SUPER BOWL XXI : DENVER vs. NEW YORK : NOTEBOOK : Players Put Free Agency Atop Their List of Priorities

With negotiations for a new contract set to begin in earnest in the spring, the NFL Players Assn. formally announced its shopping list Thursday.

No. 1 will be free agency.

“The players in the NFL feel it is time they have a choice where they work and who they work for,” said Gene Upshaw, the union’s executive director, at a press conference at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel.

“I realize management says we already have free agency, with 50% of the players changing teams through trades or waivers. That’s not the free agency we have in mind.”

The players struck for seven weeks in 1982. However Upshaw and management council head Jack Donlan have both assumed their positions since then and “have worked hard to develop a relationship,” Upshaw said.

“We don’t want to strike,” he said. “We don’t feel a strike is best for this game of football.”

No hard negotiations are expected until April. Both sides are awaiting the outcome of the NFL TV negotiations, set for February and early March.

The players are also proposing an owner incentive program, which would reward teams for making the playoffs and advancing toward the Super Bowl. The players contend that there is no economic reason for owners to compete, and they suggest that as a a consequence, some owners don’t compete.

Donlan, asked for reaction, has pooh-poohed the idea.

The players also plan to ask for guaranteed contracts, protection for their player representatives and a three-year contract instead of the current five years. They say they’re in favor of a drug program, although Upshaw noted “they don’t think random testing is a cure-all.”

Giant linebacker Harry Carson took the podium at a crowded press conference and said, “I feel like the President up here.”

The first question: “Do you think Oliver North should testify?”

Carson has a diary-type column that is appearing in the New York Daily News, and wide receiver Phil McConkey has one appearing in the Post. Of course, both players have ghost writers.

The other night, McConkey forgot about his column until almost deadline time, so the ghost writer did it on his own. When McConkey remembered he had not done the column, he called the Post.

Someone read the column to him, and the only thing he asked be taken out was a reference to tight end Mark Bavaro as Rambo.

He let go a line that said Carson’s columns in the Daily News are boring.

Bavaro, on why he doesn’t like to be called Rambo anymore: “It’s disrespectful to Vietnam veterans. Rambo exploited the Vietnam veteran. I have a lot of respect for the men who went there. A lot of my family went there. I’ve told the players not to call me Rambo.”

Bavaro was a reluctant interviewee Thursday.

“Is it painful here?” a reporter asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Are you shy?” another reporter asked.

“I don’t like reporters,” he said.

Bavaro apparently does have a sense of humor. When he found out Thursday that he had to meet with reporters for a second time, he told Giant publicity director Ed Croke: “If I had known that, I wouldn’t have used all my good stuff yesterday.”

A special table at Thursday’s press conference was set up for Lawrence Taylor. All that was missing was Taylor.

The last flight allowed to leave Newark International Airport Thursday before it was closed because of a snowstorm was a charter carrying the wives and children of the Giants. Some fans were left waiting at the airport.

Giant Coach Bill Parcells works pretty close to his troops, often too close to nose tackle Jim Burt.

When Parcells was defensive coordinator and Burt was a rookie, Burt asked to be put into a game by blocking Parcells in the back on the sideline.

“This isn’t a game for well-adjusted people,” Parcells said.

Turnabout being fair play, Parcells celebrated the early-season victory over the Raiders in the Coliseum this way, according to Burt:

“Bill gets excited and runs from the sideline and hits me. He knocks my helmet halfway across my face and almost breaks my nose. I didn’t know who it is, I though it was either a fan or L.T. (Lawrence Taylor). I’m just about to curse him out when I see it’s him. I say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ ”

Said Parcells: “He’s hit me a lot harder than that several times.”

Parcells’ numerous superstitions have been well-chronicled this week.

He only picks up pennies that are heads up. An elephant with its trunk up is good luck, especially if the trunk points toward the door. And he hired a charter pilot who had flown two other Super Bowl winners.

Parcells’ list is nearly endless, but does Denver Coach Dan Reeves have any superstitions?

“When I was a player, I was a lot more superstitious,” Reeves said. “Walt Garrison used to pull my jersey over and I used to pull his over. I remember one game in St. Louis in 1968 when I got my knee torn up. First thing I remember thinking about, laying there on the ground in pain was, ‘Walt didn’t pull my jersey over today.”’

Reeves then admitted to a few routines he maintains as a coach.

“We still do certain things,” he said. “When we have our pregame prayer, Tom Jackson and I always hold hands and he’s always on my left with (Keith) Bishop on the other side. I think it’s more them being superstitious than me, though. I don’t push people out of the way, but I do feel better when they’re there.

“Of course, we’ve lost some games when they’ve been there too, so. . . . “

Add Reeves: Reeves says he likes natural turf better than the artificial variety because “I’ve had 10 knee operations and just standing on the sidelines coaching on AstroTurf hurts my knees.”

But there’s more to it than that.

“There’s something about the blood and the mud,” he said, “the guys with mud all over their jerseys so you can’t see their numbers, the guys sliding out of bounds with water spraying all over the place.

“It just seems more exciting . . . I don’t know if it is more exciting or if it’s just that that’s the game I remember.”

Bronco linebacker Karl Mecklenburg said a hit in a 1984 game against the Raiders was the turning point of his career. It involved a Jim Plunkett-to-Marcus Allen pass.

“It was a dump pass,” Mecklenburg said. “Marcus tried to catch it in midair. He was stretched out when I hit him. I should have sent Plunkett a thank-you note, he set him up pretty badly.

“The next play they gave Allen the ball and he pitched it. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

Parcells gets a lot of letters. “The ones that start out ‘I’m a long-suffering Giant fan’ I throw away,” he said. “But the ones that start out ‘I’m a die-hard Giant fan’ I read.”

Had trouble getting Super Bowl tickets? Dianne Cox of Yorba Linda tells an encouraging story.

She said her 80-year-old uncle, Fred Pabst, of Verona, N.J., a Giant season ticket holder for the past 23 years, requested tickets from the Giants but, like almost everybody else, was turned down.

But he didn’t stop there. He called the Giants’ office and asked for owner Tim Mara. He didn’t get through to Mara, but complained to someone else that he was old and may never get another chance to see his team in the Super Bowl.

The Giants must have been impressed with his story. Two days later, two complimentary tickets showed up in his mail.

Then, after a story about Pabst appeared in the Newark Star-Ledger, two more complimentary tickets were sent to his home, courtesy of an anonymous attorney.

Then an airline donated plane tickets, a Hollywood Hotel donated room and board, and a New York TV station donated limo transportation to Kennedy Airport.

All this, plus Pabst has become somewhat of a New York media star.

How did Pabst pull this off? “I guess he just lives right,” Cox said.

NFL Properties, the merchandising arm of the NFL, won a court ruling to stop the selling of unlicensed Super Bowl memorabilia and seize counterfeit merchandise.

Superior Court Judge Jerry Fields issued a temporary restraining order allowing NFL Properties to seize hats, T-shirts, sweat shirts, pennants and other mementos hawked at swap meets and street corners by unlicensed merchandisers.

NFL Properties attorney John Flood said the court order lasts until 11:59 p.m. Sunday.

For fans who want to verify their tickets, there’s a booth for such a purpose at the Rose Bowl, located at Gate B. It will be open today and Saturday, 1 to 6 p.m.

Tennis, anyone? Some members of the media will take part in a special PUMA/NFL tennis tournament Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Tennisland Racquet Club in Anaheim. Also, former Davis Cup star Marty Riessen will conduct a clinic for participants.

Times staff writers John Weyler and Scott Ostler contributed to this story.