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Friday, February 2, 2007
State of rookie commissioner low key, at ease
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Miami — If Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue were at one extreme when it comes to addressing the world, Roger Goodell was at the other.
Not that this is a bad thing.
Take Friday, for instance, when New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson failed to contain his glee at the Miami Beach Convention Center after the 47-year-old Goodell gave his first State of the NFL address. “I’m going to tell you, I thought it was excellent, because if I had been in his shoes, I would have been a little nervous, but he seemed to handle it just great,” said Benson, a 22-year veteran of these events, ranging from the famously smooth ways of Rozelle to Tagliabue, the condescending lawyer who always let you know he thought he was the smartest guy in the room.
In contrast to Goodell’s predecessors who ruled the NFL for a combined 46 years, Goodell was just Goodell. That means he was low key with a dose of firmness and confidence. This was the same guy who flooded Rozelle’s office with letters 25 years ago to become an administrative intern for the league. This also was the same guy who survived four other finalists after five ballots to be unanimously approved by acclamation of the owners.
Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney said after the speech, “We’ve had a lot of different personalities as commissioner, starting with Jim Thorpe. We’ve also had others like Joe Carr, Elmer Layden and Bert Bell before Pete [Rozelle] and Paul [Tagliabue] came along.”
Then Rooney searched his 74-year-old mind to say, “The advice I’ve always given to every commissioner is that, whatever you do, just be yourself.”
So, for 45 minutes, before thousands of reporters from around the universe, Goodell gave his view of life with ease. There were the serious questions. (Do you think the presence of two black coaches in the Super Bowl will lead to more black NFL coaches and executives? “Whether it’s coaching, [trying to apply] for an office or for anything associated with the NFL, we want to have a sophisticated process that is open and diverse that will find the best possible candidate.”). There also were the ridiculous questions. (What do you think of reports that Brett Favre isn’t retiring? “Brett hasn’t called me recently.”)
In the end, Goodell lacked the wit of Rozelle, who once called his archrival, Al Davis, “a charming rogue” during the State of the NFL address before Davis’ Oakland Raiders won a Super Bowl. Even so, Goodell was solid enough to keep his bosses grinning and nodding. Said Benson, watching Goodell shake hands on the podium, “I thought he was direct and to the point. He answered every question. He didn’t hesitate. I’m going up there to congratulate him.”
Well, Goodell wasn’t that good. There were times when you got the feeling that he never completed a course on public speaking. His voice was fine. So were his body gestures. It’s just that, whenever he answered questions to his right, he failed to speak into the microphone. “I guess we’ll have to work on that,” NFL spokesman Joe Browne said, jokingly.
The new guy also had this habit of disagreeing with the premises of questions that were perfectly legitimate.
Questioner: Given the immense popularity of the league, do you see that these problems that seem to come in droves this year, chipping away at the league’s image to where it gets to be — I don’t know if crisis would be the right word — but where it gets to be a major problem?
Goodell: “I see it differently. I don’t see [these problems] coming in droves.”
Oh, really? The Cincinnati Bengals just had their ninth player arrested in the last nine months. That qualifies as “droves,” but Goodell is still learning.
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How Herschel changed the football world
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
That Sunday morning Mike Cavan was at the Atlanta Athletic Club with his children, of whom he’d seen little recently, for an Easter egg hunt. It was only after he returned to his father-in-law’s house that he learned the folks from Wrightsville had been calling. (This was 1980, way before cellphones.) So Cavan drove home to Athens and dropped off his family and picked up two riders for one final trip to Herschel’s place.
These were the last words Cavan’s wife said before her husband departed yet again: “I hope you sign him, and I hope he never plays.” Cavan’s explanation: “The wives had had enough of Herschel.”
Vince Dooley, Cavan’s boss, had himself undergone a bit of marital strife. Barbara Dooley had planned for her family to spend Easter with her brother, who was studying to be an oncologist, in Boston. In midweek her husband said, “I can’t go.” Barbara Dooley wondered why. “Herschel hasn’t signed.”
Quoth Barbara Dooley: “To hell with Herschel!”
Dooley was the coach of a Georgia program coming off a 6-5 season, not to mention a string of offseasons that had seen heralded backs — William Andrews of Thomasville, James Brooks of Warner Robins, George Rogers of Duluth — sign with out-of-state schools. Cavan was the assistant charged with recruiting Herschel Walker, rated the No. 1 prospect in the state and the nation, and toward that end Cavan essentially moved to a cabin in Wrightsville for the winter and a goodly chunk of the spring. Nearly two months after signing day, Herschel still hadn’t committed.
Cavan had seen every Johnson County game the previous fall and had seen the young man himself on a daily basis ever since. (Back then, coaches were allowed to “bump” into recruits without restriction so long as the bumps were unscheduled.) “There’d be four to 10 other coaches down there every day,” Cavan says, “and not the same ones. They rotated.” A lot of days Cavan would simply sit in the bleachers while Herschel went through basketball practice — “just so he’d know I was there.”
The protracted pursuit had its comedic moments. One report had Southern Cal coach John Robinson — Clemson and USC were considered Georgia’s chief competition — checking into the Macon Hilton so as to sign Herschel the next day. The hotel confirmed it had a guest registered under that name. Says Dooley: “He was John Robinson, a salesman from Valdosta.”
Finally it came down to this: Easter Sunday, Dooley and Cavan and recruiting director Steve Greer hunkered down in Herschel’s driveway. They couldn’t see the apple of their eye sign the precious letter of intent because they’d used their allotted in-home visits. They could only shake his hand after the fact. “We sat in the car,” Dooley says. “We stood around.” And little did anyone know that the lengthy courtship of one teenager would give rise to the frenzy that rings this process today.
Herschel is regarded as the Elvis of football recruiting. (Which would, by extension, make Cavan the affable record producer Sam Phillips and Dooley the gruff manager Col. Tom Parker.) The chase for Herschel was the flashpoint for the evolution of a low-key ritual into a high-volume mania. Georgia signed Walker and won the national championship eight months later, and that unprecedented cause-and-effect left everyone awaiting the Next Herschel. Twenty-seven years later, he still hasn’t arisen. We search anyway.
“It created a fervor,” Dooley says. And then: “Back then, you’d get on the phone and call around the state. It was all underground. Now it’s above the ground.”
Says Cavan, who’s now a developmental consultant for Georgia’s athletics department: “It’s crazy how much everybody knows now. It used to take a week or 10 days for word to get around. Now with the Internet, it’s unreal.”
Even after Herschel, it didn’t happen overnight. First came specialized publications, then a groundbreaking recruiting talk show on Nashville’s WLAC, and then, ultimately and inevitably, the Internet. Supply keeps rising to meet demand, and today there are fans of all schools who seem to care more about winning — or, to be precise, about being perceived as having won — on a Wednesday in February than on any autumn Saturday.
Maybe this strange business would have gotten huge anyway, but every person I’ve ever asked, and I’ve asked several, has invoked one word to pinpoint that moment when recruiting struck the communal chord that resounds today — Herschel. He signed. He played. He changed the football world.
Permalink | Comments (151) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
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