Howie Long Is Tackling New Challenges : Raiders: Defensive lineman, healthy at last and back in the spotlight, takes some shots at his critics.

Like some perennial on the Johnny-Arsenio circuit who fades into oblivion while Jessica Hahn and Zsa Zsa make the rounds, he returns to our living rooms, a force once more, smiling so winsomely the sun seems to glint off his incisors, the man to ask about everything-- there’s just no telling what he might say!

Ladies and gentlemen . . .

Howie Long.

All last season and half of this one, he was written off as washed up or gone Hollywood. NBC’s O.J. Simpson opined that Long was now lifting weights for maximum “cut,” for that good show-biz look.

Long, not one to laugh off a slight, thought that was hilarious.

NBC’s “insider,” Bobby Beathard, the former Washington Redskin general manager, opined that Long just wasn’t the defensive end he used to be.

Bobby Beathard?

“We’re as responsible for Bobby Beathard being at NBC as anyone,” said Long, no longer amused.

“We kicked their (Redskin) butts just about every time we played them, and those are the players he scouted and drafted. We traded them everyone but Run-Run Jones (a Raider equipment man), and we were just about to lock that deal up when (Beathard) left Washington. And that’s fact. He was going to give us the right side of their offensive line and their bookend defensive ends for Run-Run Jones. A lot of people don’t know that. I’m going to let it out now.”

Long was the first real Los Angeles Raider star. Lyle Alzado and Jim Plunkett belonged more toOakland; Marcus Allen was Southern California’s own, but reluctant. Who would hang around until 6 p.m. and go on with the mini-cams and make jokes about this week’s opponent? Howie!

Who got a drink in the Seattle Seahawk huddle one day and told them he deserved it more than they did? Who needled his buddies like Alzado in the papers, made the cover of GQ, did national spots for Personna, Nike, Campbell’s Soup? Who got a $9.7-million contract from Al Davis that pays $1.1 million this year escalating to $1.8 million in 1994?

Who missed most of last season with a calf injury diagnosed as any-day-now?

Who missed most of this exhibition season with a sprained ankle that wasn’t thought to be a big deal . . . then took shots to play and didn’t make the starting lineup until Game 7?

With the Raiders plummeting and Long on the sidelines looking fetching in a baseball cap, the world dive-bombed him.

The ankle healed, with the help of Art Shell, who gave him the time off he needed. The next thing you knew, here’s Howie!

“Al came to me and said, ‘We’re going to give you an opportunity to get well,’ ” Long said. “But I still didn’t have the feel for what my situation was. I didn’t get that feel until Art Shell came in. The first thing he did was come up to me and say, ‘You tell me when you’re ready to play. I don’t care what anybody else says.’

“That meant a lot to me. There was too much gray area.”

Gray area, of course, was ruinous to Long, the worrier, who had been handed around from relative to relative as a child, who long after he achieved stardom and riches would lie awake at night wondering where it all might go.

When he was on top of it all, deemed the game’s outstanding defensive force, he sat up nights imagining the worst, so you can imagine how easy this was.

“I’m up all night now,” he said laughing. “I just have the company of my kids (two sons, 4 and 1 1/2). Now I have someone to run the whole situation by.

“In the beginning, it rattled me a little bit, the things being said, the things being written about me. And then I got to the point where I just said, ‘The hell with it. You can’t control what you can’t control. The only thing you can control is, No. 1, getting well; and No. 2, when you come back, playing your butt off.’

“People just don’t know what it’s like. There are certain types of injuries you can’t function with. If you break a hand or you hurt something in your upper body, you’ve got a shot. But when you can’t run. . . . My game is getting off the ball, explosion.

“I think (the gone-Hollywood claim) is is a hook for people. I don’t actively pursue anything in that industry. I get offers to do some things. I’m not going reading for things. In the off-season, I go home, I work out and that’s what I do. If I have to do a commercial, it’s one day for six figures. If that’s going Hollywood, fine. I call it paying the bills, man. Putting my kids through college.”

Mama, don’t let his kids grow up to be football stars . . .

“I would not encourage it,” he said, laughing. “I have dreams of an outfield (the Longs’ third son is due this week). I have dreams of arbitration--for eight mil a year by that time. The biggest worry you have as an outfielder is, what, staying awake?”

Football is exciting, football is lucrative, football made him.

Football is hard, football is merciless, football can break you into many pieces.

“There are too many situations where I went in this direction (playing football) for it not to have been fate,” Long said. “God has been good to me. I’m fortunate to be around. But I’ve seen everything there is to see--injuries, success, failure. I know what a toll the game takes on your body.”

If he is no longer the game’s dominant force--meet Philadelphia’s Reggie White--Long remains a force.

“I think Reggie White is a glimpse of the future,” he said. “Here’s a guy, 6-6, 295. Those are normal numbers for an offensive tackle. When you couple that with 4.6-, 4.7-second speed . . . and the strength of three. . . . You’ve got a superior player.

“I’m proud of the fact that I’ve worked hard. I’m competing again. I don’t envision myself being as good as everybody says I am and I don’t envision myself being as bad as everybody says I am. I don’t do anything great, but I do a lot of things good, that’s all.”

It’s not all, at all. At 29, the handsome young scion with the assured future literally crawls through his large house in the South Bay for days after games. What the heck, it’s a living.