PRO FOOTBALL : Vikings’ Igwebuike Getting Trial by Media

The unfolding of a smuggling case against football player Donald Igwebuike in Florida puts the NFL back in touch with the real world.

Igwebuike (ee-gway-BEEK-way) is a Nigeria-born kicker for the Minnesota Vikings who, his lawyers contend, is being tried this week in Minnesota and Florida newspapers--and on national television--on guilt-by-association charges.

Igwebuike’s lawyers contend that the U.S. attorney’s office in Tampa, Fla., has been leaking bits and pieces of its heroin-smuggling case against one of Igwebuike’s friends, Maduwuba Ibekwe, to selected newspaper and TV reporters, who then repeat the prosecution hypothesis that there is also “irrefutable evidence” against the Vikings’ kicker.

Such leaks, of course, are an old story for some prosecutors.

“When a celebrity is involved, some of them welcome that kind of publicity,” said Tom De Paso, an attorney for the NFL Players Assn.

Network sports announcers on NBC and CBS breathlessly predicted Sunday that Igwebuike would soon be indicted.

A grand jury indictment is possible. But even in the sound-bite era, reporters should find time to remind listeners that such an indictment isn’t much more than a request for the law to look into it.

In any event, it isn’t a conviction, though often so interpreted.

Igwebuike, who makes $300,000 a year from the Vikings and sends some of it home to his family in Anambra, Nigeria, became involved because his courier--countryman Ibekwe--has been charged with also transporting heroin.

Should a U.S. attorney be suspicious of Igwebuike? Sure. Should he tell it to a grand jury? Sure.

But even an NFL kicker is entitled to American justice, which presumes innocence, and which, in its decision-making process, prefers judges and jurors over sound bites and headlines.

Pro football’s 28 club owners set out to cripple the NFL Players Assn. two years ago by ceasing to deduct dues payments totaling $2,000 annually from the paychecks of each athlete.

That was going to cost the association $3 million a year unless it could persuade the players to write out checks for $2,000.

But it’s all moot now.

“We don’t have to charge dues anymore,” NFLPA general counsel Richard Berthelsen said. “Our group licensing program is paying all the bills.

“More than 90% of the players have authorized the association to use their names and likenesses in licensing products.”

Mike Sherrard, the San Francisco wide receiver from UCLA who broke his leg again Sunday making the turning-point play for the 49ers, could return in time for the playoffs, team physician Michael Dillingham reported Monday.

“I’d say he will be out six to eight weeks,” Dillingham said. “It was the same leg (that Sherrard broke twice in 1987) but a different bone.

“This (break) was just above and on the outside area of the ankle. I don’t think it in any way reflects a tendency toward brittle bones.”

Instead, the 49ers believe, it’s just a wild coincidence that he has fractured the same leg three times.

On quarterback Joe Montana’s winning drive Sunday, with 38 seconds left, it was Sherrard who got open on third and 14 and caught the pass that got the 49ers out of a hole at their 18-yard line.

Gaining 35 yards, the play beat Cleveland’s regular alignment. The Browns hadn’t shifted into a prevent defense.

But when Sherrard came down from his flying catch, “my foot went one way and my body the other,” he said. “At the same time, a guy rolled up on me.”

Said Dillingham: “I think that was sufficient to cause the (break).”

Several days ago, the former Bruin said he had never been in better condition.

“I came all the way back last year,” Sherrard said of a season when he was on injured reserve until the Super Bowl, where he caught a pass from Montana.

“My problem with the second (break) in 1987 is that I tried to come back too soon. It hadn’t healed enough. The leg is great now, and I feel I’m as fast as ever.”

As unlucky as ever, too.

The Raiders are proving this season that, among other things, no football team can be better than its offensive line.

There has been an improvement of at least 50% in that area with the arrival of a new guard, Max Montoya, and a new offensive line coach, Kim Helton, along with increased attention from a head coach who used to be an offensive lineman, Art Shell.

Stressing depth, Shell has brought in a pair of 320-pound blockers, James FitzPatrick and Todd Peat, to back up a wall that has great strength in the middle with Don Mosebar, Steve Wisniewski and Montoya, and improving strength at left and right tackle with free agents Rory Graves and Steve Wright--plus Bruce Wilkerson, who is on injured reserve, and Dan Turk.

“They’ll get their biggest test at Kansas City Sunday,” Raider executive Al LoCasale said, noting that the Chiefs are among the league’s defensive leaders with 25 sacks.

The holding penalties that hurt Raider lines in recent years have been dramatically reduced this season because “(Shell) has us doing the little things the right way,” Graves told Channel 2 announcer Keith Olbermann.

The New York Giants are still demonstrating that when you’re hot, you’re hot.

They might not have pulled out Sunday’s game against Washington if Redskin running back Earnest Byner had pulled in Stan Humphries’ apparent touchdown throw for what was going to be a 17-14 lead with 6:51 left.

When Byner couldn’t handle a pass that hit him squarely, it was deflected for the deciding interception of a 21-10 game.

The error was the latest in a series of serious misplays that have marred Byner’s long career. In one AFC title game against the Denver Broncos, Byner, who ranks with the NFL’s hardest working and most popular players, fumbled the Cleveland Browns out of the Super Bowl. Washington has lost six straight to the Giants despite having out-played them at least half the time.

The only thing that looks worse is the judgment of the NFL in scheduling both Giant-Redskin games within a period of three weeks in the first half of the season.

The NFL should ask itself: What if one team’s quarterback is knocked out of the early going?

That’s what happened to the Redskins, who, after losing Mark Rypien for a span of several weeks, twice had to face the Giants’ 12-year veteran, Phil Simms, with the inexperienced Humphries.

Comment Department:

For the Miami Dolphins, one thing has been similar to their 17-0 year: Something happens to help them every week. They won Sunday’s game, 27-7, when Indianapolis quarterbacks Jack Trudeau and Jeff George, went out with injuries. How many teams have lost their top two quarterbacks in the same game this season?

In O.J. Simpson’s view, the Buffalo Bills are hurting themselves with conservative football.

“If the Bills were in the 49er system, they’d be in the Super Bowl this year,” he said on NBC.

He might have said the same for Minnesota and other teams. One reason that Montana keeps coming back to win is that the 49ers, basically, practice comeback football for 60 minutes each Sunday.