A LOOK AT TWO OF SUNDAY’S RAM, RAIDER OPPONENTS : Spinning to Top? : Pound for Pound, Rookie Ernie Givins of the Oilers May Lead the NFL in Talent

Shake hands with Ernie Givins. In Houston they call him Spinner Givins. First-year wide receiver. Little guy--but gifted.

May have the most talent on the Oiler team this year.

May lead the National Football League in talent--pound for pound.

Has a lot of heart, too, but not much else. The high school kid next door is probably bigger.

There are only 170 pounds of Spinner Givins, who, standing only 5 feet 9, leads the Oilers in passes caught this fall. He almost never drops one. He has never been shut out. He has been a starter in every game since he came into the NFL as the 34th college man drafted last spring, and he’ll start against the Raiders at Houston Sunday.

But why Spinner?

The name goes back to his first game at the University of Louisville.

He caught the first pass they threw him that day, and on a 98-yard play ran it in for a touchdown. Most players, ecstatic, would have spiked the ball. On an impulse, as he crossed the goal line, Givins leaned over and planted the tip of the ball in the end zone, he said, and spun it like a top.

“These days, he’ll spike it some, but out on the field, after a big catch, Ernie always spins it,” receiver coach Milt Jackson said. “The strength he has in his fingers and wrists is crazy.”

He’s all crazy, you’d swear, watching him go up for a pass over the middle. Big people hate to reach for a ball there. Eight defensive players are usually right close, and the nearest will knock you out of your shoes, if he can, before you come down.

Nevertheless, on inside slant patterns, Givins hauls his 170 pounds into the air over the middle whenever the coaches say, “Haul!” and last week, again, he paid for it.

On fourth and nine at the Cincinnati 38-yard line, with Houston losing just before halftime, 21-7, quarterback Warren Moon threw a pass where only Givins could get it--which is to say, about 10 feet up and 18 yards down the field, straight over the middle.

Givins was still several feet up when Bengal cornerback Louis Breeden reached him.

Breeden, 185, was at a gallop as he came in, and that was too much mass plus velocity for Givins, who dropped motionless--stunned but still clutching the ball.

He was absent for only one play. Returning with 30 seconds left in the first half, he caught another pass from Moon at the four-yard line, and the Oilers scored on the next play.

“A touchdown makes everything--anything--worthwhile,” Givins said.

Asked how he steels himself to run short slant patterns into the middle--where some of the NFL’s most famous receivers won’t venture, where it’s so dangerous that the Raiders don’t even have such patterns in their playbook--Givins said: “It’s my job.”

Givins has been a hard-working, undersized wide receiver since his senior year in high school at St. Petersburg, Fla., where, previously, he had been a hard-working, normal-sized third baseman.

His father, who runs a sausage factory now, had been a professional baseball player. Baseball was the only sport that Ernie ever wanted to play.

But in his junior year, he had the misfortune to bat against another Florida junior who could throw a strike whenever he wanted to. And in the big game of Givins’ last year in baseball, the other kid, Dwight Gooden, struck him out three times.

“I packed it in because I thought I was that bad,” Givins said. “I didn’t realize that Gooden was that good.”

For those aspiring to an NFL career, there’s one thing wrong with ignoring football until you’re a high school senior. The college football coaches don’t know much about you. They don’t want you.

In desperation, Givins got on a bus and rode to Northeast Oklahoma Junior College because, he said, his father had played baseball around there and loved the wilds of Oklahoma.

In time, Ernie learned to appreciate Oklahoma, too, somewhat, but that first morning the coach looked down at him and said: “No scholarships.”

Distraught, he asked: “Can I walk on?

“I suppose so,” the coach said.

“Then I’ll try it as a walk-on,” Givins said. “Until my money runs out.”

At practice that afternoon, his luck turned. The football coach still wasn’t impressed when Givins led the field in the 40-yard dash--finishing in 4.3 seconds, he said--but the track coach was.

“The track coach gave me a scholarship on the spot,” Givins said.

So he went to college on a track scholarship. And within the year, he said, he’d won the national junior college 100 in 10.12 seconds and the national indoor 60 in 6.04.

Neither that nor his brief JC football career impressed any Division I-A football coaches except those at Louisville.

“Howard Schnellenberger is the greatest coach I’ve played for,” he said. “Last winter, he got me in the Senior Bowl (where, as the MVP, Givins finally caught the attention of NFL scouts).”

Givins is particularly grateful to Schnellenberger and the others who have helped him along because, he said, his life style demands a pro’s salary. He signed a four-year Oiler contract this summer for $1 million.

And though he’s saving some, he’s also spending some.

Givins wheels around Houston in a bright red sports car, a Nissan 300 ZX.

“His personality matches the car,” Houston Post reporter Ray Buck said. “The Spinner is a cool, charismatic guy with an upbeat attitude.”

According to Givins, the young ladies of Houston love his cooking even more than his car.

In his new two-bedroom, three-bath house in south Houston, he spends much of his time in the kitchen.

“I get all my own meals, but I never want to dine alone, even at breakfast,” he said. “So I get up first and set out the kind of breakfast you’d expect in the best dining room in the country.

“They’re always surprised when they sit down to my omelets, grits, hot English muffins, bacon, sausage and freshly squeezed orange juice. I haven’t met a girl yet who could pass it up, even if they’re watching their weight.”

After practice each day, Givins hustles home and moves right back into the kitchen. He entertains dinner guests several times a week.

“I make everything,” he said. “The staples are steak, pork chops, chicken, seafood and maybe a tuna casserole, but foodwise I play the field.

“I love to experiment in the kitchen. Take baked potatoes. They’re all right, I’m not knocking baked potatoes, but chopped potatoes or sliced potatoes, when properly seasoned, are so much better.”

“Before I get married, I want to know everything about Houston,” he said. “I want to know exactly where a nice girl would like to go in whatever mood she’s in.”

One more thing: She will have to enjoy his singing.

A song-and-dance man whose favorite off-season pastime is entering talent contests--with either a male or a female partner--Givins practices singing and dancing day and night.

“I’m always singing--in the car, the kitchen, the bedroom, every place but the huddle,” he said. “A girl told me yesterday that I do the Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson things so much better than they do. My close friends call me Three-Time, which is short for three-time Grammy winner.”

The only other thing he practices so assiduously, Givins said, is his repertory of downfield pass routes.

“Lester Hayes and Mike Haynes are the best bump-and-run cornerbacks in the country,” he said. “But I run pretty good routes. I don’t think anybody can bump and run with me.”

Time to see if he can spin the ball against the Raiders.