HE’S LEARNING OF MIKES AND MEN : For Youngblood, the Play-by-Play’s Harder Than Play

In 14 years with the Rams, Jack Youngblood left a lot of himself on the playing fields of the National Football League.

He was kicked, clutched, grabbed, gouged, kneed, elbowed and otherwise abused en route to seven Pro Bowls. Now, he has retired to broadcasting booths and studios where he can observe the violence far from harm’s way.

He has learned one thing: It was easier on the field.

Youngblood works for ESPN, the all-sports national cable network, as a pro football commentator-feature reporter on a weekly Sunday morning show.

Piece of cake, right? Just sit there looking like a hulk and talk about football. Should be even easier on location. For 14 years he has been standing there in front of a camera talking to some guy holding a mike. Only now he’s holding the mike.

Youngblood recalled an early experience.

“I’m looking into the early morning sun trying to read the cue card,” he said. “I can’t see anything and everybody’s wondering why this idiot can’t get it right.

“Another time I’m trying to get a point across and this guy in the truck is talking in my ear, ‘Five seconds to commercial . . .four, three, two . . .Man, you don’t realize how tough it is until you do it.”

Meet Jack Youngblood, rookie broadcaster.

Soon after announcing his retirement from football last summer, Youngblood worked audition games for CBS and NBC, serving as the analyst on broadcasts that didn’t go on the air.

“They were adequate,” Youngblood said. “They weren’t by any means stunning. I wasn’t a star, and yet I knew I wasn’t a star. I’d never done that before. It’s a learning process, a whole new way of looking at the game and talking about it. It is completely different from the way I looked at the game as a player.”

Youngblood wasn’t hired because he wasn’t ready, but he said: “It was an opportunity to get my foot in the door with both aspects of it: the studio and the broadcasting.”

And he also showed enough promise to be hired by ESPN. He commutes from his home in Orange to the network’s studios in Bristol, Conn., almost every weekend.

On his visits to NFL practice sites to do interviews, he arouses some curious looks. Raider Coach Tom Flores asked him to leave. San Francisco 49er Coach Bill Walsh didn’t ask him to leave, “but he kept an eye on me,” Youngblood said.

“For several years now I’ve realized that the end was coming,” Youngblood said, “so I made preparations to go after this broadcasting. I think it’s a natural extension of playing on the field for 14 years. With the experiences I’ve had, if I can learn to articulate that in a way that is interesting to the public, I think it’s an asset to any broadcast.”

It might be a natural extension, but Marty Glickman, who is a broadcasters’ coach, critic and consultant to NBC Sports, said there’s more to it than that.

“Some guys come into the business, and the day they step in they’re naturals,” Glickman said. “John Madden is a perfect case. Merlin Olsen is a perfect case. Madden and Olsen are naturals. Jack is not a natural.”

Youngblood flew to New York early this year to meet with Glickman, who later checked his audition game tapes.

“Jack requires a lot of work,” Glickman said, “the same kind of training that made him a great football player, the same kind of perseverance, tenacity and application to the job. Study, discipline.”

Youngblood: “If you drive by my house at 1:30 in the morning and see somebody talking into a mirror, don’t think it’s a crazy man. It’s just me.”

Glickman said most former athletes fail at broadcasting because they think their names and personalities will carry them. They don’t realize, he said, that “nobody tunes in to listen to the broadcaster--nobody, except maybe his mother. People tune in to watch the game.”

Glickman said of Youngblood, “Personality-wise, terrific guy. Broadcast-wise, he’s a novice.

“A lot of ex-jocks have made it real big. Frank Gifford is an ex-jock, but it took many years for him to be as good as he is today. Pat Summerall is an ex-jock. It took a lot of years of broadcasting to get to where he is today. Tony Kubek, it took a lot of years for him.

“A lot of guys start at the top, and they don’t have the proper schooling to do the job. Jack ought to spend a couple of years with a cable system (or) a small radio station and learn the job of broadcasting--any place where he can get air time.

“The guys who work at it will make it, but it takes a long time, except for the occasional natural.”

Youngblood agreed. He has always been his own worst critic. That’s why he quit football, because he didn’t think he could play up to his own standards anymore. He has thought about acting, but that will wait.

“That’s down the road a ways,” he said. “The acting aspect is a whole other game. My interest right now is to become a quality broadcaster. I have to study and practice.

“I’m going to work with Arthur Joseph and different people to learn techniques to become a good broadcaster. He’s a speech coach in Hollywood. Georgia (Frontiere) introduced me to him.”

Youngblood also continues to work for Frontiere as a “consultant” for the Rams, offering input on player relations. He is a national spokesman for underwear, lawn mowers and chewing tobacco. On the road, he always seems to have an agent with him.

“This business is sumpin’,” he said, slipping into his country mode. “You’ve got agents for your agents.”

Los Angeles lawyer Marvin Demoff has represented Youngblood since he joined the Rams in 1971.

“I guess you’d call Marvin a friend and general counsel,” Youngblood was telling a reporter recently. “And then I’ve got Bill Speckin. . . .”

The man who was with you in New York?

“Yeah. . . .no,” Youngblood replied. “That was, uh, Joe Schrier, who is agent for a television show project we’re talking about, a magazine-type sports show. He’s from New York.”

Well, then, who is Bill Speckin?

“He’s like my commercial manager. Munsingwear, the lawn mowers. He manages that.”

And he’s in New York, too?

“No, he’s in L.A. Then we’ve got the RLR company--Robert L. Rosen, which is Bob Rosen and Clarence Cross. They’re agents for the broadcasting.”

Have we missed anyone?

“Yeah. My travel agent.”