Golic, Allen and Era Coming to End

It was the first time in either my personal or professional life that I felt compelled to go wrap my arm around a 280-pound football player and give him comfort. But when I saw that good fellow Bob Golic out there in the Sunday darkness, pacing aimlessly along the hash marks of a virtually empty 100,000-seat Coliseum, crying his eyes out a full hour after the game, I simply had to go do something.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“Oh, I just can’t believe it’s over,” this 13-year veteran of NFL combat said, his voice cracking with every syllable. “I can’t believe this is the last time in my life that I’ll be out here.”

Rod and Clarence, a couple of Coliseum security guys with their names embroidered on the pockets of their blue jackets, came up right behind. They came to deliver hugs, and when Rod pulled back, he said: “That’s for the way you treated everybody while you were here. Thank you, brother.”

Next thing I knew, Golic had curled his two meaty arms around all three of us. And he was saying:

“No, thank you ,”

And as he reached down for his duffel, plucking out a last few blades of grass and blowing them away in the process, Clarence stepped in and beat him to the bag.

“Allow me,” Clarence said. “You came in with class, you’re going out with class.”

The cynical will say that Bob Golic is better off, that at 35 he must have more meaningful things to do than standing on the sideline in civilian clothes while the football team to which he has pledged his loyalty is saddled with a particularly pathetic 22-point defeat. And others will say that it is Marcus Allen, too, who should consider himself lucky that from the Raiders he will soon be free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last.

At least, Allen got one last chance to show the home “crowd” what he could do, the crowd in this case being more like a flock. The much-discussed conflict of football interests between Marcus and his boss, Al Davis, did not prevent the 32-year-old No. 32 from taking one last bow on the playing field Sunday, winning another “Commitment to Excellence” award and then carrying the football a few times as part of an over-the-hill-gang offense alongside Vince Evans and Mervyn Fernandez.

Golic had no such luck. Not one down did he play--nor could he, from the Elba of the inactive list, where for the past month Golic’s career as a skillful defensive lineman has unexpectedly wound down. When the final home game of this miserable 1992 season was history and the other players were getting showered and dressed, Bob Golic, who already was showered and dressed, put his fist into a wall and left the room, eyes full of tears.

An hour later, with virtually every other player out of the parking lot, Allen had slipped away quietly and Golic had gone off by himself to sentimentally retrace 13 seasons’ worth of steps. On the way out, Howie Long spotted his locker-room next-door neighbor from a distance, saw Golic stooped near a yard-line in the dusk, the way someone literally or figuratively might have stopped to smell the flowers of his or her life.

Long called out: “Hey, if you’re not out of there in 15 minutes, I’m going to throw a rope out there for you.”

It was about 10 minutes later that Golic finally made his way to the sideline, at approximately the same time that one other straggler, Al Davis, emerged from a tunnel and headed for the exit. There is one game remaining on the Raider schedule, at Washington on the day after Christmas, and on the spot, seeing the emotional state Golic was in, Davis made a pledge.

“We’ll play Bob against the Redskins,” Davis said. “We’ll get him off that inactive list for that one. We’ll try to get him in there for some plays.”

A season is ending and an era or two is ending. This is no longer a superior football team, the Raiders, and no longer one for which players of all ages and reputations clamor to play. Allen is leaving the squad with bad blood, Golic with sad blood, and what this team desperately needs, more than anything else, is some new blood. No matter what condition Vince Evans keeps himself in, no sane NFL leadership can support its starting quarterback with a 37-year-old understudy.

The wise old owl Evans said after throwing two touchdown passes: “In the midst of storms, there’s always some sunshine that will come forth.” He, too, probably was playing his last Raider game, so hip-hip-hooray that the heavens were good to Evans one last time.

As for the remainder of the Raiders, who knows where they are headed? Al Davis needs new bodies, new attitudes, a remodeled arena and a new relationship with many of the fans who pelted him Sunday with catcalls and insults. The Todd Marinovich situation must be resolved and soon, and a very long winter awaits the Los Angeles Raiders, even if it never snows.

“Merry Christmas,” I said to Al Davis anyway, figuring he ought to hear at least one sound of good cheer.

“Thanks,” he replied. “But it won’t be.”