If the NFL Is So Smart, How Come Its Rejects Keep Becoming Stars?

You are watching the Raiders engage Buffalo in a rather exciting piece of entertainment Sunday night and funny ideas occur, related to genius abounding in pro football.

First you reflect that the coach of Buffalo, Marv Levy, is a leader unwanted not long ago. He isn’t able to get a job, if you want to overlook that he is hired to broadcast games in the Canadian League.

Buffalo takes him in, and he is coach today of a highly formidable force in the NFL.

The NFL is a league in which a black coach never before had been employed. The Raiders appoint a black to the post, Art Shell, and what he is doing is rated formidable, too.

The Raiders have advanced to a record of 4-1 this season enhanced measurably by the running of Marcus Allen, the throwing of Jay Schroeder and the catching of Mervyn Fernandez.

During training camp, the Raiders are pleading with someone to take Allen off their hands. They are willing to give him away for a first draft choice.

And the irony is, the Raiders can’t find a taker. That’s why he is playing for the team today.

And Schroeder? The Washington Redskins didn’t want him. People ask wondrously, “Who gives away a quarterback?”

And the answer is, Washington.

Fernandez is an individual who, emerging from San Jose State, is drafted on the 10th round. He is a giveaway. He is so depressed with the NFL he goes to play in Canada for four years.

The Raiders persuade him to come to Los Angeles. And, folks, you are looking today at one of the best receivers in the industry.

Dramatized for its cerebral excellence, the NFL, you can see, spends time looking out the window.

James Lofton is released by Green Bay. He is captured by the Raiders, for whom he does good work.

And why do the Raiders release him? They say he is too old for a receiver.

Well, this antique, who is 34, is picked up by Buffalo, which lists him today as a major asset, a team leader.

Buffalo also puts the arm on Cornelius Bennett. Linebackers right now don’t come better.

And how does Buffalo steal one with the skills of Bennett? They steal him because the Rams, who have the opportunity to bag him in the Eric Dickerson trade, don’t want to pay him.

The Bills are happy to pay him, and they bring to the nest a treasure.

All of the foregoing drifts through your skull as you watch Buffalo mop up on the Raiders, 38-24, and give you the impression you might be looking at a Super Bowl team this season.

One reason is the Bills argue among themselves a lot. You see considerable promise here. The old Yankees bickered a lot. A pitcher one night beat up the manager.

That’s what you really call bickering.

It was said in the ‘70s by the Oakland A’s, who won world championships, that one never removes his helmet in the locker room.

That was the most dangerous place.

In that locale, the day before a World Series, Rollie Fingers, ace of the bullpen, gets into a fight with starter Blue Moon Odom.

Fingers isn’t wearing his helmet. The two fall to the cement. Rollie reports to the Series the next day with stitches in his head.

And did the quarterback of the Chicago Bears write tomes of love to his coach the year the Bears won the Super Bowl?

Jim McMahon and Mike Ditka bickered all season.

So the Buffalo Bills are looking better every week, especially since their coach, a Phi Beta Kappa, often invites points of view contrary to his own.

Levy gets a master’s at Harvard in English history. You have to assume he discusses the Elizabethan Period with his players, not to mention the minor poems of Chaucer.

Whatever his approach, though, it is obvious he gets the Bills to play, judging from the fact they have won their division championship the last two years.

Last year, they also led the league in attendance.

if one will pardon interjection here of an ugly commercial note.

In 1988, Levy is voted Coach of the Year. This is the man who, detached by Kansas City in 1982, had to find work with the Chicago Blitz, rest in peace; with the Montreal Alouettes, rest in peace, and with a Canadian radio station, which, happily, retains a pulse.

In the 31 years of their existence, the Bills have featured but one owner, Ralph Wilson, who took the franchise in 1960 without ever having set foot in Buffalo.

He lives in Detroit. When the old American Football League was started, he bought in, given a choice of territories in Miami, Louisville, or Buffalo.

Owner of a winter home in Miami, he selected that village, only to learn he couldn’t play in the Orange Bowl, then the only major stadium in town.

The University of Miami objected to company, and its connections succeeded in shutting out a pro poacher.

So, for Wilson, it was Louisville or Buffalo.

Louisville, he figured, was all right, if one is running a mile and a quarter.

Otherwise, one picks Buffalo.

Wilson’s options weren’t to be envied, but it turns out the Bills have a following no team lately has been able to top.

As for Louisville, Wilson got there in 1974. He entered a horse in the Derby. It ran ninth.