SUPER BOWL XXV : NEW YORK GIANTS vs. BUFFALO BILLS : Talley Ho! He Makes Pro Bowl : Bills: Shell names Buffalo’s previously overlooked linebacker to AFC squad.

As with the weather, everyone talks about Buffalo’s Darryl Talley but no one does anything about it.

Until Wednesday.

Talley has been a star linebacker for years now, or so the rumor goes. Every time Pro Bowl ballots came out, Talley became the bubonic plague. He cleared rooms.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked this week. “Turn into God and walk on water to get people to notice me?”

Wednesday, someone noticed. Talley was named to the Pro Bowl by AFC Coach Art Shell, who designated Talley as a “need” player to fill in at a position where the AFC needed help.

Why wasn’t Talley voted in before? You think maybe he’s not tough enough, then discover he had knee surgery less than three weeks before the 1990 season opener and didn’t miss a down.

You think Talley can’t tackle, then discover he led the Bills with 123 tackles for the season and has more than 600 in his career. You think he doesn’t make big plays, then recall a 60-yard interception return for a touchdown at Cleveland on Nov. 4 and his two-interception playoff performance against the Raiders last Sunday. Talley made nine or more tackles in a game seven times in 1990.

You think maybe Talley needs Col. Tom Parker, who worked wonders with Elvis.

Talley had not been invited to the Pro Bowl before--seven times in seven years before this season--but snub No. 8 cut the deepest. Everyone told him to book passage to Hawaii this time. He was a lock. Then it appeared to be April Fools’ Day all over again. Eight other Bills were named, three players shy of half of all Buffalo starters.

“I thought I had a decent chance of getting in,” he said. “Afterward, I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach.”

Talley cursed the gods for a time and then got back to the business of the Super Bowl. The Pro Bowl selection process isn’t exactly quantum physics. In marking his ballot in the NFC, one Minnesota Viking player claimed to have never heard of Washington’s Jim Lachey, maybe the best left tackle in football.

“Who’s this Lackey guy?” he said. Other players have been known to cast votes for players in a conference not their own.

So, take the Pro Bowl for what it’s worth.

“I took it like this,” Talley said. “You have to be a better man than that. I can’t afford to let that drag me down. If I let it drag me down, then it affects my teammates. That’s the last thing I want to do.”

In truth, Talley doesn’t have an identity problem so much as he has a logjam problem. He’s the third-most recognizable linebacker on his own team behind Cornelius Bennett and Shane Conlan, and maybe ranks sixth overall in the state if you consider the New York Giants part of New York and include their three-linebacker set of Lawrence Taylor, Carl Banks and Pepper Johnson.

On his own team, as right outside linebacker, he plays mop-up to All-Pro defensive end Bruce Smith. He and Smith have this deal: Talley gets Smith’s leftovers and that’s pretty much the end of it.

“It’s kind of hard when you play in such a star-studded defense,” he said of cultivating Pro Bowl votes. “That’s something I can’t control. I’ve got Bruce in front of me, Shane next to me, and then on the other side I have Cornelius Bennett. Some people get overlooked in those situations.”

At least one, for sure. Most of the media wanted nothing to do with Talley this week, except that he and Giant quarterback Jeff Hostetler were college teammates at West Virginia.

So, Super Bowl week has kind of gone like this:

--”What was it like playing with Jeff?”

--”What kind of guy is Jeff?”

--”What’s it like trying to tackle a scrambler like Jeff?”

--”If Jeff was a tree, what kind of a tree would he be?”

Talley can’t help but laugh at all this non-attention attention. People notice him now more than ever.

“That’s true,” he said. “Everybody says, ‘I know who he is, he’s the guy who doesn’t get recognized.’ If I could do an American Express commercial, I would.”

He appreciates what it means to have finally made it to the Super Bowl after eight seasons, not all of them pleasant. Talley was a member of Buffalo’s nightmarish 2-14 teams of 1984 and ‘85, and the 4-12 team of 1986. Reaching the Super Bowl after so much suffering makes a career all the more complete.

“It means the world,” he said. “A lot of guys play their whole careers and don’t get here. I’m so happy to get here in my eighth year. It’s extremely gratifying.”

During the lean years, Talley said he “heard every joke that could possibly be made. So I know how the New England Patriots feel. I know how the New Orleans Saints felt.”

Talley has his favorite Buffalo joke:

“Knock, Knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Owen.”

“Owen who?”

“O and eight.”

Buffalo fans had a million of them, but have stayed true to their team. Now comes the payback.

“They come out time and time again,” Talley said. “If there’s a football or hockey game being played, they’re showing up. They’ve been consistent.”

At least as consistent as Talley, who never pretended to rent linebacker space in Lawrence Taylor’s district.

“He revolutionized the linebacking position,” Talley said of Taylor, one of his Sunday opponents. “He does so many things, it’s unbelievable. He’ll go into a pile and come out of it running. I’ve seen game films of him taking people and throwing them, and running over the top of 300-pound lineman. To physically manhandle people the way he has throughout his career is unbelievable.”

If Taylor is the Hoover Dam of linebackers, Talley is the leak in your kitchen sink. He gets on your nerves all the same; it just takes longer.

Talley knows there is more to playing linebacker than sacks. He knows because he had only four sacks all season.

“You’ve got to be able to cover, stop the run, recognize fronts,” he said. “I don’t get big numbers in sacks. But in our defense, everything fits together like a wheel.”

Wednesday, Talley got a little grease.