Steve Young Talks: Here’s Lowdown on Life in Express Lane

This is the home of the Los Angeles Express football club. What’s left of it.

Pieces are chipping off. Last week, the Express band, which plays at home games, was fired. Or dis-banded.

Not only was there no music at the Express’ game with the Birmingham Stallions last Sunday at the Coliseum, but only two of the team’s eight cheerleaders showed up. The other six were busy attending a Raiderette tryout camp.

Last Tuesday, the Express players were informed that the club could no longer afford to film practice sessions.

Any day now, you expect the local chalk company to send a repo man out here to Polliwog Park with a vacuum cleaner to suck up the white lines on the practice field.

Into this scene of gloom and despair Wednesday morning rode Steve Young, the quarterback playing on a $40-million contract for a 40-cent organization.

He arrived early for a breakfast interview. He was driving a new four-wheel-drive vehicle and wearing a Dodger cap, a T-shirt and sweat pants. Also shoes.

I had offered to buy him breakfast because my journalistic instincts told me that here was a kid who was ready to explode. With five games left in a disastrous season, Young had experienced being benched, sacked, injured, embarrassed and ignored.

The fates had been unkind. If the team had folded two weeks ago, as it almost did, Young quite likely would have wound up as a quarterback with the Raiders.

But here he is, stuck in Polliwog Park, and Young must be ready to put some heavy knocks on the players, coach, city, league and life in general.

In short, here’s a juicy story waiting to be plucked.

After all, when your boat has been torpedoed and is sinking, you don’t run up the cocktail flag and call for the water skis.

I was wrong.

“I don’t think my experience with professional football has been what you’d call normal but I don’t regret it,” Young said cheerfully. “I’ve learned a lot about myself. How to handle losing, a lot about how to play quarterback. I can’t complain at all. Corny, but it’s true.

“I’ve played, I’ve learned, I’ve got some great friends on the team, I love playing in Los Angeles.”

Dejectedly, I slammed shut my notebook.

But Steve Polyanna continued. “The last few games have been difficult,” he said. “Still, you love to play the game. Even with hardly any fans, you’ve still got 11 guys on the other team who want to kill you. Football’s an intense game. I love that. It’s awesome.”

Awesome? Getting spindled and mutilated in front of 3,000 people, with not even a band to drown out the moaning?

“I called my dad a couple weeks ago, complaining,” Young said. “He told me, ‘Wait a second. You’re one of the richest guys in the world, you’re playing football, you’re living in a great town.’

“He really unloaded on me. He knew something was wrong, he could tell by watching me play. He said, ‘I can understand what you’re saying about the problems there, but you’re starting to accept them.’

“He was right. I am lucky.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I thought.

I scrambled for a new story angle. How about: Hick Goes Hollywood. Sure it’s been done before, but it’s always fun.

What can a young, single, superstar athlete do with $40 million dollars in L.A.?

Young told me. He has a small, one-bedroom apartment and some rented furniture.

Any new wardrobe purchases?

Yes. He’s wearing it. The Dodger cap.

“I’ve got a suit and tie for church,” he said. “Everything else is T-shirts and Levi’s. “I could use a new wardrobe,” he added, but there was no urgency in his voice.

What about that swingin’ night life in the South Bay beach cities?

“I don’t go out a lot. I do go to a lot of movies. Five guys on the team live in the same apartment complex and we go out to a lot of movies.”

At least, Young bought himself a new car, the one he was driving this morning.

“That’s not mine,” he said. “Gordon (teammate Gordon Hudson) loaned it to me. I haven’t decided if I’m going to buy a car.”

Why rush into such a major purchase?

Young laughed about how he can’t break the old habit of shopping for bargains in the supermarket. He goes to Dodger games and sits in the cheap seats upstairs, Bob Uecker country. Not that Young really is a hick, understand. He graduated from Brigham Young with a degree in international relations and finance.

He is fluent in French and plans to enter law school soon, with vague ideas of someday working for the State Department.

But lawyers who speak French are a dime a dozen. I wanted to hear about bitterness toward the USFL, or about life in the fast lane.

No dice. He shot down my story angles like fat, low-flying ducks.

“I’m happy, and my life style’s pretty simple,” Young said with a smile and a shrug. “I like it that way.”

The waitress arrived.

“I’ll have the Lumberjack Special,” Young said.

I told her I wasn’t hungry.