HOLD THE TINSEL : Everett Isn’t the Hollywood Type

Quarterbacks were never meant to lead lives of quiet desperation. Bob Waterfield married Jane Russell. Later, in a commercial, Joe Namath tried on her brand of stockings. Dan Pastorini raced cars, and was stopped by a few with flashing red lights.

When John Elway arrived in Denver, reporters followed him to the barber shop to chronicle what one town considered the most famous haircut since Elvis’ induction to the Army.

So who lead the National Football League in touchdown passes in 1988 with 31? Marino? Montana? Elway? Lomax?

No, Jim Everett of the Rams. Although most days you would never know he was in a media capital. Imagine Joe Montana riding through the streets of San Francisco in an open-air Jeep.

First, a few differences between Hollywood and the upper west side of Stanton, where Everett lives.

“It’s not L.A.,” Everett says of Orange County.

But it says Los Angeles right there on your team’s letterhead.

“There’s a big difference,” Everett says, “and that’s just fine with me. I can just jump in my Jeep and have a grand old time.”

Meanwhile, Elway sneezes in Denver--and gets in the papers.

“You have to realize in Denver they don’t have much else to write about,” Everett says. “Here, there’s a ton of things going on. There’s the Dodgers, there’s Magic Johnson and the Lakers and who the Clippers drafted and couldn’t sign. All that stuff.”

A while back, Everett and some buddies landed in a Buena Park theme restaurant where customers dress in medieval costumes and partake in such traditions as gnawing cooked leg of oxen while watching simulated jousting between simulated knights.

“I put on a damn crown and rooted for the blue section and no one even came up to me for an autograph,” Everett said. “I was sitting there with this goofy crown on, starting every chant possible and having a ball with my friends. There were kids everywhere, and not a single person asked me for an autograph. I don’t know if it was because the crown was so ugly that no one recognized me or what. But it was really fun.”

After a few years in Irvine, Eric Dickerson fled for Malibu to get closer to the action.

For Everett, that night in Buena Park was action.

“I’m not this person you’re going to see parachuting out of a plane,” Everett says.

Everett has a very private side, to which you’re not invited, but it’s not the stuff of newspaper tabloids. Years of investigation into Everett’s life might lead you to an uneventful conclusion: He seems like a nice guy.

“If a reporter said he wanted to spend seven days a week with me, every minute, I’d say ‘No way,’ ” he said. “I ain’t that exciting for one, and two, it’s just not going to happen.”

Everett embodies the qualities of suburban life style. He’s as noncontroversial as the weather.

If Orange County seems an endless string of tract homes, malls and fripperies, then Everett is frozen yogurt. Like Gertrude Stein, you sometimes wonder if there’s a there there.

The public Everett is patient, kind, courteous, ever-smiling. He is a native of Albuquerque, the son of educators. His father, James, teaches special education at the University of New Mexico. His mother, Bonnie, teaches at the elementary level.

Everett brought home a bad report card--once.

“They really didn’t have to say anything,” he said. “They just looked at me.”

And that was that. Everett pressed on and became a member of the National Honor Society, and later, All-Academic Big Ten at Purdue.

The public Everett has poured time and energy into the community, recently establishing the Jim Everett Foundation in Orange County. He’s paying more than lip-service to charity, taking hands-on responsibilities for all the foundation’s projects. His charities raised nearly $120,000 last year, most of the mony going to Drug Use is Life Abuse. Next up is a canned-food drive for the homeless.

“This is a genuinely nice man,” Ram Coach John Robinson said. “I think he’s going to live his life and do a lot of good things.

The public Everett has the gift of saying things without saying much at all.

“I’m as thin as a blade,” he says proudly.

Blade, in fact, is Everett’s nickname.

The public Everett is calculatedly boring, so as to not divert attention away from the field.

“I don’t want to be remembered as ‘Hey, that was the guy who wore the headband,’ ” he says. “Or that’s the guy who said this about that guy. Or that’s the guy who thinks we should bomb Iran. I have my opinions about that stuff. And if you ever want to get into them someday, I’ll tell you my beliefs on religion and politics. But that’s not what I want to be remembered for. I want to be remembered at some point as being the best quarterback the Rams have had. And that’s a big step. It’s something that won’t come easy. We’ve had guys like Waterfield and Gabriel.”

In one of his parting shots, Dickerson called Everett an “organizational pimp,” insisting he kowtowed to management’s whims. Everett, naturally, had no comment.

The private Everett recently purchased a sprawling, ranch-style home in rural Orange Park. He likes to hunt and fish and take long walks on the beach at night. He has a steady girlfriend, Kristina Beatty, whom he met while he was at Purdue and she at Indiana. Everett also is head-over-heels about a new golden retriever, Gunner, who doesn’t yet follow a quarterback’s orders as well as Ram teammates.

The private Everett is not beyond telling a spicy joke, chewing tobacco and having a few beers with friends. But it’s his mission in life to never become a news headline. He has never done drugs, he says, and when he does have a few too many beers, he makes sure there’s a designated driver.

A star quarterback can’t afford to make a mistake.

“No one can,” he says, “Not in this day and age. It’s the ‘90s and it’s the wrong thing to do. And it’s to me the wrong image to have.”

But Everett has an ego like any other pro quarterback.

When coaches at Purdue tried to convert Everett to tight end, he refused.

“I would not accept that,” he said. “That to me was failure. Because I was a quarterback. I truly saw myself as a quarterback, and I wasn’t going to let some so-called specialist tell me I wasn’t. I wanted to prove myself to the point where someone said, ‘We don’t want you anymore.’ I’ve always been determined. And when it’s not football someday, I guarantee you it’ll be something else.”

The private Everett also is driven by the opportunity to grow in the pass offense coordinated by coach Ernie Zampese. Last year, in only his second full season as an NFL starter, Everett established Ram records for passes attempted (517), passes completed (308), yardage gained (3,964), touchdown passes (31), and most touchdown passes in a game (five).

Everett is consumed by football. He hangs out at Rams Park on his days off, making no apologies to those who think that makes Jim a dull boy.

“You see a guy who works on Wall Street,” he says. “He gets up in the morning, he eats, and he’s already thinking about Wall Street and what he’s going to do with his money. And he doesn’t get home until six o’clock. I just happen to be putting all that into football.”

The private Everett lives for Sunday afternoons.

“They always expect quarterbacks to be big risk-takers,” he says. “My idea of living life on the edge is competing on Sunday. That brings me more thrill than anything I can do in life. I realize that’s where it’s at and that’s what I concentrate on. I realize there are other things in life that just can’t match that. I don’t think a cocaine high, and I’ve never done drugs, can match that feeling on Sunday.”

It helped that Everett knew this was his team from the minute he arrived in a trade with Houston in 1986. At first, some thought he was a little too slick, too bubbly--a guy who perhaps tried to press all the right buttons too fast.

“When he came, he was a bit of a kid,” Robinson said. “But he’s maturing into a man now. I think he’s a great, great guy for this team. I spent a lot of time trying to figure him out, to guide him. But I never felt he was headed in the wrong direction. I felt he might have been a degree off. When he first came, he was almost effervescent.”

So far, Everett has managed to bridge the distance between his star status and that of his teammates. But that becomes increasingly difficult as his star continues to rise.

Everett enters the last year of a contract that pays $450,000 this season and, unlike so many of his teammates, finds himself with enormous negotiating leverage. The Rams must sign Everett before Feb. 1 or risk losing him to restricted free agency, at which time any team could sign Everett for two first-round draft choices--a small price to pay for such a precious commodity.

That won’t happen, of course. The Rams will renegotiate his contract during the season, but on Everett’s terms. And the going rate for top quarterbacks in the NFL these days is about $2 million per year.

Everett hopes this doesn’t cause a class struggle.

“I’m not blind,” he said. “If a guy happens to start a shirt company and makes millions, you hope he doesn’t change. But sometimes he does. I don’t want to. I think the values of what my parents taught me, being educators, helps. It’s what you are that makes you. I’m the same old idiot that showed up here the first day and hopefully I’ll be the same old idiot that leaves here when I go.”

But as Everett improves, new pressures await on the horizon. Word may travel slowly out of Orange County, but the football world is catching on. Everett is getting stopped in movie lines now and recently landed a bit part in a Bo Jackson commercial.

“His face is starting to pop up on TV,” Robinson said. “And if we go to the Super Bowl and win it he’s a national figure. Sure, that affects you. That’s why I think it’s so important to be well grounded. Make no mistake, a person like Jim Everett or any of these people, they have very complicated lives. They almost seem to be as vulnerable as the rock musician or the entertainer seems to be. Their images and life styles seem to becoming almost similar. Therefore, there’s more scary parts.”

For now, Everett clings to the present and awaits a promising and complicated future.

KING OF THE HILL

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