This Season, You Have to Pay Attention

Thirteen weeks into the season of pro football, there have been more than a few revolting developments, not the least of which was Joe Theismann’s body being twisted into a human pair of pliers. We have seen quarterbacks such as Jim Plunkett, Steve Grogan and Theismann get creamed, Eric Hipple’s head separated from its helmet, Jim McMahon miss game after game and quarterbacks of two 9-4 Los Angeles teams get booed by their own fans.

A fat kid with a funny nickname came from Clemson to Chicago and could not even crack the starting lineup during his first few games. Thirteen weeks into the season, he has appeared on television more often than Ed McMahon and is about to have his biography published by Signet books. A Saturday morning cartoon show cannot be far behind.

The San Francisco 49ers were treated like losers only a game or two after shampooing each other with champagne at the Super Bowl. Their quarterback was suspected of cocaine use, publicly denied it before he was publicly accused of it, and was cleared of all charges by the famous public defender Frank Gifford, who told the world one Monday night that those rumors about Joe Montana turned out to be “completely untrue.” How did they turn out to be completely untrue--because Joe Montana said they were completely untrue, that is how.

Just as nobody figured out the baseball season in advance, nobody foresaw what would happen in football. Neil Lomax of the St. Louis Cardinals was spotlighted at the beginning of the season as the man who would lead that team to glory. So far, he has led them to 4-9. The Seattle Seahawks were going to show off big-time quarterback David Krieg from small-time Milton College, but during his recent performance against the 49ers, the Seahawks would have had difficulty beating Milton College.

As for America’s Patsies, the New Orleans Saints, the only success they have seen throughout the years has been in the selling of brown paper bags with eye-holes to the fans. The Saints continue to avoid the playoffs like the plague. But just for comic effect, they replaced Coach Bum Phillips last week with Son of Bum, who masterminded Sunday’s butting of the Rams.

Yes, it has been a strange season. A kicker could not get a kick away in Denver because a snowball landed in front of him with a splat. A Kansas City player was practicing one day when the feds walked in and busted him and his twin brother for drugs. A New York Giant kicker got hurt, so they called up a 5-foot-6 high school teacher and promptly watched him turn into the second coming of Garo Yepremian.

In Miami, the most popular quarterback in town turned out not to be Dan Marino but a local college kid with a name right out of “Welcome Back, Kotter,” Vinny Testaverde. In New England, a Patriot patriot was so grossed out by his favorite team’s play against the Raiders that he climbed to the top of the stands near the press box and torched his Patriot cap. Nine weeks later, they were 9-4.

One by one, the big names of the games have begun to slow down or stop. John Riggins is starting to run like an old man. Fairly old men such as Lyle Alzado and Theismann have had their seasons ended early. Billy Sims and William Andrews have all but disappeared.

The world of the National Football League suddenly is populated by heroes named Boomer and Refrigerator and Little Train. Pittsburgh has a wonderful player with the wonderful name of Louis Lipps. It used to be that pro football stars were named Bronko and Bubba and Mean Joe. New England’s favorite player these days is a guy named Irving.

Football players were not necessarily tougher in the olden days; it just seems that way. Never mind that Green Bay’s Lynn Dickey does not have a tough-sounding name; Fran Tarkenton was not exactly butch. Dickey played great in the snow Sunday, but when Dickey asked his own team to bench him earlier in the season because he didn’t think he was playing too great, well, somewhere in football heaven, Vince Lombardi was weeping.

Tough. You gotta be tough to play this game. Jack Youngblood was one of the toughest guys in the game before he retired this season, and that probably explains the way he was shaking his head recently over the fuss everybody made over Theismann’s busted leg. Youngblood played with so many aches and pains that a little thing like a bone sticking out would have probably entitled him to an hour or two off from practice, no more.

Football players have changed, all right. Lionel (Little Train) James is San Diego’s best runner, even though he is considerably less than two yards long. William (Refrigerator) Perry is Chicago’s most celebrated player, even though he has carried the football four or five times to Walter Payton’s thousands. Well, that’s the way the rookie rumbles.

You worry that you might not see anything new when a new season approaches. You worry that the same old players and the same old teams are going to do the same old things. Thirteen weeks into the season, though, we have seen all sorts of strangeness and we know not what comes next. It could even be a New York-New York championship game, which baseball promised but failed to deliver.

Uh, come to think of it, that is one strange sight we could do without.