The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From a Strange Time Read online

  (A quick little sidelight on all these figures has to do with the price TV advertisers paid to push their products during time-outs and penalty-squabbles at the Super Bowl: The figure announced by the NFL and whatever TV network carried the goddamn thing was $200,000 per minute. I missed the telecast, due to factors beyond my control -- which is why I don't know which network sucked up all that gravy, or whether it was Schlitz, Budweiser, Gillette or even King Kong Amyl Nitrites that coughed up $200,000 for every 60 seconds of TV exposure on that grim afternoon.)

  But that was just a sidelight. . . and the longer I look at all these figures, my watch, and this goddamn stinking mojo wire that's been beeping steadily out here in the snow for two days, the more I tend to see this whole thing about a pending Labor Management crunch in the NFL as a story with a spine of its own that we should probably leave for later.

  The only other thing -- or maybe two things -- that I want to hit, lashing the final pages of this bastard into the mojo, has to do with the sudden and apparently serious formation of the "World Football League" by the same people whose record, so far, has been pretty good when it comes to taking on big-time monopolies. Los Angeles lawyer Gary Davidson is the same man who put both the American Basketball Association and the World Hockey League together-- two extremely presumptuous trips that appear to have worked out very nicely, and which also provided the competition factor that caused the huge salary jumps in both basketball and hockey.

  Perhaps the best example of how the competition-factor affects player salaries comes from the ledger-books of the NFL. In 1959, the average salary in pro football was $9500 a year. But in 1960, when the newly formed AFL began its big-money bidding war against pro football's Old Guard, the average NFL salary suddenly jumped to $27,500-- and in the 13 years since then it has crept up another $1000 to the current figure of $28,500.

  The explanation for all this -- according to Garvey and all the players I've talked to about it -- is rooted entirely in the owner-arranged merger between the NFL and the AFL in 1966. "Ever since then," says Garvey, "it's been a buyer's market, and that's why the NFL's average salary figure has remained so stagnant, compared to the other sports."

  Garvey said he'd just as soon not make any public comment on the possibility of a players' strike next summer -- but there is a lot of private talk about it among individual players, and especially among the player reps and some of the politically oriented hard rockers like Swift, Keating, and Kansas City's Ed Podolak.

  The only person talking publicly about a players' strike is Gary Davidson, president of the new World Football League -- who called a press conference in New York on January 22nd to announce that the WFL was not going after the top college players and the 35 or so NFL veterans who played out their options last year -- but, in a sudden reversal of policy that must have sent cold shots of fear through every one of the 26 plush boardrooms in the NFL, Davidson announced that the WFL will also draft "all pro football players, even those under contract," and then begin draining talent out of the NFL by a simple device called "future contracts."

  If the Boston Bulls of the WFL, for instance, decided to draft Dolphin quarterback Bob Griese this year and sign him to a future contract for 1975, Griese would play the entire "74 season for Miami, and then -- after getting a certified deposit slip for something like $2 million in gold bullion from his bank in Zurich -- he would have a round of farewell beers with Robbie and Shula before catching the plane for Boston, where he would open the 1976 season as quarterback for the Bulls.

  This is only one of several hundred weird scenarios that could start unfolding in the next few months if the WFL franchise-owners have enough real money to take advantage of the NFL players' strike that Gary Davidson says he's waiting for this summer.

  Why not? Total madness on the money front: Huge bonuses, brutal money raids on NFL teams like the Dolphins and the Raiders; wild-eyed WFL agents flying around the country in private Lear jets with huge sacks of cash and mind-bending contracts for any player willing to switch. . .

  The only sure loser, in the end, will be the poor bastard who buys a season ticket for the Dolphins '76 season and then picks up the Miami Herald the next day to find a red banner headline saying: GRIESE, KJICK, CSONKA, SCOTT, ANDERSON JUMP TO WFL.

  Which is sad, but what the hell? None of this tortured bullshit about the future of pro football means anything, anyway. If the Red Chinese invaded tomorrow and banned the game entirely, nobody would really miss it after two or three months. Even now, most of the games are so fucking dull that it's hard to understand how anybody can even watch them on TV unless they have some money hanging on the point spread, instead of the final score.

  Pro football in America is over the hump. Ten years ago it was a very hip and private kind of vice to be into. I remember going to my first 49er game in 1965 with 15 beers in a plastic cooler and a Dr. Grabow pipe full of bad hash. The 49ers were still playing in Kezar stadium then, an old grey hulk at the western end of Haight Street in Golden Gate Park. There were never any sellouts, but the 30,000 or so regulars were extremely heavy drinkers, and at least 10,000 of them were out there for no other reason except to get involved in serious violence. . . By halftime the place was a drunken madhouse, and anybody who couldn't get it on anywhere else could always go underneath the stands and try to get into the long trough of a "Men's Room" through the "Out" door; there were always a few mean drunks lurking around to punch anybody who tried that. . . and by the end of the third quarter of any game, regardless of the score, there were always two or three huge brawls that would require the cops to clear out whole sections of the grandstand.

  But all that changed when the 49ers moved out to Candlestick Park. The prices doubled and a whole new crowd took the seats. It was the same kind of crowd I saw, last season, in the four games I went to at the Oakland Coliseum: a sort of half-rich mob of nervous doctors, lawyers and bank officers who would sit through the whole game without ever making a sound -- not even when some freak with a head full of acid spilled a whole beer down the neck of their grey-plastic ski jackets. Toward the end of the season, when the Raiders were battling every week for a spot in the playoffs, some of the players got so pissed off at the stuporous nature of their "fans" that they began making public appeals for "cheering" and "noise."

  It was a bad joke if you didn't have to live with it-- and as far as I'm concerned I hope to hell I never see the inside of another football stadium. Not even a free seat with free booze in the press box.

  That gig is over now, and I blame it on Vince Lombardi.

  The success of his Green Bay approach in the '60's restructured the game entirely. Lombardi never really thought about winning; his trip was not losing. . . Which worked, and because it worked the rest of the NFL bought Lombardi's whole style: Avoid Mistakes, Don't Fuck Up, Hang Tough and Take No Chances. . . Because sooner or later the enemy will make a mistake and then you start grinding them down, and if you play the defensive percentage you'll get inside his 30-yard line at least three times in each half, and once you're inside the 30 you want to be sure to get at least three points. . .

  Wonderful. Who can argue with a battle-plan like that? And it is worth remembering that Richard Nixon spent many Sundays, during all those long and lonely autumns between 1962 and '68, shuffling around on the field with Vince Lombardi at Green Bay Packer games.

  Nixon still speaks of Lombardi as if he might suddenly appear, at any moment, from underneath one of the larger rocks on the White House lawn. . . And Don Shula, despite his fairly obvious distaste for Nixon, has adopted the Lombardi style of football so effectively that the Dolphins are now one of the dullest teams to watch in the history of pro football.

  But most of the others are just as dull -- and if you need any proof, find a TV set some weekend that has pro football, basketball and hockey games on three different channels. In terms of pure action and movement, the NFL is a molasses farm compared to the fine sense of crank that comes on when you
get locked into watching a team like the Montreal Canadiens or the Boston Celtics.

  One of the few sharp memories I still have from that soggy week in Houston is the sight of the trophy that would go to the team that won the Big Game on Sunday. It was appropriately named after Vince Lombardi: "The Lombardi Trophy," a thick silver fist rising out of a block of black granite.

  The trophy has all the style and grace of an ice floe in the North Atlantic. There is a silver plaque on one side of the base that says something about Vince Lombardi and the Super Bowl. . . but the most interesting thing about it is a word that is carved, for no apparent or at least no esthetic reason, in the top of the black marble base:

  "DISCIPLINE"

  That's all it says, and all it needs to say.

  The '73 Dolphins, I suspect, will be to pro football what the '64 Yankees were to baseball, the final flower of an era whose time has come and gone. The long and ham-fisted shadow of Vince Lombardi will be on us for many more years. . . But the crank is gone. . .

  Should we end the bugger with that?

  Why not? Let the sportswriters take it from here. And when things get nervous, there's always that smack-filled $7-a-night motel room down on the seawall in Galveston.

  Rolling Stone #128, February 15, 1973

  The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy

  Gray day in Boston. Piles of dirty snow around the airport. . . My cocktail flight from Denver was right on time, but Jean-Claude Killy was not there to meet me.

  Bill Cardoso lurked near the gate, grinning through elegant rimless glasses, commenting on our way to the bar that I looked like a candidate for a serious dope bust. Sheepskin vests are not big in Boston these days.

  "But look at these fine wing-tips," I said, pointing down at my shoes.

  He chuckled. "All I can see is that goddamn necklace. Being seen with you could jeopardize my career. Do you have anything illegal in that bag?"

  "Never," I said. "A man can't travel around on airplanes wearing a Condor Legion neck-piece unless he's totally clean. I'm not even armed. . . This whole situation makes me feel nervous and weird and thirsty." I lifted my sunglasses to look for the bar, but the light was too harsh.

  "What about Killy?" he said. "I thought you were supposed to meet him."

  "I can't handle it tonight," I said. "I've been chasing all over the country for 10 days on this thing: Chicago, Denver, Aspen, Salt Lake City, Sun Valley, Baltimore. Now Boston and tomorrow New Hampshire. I'm supposed to ride up there with them tonight on the Head Ski bus, but I'm not up to it; all those hired geeks with their rib-ticklers. Let's have a drink, then I'll cancel out on the bus trip."

  It seemed like the only decent thing to do. So we drove around to the airport hotel and went inside, where the desk clerk said the Head Ski people were gathered in Room 247. Which was true; they were in there, perhaps 30 in all, standing around a cloth-covered table loaded with beer and diced hotdogs. It looked like a cocktail party for the local Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. These were the Head Ski dealers, presumably from around the New England area. And right in their midst, looking fatigued and wretchedly uncomfortable -- yes, I couldn't quite believe it, but there he was: Jean-Claude Killy, the world's greatest skier, now retired at age 26 with three Olympic gold medals, a fistful of golden contracts, a personal manager and ranking-celebrity status on three continents. . .

  Cardoso nudged me, whispering, "Jesus, there's Killy." I hadn't expected to find him here; not in a dim little windowless room in the bowels of a plastic motel. I stopped just inside the door. . . and a dead silence fell on the room. They stared, saying nothing, and Cardoso said later that he thought we were going to be attacked.

  I hadn't expected a party. I thought we were looking for a private room, containing either "Bud" Stanner, Head's Marketing Director, or Jack Rose, the PR man. But neither one was there. The only person I recognized was Jean-Claude, so I waded through the silence to where he was standing, near the hotdog table. We shook hands, both of us vibrating discomfort in this strange atmosphere. I was never quite sure about Killy, never knowing if he understood why I was embarrassed for him in those scenes.

  A week earlier he'd seemed insulted when I smiled at his pitchman's performance at the Chicago Auto Show, where he and O.J. Simpson had spent two days selling Chevrolets. Killy had seen no humor in his act, and he couldn't understand why I did. Now, standing around in this grim, beer-flavored sales meeting, it occurred to me that maybe he thought I felt uncomfortable because I wasn't wearing a red tie and a Robert Hall blazer with brass buttons like most of the others. Maybe he was embarrassed to be seen with me, a Weird Person of some sort. . . and with Cardoso, wearing granny glasses and a big grin, wandering around the room mumbling, "Jesus, where are we? This must be Nixon headquarters." We didn't stay long. I introduced Cardoso as an editor of the Boston Globe, and that stirred a bit of interest in the dealer-salesmen ranks -- they are wise in the ways of publicity -- but my neckpiece was obviously more than they could handle. Their faces tensed when I reached into the beer tub; nothing had been offered and my thirst was becoming acute. Jean-Claude just stood there in his blazer, smiling nervously. Outside in the hallway, Cardoso erupted with laughter. "What an incredible scene! What was he doing with those bums?"

  I shook my head. Killy's hard-sell scenes no longer surprised me, but finding him trapped in a beer and hotdog gig was like wandering into some housing-project kaffeeklatsch and finding Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis making a straight-faced pitch for Folger's instant-brewed.

  My head was not straight at that stage of the investigation. Two weeks of guerrilla warfare with Jean-Claude Killy's publicity juggernaut had driven me to the brink of hysteria. What had begun in Chicago as a simple sketch of a French athlete turned American culture-hero had developed, by the time I got to Boston, into a series of maddening skirmishes with an interlocking directorate of public relations people.

  I was past the point of needing any more private time with Jean-Claude. We had already done our thing -- a four-hour head-on clash that ended with him yelling: "You and me, we are completely different. We are not the same kind of people! You don't understand! You could never do what I'm doing! You sit there and smile, but you don't know what it is! I am tired. Tired! I don't care anymore -- not on the inside.or the outside! I don't care what I say, what I think, but I have to keep doing it. And two weeks from now I can go back home to rest, and spend all my money."

  There was a hint of decency -- perhaps even humor -- about him, but the high-powered realities of the world he lives in now make it hard to deal with him on any terms except those of pure commerce. His handlers rush him from one scheduled appearance to the next; his time and priorities are parceled out according to their dollar/publicity value; everything he says is screened and programmed. He often sounds like a prisoner of war, dutifully repeating his name, rank and serial number. . . and smiling, just as dutifully, fixing his interrogator with that wistful, distracted sort of half-grin that he knows is deadly effective because his handlers have showed him the evidence in a hundred press-clippings. The smile has become a trademark. It combines James Dean, Porfiro Rubirosa and a teen-age bank clerk with a foolproof embezzlement scheme.

  Killy projects an innocence and a shy vulnerability that he is working very hard to overcome. He likes the carefree, hell-for-leather image that he earned as the world's best ski racer, but nostalgia is not his bag, and his real interest now is his new commercial scene, the high-rolling world of the Money Game, where nothing is free and amateurs are called Losers. The wistful smile is still there, and Killy is shrewd enough to value it, but it will be a hard thing to retain through three years of Auto Shows, even for $100,000 a year.

  We began in Chicago, at some awful hour of the morning, when I was roused out of a hotel stupor and hustled around a corner on Michigan Avenue to where Chevrolet's general manager John Z. DeLorean was addressing an audience of 75 "automotive writers" at a breakfast press conference on the mezz
anine of the Continental Plaza. The room looked like a bingo parlor in Tulsa -- narrow, full of long formica tables with a makeshift bar at one end serving coffee, Bloody Marys and sweet rolls. It was the morning of the first big weekend of the Chicago Auto Show, and Chevrolet was going whole-hog. Sitting next to DeLorean at the head table were Jean-Claude Killy and O. J. Simpson, the football hero.

  Killy's manager was there-- a tall, thick fellow named Mark McCormack, from Cleveland, a specialist in rich athletes and probably the only man alive who knows what Killy is worth. Figures ranging from $100,000 to $500,000 a year are meaningless in the context of today's long-term high finance. A good tax lawyer can work miracles with a six-figure income. . . and with all the fine machinery available to a man who can hire the best money-managers, Killy's finances are so skillfully tangled that he can't understand them himself.

  In some cases, a big contract -- say, $500,000 -- is really a 5-year annual salary of $20,000 with a $400,000 interest-free loan, deposited in the star's account, paying anywhere from 5 per cent to 20 per cent annually, depending on how he uses it. He can't touch the principal, but a $400,000 nut will yield $30,000 a year by accident -- and a money-man working for 30 percent can easily triple that figure.