This Prize Package Is Worth a Lot of Money After Your Playing Days

My big regret is that I never became a professional football player, because maybe then I could have broken into show business.

Here in a town full of starving or at least hungry actors, good Hollywood gigs keep going to guys whose only formal training came on football fields on Sunday afternoons, where they learned how to act tough.

I am not saying these people can’t do good work. I’m just amazed they keep getting these good jobs.

Fred Dryer gets his own TV cop show. Merlin Olsen gets a house next door to the little house on the prairie. Alex Karras, Joe Namath and O.J. Simpson have had their own weekly sitcoms. Dick Butkus and John Matuszak do lots of guest shots. Terry Bradshaw, Joe Klecko and Ray Nitschke have been in Burt Reynolds’ movies. Carl Weathers wound up boxing Rocky.

I guess maybe if you’re a casting director and you’re looking for somebody large, the National Football League is a pretty good place to look.

On cable television last week, I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger running from a costumed character who was coming after him with a flame-thrower. Turned out to be Jim Brown.

Any day now, I expect to see an advertisement for a new film starring Robert DeNiro, Meryl Streep and Refrigerator Perry.

The latest bulletin from the world of show business is that, beginning Jan. 9, Pat Sajak, the host of television’s most successful game show, “Wheel of Fortune,” is being replaced by . . .

Guess.

Here’s a clue:

R-LF B-N-RSCHK-.

Got it yet?

No? OK, buy a vowel.

R-LF BEN-RSCHKE.

OK, for the fur, the car, the lamp and the stuffed moose head, name that host.

Rolf Benirschke. Absolutely right.

For those who have forgotten him, or those who never heard of him in the first place, Rolf Benirschke is the nice fellow who from 1977-86 made his living as the kicker for the NFL’s San Diego Chargers. He also overcame a serious illness, and did so with courage and style.

I couldn’t be happier for Rolf Benirschke this Christmas, even though I haven’t the slightest idea how he ever landed this job.

Beginning next month, when Sajak goes off to host a talk show or something, ol’ Rolf will get to be there every day to introduce Vanna White, the goddess of love, the Aphrodite of the alphabet, and then spin the big wheel.

Rolf is, naturally, quite excited by all this, and good-humored as always, saying: “The only guarantee I got is that my name would never be one of the puzzles, because they’d be out there guessing all day.”

It had to be a million-to-one shot that this virtually unknown, fairly nondescript, 171-pound professional football booter out of UC Davis would end up hosting America’s favorite quiz show and becoming a hard-to-pronounce household name.

“I’m still feeling sort of stunned myself,” Rolf says.

Funny thing is, I had heard that Merv Griffin was screening possible new hosts for the show, and while I am disappointed that Merv’s people never contacted me, since I happen to know my consonants backwards and forwards, I did hear that one of the people who auditioned for the job was tennis player Jimmy Connors.

As glad as I am for Rolf Benirschke, I am truly sorry that Jimmy Connors didn’t get the job, because this could have been the first game show in history to have a host scream and stomp his feet in front of the contestants if they made the wrong call.

“Are you crazy! Can’t you even read? Look at that puzzle! All you’re missing is the letter O! Are you an idiot or something? How’d they let you on this show, anyway?”

Connors would have made a wonderful host. John McEnroe would have been even better. That guy’d yell at Vanna.

Benirschke says he was just one of hundreds and hundreds of applicants and happened to luck out. I am not altogether surprised, because anybody who has ever spent a few minutes around Rolf in a locker room knows that he is an amiable, articulate young man, and not some mouth-breathing centaur with fractured vertebrae and matching vocabulary.

I can’t help thinking this might start a trend in Hollywood.

Jocks to host game shows.

Sure, why not?

Wade Boggs to host “The Love Connection.”

Ben Johnson to host “Truth or Consequences.”

Mike Tyson to host “Family Feud.”

Ara Parseghian to host “Win, Lose or Draw.”

Katarina Witt or Debi Thomas to host “Name That Tune.”

Steve Sax to host “Jeopardy.”

“The answer is: Baseball owner who alienated everybody who ever played for him.” “Who is George Steinbrenner?” “Correct. Still your turn.” “I’ll take Famous Villains for $400, Steve.” Jerry Buss to host “Sale of the Century.”

Bruce McNall to host “The Price Is Right.”

Jim McMahon to host “Super Password.”

Max Zendejas to host “Scrabble.”

Orel Hershiser and Peter O’Malley to host “Hollywood Squares.”

The possibilities are endless.

Picture Lester Hayes, the Judge, running the “People’s Court.” He’d find the defendant guilty and order him to pay the plaintiff “2,000 dead presidents.”

Pretty soon, daytime television will be full of sports figures. The Fridge steps in for Julia Child. Joe Gibbs can do the sunrise sermonette. Randy (Macho Man) Savage and Elizabeth replace Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley. Kirk Gibson pinch-hits for Phil Donahue.

I don’t know who the heck they’ll get to do “The Newlywed Game.”

Tyson’s busy.