He Paid Big Penalty for Dumb Rap

He could throw long. He could throw short. He could scramble. He was probably the most effective quarterback who ever played the game.

But, he had this weakness. He was too happy. He always had this silly little grin on his face. He laughed a lot. Smiled a lot. He always gave the impression he had just ridden into town on a wagon and two mules. He giggled. He was as country as grits, red-eye gravy and biscuits. He was as hyperactive as a puppy with a carpet slipper.

If Terry Bradshaw had gone around Pittsburgh in a three-piece suit, carrying a briefcase, if he had frowned a lot, wore horn-rimmed glasses, thought before he spoke, had an unlisted phone, if he had played Mozart instead of Eddy Arnold, he might have gained recognition for what he was--maybe the best quarterback in history.

Instead, he got this reputation as a guy who had a great arm--he used to throw javelins with it, so a football was a piece of cake--but it came attached to a guy who would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

It wasn’t as if being quarterback in the NFL called for a Phi Beta Kappa or a rocket scientist, it was just that society instinctively thinks that anyone who looks cheerful all the time must not understand the situation.

The sporting press latches onto an angle. And the angle on Bradshaw was Dummy. His teammates did nothing to disabuse it. After a losing game, you’re supposed to sit in front of your locker and hang your head and look mopey. Bradshaw would be in the shower slapping and tickling with a towel or handing out exploding cigars.

Terry went along with the gag. If someone said, “Hey, Terry, if Farmer Jones had 10 apples and Farmer Brown bought three of them how many would Farmer Jones have left?” Or, “Hey, Terry, can you name the state capitals--can you even name the states?” Terry would laugh.

Terry thinks the whole question arose because he deliberately flunked an ACT test for admission to Louisiana State University. He wanted to go to Louisiana Tech closer to home. The skyscrapers of Baton Rouge frightened him, and the simplest way to get out of it all was not pass the admission test.

A reporter found out about it and, since not making LSU is not exactly like blowing Harvard, a legend was born. Terry Bradshaw became L’il Abner and Ozark Ike rolled into one.

It was a bum rap. But it detracted from Bradshaw’s monumental achievements in the game of football.

They’re hard enough to decipher anyway. You examine a record book and you look in vain for Bradshaw’s accomplishments. He’s 130 touchdown passes behind Fran Tarkenton and 78 behind John Unitas, for instance. His 2,025 completions lag behind Tarkenton’s 3,686 or Unitas’ 2,830.

But, when you talk of Super Bowls, Bradshaw stands alone. His nine touchdown passes lead all quarterbacks. So do his 932 passing yards.

So does his getting there. The object of the game is to get to, and win, Super Bowls. Terry Bradshaw did this better than any quarterback who ever played. It’s possible nobody ever threw as many quality passes. For one thing, Terry Bradshaw disdained the little dump-off pass that looks so good on the stat sheet but never the scoreboard. “If I had a little flare pass called for, I would always try to squeeze 20 more yards out of it by finding somebody downfield,” he grins. “My arm would freeze up on me if I wanted to dump it off. It didn’t want to do it.” Like all great passers, over 10% of his completions were for touchdowns.

But, you measure a Terry Bradshaw, just as you measure a Roger Staubach, Fran Tarkenton, Otto Graham or any great quarterback by how well the franchise has done since he left. In the case of the Pittsburgh Steelers, not very.

The symbiotic relationship of coach and quarterback in football is fascinating to study. In the days of the great Pittsburgh Steeler hegemony, and they won four championships in a decade, Coach Chuck Noll was hailed as the dominant mentor of the game. Paeans of praise were sent up over his “Steel Curtain” defense, his masterful organization of the game.

But he never won before Bradshaw--and he has never won since Bradshaw.

It’s really a Quarterback Syndrome. Vince Lombardi, to my mind, was the best coach in the history of the pro game. If he wasn’t, then Paul Brown was. If he wasn’t, then Tom Landry was. If not him, Bill Walsh.

But Vince Lombardi had Bart Starr at the keyboard his glory years at Green Bay. We never got to see how well he would have done without his guiding Starr because he died shortly after leaving Green Bay for Washington. Paul Brown was great, but he was greatest when he had Otto Graham. When Otto left, the Browns went from super to so-so. Tom Landry had Roger Staubach his title years. The Cowboys were never the same when it was Roger and out. Bill Walsh is a great coach. But he had Joe Montana in the irons for his great Super Bowl runs.

And Noll had Bradshaw. So, it was a great relief to a lot of people when Terry Bradshaw went in the Hall of Fame on the first bounce this year. Because there was a tendency to conclude that the unprecedented four Super Bowl championships by the Steelers were ascribable not to the guy in the dunce cap but that solemn, unsmiling head guy on the sidelines and the presence of so many other outstanding talents on the field. Well, how dumb could Terry have been? He’s the last quarterback anyone knows to call his own signals in this league. He has not only read books, he has written one. “Looking Deep” with Buddy Martin as co-author, is largely a chronicle of how difficult it was for the quarterback to overcome his relationship with his coach. It was hardly Damon and Pythias. More like Punch and Judy. “When I was a rookie, Chuck jerked me around on the sidelines during the games. Against the Giants my second year, he grabbed me by my face mask in front of my teammates, dragged me around like an animal and screamed at me. It was humiliating.”

Terry Bradshaw blew it. He should have shown up aloof, cantankerous, silent and menacing his first year. He should have worn purple glasses and carried books of Russian poetry and had a doormat that said, “Go away!”

If he did all those things he wouldn’t be bothered today with his new four-year deal as expert analyst on CBS football telecasts or be delivering four-to-five motivational speeches a week all over the country at a take close to seven figures annually.

He does that because people like him. Some dunce! With a football in his hands, he was Einstein.