When Sides Have Saved Face, Banks Will Play Football Again

When the Chargers trek up Interstate 5 for tonight’s exhibition with the Rams in Anaheim, one uniform, predictably, will be empty.

Chip Banks is still a no-show.

Oh?

This isn’t really news. It was news last year, when he showed up on time. Banks operates in a different time zone . . . or ozone . . . from the rest of society.

As I understand it, there are a number of plausible reasons why Banks is remaining home in Georgia while his erstwhile and earnest teammates are sweating in the La Jolla sun.

In no particular order, they are . . .

- The Chargers’ offer of $4.8 million over five years is acceptable only if it comes with a reporting bonus of $300,000 to be paid in 1990.

- He would like to be traded, presumably closer to home. In fact, he feels that playing for the Raiders would be wonderful.

- He simply does not like this time of year, doing all that work and playing in, ugh, exhibition games.

All of this may well intertwine. He could be asking for the outrageous signing bonus simply as a ploy to make it seem reasonable that he not be in a place he does not want to be (training camp) at a time (early August) when he does not want to be there. If he should get the bonus, fine. If he doesn’t get the bonus, he gets a few extra weeks of vacation.

The key here is that the Chargers cannot fine him for not being there, because he is not under contract.

But Banks is not dealing with an owner who will allow himself to be passively manipulated. Alex Spanos, known hereabouts as Mr. Ultimatum, coils and rattles and strikes when he feels uncomfortably confronted.

Understand that Banks is not the only unsigned Charger. Lee Williams, Curtis Adams and Joe Phillips also are missing, but they are quietly missing. Their contractual negotiations have not deteriorated into messy rhetoric. Their absences have not become a cause celebre.

Banks’ negotiations, if they can be called negotiations at this point, have become the focal point of controversy because he has managed to anger Spanos. The owner had understood that the $4.8 million offer had been accepted in June, and now he was being subjected to a demand for an additional $300,000 just to show up and earn the $900,000-plus per year he had already offered.

As if this wasn’t already enough to bristle a guy’s crew cut, Banks had the audacity to embarrass Spanos by asking, jokingly or not, that he be traded to the Raiders.

Significantly, Banks made this “suggestion” in the immediate aftermath of the much-criticized trade of Jim Lachey to the Raiders. Lachey asked to be traded and got his wish, and now Banks was adding to that controversy with his latest whim.

Naturally, that did not sit well with the Charger hierarchy. They come under fire for letting one guy posture himself into a trade, and now they have another guy trying to do the same thing. They trade him, too, and they open the floodgates.

No way.

They proclaim that Chip Banks will not be traded, and Spanos delivers an ultimatum that the recalcitrant linebacker must be in camp by Thursday or the original offer is off the table. Banks, like Spanos, is a stubborn man, so there was no way he would respond to such a dictum in a positive manner.

No way at all.

So he stayed home, as everyone knew he would.

The irony in all of this is that it might well make more sense to trade Banks than it did to trade Lachey. The San Francisco 49ers, for example, are desperate for linebacking help, and they have players who would fit in nicely with the Chargers.

Could the Chargers use a quarterback such as Joe Montana or Steve Young?

Hmmm.

Could the Chargers use a cornerback such as Tim McKyer or Don Griffin?

Hmmm.

Unfortunately, because of the Lachey precedent, they find themselves positioned so that trading Banks could be interpreted as a sign of weakness, and no one can allow that to happen in the macho National Football League.

But this whole scenario will only be resolved when somebody weakens.

I look for one of two things to happen.

Chip Banks will report at his own convenience, but on Spanos’ terms.

Or the Chargers will make a trade that they can defend because of the caliber of players they will get in return.

This tangled scenario will unwind as soon as the parties involved find a resolution that will allow everyone to come out looking strong. Perceptions are everything at times such as this.