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Fourth Down and Who Cares?
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My friend and another body puncher from the same Kansas City boxing stable heard the boos from about the middle of the second round on. Both had that Floyd Patterson peek-a-boo style and like I said, both were body punchers.

In the very back of the arena you could hear the socks. Combinations walloped the ribs and kidneys. Leather gouged into the belly and the body punchers broke clean, but with little chugs of invisible hurt. They watched each other. Looked for an opening and waited for the other fighter to make a mistake. No one threw a punch to the head until the late; rounds.

At the last bell, when the men began to hug and smile like the friendly adversaries they were, you could hear the boos and jeers becoming lustier and uglier. The fighters released their embrace awkwardly and went to the dressing room where they both urinated blood.

The manager for the two boxers may be the only man in the fight game who does not punctuate with sweeping hand gestures. I told the manager his two products had fought a smart match, exactly as they had been taught. “Exactly, exactly,” he repeated. “Those boys box exactly like I teach them -they got no imagination.”

If allowed a football-boxing analogy, what we have now are 26 NFL teams playing the role of counter-punchers. When two counterpunchers meet, you have a match, but no real fight. You also have empty stadium seats, fewer team decals decorating automobile windows and the television series Rhoda outpolling Monday Night Football by a hefty margin. Imagination is missing.

In the mid 60’s, there were those of us who saw pro football as perhaps the only sport truly in tune with times. Chic. Players were selected and signed at the suggestion of computer print-outs. One man knocking hell out of his opponent was said to have achieved through “EXACT EXECUTION.” Breaks translated into “MOMENTUM.” And nary a defense was not “SOPHISTICATED.” The Super Bowl was an extravaganza. Cleats gained record yards stepping along on carpet, not old fashioned grass. Football terminology invaded our language. By the early 70’s, the President of the U.S. and his men huddled in the White House designing secret patterns and plays for use against opponents. Presidential transcripts repeatedly refer to “Try an end run” and “Block him, block him good.”

Sportswriters marveled at the great Green Bay, Miami and Dallas teams, saying they moved with “machine-like precision.” We got taxi squads and suicide squads, imported kickers, two-minute offenses – then what?

Astro-turf, game films, tendency sheets, goal post nets, stop watch perfection? “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, HI THERE. WELCOME TO THE NFL GAME OF THE WEEK, A CONTEST GUARANTEED UNTOUCHED BY HUMAN HANDS. ANY PUBLICATION. REBROAD-CAST OR OTHER USE OF THIS TELECAST WITHOUT THE EXPRESSED …” How far off?

Teams don’t play to win anymore. They simply wait for the other team to lose.

I swear, two Sunday’s ago, the instant replay camera captured LeRoy Jordan’s eyes in a dull, not the normally wild, rage. Teams jog onto the field with little combative anticipation. A lesson in lethargy.

The commentating likes of Al Irre-gardless have blamed our dull Sundays on such developments as the zone defense, the three man rush and “prevent” fortifications. But in game after game, quarterbacks magically move their teams for scores -once they decide to attack. Unfortunately, the decision is usually withheld until only two minutes remain in the half or game.

The Oct. 27 Minnesota meeting with New England is a case in point. The Patriots dominate the first half. Plunkett is brilliant. In the second half, the New England offense looks as imaginative as a one-story outhouse. After the two minute warning, Tarkenton hurls several deep passes against the Patriots’ prevent defense. Finally he connects downfield with John Gilliam and the Vikings soon score on a fancy quarterback keep.

The Pats get the ball and Plunkett decides his group should now play offense. ( No one threw a punch to the head until the late rounds.) The Vikes prevent-zone-three-man-rush defense cannot keep New England from moving 86 yards in seven plays. With three seconds left to play, Plunkett finds his tight end, who bulls into the end zone giving the Patriots victory and their only score in the second half. It had been an exciting conclusion to a dull, predictable contest.

Sometime last Sunday, I half awoke from my football chair to see the Die Hard battery igniting five frozen cars. As a football fan, I am naturally an expert on automobile tires and batteries. In the old days, when steel-belted radials and the wishbone formation were fresh inventions, I remember foregoing beer runs to watch “Tires like the ones on your car” challenge incredible roads, some worse than South Central Expressway. Now, if Sunday TV viewing is any indication, “The rugged Baja” must be clogged with test car traffic. Alas, even Sunday afternoon and Monday night commercials offer a mothball quality.

Before a recent Monday Night game (Atlanta vs. Pittsburgh), I talked with a former sportswriter who said he no longer even follows NFL action. “To me,” he said, “pro football was Meredith to Hayes or Ryan throwing the bomb to Collins and Warfield. I just don’t get excited watching the games anymore.”

He did, however, join me in viewing the Pittsburgh seven point win. We both half dozed during the contest, that lasted so long it may have run into the A.M. Show ( In fact,sometime in the fourth quarter it seems someone actually did say, “Have a pretty”).

I spent an entire night not long ago explaining to an editor why football just isn’t the game it used to be. I was wrong. The problem is, football is EXACTLY the same game it was last year and the year before that. If one team wins with the zone defense, every coach incorporates a zone. If one winner runs from a stacked I formation, at least 10 teams will run from it the next year. (“Exactly, exactly,” he repeated calmly, “those boys box exactly like I teach them -they got no imagination.”)

The game has been reduced to such a mathematical science by the likes of Schula and Landry all elements of extraordinary individual achievement (don’t go for the interception, son, play the zone like you are supposed to) have been squeezed from the game.

For God’s sake, the only action that nudged me from a semi-catatonic state during one recent game was an all-out brawl which emptied both benches.

Pro football is barely a sport anymore. It’s a pedantic and precise routine. Watching Sunday afternoon football has become about as exciting as sitting and watching the Washington bureaucracy for a full workday.

Now comes the sobering question: Could it be that the professional football product will not get any better? Every sport has its golden era. Perhaps the late 60’s and early 70’s provided fans with players and innovations that will remain unmatched. Even the Cowboys super computer failed to bring Dallas a rookie starter for 1974. And no one will, this season, come close to gaining 2,000 ground yards or throw a record number TD passes.

I posed this question to one former jock, now active in relaying televised football. “I don’t know,” he said. “There is a hell of a lot of football on, one right after the other. But, to tell you the truth, when the leaves start falling from the trees, I still get a hard on. Last night, though, I went to bed when the Pittsburgh game was still tied. It seems like I’d seen that plot before. Don’t use my name.”

One pillar in the football community did not mind at all if we used his name. Cowboy General Manager Tex Schramm was in New York for a series of league meetings when contacted and popped the “Has football peaked in popularity?” question. Schramm vocally cringed, and then was kind enough to spend a half hour righting my wrongs. It seems only justified to offer his side, hence the following Good Guy-Bad Guy dialogue.

Bad Guy: Uh, Tex, thanks for returning my call. You see, I’m doing a column explaining why football is not as popular as it used to be.

Good Guy: You’re what? Tom, I think someone has misguided you. Not as popular? Let me tell you something. When the season is over I don’t think attendance will be down much at all. If it is down a little it will be solely because of isolated instances like drops in Dallas and New York.

Bad Guy: Well, the players from college don’t seem to be getting any bigger or faster.

Good Guy: This year, we kept 10 rookies from training camp. I think that number may be 12 now. I think it would be a totally irrelevant assumption on your part to take that as fact. Last year we kept nine rookies. Football players are always getting better and will continue to do so. Every sport goes in cycles. College football has its cycles and so does pro football.

Bad Guy: Well, there’s something different this year. Something is missing.

Good Guy: That, maybe, is a personal phenomenon. Remember, this year we experienced an entirely new facet in sports. . . the first serious labor dispute. We are now trying to decide, to work out, to discuss, if a union situation can exist… in sports, whether it is practical in sports. Personally, I don’t think so.

Good Guy Again: Also, we’re going through the situation where a new league has been started. The WFL, if it survives, may have a different effect from the exciting effect the other league brought in the 60’s.

Good Guy Continues: Also we are in the midst of a number of problems football has attained because of its immense popularity. For instance, Congress took action which was unique (the no blackout law), by passing a law forcing a private industry to give their product away.

Bad Guy (ready to bomb in with what he thinks is a zinger): Well, doesn’t much of what you just said kinda prove my point?

Good Guy: Absolutely not. Pro football popularity has not suffered despite these things. Why don’t you go to stadiums in Pittsburgh and St. Louis and Buffalo? You’ll see plenty of people and plenty of excitement.

Bad Guy: Let me just slightly change the subject. Some of my baseball fan friends theorize that if baseball teams played only 10 home games a year you couldn’t build stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.

Good Guy: You really want an answer to that? Well, on the record, and with tongue in cheek, I think they ought to adopt it.

Bad Guy: Well, while we’re on the subject of differences in football and baseball. In the last World Series, the Dodgers and A’s seemed amazingly loose. Perhaps because their coaches don’t demand the outward discipline many football coaches expect. Do you expect discipline changes in pro football?

Good Guy: First of all, that looseness may have been a nervous reaction. I’ve seen that happen. Sometimes they come out somber and serious just because they think they should be. But as for football, I think it is a discipline sport. I think our whole civilization is facing the question of difference in permissiveness and discipline. Team sports are a disciplined endeavor. That doesn’t mean you can’t relax rules regarding hair and that sort of thing.

Bad Guy: I noticed the other day where Rhoda clobbered ABC Monday Night Football in the ratings. I wonder if less people are watching …

Good Guy: Listen, ABC football ratings are holding up amazingly well. People in the industry marvel at its continued success.

Notice how Schramm went through the whole interview without actually calling me an incompetent bumble-head. He is truly the gentleman. However, since he is no longer around to defend himself (at least in this issue), let’s talk with another g.m., Mike Shapiro of WFAA.

Shapiro said the new fall ratings were not yet available. “I can tell you that last year for the whole season, Monday Night Football ranked number one in the Dallas-Fort Worth viewing area,” he said. I attribute that to Don Meredith and football. Nationally it (ABC football) finished somewhere up in the middle of the list.”

When asked if he had any weekly ratings lying around, Shapiro said he did. “Here,” he said, “are the A.C. Nielson ratings (national) for the week Oct. 14 through 20th. Out of 53 shows rated, Monday Night Football rated 38th. Want to know how our documentary on football injuries finished? Here, 49th out of 53 shows. Gunsmoke and Maude just eat you up in that slot.”

I asked Shapiro if he experienced any trouble selling local Monday Night commercials. He said no and added that “programming against Sunday afternoon football is hard as hell. But, they (CBS and NBC) are having trouble selling some of their football. They won’t tell you, but they’re having trouble.”

All of this season’s football advertising was sold on last year’s performance ratings. My guess is that this year’s will be down. And, if pro teams show no more color and imagination, sponsors will be wary of buying lavish one-minute spots. If I’m right, the Tex Schramms can take heart in one thing. That body-punching friend of mine refused to change his style and is now a pretty good success -one of the best barbers in Kansas City.

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