THE NFL / BILL PLASCHKE : League Can’t Keep This Under Its Helmet

One of the greatest athletes in the NFL wears one.

So do gunmen for street gangs.

Offensive linemen who do nothing worse than fish without a license wear them.

So do drug dealers and pimps.

Deion Sanders shrugs and calls it “a little scarf.”

That teen-aged hood on the street corner calls it a “G-Rag.”

Which is short for “gangster rag.”

Which, for thousands of inner-city youths and adults who mold them, symbolizes nothing but trouble.

So what is the NFL to do?

Last spring, after receiving many complaints from high school coaches and community leaders about the poor example being set, league officials considered banning bandannas from the field.

But since then, behind closed doors, NFL Properties has had a change of heart.

It has licensed a retailer to sell G-rags.

One minute, the league was publicly speaking about the need to serve as better role models.

The next, its marketing arm was authorizing a Los Angeles company called Sixth Man Inc. to stamp on an NFL trademark and sell bandannas as part of its NFL Chill apparel line.

What’s wrong with this picture?

“This doesn’t surprise me at all, because all the league is after is the money,” said Garfield High football Coach John Aguirre, who doesn’t allow his players to wear bandannas.

As recently as a month ago, SMI said that G-rags would represent “less than 5%” of its clothing line.

Those G-rags would be produced in, among other things, gang colors.

But just before the first games last week, Rudy Negrete, company president, said he had a change of heart.

He said the only head wear he will sell is baseball caps.

He promised that despite the league’s approval, he will not touch a bandanna.

We’re holding him to it.

“We do not want to be perceived as a company that is, in any way, shape or form, promoting violence,” Negrete said. “We stand by the message of peace.”

Good for him.

But SMI is still authorized to sell them.

So shame on the NFL.

“A lot of people look at the bandannas like a gang symbol,” Aguirre said. “Certain color bandannas symbolize certain things. It’s naive to think anything else.”

Some royalties from NFL Chill sales will help fund the NFL’s education center in South-Central L.A.

So in effect, the league has approved selling “uniforms” of thugs to help maintain a place to protect children from these thugs.

What’s wrong with this picture?

“I think to ban [bandannas] would be racist,” said cornerback Sanders, the most notable of the league’s several dozen bandanna wearers. “It would be a decision made by somebody who doesn’t understand what is going on.”

But the league’s point man in the initial effort to ban the rag was Gene Washington, director of football development and a former player who knows exactly what is happening.

“For prominent black men in this country, image is very important. . . . It may not be fair, but it’s reality,” Washington said last spring. “The image that the bandannas project is not a good one.

“Bandannas is a street thing, a gang thing. We have to be bigger than that.”

Countered Sanders: “I don’t wear mine because I’m a gang member. I wear it because it gives me an attitude.”

Washington, one of the league’s highest ranking African Americans, was forced to soften his tone after the players’ association reported that it would be opposed to the ban.

Worried about being perceived as racist, the league’s owners backed down.

“The official league position is that the bandanna issue has been tabled pending further review,” Washington said recently. Fine. But why did NFL Properties--which did not return phone calls for this story--decide to peddle them?

A BRAVE MAN, THIS WYCHE

While giving a pep talk in the locker room this week in Tampa, Buccaneer Coach Sam Wyche was unexpectedly, and publicly, summoned to the front office for a meeting with new owner Malcolm Glazer.

Moments later, Jimmy Johnson entered the room wearing Wyche’s team jacket.

The players sat in stunned silence.

“There’s going to be some changes around here!” Johnson announced. “I know you’re feeling pretty good about yourselves . . . but it’s time to get to serious business. Now I’ve got some papers to sign, so I want you guys to get into your film study.”

Then Wyche burst back into the room and told Johnson to take a hike.

It was a prank.

Get it? Get it?

WORLD’S BEST COACH II

The Buccaneers--not the Miami Dolphins--are still the most likely landing spot for Johnson after it was revealed that Dolphin owner Wayne Huizenga gave Coach Don Shula the same stock tip he gave Dan Marino . . . while ignoring all of Shula’s assistant coaches.

“Huizenga and Shula have become good friends,” one NFL insider said. “Don’t underestimate that.”

If Shula left the Dolphins after this season, instead of being replaced by Johnson, he would more probably become the general manager and hire his close friend Marty Schottenheimer to replace him.

Southern California fans should continue to cross their fingers that Johnson remains at Fox TV until at least 1996, when can he take over the new expansion team expected to begin play here in 1998.

QUICK KICKS

* GENERATION GAP: Bill Parcells, New England Patriot coach, was lamenting in his midweek news conference that younger players on his team have no sense of history.

“Curtis Martin’s mom is from Donora, Pa. . . . I asked him if he knew who else was from Donora,” Parcells said. “When I told him Stan Musial, he said, ‘Who’s he?’ I said, ‘Sandy Koufax, do you know him?’ He said no.

“But Run DMC, they know who that is.”

Sure enough, while typing a transcription of the interview, one of the young Patriot employees referred to the Dodger pitcher as Cofax.

But he spelled the rap group’s name, Run DMC, to perfection.

* EXPERIENCE THE RIP-OFF: There was a $5 admission fee for 2-year-olds at the traveling “NFL Experience” theme park last weekend in Jacksonville, Fla.

* NOT A GOOD SIGN: Derek Loville, the 49ers’ new starting halfback and replacement for Ricky Watters, walked through the front door of the team’s Santa Clara headquarters and toward the locker room recently when he was stopped by a security guard.

“You can’t go back there,” the guard said.

“Who are you?” Loville asked.

“Who are you? “ the guard responded.

Actually, that’s not a bad question.

* STERLING WHO? When asked this week about the loss of Sterling Sharpe, Favre said something to the effect of, what loss?

“He’s not here, and guys are getting along a lot better,” Favre said. “Sterling at times could have been a distraction because of his personality. Off the field, he just wasn’t a leader for this offense. Guys wouldn’t say, ‘We see Sterling do it, we’ll do it.’ That wasn’t his style.

“For him to hold out that first game last year, a lot of guys lost a lot of respect for him.”

Yeah, but Sharpe is great on ESPN.

Not.

* IS THIS A MEDIA GUIDE OR A POST OFFICE? On the front of the Seattle Seahawks’ media guide are photos of a coach and two players:

A guy who was arrested for drunk driving, a guy charged with manslaughter, and a guy charged with assault because he allegedly slapped a woman on the seat when she wouldn’t dance with him.

You may know them as Coach Dennis Erickson and Brian Blades and Chris Warren.

* END QUOTE: Keith Byars, former Philadelphia Eagle, now with the Miami Dolphins, on Watters’ complaints about Eagle fans:

“He just made himself a living hell for a long time.”