Football Has Become a Game for the Jet Set

You have decided, in the wake of the college bowl season recently concluded, and in the midst of the pro tournament, that football needs help.

The quality of consistency no longer is there. The viewer is confused, if not downright distraught.

It used to be, for instance, that a light plane, towing a sign, would fly over the stadium before the game. The sign might read: “Harriet, Please Marry Me--Jack.”

So what flies over the Rose Bowl the other day? A parcel of F-4 fighter jets. The national anthem ends and, all of a sudden, the place vibrates from the roar of warplanes.

“You got something against the F-4?” a good American asks.

“The F-4 is a nice machine,” you answer. “But what’s it doing at a football game?”

“Same thing it was doing at the All-Star baseball game at Anaheim,” you are informed. “Showing you America is strong.”

“At the Rose Bowl, I would rather be assured USC is strong,” you say. “Football used to be preceded by invocations, but they were thrown out on the ground that if people who like to pray have rights, those who don’t have rights, too. Well, people who don’t appreciate saber-rattling at football games also have rights.”

Solution to the problem? Play all games under a dome.

To restore order to the sideline, as well as remove an eye pollutant, penalties must be stepped off against a coach deluged by his team with Gatorade.

The infraction? Out of uniform.

If a player can be ruled out of uniform whose socks or sleeves aren’t tidy, what case can be established for a coach made to look like an idiot under a shower of Gatorade?

Begun by the Giants during their championship season of 1986, the Gatorade caper has burgeoned as a national curse. Colleges, high schools, Pop Warner League--all dumping Gatorade on the coach.

Even Notre Dame, most mature of your football institutions, nails Lou Holtz in Miami. Looking at Holtz, dripping orange, you want to inquire, “Where have you been, Lou?”

“Earl Scheib’s,” he answers. “And they threw in $15 worth of body work.”

Is there a way to spare the viewer the ugly spectacle of Gatorade dousing? A suggestion here is, don’t dump the bucket over the coach, dump the coach into the bucket.

If bowl games are going to continue on television, a coordinator must be enlisted to unify credits on the various networks.

CBS, for instance, bills its game as the Mobil Cotton Bowl, reported on NBC and ABC merely as the Cotton Bowl.

The USF&G; Sugar Bowl advertised on ABC is known only as the Sugar Bowl on CBS and NBC. And, of course, NBC’s Federal Express Orange Bowl and Sunkist Fiesta Bowl become the Orange and Fiesta Bowls to the others.

Among the viewing nation, this leads to uncertainty and loss of confidence. Headaches, backaches and bed-wetting are reported. The networks are urged to get together on this matter of vital concern, or run the risk of government intervention, ordering for all the generic label bowl games.

And if pro football is to remain a major entertainment force, it must get someone to explain to a puzzled public (a) roughing the kicker (b) running into the kicker, and (c) falling into the kicker.

There appears to be a difference. Roughing calls for 15 yards, running calls for five--and falling is excused, an act usually blamed on a blocker.

Yet, reviewing the tape, a guy watching a game often can’t distinguish among the three, which isn’t surprising, because the referee can’t, either.

But on three different occasions, almost identical acts against the punter may be judged three ways.

What pro football has ignored almost altogether today is a piece of legislation called “the bad actor rule.”

The bad actor rule calls for a penalty against the punter when he is judged to be putting on a bad act to get a flag thrown against the defense.

Now here is the worst kind of blackguard. Football, responding to human need, installs a rule to save his neck--and he tries to take advantage of it for gain.

This is a guy who would bilk a blood bank.

But, for all the bad acting you see on punts, how many times is the punter called?

What football wants to do with those F-4s that thunder over stadiums is open fire on bad actors, on Gatorade dumpers and on networks calling the John Hancock Bowl something else.