a principle -- free agency, or possibly a larger dignity -- while the richest few soldiered on in ! the interest of their annuities. Playing rough this time, the owners filled out their rosters with the ready surplus of football majors still nursing old college dreams on loading docks and in convenience stores. (How many of them there are standing by!) Included were a prisoner or two, along with a couple of prison guards for competitive balance, but only one man under indictment for murder.
About 28% of the National Football League's long-standing customers showed up to sample the first bogus games -- as many as 38,494 in Denver, as few as 4,074 in Philadelphia -- while the television audience started out curiously strong (just three or four rating points off the normal 14) but dwindled as the afternoon bore on and the novelty wore out. In 17 years, only one Monday- night program ever summoned less interest than the sans San Francisco 49ers versus the new New York Giants, though the show contained one exquisite moment. Beginning the second half, 49ers Coach Bill Walsh inserted a running quarterback and abruptly switched to a college-style "wishbone" offense. Across the field, New York's Bill Parcells took a double look and exploded in laughter.
A lot of people were laughing at the bartender quarterbacking the Bears, the stockbroker directing the Packers, at eleven sacks against one offensive line and a kickoff mistaken for a punt. Four punts were blocked for touchdowns. But the football was not as demonstrably bad as all that, just demonstrably not the best. Competition may be relative, but excellence fairly requires the stiffest opposition of the day. And excellence is the fundamental allure of sport. At the same time, the damage to the integrity of the statistics and the standings is probably being exaggerated. Traditionalists at first appalled by Gary Hogeboom's record-tying five touchdown passes in Colts livery were surprised to find out that the 22-year-old record did not belong to Johnny Unitas, as anyone might expect, but to a dentist who used to back him up, Gary Cuozzo. Anthony Allen's record 255 yards' worth of Redskins receptions left Charley Taylor's and Bobby Mitchell's historical places undisturbed; Newcomer Gary Clark had set the all-time standard just last year.
As the second weekend of scab games rolled around, without several of the major TV advertisers this time, picketing ranks were thinning and, up to eleven at a crack, the players appeared to be caving in. Free agency suddenly lost its urgency, but now the owners wanted to take their time with everything. Some onlookers noticed that the white stars seemed to be the weakest links, and wondered if black athletes were not a little more knowledgeable about perceived injustices and thus inclined toward sacrifices in the cause of freedom. A number of these idle and unanswerable musings were irresistible. Why have baseball players held together so much better and achieved so much more (almost double the salary, triple the pension)? The historic contribution of Baseball Labor Leader Marvin Miller must be one reason, but Minnesota Third Baseman Gary Gaetti picked at another last week after hitting two home runs in a play-off game. Asked if this had been his biggest day in baseball, he thought a moment and said, "No, it was the day I was called up to the big leagues."
Star football players, catered to at every level, from the green fields of Pop Warner to the auto showrooms of Oklahoma, are carried into the big leagues on sedan chairs. It takes a refugee from a minor-league bus, or perhaps a replacement player from a loading dock, to appreciate the thought that $47-a- day meal money may not have been a birthright. Possibly it was argued for and won at a certain cost by men who believed a point worth walking out for was worth staying out for. Pro football players are certainly made from the most clay, but it may not be the strongest stuff.