Rams Fair Game for Critics, but There Are Bigger Concerns

There is passion in pro football, passion and anxiety and brutality and vitality and a lot of pent-up hostility that needs release. When the clock runs out and there is no one left on the field to wallop, only then is a National Football League player left alone with his thoughts, left to think about what just happened, and left, certainly, to think about his future.

Therefore, when LeRoy Irvin and Jerry Gray started pounding their helmets onto the dirt next to the Rams’ bench Sunday, and when teammate Jim Collins crumpled a paper cup and stomped it like a bug, it wasn’t because they might be out of a job in another day or two. The only striking they were thinking about doing at that moment was against a nearby wall, with a fist.

It was only afterward, after the final, painful 30 seconds wound down and the Minnesota Vikings wrapped things up, 21-16, that it really dawned on some of the Ram players how they were all dressed up with no place to go. They were winless and might stay that way for a while. They were without victory, and, very possibly, without income.

It seemed hardly the time to make fun of them.

Yet, go ahead, John Robinson said. Permission granted. Take your best shot. Have a freebie. Slam the Rams. “It’s free-shot time, if you choose to,” he said. Smoke us if you got to. We understand. We were supposed to be hot stuff this season, super enough for a Super Bowl, but instead we are 0-2, and our players are threatening to walk out on you, so we appreciate the fact that some of you are not going to feel too charitable toward us right now.

So, OK.

Picture Eric Dickerson and 10 scabs on the same field. Imagine them at Anaheim Stadium next Sunday, trying to beat the strike-breaking veterans and assorted scabs that make up the Cincinnati Bengals. Picture Dickerson playing with 10 guys who do not play football all that well.

What’s that?

You can?

You’ve already seen it?

Very funny.

Sorry, coach. The temptation to be mean to a winless team is irresistible. You knew that when you welcomed everybody to take a free shot, when you even forgave some dumbbell for dumping a drink on your head on your way to the clubhouse after the game. People sure can treat you coldly in times of trouble.

How can we not, however, take advantage of such straight men as Dickerson and deliver the necessary punch lines when he says things such as: “If everybody else strikes, I’ll have to go on strike, too. I can’t play alone. I can’t run and play defense and play offense and play everything else at the same time.”

We cannot resist saying that it might be an improvement on what we are seeing now. Even if we don’t mean it.

The trouble is, in our minds, we really do want to be sympathetic to a football team experiencing hard times, and feel sorry for people who might be manning a picket line before long. In our hearts, however, we have been brought up to cheer for our teams when they win, and to boo our teams when they lose, and to accept the popular notion that all professional athletes are hedonistic celebrities who have it made.

What we should do, if we have any sensitivity at all, is listen to someone such as Ram linebacker Mel Owens when he says: “Hey, I’m from Detroit, where you have the UAW and the Teamsters. Nobody there would ever want somebody else to take their job. This is America, and that’s one of the things that makes it a great country. That the working man can try to have a voice in whatever he does.”

Somebody should pay attention to a 32-year-old lineman with a 22-year-old’s spirit and a 42-year-old’s flesh, namely defensive end Gary Jeter, when he says: “When I become 50, 52 years old, I’m going to be in pretty bad shape. Shoulder, back, knees . . . it’d be nice to know that I’m going to have a check coming in every month, not only to take care of me in my old age, but to be able to say that football, my life’s work, has been very, very good to me. That’d be nice.”

Have a heart, then. Even guys who make a good buck deserve a little compassion. Even comparatively rich people have feelings, not to mention families and responsibilities. And even football players from 0-2 teams feel rotten about the way they have been playing, rotten enough that we do not have to remind them how disappointed we are with their bad start by pelting them with insults.

We should put ourselves in their shoes--speaking figuratively, and not literally, as might a scab. Would we really want to walk away from our jobs over some principle that is important to us, only to find out that some faceless scab is sitting at our desk, or wearing our uniform, or occupying our place in the assembly line? Ask an air-traffic controller if he or she knows what it means to put a regular paycheck and a vocation on the line.

Are we really so contemptuous of the NFL’s players for organizing a walkout that we would gladly watch amateur scabs catching passes and returning punts? Johnnie Johnson of the Rams doesn’t think so. “I just can’t see how the public would accept football without the true 45 Los Angeles Rams or Chicago Bears or New York Giants,” he said.

OK, so the true Rams and true Giants haven’t looked so hot so far. Big deal. You paid to see them play; they played. They did their best. It wasn’t as good as their best was supposed to be, but that doesn’t entitle you to resent them for fighting for their rights. Pick on them when they’re down, but not when they’re out.

The NFL’s players might go on strike. If they do, that’s their business. They’re business. If it spoils your Sundays, they’re sorry. But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

Johnnie Johnson, for one, wishes the Rams were more popular at this moment of truth. It might make the strike easier to swallow. Then again, if the Rams were 2-0, their fans might be full of regret and anger that they finally had a good team and were not going to have the opportunity to watch it play.

Take a “free shot” at the Rams? Do so if you must. Say they were overrated. Say they are not so hot.

But, you do not have to cheer for football players to support them.

Support these players.

These are the players.

These are the players.

Accept no substitutes. Say no to scab football.