Life Its Ownself (22 page)

Players always know what happened in a game. If it's a game you lost, it's because some dumbass missed a block or dropped a pass. If it's a game you won, it was because the quarterback ignored the brilliant coach's "game plan" and threw a pass on a busted play and a leaper went up and outwrestled somebody for the ball.

If the Pittsburgh Steelers of the Seventies had stuck with Chuck Noll's game plans, they would have lost three of their four Super Bowls. They'd still be running Franco Harris on trap plays. But Terry Bradshaw, the quarterback, happened to notice that he needed to get some points. So he chunked the ball a mile into the twilight, and Lynn Swann jumped 10 feet off the ground and caught it, and this made Chuck Noll brilliant.

Shoat Cooper had been brilliant when Hose Manning would throw the ball away and Shake Tiller would go catch it.

Shoat could explain it to the sportswriters with brilliance. He would say, "Our reference was Red all the way. They showed us Blue but they jumped into Yellow. Naturally, we had to switch from Odd to Even. Against a Concealed Zone, you have to go underneath. We knew the Crease was there."

Shoat often talked like this to the players, but when his terminology overdosed the alphabet, we would only pretend to listen.

Nobody on our team would have understood the play if Hose Manning or Dump McKinney had come into the huddle and said, "Brown left, eighty-nine flex, overload K, Y-sideline, Z-trap motion on two."

We would have had to call time-out until the laughter stopped.

That was the kind of thing they said in the Dallas huddle, which was why the Cowboys, despite their enviable record all these years, had never beaten a team that was physically worth a shit.

What Hose or Dump was more likely to have said in our huddle was "Their right corner looks a little stoned to me. I'm gonna throw it over the fucker's head. Y'all try to block somebody."

Much of this was going through my mind as I now sat in the presence of Wade Hogg, Green Bay's brilliant new coach.

The contrast between the offices of Wade Hogg and T. J. Lambert would have gone a long way toward reinforcing Uncle Kenneth's argument about the college game being more fun. In Wade Hogg's office, I felt at first like applying for a personal loan, but then it became a problem to maintain a dignified posture as I studied the signs on his walls.

Wade Hogg's most prominent sign was framed and hung on the wall over his Portabubble. The sign said:

FORCE + WORK - CONFUSION = SUCCESS!

Given enough time and thought, I decided Green Bay's defensive unit could probably understand the wisdom of that, but I would have defied anyone other than Wade Hogg to explain the sign that said:

W = 1/2 MVT. + 1/2 INSP.

"Simple," said Wade Hogg. "Winning equals one-half motivation plus one-half inspiration."

I studied the sign another moment as the coach said:

"One of the things I've introduced to the Packers—it's new in the league, by the way—is the correct use of energy. We're pretty sold on it around here. What we tell our people is this: the energy of an object will grow as its speed increases. We want our energy to grow! If you're a football team and your energy doesn't
grow
, you've got a kinetic problem. What we believe is that work transformed into energy exerts
force
. There's no question about that. And a growing force is a football team to contend with!"

I wished Wade Hogg luck and said I hoped he didn't run into too many teams that stressed blocking and tackling.

"Oh, I think fundamentals will always be a part of the game," he said. "Where we've taken the lead is in the way we've learned how to transfer our kinetic energy from a gravitational to an elastic object. How's the knee coming along?"

"Okay," I said.

"Those damn gravitational injuries," he said, shaking his head. "Wouldn't have happened if you'd been in our elastic program."

I had tried to picture Wade Hogg as the prehistoric interior lineman he'd been when he played for the Detroit Lions. It was easier than picturing him as the head coach of the Packers, but it was my guess he wouldn't have the job much longer if he didn't stop reading that fucking book, whatever it was.

Later, I was up in Ray Hogan's room at the motel with my head swimming in X's and O's.

The Redskins' coach was more of the old, traditional taskmaster, the kind who drew diagrams as he talked—and talked in a language that only a football coach could decipher.

"We don't care what they do tomorrow," said Ray Hogan, scribbling on sheets of motel stationery. "If they show us this, we're here. If they're here, we're right here. You can't do this to us. We'll do this. Let's say they're in a three. Hell, that gives us this! They go to a four, we do this. Or this. If they bring in the nickel, this is open. We'll take what they give us. I'm not worried about our offense. They'll play Redskin football."

"Like they did against the Rams?" I didn't think it would hurt to give old Ray a jab.

"Aw, that was just one of those given Sundays," he said. "All teams have 'em. Your people have 'em. We had this open all day. Never could hit it. We could have run here till Christmas. Put this guy out here, they have to do this. Look what that leaves? Hell, it's a landing strip! Of course, we kept trying to do this—and they wouldn't give us that."

"Zebras tried to help you out."

"They dropped a few, didn't they? Well, they get a lot of criticism, but they do a pretty good job overall."

"You think all of them are honest?"

"In the
National Football League
? Our game officials? Goodness, Billy Clyde, that's the craziest question I ever heard! Of course they're honest! They're wrong half the time but they're honest! It's those dang judgment calls! Did he or didn't he? Was he or wasn't he? All coaches die of a judgment call sooner or later."

"Charlie Teasdale makes his share of them," I said.

"Charlie will drop a flag for you. Old Quick Flag, we call him. He likes to drop one early, let you know who's boss out there. I've accused him of wanting to get on television too much."

"What does he say?"

"You can't talk to an official. You can talk to a Pope or a king or a president, but you can't talk to an official. Charlie's a real bad official, but he's not dishonest."

Ray Hogan said you had to know how to use the officials to your advantage.

"They almost never call the same penalty twice in a row. So if we get a holding call, we tell our people to grab anything that moves on the next play. In other words, you hold after a hold, don't you? If we get a pass-interference call, we tell our people to undress the scoundrels on the next play! But this isn't anything new, Billy Clyde. Hell, I bet they taught you this in high school in Texas, didn't they?"

Yes, they had.

I pressed the other point one more time.

"Coach, you don't think there's even a remote chance an official would do some business?"

"Not a chance," said Ray Hogan. "For one thing, they're too stupid."

I asked the Washington coach if there was anything I needed to know about his defense.

"We'll be in this most of the time," he said, returning to his diagrams. "It's been good to us. We may show 'em this now and then, try to get 'em to come here. Right here's where we'd like to keep 'em. You're not going anywhere here. We'll come if they do this. We'll come if they do that. We love for 'em to try this! It's all up to Dreamer tomorrow. If Dreamer decides he wants to come to the dance, our defense will be all right. They'll play Redskin football."

Was Dreamer Tatum coming to the dance?

I asked Dreamer the blunt question as the two of us had a drink in the motel bar. We were waiting for Kathy and a camera crew so we could do the insert.

Dreamer gave me a look when I put the question to him.

"Between you and me, Clyde?"

He could trust me, I assured him.

"I'm Dixie," he said.

I told Dreamer I had assumed as much when I saw the Rams-Redskins game on television.

"You changed the future of pro football," Dreamer said. "Our conversation when you were in the hospital? I got to thinking about it later. You were right. We couldn't win a strike. I'm leading the Players Association in a new direction."

The problems were the same, he said. The players didn't have collective bargaining, the owners had completely undermined the free-agency system. A football player was less able to get a fair-market value for his services than a steel-worker. A player's salary was still determined by the "whim" of the owner.

"We threatened a strike," he said. "We made a big noise about wanting a percentage of the TV revenue, trying to force a wage scale on 'em. They only called us Commies. They don't realize it's only another form of profit-sharing. Profit- sharing is a hundred years old in this country, man! The owners' grandfathers invented profit-sharing! Looks like the grandfathers were smarter people, doesn't it?"

We were alone in the bar. Dreamer lowered his voice anyhow and had a gleam in his eye as he said, "We're going to Plan B, Clyde. Operation Dixie. That's the code name. It came out of our board-of-directors meeting."

"Play bad on purpose?"

"We're
all
goin' Dixie," he said.

"What do you think you'll accomplish?"

With satisfaction, Dreamer said, "An inferior product!"

"And?"

He said, "The big turn-off is coming, man. The public will wake up one day and say, 'What's this shit coming down?' We keep our jobs, but the game becomes a joke. TV ratings drop. This hits the owner in his pocketbook. Stadiums are empty. Coaches get fired by the dozens. Players get traded frantically. Every team is a bag of garbage. A seven-nine record gets you to the playoffs! The press gets hot. Ball clubs are an embarrassment to their communities. Owners commit suicide. We figure in less than two seasons, we can create mass hysteria."

"How many players are going along with you on this?"

"In a strike action, we were never going to get more than sixty-five percent. That became apparent. Too many Republicans in the league. Operation Dixie takes it out of the realm of politics. We think we have ninety-five percent right now. Among other things, there's less risk of injury."

"Sorry you didn't think of it sooner," I said. "I'd still be in a uniform."

"You could play on crutches now and you wouldn't get tackled!"

Dreamer said the Players Association had appointed a Script Committee.

Members of the Script Committee were in charge of thinking up ways to break the hearts of the owners and fans. Missed field goals from close in, fumbles on key downs, dropped passes for touchdowns. These were only a few. The possibilities were limitless.

Everybody was looking forward to the hilarity of it, Dreamer said. "A team drives all the way down the field. A field goal will win it. They're on the five-yard line. The owner's up in his box celebrating, but—"

"It's blocked?"

"Bad snap," Dreamer's grin was what you'd call sinister.

How was it all going to be resolved in the master plan? I inquired.

Dreamer said, "The owners will figure out what's going on and ask for a meeting. We'll get a wage scale and free agents with bargaining power. In return, we play football again."

"If it goes on too long, you won't regain the public's confidence."

"That's true, but it's a problem of the owners', not ours. What's the worst thing that'll happen? The NFL dies, right? So what? Somebody starts a new league. Rich guys will always want to own football teams and they'll always need athletes. We've got 'em, Clyde. We've got 'em right here."

Kathy and a two-man camera crew came into the bar. There was a nice spot where we could do the insert, she said. It was over in a corner of plastic flowers near the indoor swimming pool.

On our way to set up for the interview, I said to Kathy, "Dreamer was just telling me how the Redskins are ready to get after 'em tomorrow."

She looked at Dreamer, and said, "Pumped up, huh?"

"I've never seen a team as well prepared," he said.

Kathy positioned Dreamer and I on a small brick wall that separated the indoor swimming pool from the motel's Pong games, vending machines, and AstroTurf putting green. She handed me a microphone.

"Just chat informally for about ten minutes," she said. "Try to look relaxed. It'll help with the editing if you can keep your questions and answers as short as possible."

"How much of this will they use?" I asked.

"About sixty seconds," said Kathy. "Maybe ninety."

"That much?"

"Go!" Kathy said, as a hand-held cameraman moved in closer to us.

Our faces—Dreamer's and mine—grew solemn. Holding the mike, I turned to the Redskins' cornerback and said, "What about this Washington team, Dreamer?"

"They're the most dedicated athletes I've ever been associated with, Clyde. Our workouts have been the most intense I've ever seen—and you know the old saying: if you practice well, you play well."

"You're a vice-president of the Players Association. There's been a lot of strike talk, as we know. Has this had an effect on the football we're seeing this year?"