It’s Definitely an Open-and-Shut Case

As counsel for Sam Wyche, distinguished coach of Cincinnati, we wish to appeal the NFL ruling removing $3,000 from Sam on a rap you shortly will conclude is bum.

Sam was nailed for closing the locker room doors to the sporting press after a recent game against Seattle.

The fine is challenged here on two grounds. First, no effort was made on the part of authorities to look at the pictures. The instant-replay process has been instituted at the cost of millions, and no review was made to determine whether Sam merely shut the doors or locked them.

If Sam shut them, is it his fault it never occurred to those outside to open them and walk in?

Failure, too, to defer to instant replay deprived announcers from anticipating what the tape would reveal before the judgment was handed down. Announcers never wait for official disclosures. They take the position that if one can’t guess what the verdict is going to be, one doesn’t qualify as an analyst.

The analyst says: “There is no way it can be ruled that Sam locked the doors. Look where his knee touched.”

Listening to Bill Walsh work the game on TV the other day between San Francisco and Buffalo, we were seized with the urge to tender Bill advice he would live with forever. He chose to outguess the instant-replay booth, insisting the runner was down before he lost the ball.

When the tape disproved this, we wanted to assure Bill, “A seasoned expert never sets himself up to look like a chump. He waits for the ruling, then says, without equivocation, ‘It comes as no surprise that the play was ruled a fumble. How could it be ruled anything else? Study the posture of the ballcarrier and his juxtaposition to the ground.’ ”

Same with analyzing a game.

“Wait until it’s over, Bill,” you say, “then tell your audience, knowingly, ‘It was a foregone conclusion the Bills didn’t have the smarts to handle San Francisco.’ ”

How do you think guys in the newspaper business last 50 years?

In behalf of our client, Sam Wyche, it also is argued that a fine of any kind is uncalled for in the light of the cultural deprivation he has suffered, separated from those coming into the locker room.

You detach yourself from this cerebral force and, at game’s end, you can’t be asked, “Sam, what kind of pitch did you hit?”

“I didn’t hit any pitch. This is football.”

“Then when did you feel you had it won?”

“We never had it won. We blew it, 24-17.”

Those breaking off communications with the sporting press have had to answer to authorities in the sky, who normally impose a curse.

Steve Carlton, for instance, decided to sever relations with authors. He declared it would be his policy not to talk to anyone.

So what happened to Steve? He came into baseball at 21 and, by 43, he was finished.

What’s more, he won 20 games only six times.

Bo Jackson locks his dressing room door. And you don’t think Bo has been punished? He was limited to 32 homers last season and 105 RBIs.

And for all his notoriety, you count Bo’s money and you find he hasn’t even accumulated as much as the Sultan of Brunei.

Nor has one of Bo’s employers, Al Davis. Reclusive by nature, Al rarely converses with the sporting press, seeing it as an encroachment on his thinking time.

So he pays for it. The forces arrange for Al to get nothing more than $18 million from an antitrust suit, $8 million from an eminent-domain suit and $10 million from Irwindale.

And now, if he gets lucky, the best he can dredge from Oakland, Sacramento or Los Angeles is a lousy $50 million for the pleasure of his team’s company.

When Al locked the doors on the press, he should have thought about the consequences.

Defying counsel, Sam Wyche not only wants to pay his $3,000 fine but is recommending the money be turned over to a worthy cause.

“It’s going to a worthy cause,” the owners inform him. “It’s going to us.”

Sam isn’t stable enough to get into these kinds of scrapes. One week he fights with sportswriters, the next week he fights with Houston, running up 61 points and telling folks there he doesn’t like them.

What you have to do with a client such as this is allow the press into the locker room and lock the doors on Sam.