Tale of the Tape : Raiders’ Brown Lost NFL’s Fastest Man Race, but Says the Evidence Shows He Actually Won

OK, it’s not Mary Decker vs. Zola Budd, but a controversy over who is the NFL’s fastest man rages more than a month after the annual race presumably was decided at Palm Desert.

On June 16, at the College of the Desert’s Boone Field, Darrell Green of the Washington Redskins defeated the Raiders’ Ron Brown in a photo finish of the sixth NFL Fastest Man competition.

Or did he? Brown’s attorney and mother, Meri Morgan Smith, faxed NBC Sports programming director Jon Miller a two-page memo Wednesday contending that she has conclusive proof her son was the actual winner. NBC is scheduled to show the race Sunday on “SportsWorld” at about 1 p.m.

Smith said Thursday that if NBC refuses to review her videotaped angle of the finish, she will seek legal alternatives. She would not be more specific.

“There are numerous options,” Smith said. “There are always options. I’ve got friends in high places. I’m not asking them to reverse it. I’m asking them to review it with an objective eye.”

A spokesman for NBC said Thursday the network has no intention of reviewing the tape, admitting it erred or reversing the outcome of the race. In fact, NBC isn’t taking the matter very seriously.

“We don’t understand what all the fuss is about,” NBC publicist Vince Wladika said, reading from a prepared statement. “It’s our belief that (football commentator) Paul Maguire could beat them both in a footrace anyway. NBC plans on airing it as is.”

Brown, though, is quite serious. He wants NBC and Millsport, the event sponsor, to ‘fess up on the air that the wrong champion was crowned.

“I won the race,” Brown said Thursday at the Raiders’ camp. “I can prove I did, so it’s up to them to do the right thing for me. I think since I protested the race, I think it should be announced. They’ve made it like it’s no big deal.”

Smith claims in the memo that her copy of the tape shows that Brown’s chest broke the tape first; that Green unfairly “lunged forward and straightened upright” into the tape and that the photo-finish tape provided for judging by Millsport was actually the wrong frame.

“Clearly,” the memo stated in part, “this photo is taken at an angle prejudicial to Ron’s race showing only Darrell Green’s side and is not in relation to the tape or the finish line.”

She also claims that Fred Patten, the photo-finish reviewer, told Smith he was “under pressure and was forced to use less than state-of-the-art equipment to determine the winner.”

Thus, a conspiracy theory.

Patten, however, said Thursday from Colorado that he never made those statements to Smith.

“As far as equipment (goes), there is nothing better than the Omega OPS 2,” Patten said of the camera used to snap the photo finish. “It’s the standard of the industry. I was very pleased with the quality of the photo.”

Added Millsport spokesman Jeff Shapes: “We’re not talking the Olympics here, but it’s a legitimately timed event. I’m not making light of a very serious charge. But those are the results. I’ve never heard that the equipment was substandard. Ron Brown has won twice with the same equipment. . . . I was on the site. I was on the finish line. I saw Darrell winning.”

Patten said Smith might not understand how photo-finish results are determined.

“I think the biggest part of the misunderstanding about this is that you have one of those cloth finish tapes,” Patten explained. “That tape has been five to six inches beyond the actual finish line for years. It’s plausible that Ron might have broken the tape first, but the film shows Darrell was the winner. An amateur photographer could have come to an erroneous conclusion.”

Brown doesn’t agree. “So they’re saying that in the span of a couple of inches I beat him to the tape?” he asked.

Smith, in her memo, claimed that The Athletic Congress (TAC) does not allow a sprinter to dive into the finish line, as she said Green does. The NFL’s Fastest Man competition, however, is not a TAC-sanctioned event.

Brown isn’t buying that excuse, either.

“I’ve been running track for 15 years now, and I know what determines the winner,” he said. “You can’t just make up your own rules. It’s your torso that crosses the line. What else do I have to prove?”

What’s at stake here? Some might say money. Green collected $25,000 for first place, and Brown received $15,000 for second. Smith also contended that Brown lost untold potential endorsement income related to winning the contest.

“It’s not the money,” Brown said. “You work hard for that race.”

Brown earned $570,000 from the Raiders in 1990.

He was a member of the gold-medal-winning 400-meter relay team in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Brown played wide receiver for the Rams from 1984 through ’89 before signing in 1990 as a Plan B free agent with the Raiders, who have since switched him to defensive back.

Pride might also be a factor in the race debate. Green and Brown have been the only two winners of the contest, Green winning four times, Brown twice. But Brown has never defeated Green in head-to-head competition. The two years Brown won, 1987 and ‘90, Green did not participate because of injuries.

“With Ron, his reputation rides on it,” Brown’s mother said. “And that’s something you can’t attach a price tag on. We’re not talking about dollars here. It’s certainly not a fight between personalities, it’s nothing as superficial as that. Ron started working in January for this. It’s his career. So it is important to him for those reasons.”

Sunday, Brown will take his case to television viewers.

“Just get five people in a room and show them the tape,” Brown said. “I don’t care what five people you get. Show them the tape. If they say I lost, OK.”