Owning a Team Is Risky Business

Nicole was on Broad- way in New York, Ginny at Lucky in Santee, and what with the wives being busy, that left my buddy, Tom Cruise, and me talking football.

We will be doing this a lot, of course, after he becomes one of the principal owners of L.A.’s new NFL team, along with Michael Ovitz, and it was also a good chance to let him know he went a little over the top in the final courtroom scene with Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men.”

“That’s cool,” Cruise said.

You know how Ryan Leaf would react if I criticized his act?

“One other thing--just between us guys--before we get down to Elway, Bledsoe, Ovitz and your vision of football returning to L.A., this business about your wife taking all her clothes off on stage . . . I don’t want to be the one breaking it to you, but that’s what I’m hearing.”

What a relief. He had not only heard about it, but had seen the play “The Blue Room.”

“Many times,” he said, “Listen, I do love scenes, she does love scenes.”

“Listen,” I said. “Ginny in Santee would never do love scenes.”

“It’s acting,” said Cruise, taking time from his pre-production of “Mission: Impossible 2.” “In this play she’s doing, it raises it to an art form. It’s like a great athlete, like Elway. . . . “

Now that’s something to die for, if you ask Cruise. He loves John Elway, loves his football, knows more about football than anyone employed in the Rams’ organization, and wore No. 33 as a high school defensive back in “All The Right Moves.”

“Lost the championship game in the final scene,” he said, “on a Pisarcik-to-Csonka-like handoff.”

It would be tough to find five guys on any NFL roster today who could tell you about that last-second fumbled handoff by Giant quarterback Joe Pisarcik and Larry Csonka, allowing the Eagles to steal a win, but Cruise is a serious student of the game.

“I like the theater of football,” he said, while claiming no team as his favorite. “The drama of the games, the excitement, the performances. Last week’s New England-Buffalo game--what a game.

“I just love watching good games, the greatness of some of these players. You watch Barry Sanders and you know it’s not something he even thinks about, but he’s cutting here and moving there and you’re asking, ‘How did he do that?’ Or Elway throwing between two defenders and just nailing it. That’s great stuff.”

Waiting earlier in the evening for Cruise’s call, I had turned on the TV to find him by coincidence on the screen in “Rain Man,” but quickly flipped to the Rams-Eagles’ game.

Can’t imagine any worse slight to an actor, but Cruise said, “Just don’t tell me the final score; I’m taping it.”

Obviously, the man has no life. In fact, he says he tapes a lot of games, has all the sports pages saved--no autographs, please--and likes watching Notre Dame because his cousins attended the school.

“While we were doing ‘Born on the Fourth of July,’ we were shooting in Dallas and they allowed us to play a flag football game in Texas Stadium with pro refs and the lights on,” he said. “It was so cool. Lost by a touchdown. A hard-fought battle. Got the feel of AstroTurf--I was all scraped up and bloody.

“Oliver said . . . “

“Oliver?”

“Stone,” Cruise said. “Oliver said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ It was a tough movie to make and here I’m getting banged up.”

The guy sat in a wheelchair for the whole movie, how tough is that? Try interviewing Charles Haley after a loss. Shoot, after a win.

“Everybody has their opinions, and that’s great,” Cruise said. “That’s why I like going to movies on the opening weekend, taking Nic and the kids, sitting around everyone, eating popcorn, listening to how they react and sharing in that feeling of the moment.”

“Me, I always get the people who talk sitting behind me.”

“Can’t stand that,” Cruise said, and I like the idea of Tom Cruise turning to someone and asking him to please be quiet.

I also like the idea of Tom Cruise involved in football. After four years of listening to some of the bad actors who want to bring football back to Los Angeles, Thomas Cruise Mapother IV is a real football fan and demonstrated in short order more down-to-earth passion, enthusiasm and common sense than most would-be-owners.

So what if he made “Cocktail”? No one wins them all. But after commending him for changing his dorky name, ask him what he would like to tell the football fans of L.A., and this guy’s all right.

“Whether I was an actor or not, the IVth was too much of a burden to carry around and it was not going to stay,” he said. “As for the football fans of L.A., I’d rather listen to what they have to say and what they want.”

The NFL will be asking for a high franchise fee when it picks among Houston, the New Coliseum Partners and Ovitz & Co. in February, but what’s that, another movie or two for the Cruises?

“Don’t know what magazines you’ve been reading,” said Cruise with a laugh. “You’re thinking of George Lucas.”

No, it’s stars and not “Star Wars” that the NFL is interested in, and Ovitz & Co. have the potential to deliver that. Cruise, refreshingly, is more interested in what the NFL can bring to L.A.: big-time athletic stars.

“I look at Elway and that stuff inspires people to do better, be better in their lives,” he said. “It’s great theater for audiences. It’s like the movie of the week going to a stadium and seeing these players perform. Making ‘Jerry Maguire,’ I had a chance to see how these guys live, and realize what it costs them in competing, in wanting to win.

“That’s why I want to see football in Los Angeles again. That excitement. I want my son to see it. I’m American and America is football, the Super Bowl. My mother used to have Super Chili Bowls on the day of the game. We’d have this big chart up, people would put a couple of bucks in and pick the squares trying to guess what the final score was going to be. It’s part of our heritage.”

Cruise, working many days until 2 in the morning, then up at 7:30 to drive the kids to school, has agreed to become one of the three or four largest equity owners in the plan to bring an NFL team to Carson. It appears this is not merely a celebrity lending his name to an effort, but a businessman who values the investment in the project.

“I know it’s going to be up to the NFL owners who gets it, and that’s like waiting to see what a movie is going to do on opening weekend. Who knows? But I know I’m with a group of sincere people, and I believe in Michael Ovitz and his stadium plans.

“Ovitz worked on ‘Rain Man,’ he understands what it takes to bring people together. I’ve known the man for 18 years and that’s his life, bringing people together to get something done.”

One thing working in Ovitz’s favor with the NFL is that Cruise could be both part owner of the new L.A. franchise and star in the “Doug Flutie Story.” Flipping back to “Rain Man,” it’s obvious he’s the right height for the part.

“Flutie’s one of my favorites--the ability to make that kind of a change in a game--what a gift, but I’m a big fan of [Drew] Bledsoe’s too.”

“He’s a wimp,” I said.

“He’s a young, upcoming quarterback with great talent that’s developing. I met him doing ‘Jerry Maguire,’ and that guy is anything but a wimp. I don’t think anybody that goes out there and takes those kinds of hits . . . I would never use the word ‘wimp.’ . . . I’d tread lightly with that word around these guys.”

I knew it was just acting when he stood up to Nicholson. Nicholson would have kicked his . . .

“I know pressure, having to perform every day, and as a young actor wondering if I am going to work tomorrow. ‘When this movie comes out, is my career going to be over?’ But I’ve never had guys trying to crush me while under the pressure to perform. That’s why I enjoy watching these performers so much.”

Cruise just finished a Stanley Kubrick movie with his wife, Nicole Kidman, “Eyes Wide Shut.” I’d suggest changing the name.

He spends three days a week in New York while his wife performs on Broadway, and three days in Los Angeles on his movie productions.

Me, I’m going to New York next week too.

“Any extra tickets? Be happy to look her up.”

Guess he didn’t hear me.