SUPER BOWL XXII : A Mann Among Men Who Cares for Kids : Unless It’s Helping Youngsters, He Lets His Play Do Most of the Talking

Charles Mann bet on the Miami Dolphins to defeat the Washington Redskins at Super Bowl XVII, on Jan. 30, 1983, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. He hated the Redskins that much.

At Super Bowl XVIII, a year later, he was playing for them.

“My father and I loved the Rams,” he said. “The one team we hated was the Redskins. No special reason. I just didn’t like them.”

Charles Wesley Mann never got to see his son, Charles Andre, line up at defensive end for the Redskins. But he did get to go to his son’s college games, at Nevada Reno, in a wheelchair, with a bandage on his neck, before throat cancer “just ate him away,” as young Charles describes it, on St. Patrick’s Day of 1981, at the age of 48.

The football player cherished his relationship with his father, remembering how he and the other children used to rub his back when he came home worn out from driving a department store delivery truck all day, and remembering how he almost quit football, even considered dropping out of school, so devastated was he by his dad’s death.

Knowing how confused kids can get, particularly in times of trouble, Mann went through some changes himself, and decided to donate his services. There was a college course he was taking, for which he had signed up because it looked like an easy credit. The class became involved with the Big Brothers program, and Charles took a hard case named Jerome, 14, under his wing, and helped turn the kid around.

After the Redskins claimed him in the third round of the 1983 college draft, Mann made a request. He said he would be happy to help out the franchise with off-the-field projects, but only if they concerned children. He gladly would work with the Big Brothers, Special Olympics, March of Dimes or Children’s Hospital but had no interest in shooting the breeze with, say, a bunch of middle-aged boosters or Washington politicians.

“I don’t feel like I can tell a bunch of grown-ups anything that would be rewarding for either them or me,” is the case Mann makes.

So, in the five professional seasons that have since passed, in which time he has become one of the National Football League’s leading pass rushers without bragging about it--Dexter Manley, with emission control--this 6-foot 6-inch, 255-pound, full-grown Mann quietly has gone about his business, tackling adults by day, embracing kids by night. As the Big Brother credo says, “It takes a big man to stoop to help a child.”

“When I was 16, you couldn’t tell me anything,” Mann realizes. “Right now, the younger ones will listen to what I have say.”

That is why a boy like Matthew Porter could expect to find one of his Redskin heroes sitting by his bedside one Monday in 1986, even though Mann had a big game to play that night against the San Francisco 49ers.

That is why when the Manassas Vikings had their annual Pop Warner league banquet in 1984, after three years of trying and failing to get a Redskin to attend, they were so delighted when Charles Mann showed up, said a few words, then presented a football autographed by the team.

Needing money, the Vikings auctioned off the keepsake for $120, then felt funny about it, and mailed Mann a check for that amount. He tore it in half.

This is the same Charles Mann who knocked St. Louis Cardinals quarterback Neil Lomax out of one 1986 game, and at another sent Green Bay Packers quarterback Randy Wright into a hospital with a helmet-first tackle that earned him a $2,500 fine, after which he said: “I feel like I’ve been robbed.” Not always does a big man stoop to help an opponent.

At the Super Bowl, Mann is hoping to enjoy the sort of day on which Denver quarterback John Elway often looks up and sees clouds. Mann sacked Elway three times in the 1986 game at Denver’s Mile High Stadium, won by the Broncos, 31-30. On one play, with a blocker steering him away, Mann lashed out with his foot, karate style, and kicked the ball from Elway’s hand.

“We hope to apply so much pressure on the quarterback that he will throw it up for grabs,” Mann says. “Elway knows how to pass, and he knows how to scramble. If we wrap him up and sack him, we can win.”

From the stands, Washington’s defensive ends, Mann and Manley, will be easy to tell apart.

Those who sit close to the action will need only good ears. Manley will be the one yapping at the Broncos or waving his arms to orchestrate the crowd from the sideline.

Those who sit far from the action will need only good eyes, or cheap binoculars, because Mann will be the one with the “high-booty” stance, the one whose, uh, backfield juts out so prominently whenever he goes into his crouch. “My wife never has any trouble picking me out, and it’s not because I’m tall,” Mann acknowledges.

“I don’t say much of anything,” he says. “Dexter is out there calling on the fans to go crazy, busy being Dexter, and while he’s doing that, I’m in the huddle, encouraging our own players. I’m not much of a talker. I like to save my breath. But that’s OK, because Dexter does enough talking for everybody.”

There were more than 2,000 people at the team’s traditional “Welcome Home” luncheon in 1984, when rookie Charles Mann, caught completely by surprise, was asked to get up and say a few words. He got up and said a few words.

“Hi, I’m Charles Mann,” he said, and went back to his seat.

Mann rarely uses the I word. He counts on his actions speaking louder, counts on others noticing that it was he who led the Redskins this season in sacks, he who has become an All-Pro since taking over Todd Liebenstein’s place in the lineup in 1984.

Mann was a tight end and defensive tackle for Valley High School of Sacramento, and he came from an athletic family. His older brother Michael, now a doctor, played basketball for Stanford. Another brother, Donald, became a Marine, and Charles used to charge kids from the neighborhood a nickel, just to watch Donald lift weights. The Mann kids were tall and tough. About the only thing they weren’t was fat.

Charles has a metabolism problem and can’t seem to keep weight on. One of the reasons NFL teams failed to draft him was that, for most of his college career, he weighed about 215 pounds. The Redskins got him up to 270, but in the last few weeks, Mann’s weight has dropped again to 255.

“Whether or not it’s something in our genes, I don’t know, but my brother is 6-9 and only weighs about 195. My little sister’s over 6 feet, my mother’s 5-10, my baby sister’s already 5-10, and they’re all skinny.”

I’ve got one brother who, if he lets himself go, goes about 6-4 and 280 and threatens to become another Refrigerator. Otherwise, the Manns don’t balloon up much.”

Once the Redskins put some meat on his bones, Mann moved up from the special teams to the starting lineup. For his first start, about 35 relatives came to see him play against his favorite team, the Rams. Mann put a move on Jackie Slater and sacked Vince Ferragamo for the Redskins’ first safety in seven years. They won the game, 42-20.

That same season, Mann was welcomed to the NFL by another Los Angeles player, Howie Long of the Raiders. He was walking off the field after a tackle, and Long was running on. Long gave him a shot in the back of the head as he passed by, just to let him know he was playing with the big boys there.

“He was talking some mess, too,” Mann remembers. Charles said not a word. He got the message.

A few months later, Mann was in his first Super Bowl, but it wasn’t much fun. Washington’s Hogs, the offensive linemen, couldn’t give Joe Theismann much time to pass, while the defensive linemen were busy grasping at the the cleats of MVP Marcus Allen. The final score was 38-9, after which Howie Long said: “I never had Hog before. It tasted good.”

Mann’s recollection of that?

“Just a vague memory. You know how football is. It’s: ‘What have you done for me lately?’ ”

Lately, Mann has made a name for himself. The name is Charles, by the way, not Chuck, which the Redskins called him when he first arrived, and which he cannot stand. “I hate that. Chuck. Yech,” he says. As for Cement, his nickname, he merely tolerates it. Former Redskin Rick Walker gave that one to him, deriving it from C. Mann.

“When my brother played basketball at Stanford, sometimes they called him ‘The Mann in the Middle.’ And in service, my other brother got a reputation as a big card player, so they started calling him ‘The Mann With the Hand.’ So far, nobody’s hung any ‘Mann’ stuff on me,” Charles said.

Super, comes to mind.

When he first came to pro football, Mann and his brothers and sisters were still getting over their father’s death. It was a hard time for everybody. One brother got a divorce, one sister stopped coming to the house, and their mother, who used to enjoy Reno’s casinos while her husband was off watching Charles play football, nearly had a nervous breakdown over losing him.

Besides turning to helping others, Mann turned to others for help. He joined Redskin teammates Darrell Green, Keith Griffin and Ken Coffey in a support group, meeting once a week to go over one another’s situations, and, he also elected to be re-baptized. When you ask him when that was, Mann answers so quickly, you swear he could probably name the exact minute.

“Sept. 15, 1987,” he says. “This was the second time. This time it meant something.”

His faith means a lot to him. “A lot of people think religious people can’t be strong, and play hard,” he says. “Well, they can. If Jesus were here, He would not be a wimp.”

Nobody has ever called that Man that, or this Mann that. And they had better not.

Or Chuck, either.