Golic Delivers His Own Kind of Sunshine : Raiders: They thought he was a has-been in Cleveland, but the nose tackle has been playing like a legend in L.A.

He owned Cleveland. So what, you ask. Hey, it’s a big city, he was born there and as far as the fans were concerned, he was Mr. Brown.

Now he’s a refugee living in the South Bay while those lucky stiffs back home shovel their driveways, but who’s to say he’s the loser?

Not Bob Golic.

“It’s great,” says the Raider nose tackle. “At night, it gets kind of cool so I’ll go out in a pair of shorts and pretend like I’m freezing in Cleveland.

“It’s different. The hardest thing has been just about this time of year. I’m out looking for a Christmas tree and it ain’t right. It’s 80 degrees and you’re looking for a Christmas tree? In Cleveland, you’re wearing five layers of clothes and you can pick those things up. Here, you’re in a tank top. Man, those needles get you.”

But seriously folks . . .

Last winter, Bud Carson, the Browns’ new coach, decided that Golic, at 32, was the Browns’ past. Golic was a run specialist who could beat the center, but he couldn’t burst into the backfield like Carson-prototypes Joe Klecko or Joe Greene. Carson left him unprotected on the Plan B junk heap.

Coincidentally the Raiders had decided that Bill Pickel couldn’t handle the nose. They offered Golic a two-year, $1.25-million contract.

Au revoir, mistake by the laker, home sweet home.

In 1985-87, when Golic went to the Pro Bowl three times, the Raiders used to say he was a hype who had promoted himself with his “de-evolution” rap. Golic would explain how he had gone from an upright, thinking linebacker to a four-legged, head-in-the-mud nose tackle.

When the Raiders got a look at him early this season--the lone stalwart in the absence of Howie Long and Scott Davis, making 10 tackles at Kansas City when the Chiefs rolled up 152 yards and no one else up front had more than three tackles--they quickly concluded that beneath this extroverted exterior lay the real deal.

“He’s been a damn good football player for us,” Raider Coach Art Shell said. “He really has. I didn’t realize how good he was until he got here.”

Says Golic: “Over the years, I had heard some nose tackles who were kind of upset, like after Pro Bowl voting. They’d say, ‘I had more sacks, I had more tackles than him.’ I think a lot of them felt because I would talk to the press and I had some quotes in USA Today, that did it. But I can’t help what other people think. I just go out and play the game.”

In between, he doesn’t mind being quoted.

Shell calls him a throwback to the old Raiders.

Golic says he considers that the ultimate compliment, and tore it out of the paper for a keepsake the first time he saw it.

Shell said Wednesday that Golic reminds him of Ted Hendricks, old Kick ‘Em in the Head Ted, himself.

“Oh really?” Golic said. “I don’t know, maybe I’m going to have to take all this back, with what I’ve heard about Ted Hendricks. I don’t know if it’s a compliment or not. George Anderson, our trainer, says I remind him of Dave Dalby. I would have loved to have played with those guys who made Raider tradition. Although they didn’t wear many bars on their face masks. And it kind of shows up now.”

In real life, Golic is a pale imitation of Hendricks. He’s merely a fun-loving man who loves playing football and, unlike many of his peers, realizes it.

In Cleveland, they miss him.

“The light went out of our lives the day Bob left,” says Linda Lisi, a prominent Browns fan.

Golic says: “There was a radio station back there I worked with for a number of years. For like two years, I didn’t get a sack and they started playing funeral music every Monday, for No-Sack Golic. After that Monday night game against the Jets when I got my first sack, I called the station the next day. They said they’d had hundreds of calls all morning, saying ‘Did you see Golic’s sack?’ ”

He’s up to two now, so they must be dancing in the streets.

“I’ve played 11 seasons,” Golic says. “My dad (a former Canadian League player) told me when I was 9, ‘When you stop having fun with the game, walk away.’ After coming out here and getting this fresh start, I still love it. I think I’m going to love it for another four years.”

Of course, the classy thing would be to walk away at the top of his game.

So who needs class?

“A lot of guys retire when they’re in their prime,” Golic says. “That way people remember them and say, ‘That so-and-so was a great player.’

“When people look back at my career, they’re going to say, ‘Remember Golic? He really . . . those last couple of years.’ I’m going to be the kind of guy, when they pull me off the field, it’s gonna be by the ankles, and my fingers will be digging into the turf.”