THE TOUGHEST RAM? : Unfortunately for the Players, John Shaw Is Not a Teammate; He’s the Lawyer With Whom They Must Negotiate Contracts

Who in the Ram family is due $200,000 in salary this year but hasn’t been seen or heard?

Right. Eric Dickerson. And John Shaw.

The difference is that Shaw, the Ram vice president of finance, is earning his money. As far as he’s concerned, Dickerson could sit in Sealy, Tex., until the sun sets in the East.

“He’s absolutely unshakable,” Jack Mills, Dickerson’s former adviser, says of Shaw.

“I think he (Shaw) will sweat him (Dickerson) out of this,” says Calvin Guidry, who represents the club’s top draft choice, Jerry Gray.

“He doesn’t get emotional,” says Terry Bledsoe of the Buffalo Bills, who negotiated the recent Vince Ferragamo trade with Shaw.

All the people Shaw has dealt with are not as lavish in their praise, but they respect his skill and authority.

“Too much authority,” says Jim Kiles, an agent who bears scars from Shaw skirmishes.

A few foes resent Shaw’s lack of a football background, but Leigh Steinberg, who represents 16 quarterbacks and four of this year’s first-round draft choices, says: “It makes him stronger as a negotiator . . . one of the shrewdest in the league.”

While other negotiators might “fall in love with a player,” Steinberg said, Shaw can remain dispassionate and detached, dealing only in market value--dollars and cents.

And if Shaw’s football portfolio is empty, Chuck Hutchison of the Green Bay Packers says: “He must be a fast learner.”

So who is John Shaw?

The public certainly doesn’t know him. Even some of the Ram players wouldn’t recognize him. He prefers to remain an enigma, an executive avoiding publicity.

Who wields the most clout in the Ram organization, next to owner Georgia Frontiere and Dominic Frontiere?

John Robinson, you say? Guess again.

If Robinson were able to make an end run around Shaw--and don’t think he hasn’t tried--Dickerson wouldn’t be sitting in Sealy.

Shaw is the man.

“Absolutely no question,” says someone close to the inner circle who begged anonymity. “The guy keeps the club together like glue. . . . Shaw runs it.”

In his ascent to authority, Shaw seems able to resist pressure from the owner herself. He sits at her right hand in the National Football League owners’ executive sessions, and so far in the Dickerson holdout she has refrained from undermining his stand.

But even with his growing influence around the NFL, Shaw prefers to function in the shadows, pulling the strings of one of sport’s most financially successful organizations.

Who knows what motives lurk in the heart of a lawyer-CPA? Only Shaw does.

He wouldn’t be interviewed for this article. He wouldn’t even explain why he wouldn’t be interviewed, other than to say: “I want to remain consistent.”

Shaw, 33, first appeared in the Ram media guide in 1980, listed far down the executive ladder as controller/treasurer. Frontiere, who inherited the club from Carroll Rosenbloom the previous year, hired him from the accounting firm of Arthur Anderson & Co. on the recommendation of Michael Wayne, a member of her advisory board.

By the following year Shaw had leaped into the top echelon as secretary-treasurer behind only Frontiere and Don Klosterman, whose days with the team were numbered.

A year later, at 31, Shaw was second to Frontiere as vice president-finance.

The ’83 guide listed him opposite Executive Vice President Ray Nagel, with equal authority implied, but by ’84 Nagel was gone and Shaw’s position was secured--a fact underlined this year when Frontiere wrote him a three-year contract at $200,000 a year.

It has been quite a climb for a kid born in Brooklyn. He was 10 when he moved with his parents, three brothers and a sister to San Diego, where he attended Kearney High School. In high school he played tennis.

He received a degree in accounting from the University of San Diego in 1973 and went east for a law degree from New York University, receiving it in ’76. He practiced law in Bakersfield for six months before spending three years with the Arthur Anderson firm.

He likes baseball. He loves horse racing, approaching that sport, it is heard, with the cold, efficient calculation he brings to Ram negotiations.

But does he love football? Does he even like it?

Football has been Jack Faulkner’s life for most of his 59 years. Serving the Rams as administrator of football operations, he is old-line NFL, a good bet to resent the intrusion of upstart lawyers and accountants into the game.

But Faulkner said: “I think John Shaw is the best in the league at what he does. As far as the football goes, he relies on us to make judgments. I’m trained as a football coach. I’m not a numbers guy, like John Shaw.

“We’re lucky to have a guy like him. The business used to be football. Television has changed the whole complexion of profiting into deferred moneys, annuities and stuff that he can handle. I’m not equipped to do that.”

John Robinson implied that the situation is a delicate balance of power.

“John’s very good at what he does,” Robinson said. “The ability of us to communicate together becomes very crucial, like, what are we trying to do? Are we trying to win at all costs, or do we want to win and make money?

“Shaw has to want to win and, ultimately, Georgia has to create a direction. There’s always conflict. If you look at it selfishly as a coach, you would be willing to pay anything, do anything, to get the best players. There has to be give and take on both sides.”

But Robinson also said he would be about as bad at Shaw’s job as Shaw would be at his. When the original negotiations with Dickerson became sticky two years ago as the Los Angeles Express made an 11th-hour bid, Robinson said: “I would have given him (Dickerson) anything and everything. As a negotiator, I would not be effective. I’d be the world’s worst.”

Their arrangement, then, has a basic understanding.

“No trades are made without my involvement in the decision,” Robinson said. “But I don’t do any of the negotiating.

“There is a certain amount of lobbying I have to do, and John has to say, ‘You’ve got to understand what all this costs.’ I have to have an economic lesson once in a while, and he has to hear about what it takes to win.”

If Robinson had his way, Dickerson would be on a jet to Anaheim. The star’s holdout may be the ultimate test of the coach’s relationship with Shaw.

Those who have dealt with Shaw are in agreement on one thing: He won’t cave in.

Guidry said: “I don’t honestly believe the guy likes football, which gives him a lot of leverage. I don’t think he listens very well to the coach.

“I enjoy working with him. I said to him one day, ‘It’s very difficult to get mad at you.’ And I was really upset about some things because he’s a hard-liner and he plays hardball very well.”

Mills said: “He doesn’t use bluffs or ultimatums. He sticks to his game plan. I’ve never seen him lose his cool or get flustered.

“You tend to get a little frustrated just because he is so strong in the way he deals. It’s not a demanding, ultimatum type of negotiation. It’s just a firm approach.”

Bledsoe said: “He’s not a table-banger. A negotiation with John is a business transaction.”

Shaw doesn’t always succeed. When Robinson decided to trade Ferragamo to avoid a quarterback controversy with Dieter Brock, the Packers wanted Ferragamo but Shaw was unable to reach a trade agreement with them.

Later, however, he swung a deal with the Bills that delighted Robinson by bringing tight end Tony Hunter to the Rams.

Shaw seems to play a waiting game in his negotiations, holding the line until the other side crumbles. Right now he’s waiting out Dickerson.

And if anyone ever doubted Shaw was tough, that changed when the Rams first signed Dickerson two years ago. At the last moment, Bill Daniels of Denver, the original co-owner of the Express, flew Dickerson and Mills to California in his private jet.

Shaw met them at the Marina Hotel and laid a take-it-or-leave-it offer on the table, knowing that Robinson was counting on building his offense around Dickerson and that Daniels was prepared to top any Ram offer. Shaw then turned, swallowed hard and left the room.

Mills said: “I think he came to a point where he said, ‘This is as far as the Rams are going to go. If you really want to make a deal with the USFL, then go ahead and make your deal.’ He was very convincing. I think Shaw knew Eric wanted to come to the NFL.”

Dickerson’s new advisers claim that Shaw has reneged on a verbal commitment to negotiate a guaranteed contract extension. Shaw has neither confirmed nor denied the charge.

But Ladd Herzeg, general manager of the Houston Oilers, said: “In my dealings with him the past four years, his word is good. Everything we’ve said on the telephone he’s lived up to when we reduce it to writing.

“He handles himself well at league meetings. John is obviously a highly intelligent person to be able to rise to that level at that age.”

Steinberg said: “I happen to like him. He can be personally charming. I think of him as an incredibly formidable adversary. You always have the sense he has the full confidence of the Frontieres, and if the Rams went out of John Shaw’s life, he’d be very successful at something else.”