Looking for Mr. Shanahan

You stare and you stare, but you simply cannot make out Mike Shanahan anywhere. Big, mouth-breathing, would-be Raider football players are stomping around, Herman Munster-like, all across the field, or they are going long for passes, huffing and puffing, trying simultaneously to catch spirals and the eye of their new coach. Though you are certain that Shanahan is out there somewhere, in one of the aisles of this movable meat market, the man just doesn’t jump out at you.

In Raider days of yore, all you had to do was look for the familiar hipster haircut and shades of Al Davis, or the easy-to-spot avoirdupois of John Madden, or the jet-black mane and matching V-neck sweater of Tom Flores, and there you found the man for whom you were looking. Each was something more than just another face in the crowd. Spotting Al Davis at a football practice is like spotting Elvis at an Elks club. You just enter the front door and turn left at the aura.

Mike Shanahan does not have that quality--not yet. Given time, he will no longer be nondescript. Maybe after a game or two, or a title or two, the Shanahan kisser will have been seen in public often enough that it will seem as instantly identifiable as Mr. Lasorda’s or Mr. Riley’s or Mr. Robinson’s, our current leaders in the clubhouse. Maybe fingers will point and voices will whisper whenever Mike Shanahan enters a restaurant, the way they did in Denver anytime a National Football League head coach trailed a maitre d’ to a table.

The face is a boyish one, not surprisingly, seeing as how that at 36, Shanahan is nearly 5 years younger than one guy, Jim Plunkett, who for the time being is still considered one of his team’s quarterbacks. Even Marc Wilson is in his 30s. Mike Shanahan clearly is not going to be the kind of coach who goes around addressing too many players as “Son.”

Just because he is a veritable baby does not mean Shanahan is unqualified to be an NFL head coach, just as it does not mean he has not experienced a lot of life. Already, in fact, he came close to experiencing the loss of that most precious to him. Long before Mike Shanahan took to coaching football, see, the game he loved nearly cost him his life.

Shanahan, a smallish (5-11, 170) but not incapable college quarterback out of Oak Park, Ill., was taking part in a spring scrimmage one day, just before his senior year at Eastern Illinois. He got hit on an option play, and felt woozy. “I thought I just got the wind knocked out of me,” he remembered after a Raider rookie-camp practice in El Segundo the other day.

When the coaches and trainers asked if he was all right, Shanahan said sure thing, no sweat. Even after he went into the locker room and urinated a bright red, he thought little of it. There were always good parties to go to after a spring game, and Shanahan was not about to miss one. He went home to shower and change.

Three hours later, he was in a Charleston hospital, being cut open. At home he became physically ill, and knew something was seriously wrong. Doctors did exploratory work on him, attempting to locate the source of the pain. The hospital listed Shanahan in critical condition. A priest read him the last rites.

This turned out to be the end of the playing career and beginning of the coaching career of Mike Shanahan, who lost a kidney, but could have lost so much more.

“I always knew I wanted to be a coach, but when you’re playing, you don’t think about coaching,” he said. “I’d been lucky enough to have grown up in Chicago and around a lot of good coaches, and it always appealed to me. It pleased me a great deal that when I eventually went back to Eastern Illinois, I was the youngest offensive coordinator in the country.

“And, there’s one more thing you have to remember about football coaches. When you’ve got sellout crowds of 70,000 or whatever up there in the stands, they don’t care about the coach’s age. They care if he knows how to call plays.”

Shanahan comes from a family of professionals. His dad’s an electrician. Two sisters are nurses. Another sister is in law school. His brother is a pilot. “I have another sister who’s married to a minister,” he said. “So, I think I’ve got just about all the bases covered.”

The NFL’s youngest head coach is trying to acquaint himself with anything and everything having to do with the (in)famous Raider organization of Los Angeles, Oakland, Irwindale, El Segundo, Oxnard, Northridge and the world. The former Bronco assistant hasn’t even had time to bring out his family from Aurora, Colo., or to find a new house. He was preoccupied first with the NFL draft, during which the Raiders made more deals than Monty Hall, and now the rookies have opened camp, top pick Tim Brown of Notre Dame among them.

No, the coach won’t guarantee that Brown will be a starter. “I never count on a rookie coming in and being an impact player,” Shanahan said. “Hopefully, he can contribute.”

No, the coach won’t say for sure who his quarterback will be, although “That’s the one area everybody talks about, isn’t it? I remember how everyone in Denver was so down on John Elway at one time, it was incredible. The first person to get it is the quarterback or the head coach, 1-2, though I’m not sure which one’s 1 and which one’s 2.”

No, the coach has not yet met tailback-outfielder Bo Jackson. “I don’t want to bother him. He’s got a job to do. I feel the same way during football season. If his baseball team changes coaches, I don’t want him saying, ‘Let’s talk baseball.’ He’s got a job to do, so let him get it done.

“But, if you’re asking me if I’d like him to be here year-round, heck, yes. I’ve seen him run over defensive backs like a locomotive, first hand. It’s nice to be on the same side as Bo Jackson, believe me.”

Mike Shanahan has mixed feelings about what he accomplished at Denver, satisfied at going to back-to-back Super Bowls, exasperated at losing both of them. The left side of his brain tells him to be proud. “Losing the game, though, it’s such an empty feeling. It just eats at you. And, if it doesn’t eat at you, maybe you’re in the wrong profession. Because in football, there’s no second place. You don’t set out to be No. 2. I’m not here to try to make the Los Angeles Raiders No. 2.”

There have been times of late when the Raiders certainly did look like No. 2, but Mike Shanahan is here to put a stop to that. See him out there? He’s the one out there who looks as though he ought to be be carrying the Gatorade. Keep your eye on him. He could grow on you.