Dickerson Says He’s Prepared to Wait Out Rams

Eric Dickerson is prepared for a long, hot summer of waiting for the Rams to alter their negotiating policies.

“I don’t get bored easily,” he said Monday on Day 1 of his holdout. “I love to watch television. I could watch television all day. I’ll watch a whole lot of television.

“But I’m real sorry this couldn’t be worked out before, that this had to come about.”

Club owner Georgia Frontiere said: “I’m not happy about it, period.”

As other Ram veterans checked into training camp at Cal State Fullerton Monday, Dickerson announced at a press conference in the Hyatt Wilshire hotel in Los Angeles that he wouldn’t be there until “Rams Vice President John Shaw honors his agreement to extend my contract for three years.”

That is the point of the dispute between the club and the 24-year-old running back who set a National Football League record with 2,105 yards rushing last season.

Dickerson’s advisers, former heavyweight champion Ken Norton, lawyer David Epstein and Norton’s associate, Jack Rodri, claim that at lunch last month Shaw promised to discuss extending Dickerson’s guaranteed contract for three years past the current 1986 commitment, then “reneged,” in their words. Dickerson was not present at the time.

Epstein said Monday: “It came at this hotel. I haven’t heard Mr. Shaw deny it.”

Shaw has declined to comment at all. As his advisers had earlier, Dickerson, in a prepared statement, seemed to appeal to Frontiere to intervene.

“Rams’ owner Georgia Frontiere has always treated me fairly, and I fully expect she will be able to straighten out this disagreement with Mr. Shaw,” Dickerson said.

Frontiere said later at training camp that she hasn’t been ignoring the situation. “I’ve been involved all along,” she said.

She implied that Shaw will continue to negotiate--or not negotiate--for the Rams, acting for her and the organization.

“It’s the same thing,” she said.

Coach John Robinson pointed out: “We have three people that are not in camp--actually four, with (Ivory) Sully.”

He drew a subtle distinction between Dickerson and linebacker Mel Owens, nose tackle Greg Meisner and reserve defensive back Sully.

“Three of them don’t have contracts, so they can’t be in camp,” Robinson said.

Owens and Meisner are continuing to negotiate, and the Rams plan to grant Sully’s wish to be traded or released.

Dickerson’s original series of four one-year contracts has two years to run.

“I fully intend to honor the terms of my original contracts,’ he said. “On the other hand, it seems only fair that at the same time, the Rams should live up to John Shaw’s agreement.

How Dickerson’s advisers plan to press their case was not entirely clear.

“We’re just getting started,” said Epstein, who earlier cited a California statute supporting oral agreements. “Let’s wait and see what happens.”

Meanwhile, Robinson said: “We’re obviously disappointed that he’s not here. We’re hopeful that Eric will be in camp soon. He’s taking care of his business, but our team is also going to proceed. We’re in training camp and there’s no world outside those walls. He’s outside the walls.

“Both sides have a right to do business. I think it will work out. It doesn’t strike me as being like life and death.”

Robinson smiled and added with a laugh: “That’s this week, though!”

Dickerson’s absence leaves two-year backup Barry Redden as the No. 1 running back, with A.J. Jones and Charles White competing for the next spot.

Bruce Snyder, who coaches the running backs, said: “It won’t change anything in terms of what we’re practicing. We’re deep enough there. We’ll just coach him when he gets here.”

Dickerson was not among those players participating in volunteer off-season workouts at Rams Park, when Robinson started installing his new passing offense.

The decision did not seem to be an impulsive one by Dickerson.

“I kind of made my mind up when they said they weren’t going to negotiate,” he said. “About a month ago, I guess.”

He was emphatic that his advisers had influenced him little.

“I hadn’t told them but my mind was really made up,” he said. “I was just hoping that we could work out something. I’d already said if they (the Rams) didn’t want to cooperate, hey, I wasn’t going to camp.”

The Rams, through Shaw, usually are agreeable to discussing contract extensions when contracts have only one year to run. But Dickerson didn’t want to wait until next year.

“I am in a high-risk business,” he said. “I need to hold out for the security that comes with the contract extension promised by the Rams.”

In his statement, Dickerson also spoke of “one-way contracts which require me to play but allow the team to back out any time it wants. . . . If I am injured or the teams simply decides it wants another player, my contract will be ended.”

The same principles would apply to an extension, so Dickerson wants that guaranteed. But the Rams also have a policy against writing guaranteed contracts.

Rodri said: “Shaw had made an agreement with us about a guaranteed extension of Eric’s contract. You can sign contracts through the year 2000. If there’s nothing behind them they’re just pieces of paper.”

At the press conference, Dickerson spoke from behind a cluster of microphones. Norton sat on his left, Epstein and Rodri on his right. After reading the statement, Dickerson answered questions, such as, what brought him to this impasse with the Rams?

“Two years of wisin’ up,” he said.

He didn’t seem to help his case when asked about Redden.

“Barry Redden is a very good running back,” Dickerson said. “They could be just as productive.”

He expected that his teammates would understand, saying: “Most of them have been in this type of situation.

“I’m still happy to be playing for the Rams, but I am not a fool, either. I am looking out for Eric. I care about the team, but I’m looking out for Eric now.”

Dickerson spent most of last week in Thomasville, Ga., visiting his girlfriend. He returned to Los Angeles Sunday evening.

He asked a reporter about training camp.

“They start (practicing) around 3 o’clock--when I get my first fine of a thousand dollars?”

He laughed. National Football League rules allow the Rams to fine holdouts up to $1,000 a day. Robinson would not say whether Dickerson will be fined.

Dickerson also stands to forfeit the $150,000 reporting bonus included in his $350,000 contract for this season.

“I’m prepared to do that,” he said.

As for a potentially long, bitter dispute spoiling the personal relationship among Frontiere, himself and the great-aunt Viola, whom he calls mother, Dickerson said: “This is business. I hope we keep it separate. I’m gonna love my mother, no matter what, and my mother’s gonna love me. But this is just business. She told me to ‘do what you have to do. I’m behind you 100%.’ ”

Dickerson also said that, contrary to some published reports about Frontiere’s flying his family out from Sealy, Tex., “I’ve always paid my parents’ way out here.”

And he said Frontiere spent considerably less than the reported $100,000 to furnish his Irvine condominium last year.

“She spent, I’d say, 35 to 40 thousand dollars,” Dickerson said. “It was very nice of her and I’m grateful, but I don’t see $100,000 worth of furniture and pictures in my house.”

And the Porsche she gave him after the ’83 season? “I was going to buy that car on my own,” he said. “I’d asked around about it. As a matter of fact, they introduced me to the guy (dealer). There is no way in God’s name I would ever ask somebody to go buy a car for me.”

Dickerson said he would work out on his own, running and lifting weights.