Progressing in regimental fashion, we’ll stay with the quarterback questions for a while. Rick of Boulder, Colo., thinks one of the most overrated statistics for QBs is fourth-quarter comebacks, a big hoo-ha out there in Elway country; but Rick feels that maybe it was some earlier screw-ups that can put a team in a comeback mode to begin with. Yep, I sure agree with that; in fact, I think trying to isolate any one stat (except Favre’s durability) is a mistake. My least favorite stat is passer-rating points, a system keyed almost entirely to completion percentage. Step right up, dinkers, and collect your reward.
From Brandon of Austin: Rex Grossman gets benched. But no one ever calls for Drew Brees, with numbers that are almost as bad, to get the hook. How come? Three reasons — 1) Brees is better, 2) Brees has done it, and Grossman hasn’t and 3) Exactly who would you go with if you benched Brees … Jamie Martin with eight starts out of 13 years in the league? Free-agent rookie Tyler Palko?
Let’s stay with the Saints. From Myshall, Carlow, Ireland, comes Padriac, a fan of the Saints, namely Paul, Peter, Vincent and Sebastian … OK, ha ha, a fan of the New Orleans variety who wants to know what’s wrong, actually? The secondary has been exposed. So has the offensive line. That’s two big areas of need, and if they make the mistake of trying to fit Reggie Bush into Deuce McAllister’s role of heavy-duty back, that’ll be three areas. But I can’t believe they’ll do that, not with Aaron Stecker simply thirsting for action. Thanks for what you wrote about my work, mate.
And thanks to you, as well, Dan of Sammamish, Wash., who likens Bush to Rocket Ismail, a fantastic college player who never did much in the NFL. Ismail remains a mystery to me. He was the greatest collegiate kick returner I ever saw. Led the AFC in his rookie year with the Raiders, then kind of flattened out. I remember thinking he shouldn’t be messing around at wideout. Let him do what he does best. I liked Bush better as a receiver than as a runner last year. Now I don’t know what he is.
Question No. 2. Is the Cowboys’ Marion Barber another Robert Newhouse? No. Newhouse was a chunky-legged little banger. He was the featured runner only once in his 12 years with the club and in that he has something in common with Barber. Style-wise, Barber is different. He’s a two-gap runner with great instincts and competitive fire, a powerhouse, going for the first down. Why he plays behind Julius Jones, a guy he’s infinitely better than, I’ll never know.
Let’s whip overland to San Diego, whose Chargers provoked a question from my E-mailer of the Week, Garth Stewart, who comes from, well, from Seattle. A rather innocuous query, but it’s clothed in ancient history, which I love, thus, on this self-serving basis, a cherished award is rather frivolously given. “I continue to ask this question as relentlessly as the elder Cato calling for the destruction of Carthage. Did San Diego fire the wrong man? The wheels are coming off the bus.” If history truly repeats, Civis Stewart, then you shouldn’t be too anxious to get rid of Norv Turner. Carthage was destroyed, as Cato urged, but three years after he died at age 85. Do you really want to wait that long? By the way, I don’t fire coaches here on SI.com. Call it feather-footing, but it’s one game I refuse to play.
Closer to the action, Chris of La Mesa, Calif., wants my “overall opinion of Philip Rivers and the Chargers.” What I wrote in my rankings column still holds. They seem like a one-man team, Antonio Gates, whose circus catches kept bailing out an erratic Rivers. The Packers crowded the box to stop LaDainian Tomlinson and collected Rivers in the same box. He could have won the Green Bay game with one play, late in the contest, when the Chargers were protecting a four-point lead with two-and-a-half minutes left. Third and three on his own 28. A first down gets the Pack out of timeouts, and one more play runs into the two-minute warning. Another play and the clock runs way down, and another first down and the game’s over. What does Rivers do on third-and-three? Overthrows Vincent Jackson on a sideline pattern, and that’s a big guy to overthrow, 6-foot-5, 241 pounds. On TV Phil Simms makes this goofy pronouncement: “He played it smart.” Huh?
Punter Mike Scifres, and here’s an area you won’t see discussed that much … anyway, punter Mike Scifres, one of my favorites last season because he was usually good for a five-second, high hanger, in the clutch, let’s go with a 3.69 weenie that nets 29 yards, and the Pack is set up. The great firm of Merriman and Phillips, which has been quiet all day, and their lassitude this season has been still another problem, remains dormant. Green Bay scores its TD, Rivers still has enough time, but he throws three straight misfires — the third one a pick that comes back to the San Diego two, and it’s all over. The worst thing was that the great handicapper, Z, had San Diego as his lock of the week. You ask me about Philip Rivers? Phooey, I say!
On to less strenuous topics. John of Atlanta doesn’t much care for the last minute timeout that nullified game-winning field goals two weeks in a row. He asks about a proposed rule that says that if there’s a stoppage in play, then no timeout can be called after the play clock winds down to 10 seconds. Well, the league told me that timeouts were called well in advance, but the whistles weren’t heard because of the noise, so the ball was snapped and the ball kicked anyway. I’m not so sure. Didn’t look like that to me. Yeah, I’ll go for that 10-second rule. That last-minute sneaky timeout, which the league claims doesn’t really exist, frankly stinks.
My column, The Meaning of the Game, drew some positive responses and one negative. First eat your spinach, then you’ll get dessert. Nostalgia is overrated says Joe D. of Lynnfield, Mass. Do I really want to go back to the good old days of racism, sexism and toryism (OK, the last one is mine)? “The world isn’t better or worse, just different. Football today is not football of yesterday. So what? It is what it is.”
What a tough person. Is there no romance in your soul, sir? No dreams of the snows of yesteryear? Do you really love the hype, the wrestle-o-rama that is today’s presentation? You say you don’t, but you accept it because it’s here. So are certain political figures whom I can’t accept. So is terrorism. Besides, when I wrote of the past I was careful to point out this was an old-man’s vision, misty-eyed but not really clear. Do you wish to strip me of all my memories?
Well, Bill from Clearwater, where the water is truly clear, liked the piece. So did Andy of Baltimore and Alan of Omaha and J. Tyler of Terre Haute, and these are not chaps to mess with. Note to JT — my favorite thing in Terre Haute is the Eugene V. Debs museum, honoring one of my heroes. My least favorite is the motel where we stayed while covering the Colts’ camp. Within a two-block span on either side, we counted 32 chain restaurants. We chose Outback. Next to the Hardee’s and Arby’s and McDonald’s and Burger King, it seemed like the Four Seasons.
Andy of Baltimore asks if Brian Billick runs one of the most media-friendly operations. Yeah, he’s pretty good about access, maybe because he once worked in the 49ers’ PR office. Herman Edwards is very good in that department, too. Alan of Omaha feels that all the dirt-digging types, epitomized by YouTube style of journalism are a big reason why the game has turned nasty. I guess so. Maybe it’s just the overall crush of journalistic bodies, mine included.
From Alfred G. of Santa Monica — Fox’s No. 1 team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman worked a game that neglected to include starting lineups. A mistake, or something deliberate?
I asked that same question — to someone on the production team of the show. His answer was that they had ditched them, but were “working on something new.” Oh, I see. Why tell people who’s on the field? WE ARE THE GAME holler the networks. How about showing the starting lineups, instead of all the Fox announcers in action that day? Freakin’ arrogance, I calls it.
Tim of Arlington shoots me this teaser: You’re a GM. Pick one but not both and tell me why. Terrell Owens. Randy Moss. My answer is that I’d pick the one least likely to go into the tank, if the team loses a few. Owens. The other guy might just spend half the game at the concession stand if the team were going badly. Thanks for your kind words and yo
ur concern about the book, and your pledge to buy two.
Nice of you to want my book,
Publishers feel that I’m a shnook;
Fantasy football, “now that’s got class,”
So I say, stick it up your …
Michael of Salt Lake City feels that a great team in a division elevates the whole level of that division because the other clubs are so intent at trying to beat it, hence the quality of the AFC South. Why wouldn’t they want to be better, just to be better and go as far as they can? But I’m not discounting your theory entirely. I think teams’ drafts are based on the toughest people they have to play twice. If you’re in the same division as Indy, you’d better have some serious cornerbacks. When he was with the Giants, Bill Parcells used to load up on guards. Why? Because all the other teams in the NFC East played a 4-3 and had at least one fine tackle — Eric Swann in Phoenix, Randy White in Dallas, Dave Butz in Washington, Jerome Brown in Philly.
From Guillaume, le grand auteur de Los Angeles: Arizona switches from a lefty QB to a righty, back and forth they go, so how does this affect the traditional LT-RT designation, with one, supposedly the tap-dancing pass blocker, protecting the back side and the other one the pounder on the front side? They just make the best of it, besides the differences aren’t as great as you’d think. It would be too upsetting to disturb these guys’ comfort zones by having them switch during a game after working all week on one side. And merci pour votre sentiments.
Ditto to Joel of Longmont, Colo. He wants to know what happens when a first-round draft choice just departs the board, as will take place if New England has to give up theirs. Well, if I worked for the Players Association, I’d say, hey, you can’t just remove a man from the work force, but I’m sure that management has made certain there’s a provision in the contract for it. As far as the effect on salaries, well, an agent would ask for first-round money if his guy is the 32nd pick, or the first one in the second round; the team negotiator would say, sorry, pal, but he was still taken in round No. 2. And back and forth they’d go, a little give on each side, a little take, and how we do worry about the comings and goings of the millionaires, don’t we?
8. Urgent Dispatch from Comrade Kalugin
A fairly comfortable time after Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika had changed almost all the rules of the Cold War and turned many of the KGB’s most fearsome operatives into willing comrades of the West, at least in theory, The New York Times ran a lengthy sketch of Oleg Kalugin, who had been the agency’s youngest major general in its history. The story began on the front page and continued with a jump inside, occupying a massive wall of print.
Normally one of these gigantic Times monoliths has a numbing affect, but I read every word avidly for two reasons. No. 1, it was written by no less a master of spywriting than John Le Carré, whose thrillers I’ve loved for many years, and No. 2, I had known Oleg when he was 24 years old. He had been my classmate.
Oleg’s career had been a contrast of light and dark. The dark side involved many KGB operations that would have drawn shudders, even gasps from our easygoing Class of 1959, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, if we could have seen what our handsome, smiling confrere would be up to some day. One particular nasty one that I remembered at the time — because it had been so bizarre — involved the dissident Bulgarian journalist, Georgi Markov. He had been eliminated by the Bulgarian secret service, which had loaded an umbrella with poison pellets and then had an operative shoot Markov with them, as he brushed into him.
I was a bit stunned to learn that Major General Kalugin had been in charge of the operation, although years later in an interview he was quoted as saying that he didn’t actually implement it himself … the Bulgarians did that … he just supervised it. This was during Oleg’s “Hallelujah, I’ve Been Saved” period after he had become a Soviet dissenter and enemy of the KGB and a valuable friend of the United States. His contrasting emergence into the light.
Le Carré, a.k.a David Cornwell, is, of course, an old pro and a former intelligence operative himself and, while acknowledging Kalugin’s many contributions to the West, he gave the impression that he wasn’t entirely buying the act. Perhaps it was Oleg’s insistence on how his deals had been betrayed by the slothfulness of the KGB, thereby driving him to our shores, that bothered the writer. I know it bothered me. But I sensed the picture of a guy saving his own behind, getting out while the time was right, and I guess Le Carré did, too.
So I decided to write to him, care of The Times, if that was indeed the way you reached someone of his stature, and give him the benefit of my memories of Oleg and the Class of ’59, high above the banks of the Hudson, just in case it might be of any use to him in future writing on the subject. This was not exactly dry material. It had its share of snappers, as you will see.
Now I’ve always considered myself a team ballplayer, and my first loyalty went to my team, Time, Inc., the parent company of Sports Illustrated, which paid, and still pays, my salary. So as Oleg’s name began to take on significance, I tried to pitch my little narrative to the powers that ruled the Time empire. I received one callback, expressing annoyance that a Cro-Magnon from the world of sport, pro football no less, actually had the audacity to, etc. etc. I remember how, in desperation, I actually invaded the office. Their editor, who later quit the magazine, citing inability to accurately express himself under its system, told me he’d let me know if anyone were interested. I counted four times that he looked at his watch, a typical managerial tactic to let you know you’re wasting his time.
Finally I wrote a note to the assistant managing editor at SI. “Doesn’t anyone even want to hear the stories about this guy?” I had mentioned a line in The Times that described Oleg as attending Columbia, “masquerading as a student,” while actually practicing his spy trade. “Hell, we were ALL masquerading as students,” I said. Later the editor told me he’d gotten a chuckle out of that line but hadn’t felt the need of passing along my note.
So off to the master of Smiley, and Leamas Who Came In from the Cold, went my Oleg stories, and quicker than I would have suspected came John Le Carré’s reply. “What fun about Oleg,” he wrote, followed by a thank you for permission to use of the material, if ever needed, but “you must write it all some day.” And then, he gave me a sense of what I had guessed about his feeling for General Kalugin:
“You know,” he wrote, “I had the impression that sometimes, listening and watching, that he really wasn’t real to himself.”
* * *
September, 1958: We had heard rumors that Columbia was about to host the first Fullbright Exchange Scholar from Russia, but we weren’t really sure. We found out on opening day when the foreign students introduced themselves to the class and gave a little talk about “Journalism in My Country.” I can’t remember them all; there were maybe a dozen or so. A few South Americans; the usual Gupta from India; one guy from Canada who’d show up every now and then to play for our intramural basketball team; lovely little Guiti Nashat from Iran (or was it Persia then?), who captured the heart of Mike Claffey, a tough Irishman from Queens with whom I’d been a copy boy on the Journal-American; poor Silvia Pakains, originally from Latvia, later a victim of an unsolved murder by, we suspected, a very weird countryman of hers. And Oleg.
Compactly built, handsome in a sandy-haired, Slavic kind of way … he looked like future Olympic sprint champ Valeriy Borzov. Friendly. Smiled a lot.
The speeches that day were mostly haphazard things, with English not always perfectly handled … “Waal, in our country we try to, ah, write sometimes better style …” Oleg blew them all away. His English was perfect. In precise, outline form, he described a journalistic system of integrity, logic, freely expressed ideas and clarity of purpose. Beautifully done. Total bullshit, of course, but we saluted the effort. Don’t forget, this was not too long after the Soviet tanks were in the streets of Budapest.
When c
lass broke up, we hustled Oleg down to the West End Bar & Grill on 113th and Broadway. “I want to see what a few Rheingolds do to him,” said 6-5 Charley Wilson, who jumped center for our hoopsters. They didn’t do anything to Oleg except make him a little happier, but they put Charley and a few others down. I’m sure Oleg was thinking, “Beer? Child’s play.”
He fit in well. He was socially adept, never coming on too strong, never really holding back. I’m ashamed to say that we never tried to see how he would handle himself in a far reaching political debate … it might have been interesting … but there was a certain amount of shyness that kept things away from political heaviness. We’d talk about beer or the weather or school or women. I’d guess you’d have to describe his demeanor as smooth, kind of the way you’d imagine people at an embassy would handle themselves. I never saw him lose his temper, or even show serious annoyance. When we had some really interesting interview candidates to practice on … Harry Truman, for instance, gave us a lesson in how to become browbeaten, whipped dogs, in the face of a really tough subject … Oleg never, to my recollection, asked a significant question. He was friendly to the female members of our class, even cordial, letting his well-developed charm carry him along without ever making an obvious play that I noticed.
He never let on that he was married.
Basically, he represented a huge puzzle to us. Was he just a friendly, charming guy who happened to be a Russian, or was there something perhaps a bit more sinister involved? When he wasn’t around, we’d concoct elaborate stories about him. What if he were a spy? Could they really have sent a young spy over to join our class and spy on America? Or on us? The idea was flattering.
Dr. Z Page 19