Lonnie White recalls sights, sounds and (gulp!) smells of Saints’ bad old days
Lonnie White was a wide receiver/kick returner for USC from 1982-86, which included appearances in the Rose, Aloha and Citrus bowls. In 1986, White established a single-season school record for kickoff return yardage (716 in 29 returns), a record that still stands. A former sportswriter with The Times, he made the New Orleans Saints roster in the strike-shortened 1987 season.
Garrett Hartley’s game-winning field goal to give the New Orleans Saints a 31-28 overtime victory over Minnesota in last week’s NFC championship game was still in the air when the phone rang.
On the line was my former Saints roommate Derrick Taylor, who did not hesitate to ask me: “How do you feel? Are you happy for them?”
That’s when it hit home. The New Orleans Saints, the onetime laughingstock NFL franchise that had paid my bills many years ago, were Super Bowl-bound. Some might think 43 seasons is a long time to wait for a trip to the big game, but as a former employee . . . I didn’t see it coming so fast.
How in the name of Jim Mora, Sam Mills and Dave Wilson did that happen?
Taking a telephone trip down memory lane with Taylor, we couldn’t believe this was the same franchise that had given us so many laughs back in the day. Well, laughs as in . . . “Someday we will laugh about this.”
From the team’s outdated practice facility -- which featured arguably the worst weight room in the league -- to the undersized, brick-hard beds used for training camp, the Saints were still considered a franchise joke when I joined the team as an undrafted rookie free-agent wide receiver in 1987.
Think Burt Reynolds’ “Longest Yard” meets Peter Gent’s “North Dallas Forty.” Yes, these football movie “classics” are a good way to describe being an employee for the Saints in the late 1980s. A collection of misfits, an incredibly awful setting, and stories more like a farfetched Hollywood script than an NFL franchise game plan.
After spending four seasons on the big stage in the Coliseum as a member of the powerhouse USC Trojans, the biggest surprise was to see how rundown the Saints’ facilities were.
Built in 1967 when the team joined the NFL, the building had more of a prison feel than that of a professional football facility. The paint on the walls was old, worn and dingy, and the place had a musty aroma that reminded you of past Saints teams -- it stunk.
The practice fields weren’t well-kept either. They were uneven, always wet and slightly muddy. Most players complained, but the sloppy fields turned into a plus for me, thanks to fellow free-agent rookie quarterback Erik Kramer. , It was difficult to get quality repetitions as a rookie wideout, but when I did I was able to keep my footing on the muddy grass, unlike some of the faster wideouts. Kramer, who eventually played 13 NFL seasons and still holds the Chicago Bears’ single-season passing record, helped keep me with the team with his strong arm and accurate throws.
When it was time to hit the weight room, the fields didn’t seem so bad.
“I couldn’t believe it when I first walked into their weight room,” said Taylor, who played three games as a replacement player for the Saints in 1987 and then spent five years in the Canadian Football League. “It was so small and smelled really bad. You would have to wait a long time in line just to bench press and there were always people rushing you.”
Maybe that’s why many veteran players owned memberships at local fitness gyms. Think about that -- NFL players working out at Bally Total Fitness just to get in shape for the season.
Mora, in his second year as coach when I got there, was determined to get this team shipshape, despite the conditions. In fact, he turned the Saints’ lack of respect around the league into a rallying cry for his team. With two USFL championships under his belt and a roster filled with former players from the United States Football League, Mora went to work . . . and more work . . . and more work . . .
Despite temperatures that rose above 100 degrees for daytime practices at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, La., Mora’s workouts were unrelenting. He didn’t care about the horrible facility or sleep conditions, or the fact that the lousy training-camp food wasn’t helping the players’ bodies to revive.
Finally, some of the veteran players talked to team owner Tom Benson about the food, and he hired a gourmet chef from North Carolina who took special pride in his meals. This did not go over well with Mora, who criticized some players for eating too much and thought that the high-end plates were making his team soft, not to mention fat.
We all discovered how thin this club really was when the Saints spent several days in Wisconsin practicing against the Chicago Bears, who were still riding the success of their Super Bowl XX victory over New England. For the entire week, the Saints were treated like a JV team compared with the Bears, who were led by marquee players like Walter Payton, Jim McMahon and Mike Singletary. And we felt like one.
When we arrived on buses and the fans discovered we weren’t the Bears, they would just walk away. Guess they figured we were practice scrubs. People thought nothing of walking through our workouts and team practices. In town when people asked and discovered we were the Saints, they would say: “Is there a player we would know?” Talk about humbling.
As it turned out, Mora was the coach who finally got this franchise headed in the right direction and led the Saints to their first playoff appearance. And today it’s a much different story for the Saints. They have become America’s new “feel-good” team heading into Sunday’s Super Bowl matchup against the Indianapolis Colts. The team has a new, state-of-the-art practice facility and the franchise’s fan support ranks among the best in the league.
Funny how things change. Well, funny now.
Lonnie White is a feature writer for Fanhouse.com.