Suffering Starts if Pain Ends

All athletes have a big problem as to what to do in the after-life, when their sports careers are over and it’s time for the real world. Bob Golic has a bigger one than most.

The Raider lineman has to find an occupation that will fill needs built up over two decades of nonstop football play in the most grueling position of all, defensive tackle.

Bob Golic is going to miss the pain. Bob Golic is going to miss the Monday morning head buzzes, the locked knee, the twist in the lower back, the ringing in the ears and the overwhelming urge to throw up.

He’s going to miss the Excedrin, the throbbing in the left ankle, the knee that tells him when it’s going to rain and the swelling in the calves, or even the feeling that his left shoulder is free floating.

It’s a neat problem. What do you do? See if your neighbor next door wants to come over and exchange head butts? Try to find somebody who will double-team you at the supermarket? Or who will sneak a punch in your gut and then step aside with an injured innocent look? Or do you just go and ride a bike on the Hollywood Freeway at twilight?

It’s not easy living without pain. You feel as if something is missing from your life. Bob Golic has been slamming into hostile, vengeful people all his adult life and most of his childhood. It gets addictive after a while.

Some people like hot fudge sundaes. Others are partial to baked Alaska or chocolate malts. Bob Golic is addicted to having his teeth hurt. Nosebleeds are kind of fun, too. He has had his thumb broken so many times he always looks as if he’s hitchhiking.

It’s hard to give up a way of life. Golic can do without the crowds cheering, the wave, the banquets, the adulation--but he could break down and cry when he realizes he’s not going to be on the five-yard line against the Chicago Bears ever again, living the ecstasy of having his facemask ripped by some sociopath who is just smaller than a bus.

Bob Golic has been wearing a helmet so much of his life only a few people know what color his hair is. Or even if he has any. He’s hard to recognize unless he’s lying on top of a quarterback or manhandling a halfback. In the NFL, if you don’t have the football, nobody knows who you are. But all the flossy plays by the passers and wide receivers would not be possible if people like Bob Golic didn’t get them the ball.

Bob Golic has been getting the ball for people since grade school. He’s a charter member of the hall of fame at his high school, St. Joseph in Cleveland. At Notre Dame, he made 479 tackles, more than anyone else in the history of the school. Wherever the football showed up, Golic did, too.

But crashing into other 270-pound behemoths every weekend, or every practice, wasn’t enough for Golic. In his spare time, he wrestled. Not the Hulk Hogan hype wrestling, the real article, the kind where the blood isn’t ketchup. He had a high school record of 67-14-2 and was state champion. At Notre Dame, his wrestling record was 54-4-1. Golic was happiest when he was either in a headlock or inflicting one. Some guys watch birds in their off-hours, others play golf. Golic preferred to throw people around--or vice versa.

Bob Golic sat in the Raiders’ locker room after Sunday’s Bear game and peeled off the tools of combat--yards of bloody tape, a scarred helmet, a mound of dirt. He grinned at the circle of microphones and note pads of the assembled press.

“I enjoy the pounding,” he said. “It’s very familiar to me.”

Would he miss it?

Golic laughed and said, “I guess I’ll have to get in some dangerous occupation. I don’t want to get bored.”

Golic might not be content with putting out oil-well fires or defusing terrorist bombs or even climbing the Matterhorn in street shoes. He might need to go out periodically and persuade someone to fetch him a karate chop, or an elbow in the ribs. He might have to get a friend to sink a fist in his mid-section, kick him in the groin, do something to take away that longing in his heart for the Green Bay Packers and the good old morning-after feeling, as if he has just been run over by a truck.

When does the hurting from a game stop, he is asked, along about Wednesday? Thursday?

“How about March?” Golic says with a wince. “How about just in time to go to training camp and start all over?”

Has he always had this affinity for public suffering?

“Well,” he says, grinning, “when I was a kid I used to get my father to run his truck into me.”

He pauses to laugh.

“Naw, I’m kidding. But you have to get used to collisions. It’s crowded out there.”

Bob Golic is typical of the acquisitions of Al Davis’ Raiders. It is the policy to pick up skilled, crafty, still aggressive players whose own teams have concluded that their usefulness is over.

Golic was a “Plan B” player with the Cleveland Browns, a veteran not protected on the team’s 37-man untouchable roster. The Raiders picked up such explosive players as Lyle Alzado and John Matuszak similarly when their teams gave up on them. Golic, to owner Davis, was another classic example of a guy who still had a lot of tackles left in him, even though he made 738 in 10 years with the Browns.

Golic has had a plate in his right arm, more or less permanent game-day stomach cramps, and gets predictable postgame nausea. His cup runneth over. What more could any red-blooded American boy ask for?

Being on the Raiders is a little slice of heaven, since opponents save their most homicidal attacks for them. Golic doesn’t have to fear being coddled. Playing in a Raider line is a little like having a home on the slopes of Mt. St. Helens.

Golic wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s kind of boring walking around and not having anything to heal and your stomach is at rest and the bleeding has stopped. I mean, if you feel good all the time, what do you have to compare it to?

Fortunately, Golic doesn’t have to worry. He only feels good in March and parts of April. His biggest nightmare is probably that when he retires, he will wake up every morning feeling like singing and without a mark on him--and his next door neighbor will be a priest.