DeJurnett Beat Rams to Anaheim : Nose Tackle, 33, Is Kidded About Once Playing in WFL

Ram nose tackle Charles DeJurnett is half the answer to a trivia question: Which National Football League players also played in the World Football League?

According to the NFL office, the only other one is quarterback Gary Danielson of the Cleveland Browns. Danielson played for the Detroit Wheels. DeJurnett played for the Southern California Sun.

Who could forget the Sun, with orange and magenta colored uniforms? The Sun called Anaheim Stadium home long before the Rams arrived.

“I seem like a dinosaur, huh?” DeJurnett said. “I just don’t want to become extinct yet.”

As it turned out, every player in the WFL was part of an endangered species. But his teammates insist that DeJurnett, at 33 the oldest Ram since Jack Youngblood retired, goes back further than that.

“Dennis (Harrah) and Kent Hill and Jackie Slater give me a hard time about playing in the ‘old Negro leagues,’ ” DeJurnett said, laughing.

They call him Daddy.

“Kent Hill makes me feel like I just came out of a convalescent home. ‘You been playing about 15, 16 years, haven’t you, Charles?’ But when they quit joking me, I’ll know I’m getting old.”

DeJurnett, from San Jose State, was a 17th-round draft choice of the San Diego Chargers in 1974. He thought his chances would be better in the WFL, which organized that year.

“When we started out, it was a lot of fun and a good experience for me and a lot of guys that got drafted low in the NFL,” he said. “They got experience and went on to the NFL. It helped me a lot.”

DeJurnett remembers the day the Sun folded in mid-season of ’75.

“We had just missed one paycheck, but it was late, and we’d started hearing about the other teams,” he said. “Detroit had folded. Portland had folded. You figured it was getting kind of close.

“We came into the meeting room after the sixth game and everything was cleaned out. You knew something was wrong. No film projector. (Coach Tom) Fears hadn’t come in yet. You just had that eerie feeling that something was up.

“Then you look around and see guys going through the equipment room. I guess I was kind of slow. I’m saying, ‘They’ll get in trouble if they take all this stuff.’ ”

DeJurnett’s one regret is not salvaging his jersey, No. 75.

“Before I could grab one, everybody else had grabbed ‘em,” he said. “I saw a guy walking around with my jersey. He didn’t even play ball. If he had been close to an alley I might have snatched him in there. But I couldn’t buy it off him or nothing.”

DeJurnett said his salary with the Sun was about $25,000. “It wasn’t bad in those days. Some guys made maybe 10 or 12 thousand.”

When owners Sam Battistone and Larry Hatfield vanished without paying off the players, “It left a lot of hard feelings,” DeJurnett said.

Younger players can’t appreciate what some of their elders went through, DeJurnett said.

“It’s changed so much,” he said. “You see guys now driving Mercedes and Porsches--rookies. I’m saying, man, it took me six or seven years to even get a Jeep.”

After the WFL folded, DeJurnett played six seasons for the Chargers before the Rams acquired him in 1982.

In the old Sun media guide, DeJurnett was listed as 6 feet 5 inches and 270 pounds. The Rams list him at 6-4 and 260. Apparently, that’s what playing nose tackle for a dozen years will do to you.

DeJurnett, though, has also learned a lot of tricks. The best one? “I’ve learned how to survive.”