Heavy metal

The call came at 2 a.m., jarring Dallas Cowboys executive Gil Brandt from his sleep.

It was the sheriff of Amarillo, Texas. He said he had quarterback Roger Staubach in jail, arrested for being drunk and disorderly.

“Roger?” sputtered Brandt, knowing Staubach to be one of the most straight-arrow members of the team. “Are you sure? How do you know it’s really him?”

But the sheriff had Staubach cold: The boozer was wearing his Super Bowl ring.

“I don’t think that’s Roger,” Brandt said. “Check if he’s a ring salesman and call me back.”

Sure enough, the fellow behind bars was a ring peddler wearing his most impressive sample, one sure to turn every head in the bar.

“It’s a badge of honor, an attention-getter,” Brandt said. “If I’m on an airplane wearing mine, people will walk up the aisle to see it.

Players from this year’s Super Bowl champion will each take home winner’s shares of $73,000, but somewhere along the line -- there doesn’t appear to have been a seminal moment -- winning “the ring” became a euphemism for every athlete’s ultimate goal. Never mind that each ring is worth only a fraction of what a title is worth in bonuses.

In the NFL, the bling-bling is the thing.

Consider the oft-told tale of Phil Hong, a Purdue student, who in 2001 made an astounding discovery in his off-campus apartment while playing with his dog.

Fishing out a toy from under his beat-up brown couch, Hong retrieved something heavy and metal -- the diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring of Chicago Bears great Walter Payton.

Although Payton had died two years earlier, the mystery of his missing ring had baffled his family since the mid-1990s. It was lost, according to numerous reports, when he was a volunteer assistant basketball coach at Hoffman Estates High outside Chicago.

In order to build trust among the players and teach them to take risks, Payton put the ring in their care. The players, in turn, set up a schedule allowing them each to take the ring home overnight.

Then, the worst. Nick Abruzzo, one of the players, lost the ring while it was in his care. That triggered a frantic search by team members and parents, but to no avail.

Hong was friends with Nick’s younger brother, Joe, and got the sagging sofa from him, dragging it through three moves. Finally, the ring fell out of the torn fabric on the bottom, and Hong discovered it and promptly drove to Chicago to return it to Payton’s widow, Connie.

Like Payton was, Lynn Swann is comfortable putting his Super Bowl rings -- he has four of them -- into the hands of starry-eyed kids. The former star receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who last year failed in his bid to become governor of Pennsylvania, typically takes a couple of rings with him when he makes public appearances. Invariably, they wind up on someone else’s finger.

“I’ve given them away in parades,” he said. “I’m campaigning and a kid would chase after me and say, ‘Can I see your Super Bowl ring?’ I’d take it off, I’d give it to him and I’d leave. Go off and do my thing ...”

An assistant was charged with staying behind to make sure it was returned.

“People are curious,” Swann said. “A Super Bowl ring is hard to get, and how many people get a chance to hold one or put it on? Very often I’ll give it to people and they’ll put it on and take pictures with the ring on. Why wear a piece of jewelry that big if you didn’t want people to see it? And if they see it, why not let them hold it?”

Holding it is one thing. Keeping it is another. But New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft knows all about that.

Two years ago, during a business meeting in Russia between American business executives and Vladimir V. Putin, Kraft removed his Super Bowl XXXIX ring and let the Russian president admire it.

But something was lost in translation -- namely, the ring.

Putin thought Kraft was giving it to him, putting the five-karat, $25,000 bauble on his finger and thanking his new friend for his generous gift.

A team spokesman said that Kraft, pleased that Putin liked it so much -- and perhaps wanting to avoid an international incident -- let him keep it, and ordered a replacement.

Vince Lombardi designed the first pro football championship ring for his 1965 Green Bay Packers a couple of years before the first Super Bowl. It was round with a single diamond, a ring as unpretentious as the coach. Each year, it seems, the bauble gets a bit bigger.

The Patriots’ most recent keepsake, representing their third championship in four seasons, was the largest Super Bowl ring ever produced by Jostens, the Denton, Texas company that has designed 27 of the league’s 40 rings. It weighs 4.06 ounces and features 124 diamonds set in white gold. On the crown is a depiction of three Lombardi Trophies. One New England player referred to it as a “three-bar-stool ring,” meaning a person three seats away could make out its detail.

The NFL helps foot the bill for the rings, paying up to $5,000 each for up to 150 rings for the championship teams, and up to $2,500 each for the same number of runner-up rings or charms. It’s a far cry from when legendary Chicago Bears coach George Halas rewarded the players on the 1933 NFL championship team with bear-shaped blankets.

The biggest individual ring Jostens has made belongs to former Bears defensive tackle William “Refrigerator” Perry, a size-23 large enough to pass a half-dollar through. The one said to be the most valuable as far as collectors are concerned belongs to former New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath, who in 1969 made good on his bold prediction of an improbable Super Bowl victory over Baltimore. That one is valued at more than $100,000.

“The Super Bowl ring is a sports championship icon,” Jostens spokesman Rich Stoebe said. “When you think about ‘the ring,’ there’s only one thing you think about and that’s the Super Bowl ring.”

Not surprisingly, some down-on-their-luck players are forced to part with their rings. In 1996, as part of bankruptcy and divorce procedures, Steelers running back Rocky Bleier reportedly sold his four rings to a friend for $40,000 then was allowed to “lease” them back over three years for $1,368 per month. Three of his rings were later stolen while he was at a speaking engagement. The ring belonging to Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, the former Cowboys linebacker, was seized to pay back taxes. And Raiders cornerback Lester Hayes said he pawned his ring so he could pay a dentist bill, only to find the ring had already been sold when he returned to the pawnshop to buy it back.

Impressive as the rings are, many players keep them stashed away except for special occasions.

“I don’t wear a lot of jewelry, and they’re heavy,” Swann said. “When you’re wearing them all the time and you’re shaking hands, it hurts.”

Indianapolis receiver Ricky Proehl, who will play in Sunday’s Super Bowl, almost never wears the ring he won as a member of the St. Louis Rams. If that ring sees the light of day, it’s usually on the hand of his father.

Proehl was asked this week if he gave it to his dad on loan.

“No,” he said, smiling. “My dad loans it to me.”

sam.farmer@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

SUPER BOWL XL

Pittsburgh... 21

Seattle... 10

SUPER BOWL XXXIX

New England... 24

Philadelphia... 21

SUPER BOWL XXXVIII

New England... 32

Carolina... 29

SUPER BOWL XXXVII

Tampa Bay... 48

Oakland... 21

SUPER BOWL XXXVI

New England... 20

St. Louis... 17

SUPER BOWL XXXV

Baltimore... 34

N.Y. Giants... 7

SUPER BOWL XXXIV

St. Louis... 23

Tennessee... 16

SUPER BOWL XXXIII

Denver... 34

Atlanta... 19

SUPER BOWL XXXII

Denver... 31

Green Bay... 24

SUPER BOWL XXXI

Green Bay... 35

New England... 21

SUPER BOWL XXX

Dallas... 27

Pittsburgh... 17

SUPER BOWL XXIX

San Francisco... 49

San Diego... 26

SUPER BOWL XXVIII

Dallas... 30

Buffalo... 13

SUPER BOWL XXVII

Dallas... 52

Buffalo... 17

SUPER BOWL XXVI

Washington... 37

Buffalo... 24

SUPER BOWL XXV

N.Y. Giants... 20

Buffalo... 19

SUPER BOWL XXIV

San Francisco... 55

Denver... 10

SUPER BOWL XXIII

San Francisco... 20

Cincinnati... 16

SUPER BOWL XXII

Washington... 42

Denver... 10

SUPER BOWL XXI

N.Y. Giants... 39

Denver... 20

SUPER BOWL XX

Chicago... 46

New England... 10

SUPER BOWL XIX

San Francisco... 38

Miami... 16

SUPER BOWL XVIII

L.A. Raiders... 38

Washington... 9

SUPER BOWL XVII

Washington... 27

Miami ...17

SUPER BOWL XVI

San Francisco... 26

Cincinnati... 21

SUPER BOWL XV

Oakland... 27

Philadelphia... 10

SUPER BOWL XIV

Pittsburgh... 31

L.A. Rams... 19

SUPER BOWL XIII

Pittsburgh... 35

Dallas... 31

SUPER BOWL XII

Dallas... 27

Denver... 10

SUPER BOWL XI

Oakland... 32

Minnesota... 14

SUPER BOWL X

Pittsburgh... 21

Dallas... 17

SUPER BOWL IX

Pittsburgh... 16

Minnesota... 6

SUPER BOWL VIII

Miami... 24

Minnesota... 7

SUPER BOWL VII

Miami... 14

Washington... 7

SUPER BOWL VI

Dallas... 24

Miami... 3

SUPER BOWL V

Baltimore... 16

Dallas... 13

SUPER BOWL IV

Kansas City... 23

Minnesota... 7

SUPER BOWL III

N.Y. Jets... 16

Baltimore... 7

SUPER BOWL II

Green Bay... 33

Oakland... 14

SUPER BOWL I

Green Bay... 35

Kansas City... 10