Germany’s Eagles Barely Flying : Football: Berlin team, which plays American version of the game, is successful, but virtually unknown in the country.

In a land where 1-0 soccer scores prompt national celebrations and general mayhem, a quarterback who threw 52 touchdown passes in a single season might as well have not existed.

Such is the staggering popularity climb American football faces in Germany. There are three sporting names that matter here: Steffi Graf, Boris Becker and Franz Beckenbauer. If your name is not among them, take your proper place behind a long and lonely offensive line in Berlin.

Cliff Madison, a graduate of Crenshaw High in Los Angeles, is quarterback for Germany’s best American football team, the Berlin Adler (Eagles). His team scored more than a 100 points in a game three times last season on its way to Germany’s equivalent of the Super Bowl title. Madison threw for 4,028 yards in 10 games, which included one nine-touchdown performance.

Yet, hardly anyone knows of him.

Obviously, one country’s definition of excitement is not another’s, as the NFL will learn as it attempts to export its brand of football to a new Germany.

But if 52 touchdown passes doesn’t grab your attention, what will? For one, a World Cup soccer championship, no matter what the complaints about aesthetics.

“They’re just learning American football,” Madison said. “It hasn’t even caught on yet. Most people know very little about it.”

Madison said there are no attempts to compete with soccer, the national sport. American football was probably set back further after West Germany’s recent victory in the World Cup.

“Berlin was wild,” Madison said. “So many things were happening at the time. The wall came down, Germany takes the Cup. I mean how much better can it get for a city like this?”

If you said the Rams and Kansas City Chiefs this weekend at Olympic Stadium, perhaps it’s time to loosen the straps on your leder hosen.

But until they deport Madison for preferring his brand of football, he promises to keep lighting up scoreboards to the sound of no applause.

“I look in the stands sometimes, and I say ‘Where are the people?’ ” he said. “This is America’s sport. But that’s why I like scoring 60 or 70 points a game. I let them know, this is football, this is not soccer.”

Madison’s team, the Adler, is one of about 75 club teams competing in the country’s Bundes Football League. The Berlin squad plays on a grass field encircled by a bicycle track. Madison said crowds range from between three and four thousand per game. As part of Saturday’s scheduled events, Berlin will play the Dussaldorf Panthers before the Rams and Chiefs take the field.

Madison joined the Adler in April, 1989, after playing out all his options in the states. He attended three colleges, had a brief stint in the Canadian Football League, and last played for the Chicago Bruisers of the Arena Football League in 1988. The Bruisers picked him up after Madison was beaten out by Matt Stevens for quarterback of the L.A. Cobras.

After his Arena career ended, Madison attended another pro tryout camp that was held at UC Irvine. Madison’s logic was simple:

“Nobody picked me up, and I didn’t feel like working 9 to 5,” he said.

A coach at the tryout suggested Europe, and Madison soon found himself in Berlin.

He is one of three Americans on the team. The star receiver, though, is German. His name is Roman Motzkus, who has 20 touchdown catches with one game remaining this season.

Motzkus, one German who considers American football more than a passing fancy, watched Monday’s Ram practice with uncommon awe.

His favorite American player is San Francisco’s Jerry Rice, but he wears uniform No. 83 in honor of Ram receiver Flipper Anderson. Motzkus came to know Anderson after his game-winning playoff catch last year against the New York Giants. The game was broadcast live in Germany at 2 a.m.

“Perhaps I’d like to meet him,” Motzkus said as he watched Anderson run a pass pattern.

The German’s club football season runs from April to October.

The teams are staffed with German coaches, but Madison finds himself doing most of the teaching for the Adler.

“The coaching staff is not really obligated,” he said. “They have to work and take care of their families.

“We don’t have a head coach. I run the offense. We have three assistants and myself.”

When none of the coaches had arrived for a recent game, Madison ran the team from the huddle.

Although Madison averaged 5.2 touchdown passes per game last season, he keeps the statistics in proper perspective.

“Hey man, these are phenomenal stats,” he said. “But only over here, you know what I mean?”

The Adler pays Madison 3,000 German marks--roughly $2,000--and furnishes him with an apartment.

Madison’s goal is to catch the attention of someone in the newly-formed World Football League, which kicks off play in spring, 1991, with European teams in Frankfurt and Barcelona, Spain.

“I think I can get a shot at it,” he said. “I’m 27 years old, but I feel like 23. My body’s not aching at all. I’ve been in this game 20 years and my arm feels great. I am looking forward to leaving and joining one of these World Football teams.”

Ram Notes

The first of three scrimmages between the Rams and Chiefs is scheduled for today. “I think it’s great,” Ram Coach John Robinson said. “It begins the work of practicing against strangers. I think it’s a nice step up.” . . . Great arms, bad voices: Two generations of former Purdue quarterbacks, Len Dawson and Jim Everett, were reported out on the town Monday night, singing Elvis Presley songs in bad German accents. Dawson is a local television sports anchor in Kansas City. Everett, of course, plays quarterback for the Rams . . . Ram defensive end Bill Hawkins appeared to have aggravated an injury to his left knee in Monday’s practice, but said the leg was just stiff from Saturday’s long plane ride. Hawkins had surgery in December to repair a torn ligament in the knee. . . . Cornerback Darryl Henley (groin) and linebackers Larry Kelm (toe) and Fred Strickland (hamstring) also missed practice. Robinson said Kelm may be held out of Saturday’s game as a precaution. . . . The best question of the day came from a German journalist who asked Everett: “In the United States, you are a star. But in Germany, it’s a bit different. Who’s Jim Everett? You’re no Franz Beckenbauer. How does it affect you?” Everett’s reply: “That’s just fine with me. That’s probably the way I’d like life anyways. I don’t mind that one bit.”