CHIP BANKS : He Is Hoping for a Warm Reception After Cold War Back in Cleveland

For Chip Banks, happiness always has been just a holdout away. So when Banks says he’s reporting to training camp three days early , you had better call your friends in Cleveland and say: “Did you hear the crazy news?”

Four times in five years, Chip Banks had been a Pro Bowl linebacker for the Cleveland Browns, but was traded to the San Diego Chargers in April because (a) he had one friend in the organization and it wasn’t a player, a coach, a general manager or an owner; (b) he spent too much time incommunicado; (c) his middle name was “Renegotiate!;” (d) he would hold out and wind up taking them to the cleaners; and (e) he reminded them of a Los Angeles Raider.

The Browns’ officials say they got rid of Banks because they liked a rookie named Mike Junkin. So they gave Banks, a headache to them, to the Chargers for a high draft pick and selected the “heady” Junkin, who played inside linebacker at Duke. The Browns insist Junkin will easily replace Banks as their left outside linebacker, but Junkin says he has never played outside linebacker.

So why trade Banks? Ernie Accorsi, the Browns’ general manager, finally admitted the other day: “I don’t want to analyze it, but generally, I thought it better that he move on.”

Suddenly, the Browns’ headache belonged to the Chargers. After Banks initially threatened not to report to San Diego, Charger Coach Al Saunders left messages on Banks’ answering machine. Accorsi, who tired of getting the machine instead of the man, sometimes didn’t bother to leave messages. Banks actually returned Saunders’ calls.

The Chargers later sent their linebacker coach to Banks’ home in Atlanta, and Banks let him inside for a week. The Chargers feared Banks wanted to renegotiate his $700,000 contract, but Banks said: “Why should I?”

And Banks--who held out for one hour in 1984, one day in 1985, one month in 1986 and hasn’t seen a mini-camp since 1983--said in a phone interview this week that he’ll show up Wednesday for training camp, even though camp actually starts Saturday.

Headache?

Incommunicado means leaving the answering machine on 24 hours a day.

Hi, you’ve reached Pro Stars Management Inc . . . . Please leave a message at the beep. Thanks.

Now, the machine’s on only eight hours a day, though Chip Banks may not greet you so smugly when you finally get him. . . .

Reporter: Hey Chip, how ya doin’?

Banks: I’m OK. I’m a little busy right now. I don’t have time to talk. What’s up?

Reporter: Listen, Chip, I’ll be in Atlanta real soon. Can we talk? Can we have lunch?

Banks: No, not really. Because I’m really pushing the time right now. I’ve got so many things to do and not enough time to get ‘em done. I’ve got a real estate business. I won’t have time to sit around and chat about something.

Reporter: Well, how about talking a few minutes on the phone?

Banks: Uh, I really don’t have much to say. About what, particularly?

Reporter: You showing up to camp on time?

Banks: I’ll be there, I’m sure. So yeah. It’ll be a challenge, I’m sure. Something I’m looking forward to. . . . I couldn’t have picked it (the trade) better myself.

Reporter: At first, it seemed like you hated this trade.

Banks: At first, that was true. The suddenness. . . . I mean, having it happen like that, I had no idea I’d be involved in a trade like that. But it took me time to get over the hysteria, the suddenness of it all.

Reporter: Even if I stopped by, you still wouldn’t want to chat?

Banks: I probably wouldn’t be here. But maybe you can give me a call and see if you can catch me and we can talk a few more minutes. Listen, I gotta go.

Chip Banks is no longer incommunicado because he’s suddenly an important cog. In Cleveland, he begged Coach Marty Schottenheimer to use him every down, but--until last season--Schottenheimer benched him on passing situations. He thought linebacker Clay Matthews was better.

So Banks says he lost all respect for Schottenheimer, and their frequent feuds were one reason why Junkin sounded so good to Schottenheimer on draft day.

“I feel I can compete with anyone anywhere,” Banks said. “I can compete with Junk or whatever his name is.”

In San Diego, where the Charger defense has been usually junk, Banks has a new and improved role. In Cleveland, Schottenheimer used Banks on the left side--which is generally the tight end’s side--meaning Banks wasn’t free to blitz and create havoc. Saunders says Banks will play the right side in San Diego, and Banks sort of takes his word for it.

See, he says Schottenheimer--who was unavailable for comment this week--also made promises, but didn’t live up to them.

“I took his word as a man,” Banks said this week. “We had talks before the last two seasons, and we talked about some situations. It (his promises) didn’t come about, and it really ticked me off.”

Saunders and Banks have spoken about four times this spring and summer, and Banks--when asked about his first impressions--said: “I really don’t have any. I mean, I have to go out there and sit down and talk to him. When I’m out there next week, we’ll get a chance to chat and get a better feel for each other. I think he sounded really nice on the phone. . . . But you know how first impressions can be.”

They’ll probably get along, because Saunders badly wants to be his friend. It was Saunders who sent linebacker coach Mike Haluchak to Atlanta--playbook in hand--to visit with Banks a month ago. They spent four hours a day together for a week, and Haluchak says they ran through certain Charger formations in one of Banks’ empty rooms.

See, besides wanting to play on the West Coast, Chip Banks--according to friends--badly wants to be pampered. He wants to be the end-all important part of a team’s defense. He is completely comfortable comparing himself to the Giants’ Lawrence Taylor.

“We’re in the same boat, but in different streams,” Banks said. “Our defenses are implemented differently. He’s one of the best backers in the league, but, in my own way, I can be one of the best.”

The Chargers, it seems, will pamper him. Saunders says, yes, he can be their end-all.

The Browns wouldn’t let him.

Those who know Banks well--and not many do--say he is an overly sensitive 27-year-old who was misunderstood in Cleveland.

Banks and Schottenheimer once had a screaming match during a film session because Schottenheimer--according to Brown sources--didn’t think Banks was enough of a headhunter. Schottenheimer noticed that Banks would never lay on a big hit, and that’s why Banks always managed to stay healthy. Banks never missed a game because of injury.

But screaming is not the way to win over Chip Banks.

“At times, every once in a while--and I don’t know if it was just a stubborn streak--but if you got in Chip’s face too hard, he withdrew,” said Ram Coach John Robinson, who recruited and coached Banks at USC. “He responded more to encouragement.”

Chip Banks’ one true friend in Cleveland was Ted Chappelle, a 53-year-old former police detective who was the director of Browns’ security. Chappelle first met Banks as a rookie during a Get-To-Know-Each-Other meeting with then-Coach Sam Rutigliano and teammate Calvin Hill. Rutigliano talked football the whole time, but Chappelle kept quiet.

Finally, when the meeting ended, Chappelle began asking about Banks’ family, found out that Banks’s parents had been divorced at an early age and listened to all of Banks’ problems.

“I could be wrong, but let me take the mystique out of Chip Banks,” Chappelle says now. “In his case, I think the thing lacking in his life was a father’s image. If he called my house during the season, he’d always have a long conversation with my wife, too. And it surprised some people in this organization.”

After the 1984 season and after they’d just renegotiated Banks’ contract, the Browns tried making a trade that would have sent Banks to the Buffalo Bills for the No. 1 choice in the supplemental draft and the rights to quarterback Bernie Kosar. The Bills asked if they could decide between taking Banks or the Browns’ No. 1 choice.

The Browns agreed.

When the Browns alerted Banks about the trade, he said thank you, but he’d rather retire. The Bills tried reaching him. Terry Bledsoe, then the Buffalo general manager, was talking to a Cleveland reporter one day and asked: “You know Banks’ number?” Eventually, all they could get was that answering machine, so Coach Kay Stephenson called Schottenheimer, who called Chappelle.

Schottenheimer asked: “Teddy, get the Bills in touch with Chip, will you?”

The Bills, desperate to make their decision, asked Chappelle to fly to Atlanta the Sunday before the Tuesday draft, where he’d try to arrange a meeting between Banks and Buffalo officials. Chappelle says he went to Banks’ home and asked him to talk to the Buffalo people, but Banks wouldn’t do it.

“It (the trade) was a knock on Chip’s pride, because Kosar was involved,” Chappelle said. “Here was an unproven quarterback, and Chip was a proven star. He’d be going to the bottom of the rung in Buffalo.”

So the Bills decided the Monday before the draft they wanted no part of Banks. He was still a Brown, but now he was asking the Browns to trade him because they’d just tried trading him to Buffalo.

By this time, Chappelle had returned to Cleveland, but the Browns asked him to turn around and make a second trip to Atlanta to appease Banks. So for the second time in three days, Chappelle arrived at Banks’ home for a pep talk.

When Banks showed up for training camp the next year--a day late--he held this conversation with reporters. . . .

Question: Are you ready to put the trauma of the trade behind you?

Banks: Ask Art (Modell, the team owner).

Q: Modell says it’s over.

Banks: That’s news to me.

Q: Are you here to stay?

Banks: This is a business. Everybody comes and goes.

Q: You seem to be unhappy. You still want a trade?

Banks: I’m here now. So far, so good.

Q: If you’re not happy, what’s the problem?

Banks: Ask Art.

Reporters asked Modell, who said he would meet with Banks and get it solved. At times, Modell has been gracious to Banks--remember the ’84 renegotiation?--but The Holdout of ’86 was too much to take.

Before the 1986 season, Banks wanted to renegotiate for the second time in three years, and he held out 26 days before last season, even though the Browns eventually offered a two-year, $1.3-million deal. At one point, Banks threatened: “Pay me, or you’ll never see me again,” and Modell retaliated with an ultimatum: Report or retire.

Modell was really angry. He accused the Raiders--”or some other West Coast team”--of tampering with Banks, of orchestrating his holdout so they could eventually work out a trade for him.

Modell, a longtime Al Davis adversary, said at the time: “I have no doubt he has been tampered with. . . . If Al Davis tampered with him, it will surface. It doesn’t become moot if he signs with the Browns. Tampering is tampering.”

At the time, Davis had an assistant named Steve Ortmayer, who now is the Chargers’ director of football operations.

“There was no tampering at all in terms of the Raiders,” Ortmayer said. “One thing the Raiders have not done is dealt in anything so misappropriate that they might lose a draft choice. And that’s what would happen if it were tampering.”

Eventually, Banks negotiated the deal for himself, taking over for his agent, Harold Daniels of Los Angeles. Accorsi and Daniels never got along that well, and they reached an impasse. “I stepped to the forefront,” Banks remembers. “I put everybody to the side and worked it out.”

Actually, Accorsi says Banks made a pretty good agent. “It never got nasty,” he said.

Banks got a $200,000 bonus and agreed to the two-year, $1.3-million deal they had already offered.

“Not bad if I say so myself,” he said.

So he was all set to sign it a week before the season, but--before he would--he requested that the Browns send Chappelle down to Atlanta with the contract. Chappelle--making his umpteenth visit to Atlanta--flew down, dialed Accorsi, handed the phone to Banks and left the room. Later, as Banks was about to sign, Chappelle gave a play-by-play description to Accorsi over the phone.

Chappelle remembers saying: “He’s got the pen in his hand, he’s signing, yes!”

So Banks played in the season opener and even made the Pro Bowl. Schottenheimer played him on passing downs, and the Browns came close to going to the Super Bowl.

Banks told friends he might even make it to next year’s mini-camp.

So, the eventual trade to San Diego was a shocker to Banks, especially because the Browns never called to let him know. Saunders finally got him.

Saunders said welcome aboard and also: “Call me anytime.” He gave Banks his home number, which was more than Schottenheimer had ever done.

Soon after the trade, a bunch of Banks’ furniture was found strewn in a Cleveland park. Some people assumed he’d done it in protest of the trade, and police assumed it was the result of a burglary.

Banks says he was leaving town and wanted to give his furniture to the Salvation Army. But he says he met some men outside the Salvation Army office, and they wanted to buy the furniture from him. He negotiated a deal and sold it to them.

A few days later, he says that same furniture was found in the park.

“I got caught doing some guys a favor,” Banks explains.

The bottom line, he says, is that he wasn’t really upset about this trade. Instead, for what seemed like the millionth time, the Browns had hurt his feelings. But the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of being a Charger, of being an important cog.

So that’s the big news. Chip Banks, three days early , is bringing his answering machine to San Diego.