FOOTBALL VAGABOND : After Tour of the NFL, Gagliano Fights for Job With Lions

Bob Gagliano writes it off as “just a couple months of craziness.” It was a National Football League tour that took him from San Francisco to Tampa Bay to Houston to Indianapolis and back to San Francisco, the first two visits in training camp alone.

Actually, last year’s tour looks more like the latest chapter in a career that has had more lives than Shirley MacLaine.

Gagliano, a 1976 graduate of Hoover High in Glendale, where he played football, basketball and tennis, quarterbacked three colleges teams: Glendale College, where he was named a JC All-American; United States International University, where he played one season before the program was dropped; and Utah State, where he threw for 2,365 yards and 20 touchdowns in his lone season there.

Then he started to move around.

He went to Kansas City and played two games in three years with the Chiefs, the team that drafted him in the 12th round in 1981.

Next came San Antonio of the United States Football League, then Denver of the USFL. Back to the National Football League with San Francisco, and then on the NFL conveyor belt last season.

So who should show up in camp with the Detroit Lions? Heeee’s baaack.

Maybe better than ever, or at least in better-than-ever circumstances. Sure the Lions opened camp with five quarterbacks--four veterans and Heisman Trophy runner-up Rodney Peete from USC--but previous experience with the run-and-shoot offense makes Gagliano, who will turn 31 on Tuesday, a good bet to stick.

“We’re thinking that he will fit into our plans prominently,” said June Jones, who, like fellow offensive coordinator Mouse Davis also coached Gagliano with the Denver Gold. “We had him in the USFL and he has a good feel for the offense. He probably excels more in this than a standard offense.”

Excelling to the point that he could beat out a couple other bigger names when the Lions make their final cuts and get down to the expected three quarterbacks. There’s Peete, and Chuck Long and Eric Hipple were the known entities a year ago but both finished 1988 on injured reserve with elbow and ankle problems, respectively. Rusty Hilger, a former Raider, came in and was named the team’s most valuable offensive player.

When the roster was sliced Tuesday by 11, no quarterbacks went. That put even more strain on an already tense battle in the Lions’ den.

“Of all the camps I’ve been involved in, this one has the most stress in going for the position,” said Gagliano, who has completed 12 of 22 passes for 170 yards while playing in two of the first three games. Detroit’s exhibition season ends tonight against the Rams at Anaheim Stadium.

“We’re not getting as many reps (repetitions in practice) because there are so many guys for the coaches to look at,” Gagliano said. “Then, when you’re at the games, you are a little unsure in some situations because the practice time may not have been there.

“It comes right down to how you do in the games. The quarterbacks have been talking for the last three weeks about how tense it’s been. From a physical standpoint, this isn’t necessarily harder than other camps. But from a mental standpoint, it’s been much more intense.”

Last year, Gagliano began with San Francisco but asked to be cut when it became obvious he wouldn’t get much playing time. He bounced to Tampa Bay--”thank goodness,” Gagliano said of leaving the Buccaneers--and Houston and Indianapolis, picked him up when those teams needed a quarterbacks.

Both let him go soon after.

He stayed with the Colts for a game before being cut. San Francisco brought him back, but the league office took care of that. One day while coming off the field after practice, a 49er official recited a rule that said a player cannot be cut by a team and re-sign with it the same season. Gagliano was gone, for the season as it turned out.

“I’d never heard of a year like that,” he said. “Frankly, all that made me think twice about whether I should continue in football. The handwriting was on the wall.”

Soon, it was on the paper, too. While considering retirement, he went so far as to turn in applications to join the fire department in the city and county of Ventura. But when Detroit, specifically Jones and Davis, came calling, Gagliano re-upped.

“There were a few times when I said, ‘I can’t take it anymore,’ and then I’d get a change of heart,” he said. “You’ve got to love it to a certain extent. Maybe all athletes are masochists.”

But Gagliano knew he would have a good opportunity to make it in Detroit. For one thing, there’s his experience with the Silver Stretch, Coach Wayne Fontes’ version of the run-and-shoot, an offense that uses a lot of quarterback rollouts. For another, the fact that the Lions, with Long, Hipple and Hilger, finished last in the National Football Conference in passing last season.

Peete has started both games in which he has played and is considered No. 1. But the other four remain bunched, each with particular strengths--Hilger has the strongest arm, Gagliano the knowledge of what can be a complicated offense, Long the passing touch and Hipple what Fontes terms savvy.

That’s a good enough spot for Gagliano now. Things are, after all, going well.

“So far,” he said.