SUPER BOWL XXI : DENVER vs. NEW YORK : The Chatter, the Earrings; It’s the Vance

Joan Rivers is supposed to interview Vance Johnson of the Denver Broncos--the Vance!--on her TV show later this week.

Memo to Joan: There is no need to ask: “Can we talk?” He can talk. He wants to talk. He lives to talk. Joan, he’s the male you. He makes Dr. Ruth look meek. He makes the Gabor sisters seem mute. He can talk like Liz used to eat.

The Vance says he is ready. Anything you want to gab about, he will oblige. He’s got his game mouth on. This could be the first talk show in history to run six hours. The guy’s got to be in Pasadena by 3 o’clock Sunday to catch passes against the New York Giants, so please, try to cut him off at some point. Go to a commercial.

In the meantime, can we talk about his earrings? Of course, we can. Can we talk about his artwork? Sure, we can. Can we talk about his haircut, atop which Rivers could balance her coffee cup? Go ahead. Make his day.

“I’m prepared for anything she’ll be asking me,” says the Vance. “I have a lot of character.”

Even if she asks: “How’s your sex life?”

“How’s my sex life? It’s great!” answers the Vance.

And on he goes, shoveling super bull before the Super Bowl, talking an orange-and-blue streak at a Bronco rap session Tuesday in Costa Mesa, entertaining anybody within earshot.

Sometimes, he speaks in the first person. “I want my art to speak for itself, and personally, I think it does.” Other times, he speaks in the third person. “Well, usually Vance goes home and falls asleep from 8 to 12 on the floor next to his Doberman.” When Joan Rivers introduces him, she should say: “Here they are, Vance Johnson.”

At last, he has a forum and a quorum. A stage from which to be heard and enough people to listen. Denver’s 23-year-old, eager-beaver wide receiver is dying to be discovered.

“I think it’s real important for me to try to get well known during this Super Bowl week,” he says. “And I want to go out there and have a big game, too. You can wear as many earrings in your ear as you want and have as many flat-tops as you can can get, but if you go out and do a poor job in the game, everybody’s going to be talking bad about you. So, I’m going to have to back all this stuff up.”

The prospect of becoming Super Bowl XXI’s household-word celebrity does not disturb him in the least, although he doubts he could become as big as, say, the biggest (and we do mean biggest) star of Super Bowl XX, Refrigerator Perry of Chicago. By the time the Bears got through beating the New England Patriots last January, even Englishmen were eager to get a look at Perry, in the exhibition game scheduled against the Dallas Cowboys later in the summer.

“In London, everybody wanted to see the Fridge. I don’t think everybody’s waiting to see the Vance,” the Vance suspects.

Still, he will keep talking and see what happens. Keep those tape recorders ready. Keep those batteries supercharged. Before the AFC championship game at Cleveland, Johnson swore he would not return to Colorado unless Denver won the game. The Broncos won in overtime, sparing the Vance the embarrassment of being able to play future games only on the road.

Any wild threats or promises before meeting the Giants? No, not today, but check with me the day before the game, the Vance says. “Can we come to your hotel room?” someone asks, joking. “No, but give me a call and I’ll come down to the lobby,” the Vance answers, not necessarily joking.

Well, how about that Lawrence Taylor, then? He’s one tough linebacker. How you gonna get around him, Vance? How you gonna keep L.T. off you Sunday?

“I was thinking about that. I think if he sees the earrings and the hair, maybe L.T.’s going to take it easy on me because he’ll think I’m gay or something,” the Vance answers.

An answer for every occasion. Rivers is home free. Maybe she can even ask him about something delicate, something no one else did Tuesday, like the two children he already has had by two different women, without the extra added attraction of marriage. Nicole is 3, Vance Jr. is 1 1/2, and the Vance would like to have custody. Single fathers do not have much luck in that department.

Life’s realities began to occur to Johnson on the football field as well as off, earlier this season, when defensive back Mike Haynes of the Raiders gave his right knee an accidental crunching that knocked him out of action for four weeks.

“The doctor said, ‘Vance, you have to be prepared for the worst. You might not play again this year. You might not play again, period.’

“That brought me back to Earth. I was living on Cloud 9. I spent money like water. I’ve got a 911 turbo Porsche and a boat and a nice house. But the injury made me realize: ‘Vance, you’re not gonna play football forever.’ So, I started getting serious about my artwork. That’s where my future is.”

The Vance, working mostly in acrylics, does portraits of women. Only women. Never men. All with bold lines. Bright red lips. Jet black hair. Piercing eyes.

His work is heavily influenced by the artist Patrick Nagel, and the Vance, who is only one University of Arizona semester away from a degree in commercial art, says: “Nagel influenced me in art the way Gale Sayers influenced me in football. A lot of people say I’m so influenced by Nagel’s work that I’m copying it, but I’m not. Mine’s similar, but different.”

He often does a drawing after a Denver game, just to express what he is feeling. After the recent playoff game with New England, a close call, he did one called “Victory.”

After the Cleveland game, he did one called “A Peak at ‘87”--peak, he says, as in the football team peaking and as in the Rocky Mountains’ peaking--in which a woman, naturally, peeking behind a small blanket, staring at herself in a mirror, gives herself thumbs up. “I’m bringing one for Joan Rivers,” the Vance says.

Teammates have seen his work, in more ways than one. Often, as punter Mike Horan recently did, they walk into the locker room to find caricatures of themselves on the chalkboard.

Asked his opinion of the Vance’s paintings, offensive lineman Keith Bishop said: “I love his paintings. In fact, he’s doing one of my wife. I think he’s going to make a lot of money with them. They’re neat.”

All great artists need inspiration, and Johnson has been known to have one from time to time. For instance: “I had this dream that Keith Bishop had adopted me into his family. And I started getting close to him in my dreams. That was really weird. So, I woke up and talked to him at practice and we started hanging around together, going hunting and everything, riding our motorcycles together, and we hit it off real well.

“Real weird: A tall, big, strong white guy and a little, small, fast black guy hitting it off like that.”

Possibly it is something about the position, wide receiver, a fairly artistic role, one calling for style and grace, that brings out the sensitive natures in certain players.

Willie Gault of the Bears danced in a ballet between games this season. Al Toon of the Jets studied modern dance in college. Lionel Manuel of the Giants--who also wore an earring Tuesday, just for the record--plays several musical instruments. These guys use their hands and legs for more than just down-and-outs.

The Vance says he never began to express himself verbally, however, until 1985, when he hit the NFL. At Arizona, where he was a running back, he says he was terribly shy. “And when you’ve got a lot of ability and you’re shy and you don’t talk to people, they get the wrong impression and they think you’re stuck up, and that you’ve got a bad attitude. Therefore, I didn’t get along with my line in college, and as a result I got killed in college.”

Sports had been his only outlet. Besides football, Johnson had just missed qualifying for the 1984 Olympic long jump. Through art, he was able to “put my frustrations on canvas,” and before long evolved the Vance, a colorful character indeed.

At Bronco training camp he showed up in a coyote fur coat and white sunglasses. Eventually came the flat-top hair, a self-acknowledged “Grace Jones, Carl Lewis kind of thing.” Then came the earrings, which got the attention of both the coach and owner.

The Vance knew Coach Dan Reeves wouldn’t care for the gems in his lobes, so Tuesday morning, he took them out. Good thing, too, because Reeves checked on the bus, first thing. Owner Patrick Bowlen made light of it, donning a pair himself and saying: “What’s this I hear about one of my players having trouble wearing earrings?”

Meanwhile, in the Tucson, Ariz., vicinity, Eugene Johnson, an ex-Army man, was watching TV the other night when his son’s face flashed onto the screen, earrings and all. “He hasn’t commented yet,” the Vance says. But compliments are not expected.

For someone ready to be noticed, daring to be noticed, it occasionally is necessary to offend. If it takes fast talk and fancy dress to introduce the general public to the Vance, so be it. He believes the time has come. Vance Johnson is an end who is perfectly willing to justify the means.