The Ins and Outs of Football Are No Snap at This Seminar

There’s a scene in the movie “Diner” in which a group of friends nervously pace outside a locked bedroom door while their buddy, a man obsessed with the Baltimore Colts, fires question after question at his fiancee.

Now this is the ultimate football quiz, laced with probing inquiries into the lives of former Colt greats Alan Ameche and John Unitas.

The only thing at stake is the wedding. If she fails the test, he says, the marriage is off. The woman he’s spending his life with, by God, is going to know who led the Colts in punting in 1956. And wasn’t it only fair? Sexist? Sure, but this was a movie set in the late 1950s, when some perceived a major woman’s movement as being a drive from the dairy to the emporium.

So there I was a few weeks ago in the lobby of an Anaheim hotel, watching Ram Coach John Robinson run around a banquet room as though possessed by the very soul of Richard Simmons.

Robinson had lined before him a full offense and defense composed only of women, all wearing Ram jerseys.

The quarterback, No. 10, was a tiny brunette who weighed all of 90 pounds, or about the size of a Dennis Harrah thigh.

Robinson ordered her to the line of scrimmage for a drill on calling audibles.

“Red, red, off tackle,” she whispered.

“Louder!” Robinson screamed.

“Red! Red! Off tackle!” she said again. “Set, hut-one, hut-two.”

She took the snap but the ball fell to the carpet.

Everyone laughed.

The drills and thrills were all part of Robinson’s third annual football seminar for women, designed, of course, to plug the Rams and prepare women in the event they should ever be confronted by the dreaded “Diner” quiz.

The event, which drew about 250 people this year, was marred only by the presence of a few men. Sexism works both ways, you know. After complaints to the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, the city had to open the seminar to all comers this year.

Some women felt intimidated. After all, this was supposed to be their night.

“Normally, we’re free to ask the questions we really want to know,” Phyllis Archer said. “But you won’t ask the question if you know the man next to you is going to have a sneer on his face.”

For $12 a pop, Robinson lectures on the rules of football, leads women through walk-through drills and answers questions.

“What’s the difference between off-sides and illegal procedure?” one woman asked.

Robinson told her.

“What are the rules about calling timeouts?” asked another, who obviously saw how the Rams handled theirs in last season’s National Football Conference title game against the Chicago Bears.

Robinson, the great communicator, was the perfect host. He’s animated and unpretentious, never talking down to his audience.

Of course, the night is all in fun and isn’t designed to save romances, unless you happen to be the girlfriend of Ed Dana.

Dana is a man who takes his football seriously, a throwback to the “Diner” era. He grew so tired of his girlfriend asking what he said were dumb questions during games that he hauled her off to Robinson’s seminar for a crash course.

The woman in question, Mary Oberschlake, once asked Dana what the plastic things were hanging from the players’ mouths.

“I thought they were water containers,” she said. “When you sit around and watch football with guys who played for years, well, they know the game. To me, they’re not stupid questions.”

Dana, though, could take it no longer.

Last year on Oberschlake’s birthday, he gave her a certificate that awarded her 25 credit points toward the 1985 National Football League season. Questions he considered dumb were awarded a point value from 1 to 10, and each time she asked one the points were deducted from her total.

If she exceeded her total at season’s end, she had to buy beers for the guys.

Oberschlake finished the season with 10 points, but admits that after a while she just quit asking questions.

It should be noted, though, that she can carry those points over to this season, giving her 35 entering this season.

Oberschlake says she’s interested in a more serious relationship with Ed and football, so she agreed to attend the seminar.

So what did she learn?

“That defensive players can just grab people,” she said. “And I learned that nobody blocks with their head, which would seem to be the sensible thing to do.”

It seems the only thing standing in the way of a beautiful relationship now is the test. That’s right, the “Diner” test.

“I’m not 100% sure that he wouldn’t pull that on me,” she said.

Just in case, Mary, file this away. The Colts punter in 1956? It was Bert Rechichar. Remember. Bert Rechichar.