PRO FOOTBALL ’87 : COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS AND TRENDS TO WATCH THIS SEASON : After the Bowl, Life Isn’t Super : GIANTS: Their Backbiting Has Become an Open Book

Let’s see, don’t we have a form around here for these things?

Oh yeah, here it is:

“(Dateline)--Eight months after their moment of glory in Super Bowl ------, there are disquieting developments in the camp of the world champion ------.

“The team’s star, ------, has written a tell-all book which even makes embarrassing disclosures about his coach, ------. The coach has written his own book, candidly acknowledging his long-running differences with ------ upper management, specifically ------.

“Another player, ------, wrote a book to explain which of his teammates he didn’t like and why.

“Still another player, ------, didn’t rip anybody in his book and spent the off-season giving lectures at $5,000-$10,000 per to management seminars on the importance of teamwork in achieving group goals.

“Now, can the ------ pull it together anew to become the first National Football League champion to repeat since the 1978-79 Steelers?”

OK, now we’re ready.

PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y.--Eight months after their moment of glory in Super Bowl XXI, there are disquieting developments in the camp of the world champion New York Giants.

The team’s star, Lawrence Taylor, has written a tell-all book which even makes embarrassing disclosures about his coach, Bill Parcells. Parcells has written his own book, candidly acknowledging his long-running differences with the Giants’ upper management, specifically General Manager George Young.

Another player, Leonard Marshall, wrote a book to explain which of his teammates he didn’t like and why.

Still another player, Phil McConkey, didn’t rip anybody in his book and spent the off-season giving lectures at $5,000-10,000 per to management seminars on the importance of teamwork in achieving group goals.

Now, can the Giants pull it together anew to become the first NFL champion since the 1978-79 Steelers to repeat?

Seriously, why can’t they?

Who can forget that crunching defense, the 66-3 romp through two playoff games, Mark Bavaro ferrying whole secondaries on his back, Phil Simms’ 22 for 25 in the Super Bowl?

Have you forgotten that Simms went all season without his top wide receivers, and they’ve added two dandies, Mark Ingram, the No. 1 pick from Michigan State, and Stephen Baker, the touchdown maker from Fresno?

Didn’t 39 of the 51 players under contract attend the rigorous off-season conditioning program?

Really, isn’t this, at long last, the next dynasty?

Shouldn’t the Giants be favored?

Naaah.

It’s a sleepy summer day in the sultry woods of Rip Van Winkle country, 20 miles north of Manhattan, where the Giants are again encamped.

The players are in meetings. The writers are whiling away the morning, updating on the press room blackboard the list of books they’d have really liked to see written:

“Media Sharks and Mako Sharks” by Capt. I.B. Tuna. (The pear-shaped Parcells is known to his players as Tuna.)

“Len-hard the Blowhard,” by J. Burt.

“Burt Is a Boarshead,” by L. Marshall.

“Golf Is My Co-Pilot,” by L. Taylor. (In Taylor’s book, he tells of having cut short his stay in a detoxification program in favor of a driving tour of the country, in which he played golf daily as therapy.)

Also there is a fictitious notice of an appointment to meet with the general manager, Young, along with what is alleged to be Young’s position on all the myriad controversies he is asked to comment on:

“Anything that is a subject of discussion, we don’t want to discuss.”

Hank Gola of the New York Post is handing out copies of “Hard Nose,” the book he co-wrote with nose tackle Jim Burt. There is a poster advertising it on the wall, with a picture of a smiling Burt. Above Burt’s head, someone has pasted a cartoon balloon in which Burt says, “None of the good stuff is in the book.”

Down on the field, the Giants saunter through a low-power drill. The playing roster is in its usual fine fettle; i.e., half of the players aren’t talking.

Of course, Taylor, smarting from the controversy his book started, is dodging the press again for all he’s worth, and team spokesman/recluse Harry Carson is picking his spots according to his horoscope or the tides.

Mark Bavaro? Get serious.

More Giants are intermittently following suit, including scrubs like Pepper Johnson and George Adams, and heretofore good guys with books to flog like Burt.

One key to understanding the Giants is they don’t have to talk. They’re bigger than that.

They’ve owned New York since the Eisenhower presidency and the glory days when Frank Gifford hung out at Elaine’s. Nothing--losing seasons, moves to the Jersey marshlands--could ever change that.

Was it not inevitable, then, that the first Giant Super Bowl champions would be lionized up and down Publisher’s Row?

Can you imagine the dismay of any house that doesn’t have an entry, be it:

A first-person account--Parcells’ “Parcells, Autobiography Of The Biggest Giant Of Them All”; Taylor’s “LT, Living on the Edge”; Burt’s “Hard Nose”; Marshall’s “Leonard Marshall: The End of the Line”; or McConkey-Simms’ “Simms to McConkey.”

A history--”The Giants” by Richard Whittingham.

A coffee table picture book--The team photographer, Jerry Pinkus, did one.

Of course, it’s hard to make yours stand out from the pack. Parcells’ book carries a foreword by his old West Point pal, Bob Knight, in which Knight affectionally calls Parcells an SOB twice and makes one reference to Parcells’ “fat” rear end.

And the publicity kit from New American Library hyping Marshall’s book alludes to the author’s “biting opinions of two of his more famous colleagues, Lawrence Taylor and Jim Burt. Marshall’s frank views on these and other issues will provide fodder for the sports media long after the ‘other’ Giants books have been cast aside.”

The release also notes that Marshall “has become one of the league’s premier defensive linemen and such a feared pass rusher that he is usually blocked by two opponents. This double-teaming often frees linebacker Lawrence Taylor, whose tremendous impact on the game is partially--and rightfully--credited to Marshall’s presence.”

Kind of makes you wonder how LT limped along those first three barren seasons before Marshall made the lineup.

Anyway, the winning author is LT, in prose as in life, the wildest Giant, the most celebrated, the most controversial and soon to be the leading money-winner.

Simms’ agent, David Fishof, estimates Taylor will make $500,000 in royalties. Of course, Fishof also notes that Taylor got an advance of only “$75,000. Period. That’s it.” Fishof says he got Simms $225,000 for his book, beating Jim McMahon’s $200,000 of the previous year.

Well, not everyone can have a killer deal.

Some guys have to do it the hard way.

My attitude then--and now--was, So what? I have no idea if I’ll make it to 30. I want to. I’m surely not looking to kill myself--or anyone else. A friend of mine recently asked about my driving habits. I told him I didn’t wear seat belts because if I ever got in a crash at the speed I go, I wouldn’t survive anyway. I told him the truth: that I knew all about the dangers drinking and driving brought other people. But I also told him what I tell anyone who asks: If I don’t care about what happens to me now, can I really think about what might happen to others?

. . . When I got to the Giants, there was a friend on the team who always had cocaine around and who kept trying to get me to use it . . . When I started, it was just part of a good time. I got high on the stuff but hell, I drove my car over a hundred miles an hour, closed down more bars than I could remember, went where I wanted and did what I wanted and still could go out on a football field and knock some . . . loose.

. . . After Bill (Parcells) got through his first year--and wasn’t fired--he started cleaning house. He got rid of everyone he thought was on drugs except me, along with some other guys whose only crime might have been their closeness with me. By the end of the ’84 season, I looked around one day and found that every friend I had on the team was gone--traded, released or cut. What was I supposed to make of that? I certainly felt hurt and depressed to lose my friends. But I wasn’t going to change my ways. Besides, I knew no one out there was going to stop me.

--LAWRENCE TAYLOR, From ‘LT, Living on the Edge’ For readers interested in learning more about self-destructive behavior as a life-style, ‘LT, Living on the Edge’ is a must.

For Giant fans who want to know more than “What highway are you going to be on and when?” it’s also a useful study in the doubts that plague even the best teams.

Page 192--”I remember after the Seattle game (a 17-12 loss last October), sitting with a friend and unloading all the nasty nagging feelings I had had for years. Our offensive coordinator (Ron Erhardt), I said, was a real nice guy but a . . .--no imagination, everything predictable. That wasn’t true--as the rest of the season proved--but I said it.

“I said our quarterback was a semi-. . . I mean, Phil was a quarterback who somehow just didn’t see the field. . . . I told my friend what I and a lot of other players had talked about among ourselves for a long time--that if Bill wasn’t hampered by so much loyalty to his players, he’d let Jeff Rutledge take the quarterback job. There were a lot of us who believed then that Jeff could move the team better than Phil.”

Taylor went on to rap the wide receivers, the offensive line and the team’s overall ability to rise to the occasion. Of course, he notes, they didn’t lose any of the 12 games they played after that.

“I was (angry)--that was all,” he writes, or dictates. “My anger and frustration got the best of my judgment.”

Taylor’s book was the first of the Giant bonanza to hit the streets. When the tabloids got done playing badminton with the question of what Parcells, the Giants and local law enforcement agencies knew about his drug use and when did they know it, Taylor was assured of a great many more sales and a lot less peace.

When he arrived in camp, obliging him to face for the first time an inquiring press, he delivered himself of what became known as “the 63-second monologue.”

It went:

“I would never put the Giants, my teammates or Bill Parcells in a bad predicament. Now the Giants have done a lot for me in six years. more than you guys can imagine. Bill Parcells is a guy I love and, I mean, he’s one of my closest friends on the team, so I would never put him in a bad predicament. It took me 18 months to write this book and you guys jumped on the negative bandwagon from the very beginning without giving the book consideration. And I guess that’s the way you do things around here. But, you know, guys, I’m not gonna let y’all destroy me. I’m going to be a Giant, I’m going to stay a Giant, I’m a Giant die-hard, I’m a Giant player. When I die, probably my last words are going to be, ‘Go Giants.’ So no matter what you do, you’re not going to win and I’m going to be here. It won’t be you guys who decide if I’m going to leave or stay. It’ll be the Giants because that’s who I play for.

“Thank you very much.”

Those are the last words he has spoken publicly.

On this note, the veterans reported.

For the presence of Phil Simms, Giant writers whisper votes of thanks daily. While the other stars take their vows of silence, or answer in monosyllables, Simms is as ever, this blond, fast-talking country-kid-turned-30 from Kentucky, available and quotable.

How did he spend his off-season? The same way, appearing and talking.

He made a fast $1 million, too.

Not that it was easy.

“I was probably busier than I wanted to be,” Simms says. “I enjoy my off-season. I want to do what I want to do. Being a quarterback, the season is nerve-wracking enough. It takes me a while to get over it.

“But still at the same time, I knew I had to do it. The money was there. The opportunities were there. And they won’t always be.”

Simms had several rules. He wouldn’t leave town (he broke it only a couple of times). He wouldn’t let anything get in the way of his workout schedule, since he felt it important for his teammates to see him working as hard as anyone else. He wound up packing as much as he could into his days off from training.

“I tried to keep it sane but it didn’t work,” he says. “You have your nice little schedule--’Oh, this week’s a nice week, maybe at the end of the week we’ll go catch a show in New York.’ As the week goes on, the phone rings, my agent calls, this, that, ‘Oh, you can’t pass this up.’ Next thing I know, another . . . week.

“I remember one day I did two radio spots, shot one commercial and did two different photographic shoots for two different companies. The hardest thing was the night before, getting all the wardrobe together.

“Of course, they had a car (read: limousine) to take me around. I was pretty well organized. I had food waiting for me when I wanted it. It worked out OK but it just killed me. Mentally, it just drained me.

“I did a book, me and McConkey. Ours is a lot different than most of them. I don’t talk about players, I don’t talk about coaches. I just talk a very little about myself. I talk about McConkey and our relationship.”

The book must have taken up more time, too?

“Didn’t take me no time,” says Simms, happily. “Dick Schaap wrote it after following us, I guess, for the last 6-7 weeks of the season. He was just there after the games interviewing us like anybody else, nothing special.”

The joke going around Giant camp is that Schaap couldn’t get Simms to open up or McConkey to shut up, but clear out a corner in the Library of Congress, another Giant book is on its way.

All the books, aren’t they one of those pitfalls champions have been disappearing into?

“The pitfall is the competition,,” says Simms, not as happily. “There’s 28 teams, so hell. . . . Forget all those books. I don’t think that has . . . to do with nothing.”

And the strain of photo shoots, etc.?

“That has nothing to do with repeating,” Simms says. “I mean, I’m in better shape this year than I’ve ever been in. I didn’t move around this off-season.

“I mean, you can’t spend your whole day, every day, just working out and thinking about what you’re going to do next season. You’d drive yourself nuts. If anything, I became more disciplined. I took better care of myself because I worked harder.

“I don’t see any pitfalls at all, not one. The big pitfall is the level of competition in the NFL. And if anyone can’t realistically see that, then you’re looking for something that isn’t there.”

Oh.

And the parts in other books where they get into each other, like Lawrence Taylor’s calling him a “semi-. . .?”

“I read it,” Simms says. “That still has nothing to do with anything. When I line up to play, am I gonna be thinking, ‘Oh, he said this about me?’

“You think players are any different than fans? That they don’t sit back and say, ‘Well, if the quarterback hadn’t done this, maybe we would’--instead of looking at themselves?

“I know players talk behind my back. I’m not naive enough to think they don’t. But you know what? It doesn’t matter because what they think isn’t worth the tissue paper they blow their nose with.”

Oh, indeed.

You want to see candid?

Run, don’t walk to your neighborhood bookstore for your copy of “Leonard Marshall: The End of the Line.”

In which our 26-year-old hero advises us:

--Lawrence Taylor, who plays behind him, “may not be the best all-around linebacker the Giants have,” and adds, “For his sake, I hope (Taylor) becomes more of a team guy.”

--Jim Burt, the man next to Marshall on the defensive line, is: insecure because he wasn’t drafted; bent on creating an identity; “egotistical”; a hot dog; jealous of Marshall; not one of the top 10 nose tackles in the league; and wouldn’t beat Marshall out if the two were competing for the nose tackle job.

Marshall also says, “When people ask me about Jim Burt in public, I don’t like to respond.”

Apparently he means, not until they come up with some front money in the form of a book advance, anyway.

Marshall also nominates himself to pick up the fallen baton of role modeldom on the Giants.

Marshall also says he approached the offensive backfield coach and asked if he could carry the ball in the Super Bowl, a la Fridge, but didn’t press it.

Why not?

“I’m concerned with the respect of the other players on the team, at least in the context of rifts that can be damaging to the overall team camaraderie,” Marshall writes.

“It’s not good when you have egos clashing. Look at the Chicago Bears.”

What we have here, obviously, is a man for all seasons. He tells all one moment, is discreet the next, is out for himself the next and a team man in the end.

Get him a mirror.

Or introduce him to that guy two feet down the line, Jim Burt.

Now Burt has been tweaked in other teammates’ books. Lawrence Taylor dates the end of their active friendship to the day he caught Burt cheating in a golf tournament, and suggests Burt may have been leaking inside stuff about him to the press.

Burt has his own version--LT is a little mixed up, it was LT who was cheating, and then-Giant kicker Eric Schubert saw it--but mostly Burt laughs it off.

“LT said it pretty much how it is in the book,” Burt says, easily. “He said we’ve had a very strange and intense relationship. He’s extremely competitive and I’m extremely competitive. If two guys who are competitive compete, one’s going to lose and he’s going to be angry.

“We’ve had our confrontations during games. We had one last year where both teams turned around and stopped the huddle, they couldn’t believe it. That got out somehow, that we almost got into a fight during the game. He must have thought I was teed off and I mentioned it to one of the reporters.”

And the things Marshall said?

“If I comment on that, I think it would be bad for the team,” Burt says, not as cheerfully. “I think that type of comment, a jealousy-type comment or whatever, it just doesn’t warrant comment.

“The things LT said, they’re the truth. He and I compete. We’ve come close to fighting but then we’re real good friends.

“Leonard and I don’t have that relationship.”

Perhaps all this backbiting isn’t as bad as it looks?

Maybe the only thing new is that this rancor has been collected in book form so now everybody on the outside will know what everyone on the inside always knew?

All teams have these problems, don’t they?

“Not really on our team that much,” says Burt. “We’ve really got a pretty low-key team. I was really surprised at some of the things that came out in the books, but I guess that’s the way it is.”

This is how it is:

Burt has with him a box of 24 books he just got from his publisher.

Bill Parcells’ publisher has sent a team of publicists to camp to hold a noon luncheon reception/press conference to announce publication of their effort.

A source says that three Giants--Simms, Burt and McConkey--made more than $200,000 in endorsements, etc. over the winter. The source says no black Giant made as much as $100,000, including the highly visible (when he feels like it), articulate, handsome nine-time Pro Bowler, Harry Carson. The blacks on the Giants are said to have noted the phenomenon and to be angry about it.

And now all the Giants have to do is wade through 27 fightin’-mad teams, starting with their opener at Chicago Monday night.

Repeat?

If they do, they ought to carry them en masse in sedan chairs over strewn rose petals all the way to Canton, where each and every one of them should be enshrined in the Hall of Fame, right down to the water boy.

Repeat?

Maybe, but they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.