Life Its Ownself

by Dan Jenkins

  The Lions defeated the Vikings in Detroit by the score of 10 to 3. They broke the 3-3 tie in the third quarter with an 80-yard drive that featured three pass-interference penalties. Detroit's quarterback, Kelvin Thorpe, sneaked across for the winning touchdown on his fourth try from the 1-foot line.

  The fourth quarter offered little more in the way of excitement than incomplete passes and offsides penalties.

  We were in Dallas, back at Texas Stadium, for the NFC championship game on Jan. 2, a memorable contest between the Cowboys and Lions. Kelvin Thorpe of the Lions scored two quick touchdowns for Dallas in the game's first five minutes by throwing interceptions to Len Ikard, a Cowboy linebacker. Dallas held on to the 14-to-0 lead for the rest of the game.

  In the last three quarters in Dallas, neither team advanced the ball past mid-field. There was so little action on the field that Teddy Cole and Mike Rash threw every insert into the telecast they could muster up, most of them having to do with the off-season hobbies of NFL players.

  Those viewers who stayed with us saw film clips of Hudson Stone, a defensive tackle for Dallas, building model trains; of Dallas quarterback Alvar Nunez cooking beef fajitas; of the Lions' Oran Rippy, a strong safety, boarding a plane with his pet goldfish; and of Gregg Glasscock, a Dallas running back, being handcuffed by federal narcotics agents.

  Brent Musburger did the voiceover on all of the inserts. He explained that Gregg Glasscock had been cleared of trafficking in drugs. The 5-pound sack of Gold Medal flour he had been seen to purchase from a fishing-boat operator in Key West had later tested out to be a 5-pound sack of Gold Medal flour.

  Earlier that same day, the AFC championship game was played in Miami. The Seattle Seahawks had beaten the Dolphins 2 to 0 on the last play of the game. What happened was, Jackie Barnett, the Miami punter, inadvertently stepped out of his own end zone for the safety that gave the victory to Seattle.

  It was a humiliating way for Miami to lose the game. A near-riot had erupted in the Orange Bowl. Barnett had been placed in the protective custody of police.

  Jim Tom Pinch defended Barnett in print. He wrote that Barnett's blunder—if that's what it was—had prevented the most boring game in the history of football from going into an overtime period, an overtime that would have caused turmoil with every sportswriter's airline reservation. It was a mercy killing, Jim Tom said, and Jackie Barnett was a hero.

  Dallas and Seattle were thus going to the Super Bowl on Jan. 16. And Larry Hoage said on the air that he, personally, had never looked forward to a Super Bowl with such nerve-tingling anticipation. He said it was clear to him from the playoffs that the NFL had brought "rip-snortin", rock- ribbed defense" back to football.

  The TV ratings for the playoffs were drastically off from previous seasons, and at the same time, the college game dealt its own blow to the sagging image of the NFL.

  In the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day, twenty-four hours before those so-called championship games in the NFC and AFC, the Auburn Tigers (10-0-1) and Texas A&M Aggies (11-0) played for the shouting rights to who's No. 1.

  Pat Summerall and John Madden did a first-rate job of broadcasting the game for CBS. Richard Marks had shown good judgment in assigning his best announce team to an event of such magnitude, even though it seemed likely the network would be sued for having breached the contracts of Terry Culver and Roxanne Lark, the popular boy and girl who were CBS's regular college football announcers.

  "I'd like to see 'em try to bounce Larry off a broadcast," Hoyt Nester said.

  We all watched the Cotton Bowl game on TV in Teddy Cole's suite at the Adolphus—Kathy, Teddy, Mike, Larry, Hoyt, and me. Kathy and I rooted for the Aggies, me because of the Southwest Conference, Kathy because of the Aggie fight song. Teddy and Mike rooted for Auburn. Larry rooted for Summerall and Madden to make mistakes. Hoyt kept stats from force of habit.

  The lead changed hands eight times in the game. Three touchdowns were scored in the last seven minutes before Auburn made a goal-line stand and slipped by with a 38-to- 35 victory in one of the greatest poll bowls anyone had ever seen.

  Only seconds after the game ended, I got a call from T. J. Lambert. He wanted to tell me that Auburn would have every starter coming back and remind me that, sadly enough, Auburn was the first opponent on TCU's schedule next season.

  He said, "Here I am tryin' to bring us back from the dead and I got to play me a national champion the first pop out of the box. The game was signed up five years ago when Auburn wasn't worth a shit; now they'll be comin' in here with their dicks hard."

  "You'll have Tonsillitis and Artis," I said.

  "They won't have played no college game."

  "Maybe it'll rain. Hold the score down."

  "It could rain fish fuckin' rooftops and it wouldn't help me none against them sumbitches. How's Barbara Jane?"

  In very good health, I said, as far as I knew. Her show was going to premiere in two weeks—the night of Super Bowl Sunday, in fact.

  "You ought to have your head examined," T. J. said.

  "Why? ABC made the decision. They think it'll get a big rating that night."

  "I ain't talkin' about TV, asshole."

  "What are you talking about... ?"

  T.J. said, "You're married to the greatest woman in the world and you can't keep Leroy's helmet on."

  "I haven't done anything, T.J."

  "No need to lie to me, son."

  "I'm not lying. Barbara Jane's overreacting."

  "You got that blonde with you right now, don't you?"

  "We work together."

  "You're in big trouble, son. You better straighten yourself out."

  "You want to meet Kathy? I'll bring her over."

  "I don't allow no whore lady in my home."

  "She's not a hooker, for Christ's sake. She's a good girl. She's a pal."

  "She must be somethin' else for you to shit on Barbara Jane."

  I tried to convince T. J. that I wasn't having an affair with anybody but J&B at the moment, that Kathy was a decent human being, a victim of circumstances who felt awful because of Barbara Jane's opinion of her and even worse about what had happened to my marriage. Kathy would like nothing better than to think of a way to undo the damage if it were within her power, I said. But the problem was in Barbara Jane's mind.

  "The problem's got nothing to do with whup," I said.

  "It don't, huh?" said T.J., who then whistled into the phone—a long, low, rippling noise.

  "What's that?" "Face mask," he said.

  There had been no way to reason with Coach Lambert that day.

  EIGHTEEN

  I guess going to a Super Bowl would be fun if you were a person who's just escaped from a mental ward or a maximum-security prison. The National Football League likes to promote Super Bowl Week as one of the grand experiences on the sporting landscape, but anybody who's ever been to one will tell you it's basically a six-day cocktail party followed by a frivolous, over-hyped football game that every poor, hungover bastard in town has come to loathe before it's even been played.

  I thought this after I went to the game as a player, and I thought it even more after I went as a broadcaster. You can't get over the suspicion that you're there for reasons other than to let two teams decide a championship. It's as if your primary purposes are to celebrate the mere existence of the NFL, to rejoice in the Commissioner's good health, and to drink a thousand toasts to the $900,000 commercial minutes that have been sold for television.

  When the Super Bowl goes to New Orleans every so often, as it did for the Dallas-Seattle game, you can multiply the dementia by 10. That's because the French Quarter, which never closes anyhow, becomes a combination of spring break and Tet offensive.

  Going to the Super Bowl as a broadcaster made it a little more bearable, but not much.

  CBS took over an entire hotel in the French Quarter that week, the Saint Louis. We had our own courtyard, our own bars, our own dining facilities. We could hide. We could avoid the insanity.<
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  The insanity was out there on Bourbon Street if you wanted to wade into it, but you could escape quickly. Nobody could get at you but the invited guests of the network, and since there were only 5,000 of those, we were protected better than most visitors to the city.

  I got two extra rooms in the hotel for Shake Tiller and Jim Tom Pinch and their guests. Shake brought Priscilla and Jim Tom brought Kelly Ann. Unnecessary baggage, as I saw it. One look inside The Old Absinthe House in the French Quarter was proof enough that the city was jammed with Priscillas and Kelly Anns of every size and accent. As Uncle Kenneth would say, you always bet the Under on wives at a Super Bowl.

  Shake had come to New Orleans reluctantly. As he had said, "I try to avoid eighty thousand people whenever possible."

  But having a room in the CBS stockade appealed to him. He would be close enough to life its ownself to stand on his balcony and holler at it, but it couldn't climb up and get to him.

  The days of Super Bowl Week were filled with organized interviews at which the press swarmed around a Dallas Cowboy or a Seattle Seahawk and tried to get him to talk at length about the case of chicken pox he had suffered as a three- year-old.

  Kathy Montgomery arranged for me to do inserts with every starter on the two teams and both head coaches, John Smith of the Cowboys and Turk Kreck of the Seahawks. Richard Marks wanted coverage on everything.

  "We don't want to miss an angle," he had said.

  The angles we got from the player interviews ranked right up there with most player interviews at most Super Bowls.

  Alvar Nunez, the Dallas quarterback, said, "I have a lot of respect for our opponent."

  Gary (Gun Mount) Gittings, the Seattle quarterback, said, "It's going to be one of the great games."

  Marshall Hammond, the Cowboys' top pass receiver, said, "I see it as a collision between two brilliant coaches and two brilliant systems."

  Borden (Swinging) Vine, the Seahawks' fleet pass receiver, said, "I just hope it's not decided by an injury and nobody gets seriously hurt."

  In private and off-camera, none of the players admitted to me that they had ever heard of Operation Dixie or a Script Committee.

  John Smith, the coach who had taken over from Tom Landry at Dallas, was a tall, handsome man who dressed like a banker. In the middle of our interview, he reached inside his breast pocket and handed me a small, leather- bound copy of the New Testament.

  "What's this?" I said.

  "Well," he smiled, "you might say it's our secret weapon."

  "There you have it," I said to the camera. "John Smith's gonna isolate on Leviticus and hit 'em in the Proverbs."

  The interview with Turk Kreck, Seattle's coach, was enhanced by his candy-striped leisure suit. I hadn't seen a leisure suit in years.

  Turk was a barrel-chested former guard with the Browns who couldn't help spitting on you when he talked. Jim Tom once wrote that Turk Kreck was the only man who could spit inside your glasses.

  "Some people think this is a party," said Turk, "but the Seahawks are here to play football."

  I asked Turk what he thought was going to decide the outcome of the game.

  "It better not be a zebra," he said, splashing me with the z.

  "We're in luck," I said. "Charlie Teasdale won't be working the game."

  "He could be the halftime entertainment," Turk said. "Let the cocksucker run out on the field naked and everybody who catches him gets to stick a flag up his ass! Are we live?"

  We went to all of the parties. Kathy and I, Shake and Priscilla, Jim Tom and Kelly Ann.

  All three network parties, those of CBS, NBC, and ABC, were on the same riverboat. They had the same seafood buffet, the same jazz band, and the same guests. The riverboat was overcrowded with ad-agency people, team owners, movie stars, and select members of the press.

  Jim Tom looked around the first night and said, "I have a new motto. Life is hard—then you die."

  Shake was grilled by some of the owners at the parties. They wanted to know if he actually believed what he had written in Playboy, if the players had been trying to sabotage the game.

  Shake never mentioned Operation Dixie or the Script Committee, but he said the playoff games had made it clear to him that the players had not packaged their best product, as it would have been clear to anyone but a lamebrain owner.

  Acacia Kirby, the rich widow from Tyler and Cuernavaca who now owned the Dallas Cowboys, suggested that Shake move to Russia.

  "You've done our nation a terrible disservice," said Acacia. She was a bony woman in her fifties, a third-generation oil heiress. Her face looked as if it had been drained of blood and glued onto a neck and shoulders that were excavated from parched land. Acacia's late husband, Polk, had talked her into buying the Cowboys from Clint Murchison for $100 million, after which he, Polk, had choked to death on a bite of cabrito.

  "I know about your husband," Shake said to Acacia. "What year did you die?"

  The owner of the Seattle Seahawks, Karl Lutcher, a man from La Jolla, California, who had amassed a fortune selling arms to Arabs, was more concerned about the motives of the players than Acacia Kirby.

  "There may be some truth to what you wrote," Karl Lutcher said to Shake. "I haven't liked the way some of our fumbles have looked. But I expect both teams to give us their best in the Super Bowl, don't you?"

  "No question," said Shake. "You're going to see an exhibition you'll never forget."

  The Seattle owner could have taken that two ways. He chose the wrong one.

  "It's a relief to hear that from you," he said. "I know you're close to some of the players."

  Looking at Shake and me both, he said, "How 'bout a prediction? I think we've got 'em outcoached. You can't give Turk Kreck two weeks to get ready for somebody."

  Shake said, "There are things you have to keep in mind when you're talking about a football game. Each team will have eleven men on the field."

  Karl Lutcher nodded.

  "And there's only one ball," I said.

  He nodded again.

  "Think about it," said Shake.

  "I hear you," the owner said.

  "The field's a hundred yards long," I said. "Not ninety- nine."

  "And there's sixty minutes on the clock," Shake said. "Not fifty-nine."

  "Another thing," I said. "That one ball? It's got air inside."

  "It's not round, either," said Shake.

  "Good point," I said. "It's damn near shaped like a football."

  "Put it all together and what have you got?" Shake said to the owner. "It's why we're all here."

  Jim Tom and the girls had been listening to us. As we walked away from the Seattle owner that night, Jim Tom said, "I've learned how to handle Super Bowl parties. Every time I yawn, I put a drink in my mouth."

  We saw Burt Danby at all of the functions. Most of the time, he would be working his way through the crowd, trying to give Veronica the slip.

  The first time we ran into Burt on the riverboat, he glanced at Shake and said, "Holy shit, it's Sherlock Holmes!"

  He then pumped Shake's hand in friendly fashion and got around to noticing Priscilla and Kelly Ann.

  "Hi, girls," said Burt. "Ever been on a Lear?"

  Shake introduced Priscilla Handler and Kelly Ann Rob- bins by saying, "Burt, I'd like you to meet Sonny Jurgenson and Bill Kilmer."

  "I'm exhausted," said Burt. "Fucking Super Bowls will kill you. Last night I kidnapped the Lindbergh baby, robbed a liquor store, threw up on my wife at Moran's, caught syphilis from a hooker, stole a police car, and set fire to an orphanage."

  "That'll win," said Kelly Ann.

  Traditionally, the Commissioner tossed the biggest party of the week. This time, it was on Friday night at the River Gate, a convention hall. Bars, buffet tables, and Dixieland bands seemed to be everywhere, along with 10,000 people you had never seen before in your life.

  The Commissioner and the owners and their wives were segregated from the rest of the party. Their tables were
behind velvet ropes and a ring of uniformed guards.

  We assigned Priscilla to talk her way past the guards and get Bob Cameron's attention, which she did with ease. The Commissioner came outside the ropes to visit with us. Priscilla came back with a heaping platter of barbecue shrimp and raw oysters.

  "You worried about the game?" Shake asked the Commissioner.

  "More than the owners," he said.

  "What do you expect?"

  "I'm afraid to think about it."

  I said, "Bob, I know you've checked it out. How many guys in the game are strong union men?"

  "Too many," Bob Cameron laughed. "Food poisoning won't work. That's off the record, Jim Tom."

  "I wasn't even listening," said Jim Tom, wearily. He then took out a spiral notebook and pretended to write something in it. "Commissioner poisons Super Bowl," he said.

  Back at our hotel that evening, Kathy and I sat in the courtyard after Shake and Priscilla and Jim Tom and Kelly Ann went up to their rooms. This was the night Kathy opened up about her lovelife. She said she wouldn't dream of discussing it with anyone but me—her best friend— but she needed to talk about it with somebody who would be sympathetic and understanding. The relationship was getting complicated. She could see it leading to a crisis, a choice, something that could affect her work, her career, her whole life.

  It had all started three years ago when she had first moved to New York. She had met this older man in a restaurant on the East Side, Gino's, over by Bloomingdale's, and she had let herself get involved with him.

  He had taken a liking to her, pursued her, practically adopted her. She had always been attracted to older men. They were more interesting than people her age. The man was in his early fifties and quite wealthy, but very married. That part had always bothered her, but every girl she knew at CBS was also "dating" a married man. Why was it so hard for a girl to meet a single guy in New York who was interested in something besides stock options and his mother?

  "I won't tell you my friend's name," Kathy said. "It wouldn't mean anything to you. He's a lawyer."

  The thing that had further complicated the relationship was that Kathy had accidentally, through a chance meeting at a party, become friends with the man's daughter, Denise.