Rams ’87 : PREVIEW SECTION : Q & A : Harrah Has Seen and Lived It All

The details are a bit hazy but, yes, Ram right guard Dennis Harrah can remember his first season in the National Football League a dozen years ago. If he’s not mistaken, it was the same year President Gerald Ford was trying to Whip Inflation Now.

At the time, though, football was whipping the West Virginia twang out of Harrah, the Rams’ rookie guard and first-round draft choice from the University of Miami, Fla.

“I remember calling my dad and telling him that I wasn’t going to make it,” Harrah remembered. “I told him I was going to have to find something else to do for a living. I didn’t know what. I thought about maybe being a state trooper or something. I really didn’t think I was going to hang with it.”

If it wasn’t one thing--veteran guard Tom Mack sneaking into his room and pulling his chest hairs--it was another, such as the unsettling prospect of failure.

But somehow, Dennis Wayne Harrah has outlasted them all. It’s been 12 years packed full of Pro Bowls, bar fights, adhesive tape burns, sweat, pain, friendship, one liners, pranks, Duval Love’s socks, more tape burns, rashes, last-minute wins and frozen playoff losses in Minnesota.

Harrah had the privilege of entering the game in the era of Mack and Jack Youngblood and will have the pleasure of leaving it in the company of Jim Everett and Eric Dickerson.

It seems funny that teammates should now refer to Harrah, who turned 34 last March, as “Pappy,” for there was a time he could tip a beer and turn over a table with the rowdiest of fraternity brothers.

“I was a tad bit out of control,” Harrah says, laughing.

But even right guards grow up eventually. Harrah married at the ripe old age of 33, and last March his wife Teresa gave birth to son Tanner Calvin. It also served as a new birth for another Harrah, by the name of Dennis, who will never see life and living in the same light again.

Harrah is the elder statesman of the Rams, the unquestioned leader, rock and funny bone of a team with its sights set on Super Bowl XXII in San Diego.

Recently, Harrah agreed to sit down and discuss his colorful 12-year career with the Rams.

Question: How did you ever last this long?

Answer: I enjoy being with the guys. I enjoy my job. I just realized I would never be happy if I wasn’t doing what I was doing. We didn’t practice the way we do now. It’s hard to see anyone playing 10 years now because of the salaries, they don’t have to. I was a first-round draft choice and I made $30,000. The whole thing’s changed now. Most kids coming out now make tremendous money. It took 10 years to be finally secure in the era I played. It doesn’t take that long now.

Q: You’ve just completed your 13th training camp. Any thoughts?

A: I hate it. I hate beating to death my own players, and my own players beating me to death. I hate two practices a day. I hate being locked in a room. I hate the food. I hate sleeping in a bed that’s made for a 9-year-old kid. You know, in baseball they work slow in training camp and increase everything slowly. We do it in reverse. It’s amazing we don’t get more people killed. I’ve thought about quitting for 13 years. Then, you get through training camp and get on with your life.

Q: But you need training camp, don’t you?

A: No, I don’t. I can honestly say no. I need a week of hard work to get ready and then let’s go. I don’t see any reason for training camp, because they just beat you to death. It makes a lot of people retire, training camp does.

Q: How has the game changed since you arrived in 1975?

A: Well, the blocking technique of the offensive line has totally changed. I was in the middle of that transition and it was tough to learn. When I first started playing the game, our coaches made us grab our jerseys to block. Our jerseys. Now, we get to grab theirs.

Q: What about the game’s personalities?

A: I don’t care much for the prima donnas that the big money has brought on. I think it started with Joe Namath. The fans see one superstar like Joe Namath and they think girls are falling over everybody. Heck, I don’t think I had a date until my fifth year in the league. Of course, I look more like Fred Sanford. Walk like him too.

Q: Today, NFL players’ salaries have gone public. Has that helped the player?

A: It’s really helped. Back then, there was a lot of sneaking around the backs of other players. Other guys used to get ticked off because other guys wouldn’t tell them what they got, or they told them but lied to them about it. It’s better now, because management can’t put players between players, because salaries are shown.

Q: Do players making big money play as hard as the players who don’t?

A: A lot of people won’t retire now because they make good money, so they’re trying to play harder. If I weren’t making good money, I’d say hell, I can get another job making this kind of money. But hell, what am I skilled at? What is my skill, kicking butt? How many guys are going to give me a job making $400,000 doing that? I know I’ve gotten in too much trouble now to be hired by the police department.

Q: What’s left for Dennis Harrah?

A: The Super Bowl is the No. 1 thing in my mind. But I don’t try to project too far, if I do, I mentally get in trouble. I’ve taken care of myself financially. I enjoy working with kids, and I want a big farm, and I’m working on that. My plans are wide open. I love West Virginia, I’ll probably make it my home. Because unless they start making double-decker freeways out here, everyone is going to be killing each other until the year 2000. It’s getting so crowded, I just couldn’t see living here the rest of my life. You know that old sign that says you’ve visited California now go home, well, OK I will . . . when the time comes.

Q: You sound like a guy who wants a white picket fence and chickens in the barn.

A: I’ll probably have a big farm in West Virginia. I’m hoping me and my dad can build a house. I’ve never built a house. Well, I built a tree house when I was a kid but fell out of it.

Q: What’s so different about you since you’ve been married?

A: I don’t think I’m missing anything now. When I was single, the guys would tell me stories about how I should have gone out. Now, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I don’t miss everybody telling stories about me about what I did. I don’t miss that at all.

Q: How has the birth of your child changed your life?

A: Well, it’s the same thing that usually comes over a normal person at age 24 but came over me at about 34. It’s responsibility. Before, I was single and stupid.

Q: You’ve gone to great lengths to change your public image. You’re very guarded when it comes to mentioning alcohol in terms of it being something glamorous. Why the change?

A: Well, I was hoping I’d mature before I collected Social Security. I have a kid now. You start thinking about it. When you were young and crazy, you let someone else worry about that. You say it’s not my problem. But everything’s turned into a problem now. Everything we considered fun at one time turned into a problem. I don’t want to be the start of anyone’s problem. Drinking and drugs, I want to say no to that to all kids. I mean no drugs and you don’t have to drink. You just don’t have to. I think that’s very important. You don’t have to do what others want you to do. Hey, if a guy has seven drunk driving charges and he’s still driving, I’d be mad too, because I think about my wife and my kid being out there.

Q: Do you resent being a role model for kids?

A: When I came in, there was no reality. You could get out of trouble because you were a ballplayer. Now, if a ballplayer gets in trouble, they double the fine. Everyone’s saying you’re a role model. You’re a role model and you’re out there beating everyone in the head. Yet they picked you to be a role model?

Q: What was the biggest moment of your career?

A: It was my first time in the Pro Bowl (1978), when Tom Mack retired at the Coliseum. They told the fans that this was Tom Mack’s last ballgame and he was over on the sideline. I waved him back out on the field. We were going in to score. He got a standing ovation, and I shook his hand. All the other players shook his hand. It felt good to be able to give back, because he nurtured me through a very trying time for me. I was starting in only my second year and I didn’t know anything. I was lost out there, but he worked me through it. It was a little applause I could give. It was very, very emotional. Just telling the story, you can’t understand unless you were there. It was very, very emotional for Tom. You could not go out any better, playing your last game in the Pro Bowl, in your home stadium and getting a standing ovation.

Q: Is there more?

A: Of course, Tom Mack went on to become a nuclear engineer. I don’t figure the day I retire I’ll be a nuclear engineer, because there’ll be another one of those Chernobyls. Forget me working in the plant, because I’ll definitely fry someone.

Q: What about a low point in your career?

A: It’s just mainly been personal problems everyone goes through in life. Trying to keep up with my career with personal problems and working through those. Those are some of my better moments, working through personal problems that I did have, but they also were some low points.

Q: You may have had your best season last year. You made the Pro Bowl for the fifth time, were named first-team All-NFL by Associated Press and first-team All-NFC by United Press International. You’re at the top of your profession. Yet, you make football sound as fun as having a root canal. Is it really that difficult for you?

A: It’s a daily struggle. I’m an offensive lineman. If I was a great athlete I’d be catching the ball. Football has been a struggle since Little League in West Virginia when I was 9 years old. You’ve got to be a phenomenal athlete and I’m not. I’ve got to work my butt off every time I go out there just to survive. It’s not like I can sit there and pass block like there’s nothing to it. It takes a lot of mental work to make you that sick every play. It’s not a perverted sick, but you have got to be sick mentally every play because a normal human being can’t do that every day. Sure, people get fired up in a board meeting, but they don’t get fired up thinking someone’s going to break their neck.

Q: So you’re saying you can’t afford to be secure?

A: As soon as I think I’m comfortable, I’m lying on my back with somebody’s footprint on my body. I get my butt whipped. As soon as I think I got it made, they’ll give me an old Timex and a Greyhound bus ticket. Just so I don’t have to ride on the RTD system. I don’t want to get in a wreck before I go home.

Q: You came into the NFL in a pretty exciting era.

A: It was fantastic. I got to play with some of the old boys, the boys that had a good time, I mean from the moment training camp started, they loved it--football, and everything that came along with it. They used to stick both feet in and have a good time. I mean it.

Q: So what’s so different now?

A: It’s a business now. You need 14 accountants and two lawyers for everyone that wants to sue you. You’ve got to have a driver to drive your car so you don’t get in trouble driving. Everything’s a problem now. We’ve got problem groups for every facet of our lives. It’s sort of cool now to admit you have a problem. I mean ever since Betty Ford . . .

Q: Who are some of the characters you played with and what do you remember about them?

A: Well, there was (linebacker) Isiah Robertson, who had an excuse for training camp about every three days. Every few days Isiah would come up with something and leave camp.

And (center) Rich Saul, he wanted the team to double his salary one year or else he’d only play half the year and someone else would have to play the second half. Then, he wanted to go play with his brother (Ron, with the Washington Redskins) and we all came to the conclusion that Rich Saul was a nut. He lives right beside me now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m positive now, he is a nut.

Q: What about Tom Mack?

A: He was the biggest jerk of all. He pulled out more chest hairs of mine than I had. And every time you had a bruise or a cut he’d stick his finger in it and ask if it hurt.

Q: Jack Youngblood?

A: I never knew anybody that worked as hard to be somebody. Jack works 24 hours a day to be Jack and that’s a hard job, to be like John Wayne. And Jack Youngblood is no doubt the John Wayne of football. There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with it. You’ve got to say all the right things at all the right times.

Q: Fred Dryer?

A: He used to eat horse oats, really, the kind you’d feed a horse. You could tell when you walked into his room because here was a horrible smell in there. And Fred never wore clothes. You’d walk in his room and he’d just be sitting there on the floor, eating his oats, naked.

Q: Did you guys know that Fred was going to make it in Hollywood.

A: Oh yeah, you could see that in Fred. He was bizarre, but he’s good for a team. There was not one person that didn’t like Fred Dryer. It’s like the time (head coach) Chuck Knox raised a big stink about everyone’s uniform regulations and Fred Dryer came out to practice with red Christmas socks on. Chuck Knox about died, but Freddy didn’t care. He could make fun of any moment there was.

Q: Jack (Hacksaw) Reynolds?

A: Friend to none. I think Jack Reynolds probably got the first dime he ever earned except for what his wife has spent.

Q: Lawrence McCutcheon?

A: Lawrence won the team’s “Ugmo Contest” seven years in a row. But he married a pretty wife. Just shows what money can do.

Q: Eric Dickerson?

A: What he can do is phenomenal, he’s one of the most talented people I’ve ever seen in my life. He can’t do anything but help me. Even on a bad block he can make me look good.