Company Jets

by Perry Meisel

Football is blocking and tackling. Everything else is mythology.

- Vince Lombardi

The Jets' regular home is the Weeb Ewbank training center, comfortably tucked in a (naturally) green and isolated strip of the high-rise Hofstra campus on Long Island. When I went out for a visit in the plash of a sporadic rain the Thursday before the season-ending (so far) Monday Night Football tilt with the Patriots, the military atmosphere was anything but subtle. Within 10 minutes after arriving, I was spotted squatting along the sideline watching the offensive troops drill. Eyes everywhere, the Coach greeted the new visitor with a question asked in a tone that was only half joking: "You're not from New England, are you?"

This was hardly the austere and rabbinic Joe Walton I was used to seeing on the tube; it was clear that, full metal jacket and all, Joe was enormously relaxed (this was five days before the strike and long before he was forced to coach scabs), and, well, enjoying himself, even relishing the implication (wholly unwarranted given the hardass security at the gate) that I was an enemy spy sent by the archrival Pats. Joe's question in fact detonated a whole string of images that lead into the heart of football's classic military vocab.

Squad, bombs, drills - the list of shared terms is endless. Engaged as we now are in an NFL DMZ, the tenacity of these tropes is alarming, especially if the strike principals stick to 'em. You think I'm exaggerating? The Jets' PR chief, Frank Ramos, a lean and elegant man with keen, distant eyes (not unlike field general Ken O'Brien's), spent his army hitch working for the football program at West Point.

Military structure runs through all pro football, but there's another system at work that's especially evident with the Jets. I didn't see it fully until I visited the locker room following the Monday night game at the Meadowlands, where the cold high-tech feel provides a stark contrast to Edenic Hofstra. While the Giants or the Bears will pop off to the press, the Jets are trained not only as a football squad but also as, well, a corporate sales force. (Walton's description of Freeman McNeil in the Jets media guide could just as well have fit an IBM marketing veep: "He has good leadership qualities and the team responds to him.") Face it: despite their relative eloquence (or perhaps because of it), the Jets are now one of the most faceless teams in the NFL.

The fabulation of team harmony is so brutally perfect it leaves you gasping. These guys are as man/nerly in their discourse as they are on the field. The Brooklyn-born O'Brien is the perfect Jet - cool, levelheaded, nerveless. But whether it's because he's developed Sacramento cool or because Lockheed subcontracted his cerebrum, it's hard to tell. No showboating for this team, no fat-heading, no stupidity - not as players, not (any longer) as personalities. Only Jetspeak, a fine and supple language that yields nothing and whose primary rule is that the speaker subjugate himself to the team as a whole. The corporate message behind Jetspeak is sheltered very well indeed in the military metaphor. Jetspeak is a mode of military orderliness for the players, but also a mode of corporate cool for the company.

Jetspeak is an example of the slow addition of the language of the corporation to the more classical milatarese we associate with football. But the noncoincidence of the metaphors is surprising. In fact, it's caused a football strike. Pro football has, of course, always been a business, but only lately - in these days of Super Bowl Giants who are both suburban M.B.A.'s and "lunch pailers" - have its self-describing metaphors caught up with the corporate reality that produces them. In fact, you could say that there's been a time lag in the history of football terminology. You could even say that the military lingo has, until recently, almost entirely repressed the corporate infrastructure.

The striking NFL player looks like a guy itching to be a mercenary (the natural combination of war skills and the corporate marketplace) but discovering that he's only got a single client - and a single metaphor - to stand on. After the USFL's demise, the NFL is once again a monopoly, especially when the TV money is divided equally among the clubs no matter how well they perform. Had Pittsburgh played the Jets last weekend, for instance, it wouldn't have been a fight between cities but between "organizations." Look at it this way: football, the ultimate TV sport, is a living-room war - our continuing Vietnam. But the difference is that the NFL is always the home team and the enemy. Sorta like Rollerball (itself a joke about the NFL) with Tokyo and Houston in mortal "combat" in the arena under the regime of a single international corporate government. Sorta a lot like it.

Military and corporate metaphors have suddenly collided rather than meshed - hence the strike. In fact, for the past few years they've been colliding in the current system, which is military for the players ("loyalty to the team") but coldly corporate for the owners ("loyalty to profits"). "When we call it a game," said John Matuszak in North Dallas Forty, "you call it a business. When we call it a business, you call it a game." Most NFL players not named Gastineau have finally come to understand the slipperiness of this doublespeak - and to act on it.

No matter how successful the players are in their strike and how much the structure of the NFL changes as a result (it's hard to imagine the NFL Players Association turning the league into the People's Republic of Santa Monica), the Jets' astonishing bolt out of the gate this year is likely to silence kvetches and succor the faithful once a legitimate season resumes. OneVoicehand even quipped that a strike would at least bar another late-year Jet collapse, since the schedule will be truncated. Whatever happens, who'd've figure the Jets to be 2-0 and the Giants 0-2 in 1987? Before the opener at Buffalo (a sturdy though numerically slim victory, 31-28), it seemed that the Jets would probably benefit from a suspension of play more than any other team in the league (Joe Klecko, Lance Mehl, and Reggie McElroy are expected to return no earlier than November - hang on, scabs).

The Monday night subjugation of the Patriots should've dispelled any lingering questions about Obie (his late-season slide last year turned most Jets fans into amateur shrinks) or the two rookies, Gerald Nichols and Alex Gordon, now filling in for Klecko and Mehl, respectively. With a combo of sticky D by the secondary and funky stunts by the line (from the second quarter on), supersound field-positioning by the special teams, time-bomb running by Johnny Hector and Freeman McNeil, and an obviously refreshed O'Brien, particularly in the second half, the Jets are (were) on a roll again.

Ironically, it's the Jets rather than the Giants who should be hungry to get back to work. They're (once again) the surprise team of the year, this time in a stillborn season.

Originally published in The Village Voice, October 6, 1987

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Arctic Spring

A Consumer Guide to the USFL

by Perry Meisel

Except for Herschel Walker, they all have a lean and hungry look. Somebody seems to be watching from behind - you, me, the coach, the owner, the NFL. Above all, the NFL scouts. Those prospective gazes are the secret diversion in both the players' and their mentors' eyes even in the thick of a sometimes bruising, sometimes sluggish game in the fledgling United States Football League.

Sure, the overtness of the anxiety has receded now that the season is several weeks old. And no, as Lou Grant would say to Mary, "it doesn't stink," either as spectacle or achievement. Boring maybe, but not pathetic. With only a month's camp and no exhibition games, some offensive lines actually started to click by the second week of play (Philadelphia's in particular, releasing North Carolina rookie Kelvin Bryant for big yardage), though others stayed inarticulate (Washington's); team concentration sagged in some cases (New Jersey), but in others it deepened profoundly, especially in Arizona's stunning alarm-clock comeback to beat powerhouse Chicago under the new gun of LSU rookie star Alan Risher.

But the almost palpable anxiety remains and is likely to endure, qualifying the major-league credibility of the new league. Even the Birmingham press corps - as ready (again) as any for a pro franchise - was reportedly grumbling "Triple A" after the opener there against Michigan.

By turns jaunty and tedious, exhilarating and downright dull, the USFL will in all likelihood remain Triple A in stature, a highly formalized, almost luxurious hybrid of established minor institutions like the Canadian Football League, the Central American baseball leagues, or summer pro basketball clubs. But it wouldn't stand a chance against even the impromptu NFL Players Association squads that played two games during last fall's strike (John Riggins took the red-eye to play in both). The USFL will forever be a three-quarters to seven-eighths version of the NFL, everything - and most everybody - built just a tad off-scale, especially (and in this case, happily) the exciting young quarterbacks like Risher who wouldn't - and won't - get legitimate shots at the Real Bigs.

But while the USFL is offscale aesthetically, it will probably have no financial problems in staying afloat (or adrift) for at least a few more years, certainly longer than the two-year bubble of the old World Football League in the early '70s. After all, the marketing boys at ABC said go ahead and spend a rumored $20 million last year. Meanwhile, ESPN -- which shares the league video package with ABC and whose former president, Chet Simmons, is the new league's commissioner - is rumored to have its future hanging on the new venture at a supposed cost of $11 million. But after a couple of weeks the Nielsen numbers aren't just respectable - they're terrific, both for ABC and ESPN (of the 30 million households that have cable, almost 25 million get ESPN). Stadium attendance, too, has been more than reasonable - consistently over 30,000 plus an average per game, producing a controlled but visible jubilance among league personnel and contradicting guys like Dave Anderson (the John Simon of sportswriting) who prophesy a virtual biogenetic dysfunction as the result of pro football in the spring and summer.

And add still another advantage, this one the plain (and perhaps the only) result of real football work: two extremely different kinds of high-caliber players buttressing the league at its inception - some good NFL veterans plus some genuinely dazzling rookies. Hence the re-emergence of tested rifles like Chicago's Greg Landry, and even the emergence of Tampa Bay's John Reaves; the shocking jump to the new league by ex-Lions linebacker Stan White (NFL strike spokesman, by the way) now calling signals for the Chicago Blitz defense; and the signing of Eagle linebacker John Bunting by Philadelphia.

Hence, too, not just one but two sets of college rookies, one group normally NFL-bound (North Carolina's Kelvin Bryant, SMU's Craig James, Wisconsin's David Greenwood); the other brilliant but slightly offscale (the kind of college stars you've always wanted to see more of but couldn't, performers like Risher, Birmingham quarterback Reggie Collier, and Chicago wide receiver Trumaine Johnson).

This is the one important - and historically salutary - difference that the USFL adds (or subtracts?) to pro football. Sure, James or Bryant would likely start in the NFL (at least on a noncontender). But Risher would get cut, like Yale's John Rogan last year with the Jets, as would Washington's rookie quarterback, Minnesota's Mike Hohensee.

Of course, in the middle, both figuratively and literally, come all the no-names and never-names, guys cut for years and years but who could at least beat out the hundreds who came to the earliest camps. But let's face it: like the Académie Française, the NFL has the legal standards no matter its mistakes or its politics.

Both credible and incredible, then, what's this three-quarters to seven-eighths operation like? Only real football junkies need apply (I confess to watching CFL replays at 3 a.m. in August). Most of us expected a wide-open offensive game like the old AFL at season's start. Even the commentators (and more especially the coaches) huffed about offense being prime.

The consistent ring (clunk would be too strong a word) is not so much poor execution as it is an almost uniform principle of conservative rather than reckless play - as if to offset all the prophesies (including the coaches' own hype) about mega-offense. Conventional idiom would say defense was simply ahead of offense. But defense is hardly the dominant factor. Offensively, the games have simply centered on the ground, superadded to a control passing game used either simply to mix it up or, more often, to maintain possession by zipping the ball to receivers curling under the defensive backs and behind the linebackers, or by tossing outlet passes to flaring backs.

Under the relative duress of sketchy video coverage and only a few weeks of play, then, here is a set of team-by-team impressions, containing some maybe harebrained predictions (special thanks to ABC Sports for providing whatever additional video has been available).

Atlantic Division

New Jersey Generals: Even before the signing of Walker, everyone thought this was the team to beat, based largely on coach, president, and part-owner Chuck Fairbanks's reputation, a stolid if soggy customer. Boy, were we wrong. Just thinking about how much depended on rickety old Bobby Scott after nine years on the beach in New Orleans during its "glory years" should've clued us in. The Generals' receivers do include two former Giants, Mike Friede and Mark Slawson (Friede's acrobatic catches often made highlight films when the Giants rolled).

Without Herschel (is this a scam we have to get used to, or are we really waiting for something?), the Generals' backfield has looked strangely like the Giants' did a few years ago, especially with ex-Giant Larry Coffey stroking off a few elegant yards on one play only to fall on his face in the backfield on the next.

But it's not all Coffey's fault, any more now than it was with the Giants. Plagued by a demoralizingly inept offensive line, Herschel will have to start carrying the ball 30 to 40 times a game after (so Fairbanks's rap goes) he learns all the plays, especially his blocking assignments and a better way to see holes. And even despite a line in shambles, Herschel still runs like he did at Georgia, sweeping mostly to the right and simply feeling his way along his blockers' asses till he finds a crack. He's hardly had a blast-off run yet; questions are actually cropping up about his ability to accelerate.

But if Herschel does start carrying more often, it still means he'll have to take Earl Campbell-style punishment, extremely damaging both physically and mentally. Marcus Allen, for example, will last longer (like Tony Dorsett or Walter Payton) because his narrowness doesn't give tacklers a chunky target to spear - the weighty Campbell and Herschel are sitting ducks by comparison. What this will spell for Herschel's later NFL career, we won't know for a while. But to think that Herschel will stay in the USFL very long is naive.

Philadelphia Stars: A slashing tailback from North Carolina, Kelvin Bryant was easily on his way to breaking the record for NCAA season touchdowns (29) when his knee gave out early in his junior year (despite arthroscopic surgery, he still came back to gain over 1000 yards in the 1981 season). The injury clearly hampered him in his senior season, scotching once-genuine hopes for a Heisman bid. On the first Sunday, the sleek and stocky Bryant still had 77 yards. And with a full camp behind him, Bryant at least has, like his linemen, obviously learned the system well (Herschel, Herschel). But, like Walker, look for him to jump to the NFL at the right time.

Quarterback Chuck Fusina (one of innumerable Penn Staters in the USFL, including teammate Scott Fitzkee) is indeed an NFL backup but a much younger one (three years behind Doug Williams at Tampa Bay), but in charge as much as any quarterback in the league. Exuding a quieter and more convincing confidence than Reeves or even Landry, Fusina's second game was the best exhibition yet of the control passing that will highlight the league's conservatism more consistently than the rushing game. But with Bryant in there, too, Philadelphia obviously has the most balanced attack in the East.

Washington Federals: Even though SMU tailback Craig James would've doubtless ended up a probably latish NFL pick (he played alongside Eric Dickerson, the cool, wise one who sits and waits), he'd likely have ended up on special teams ("oops, my frontal lobe"), seeing only backup duty at fullback on a contender and a faceful of defense on a lousy team. After a dismal opener, though, James went down with a jammed back the second Monday night against L.A. And along with him went Washington's other best hope, rookie quarterback Mike Hohensee, another Risher in stature but without the mobility (receiver Reggie Smith also went down in the second game, decimating an already sluggish squad).

Boston Breakers: It's been an ex-Eagle Johnnie Walton's passing that has seen Boston first lose one of the few seesaw openers to an equally aerial Tampa Bay team, and then win one the next week against Denver on a fleaflicker bomb plus a 14-yard TD strike (Walton also has ex-Eagle Charlie Johnston to throw to). Add to the passing a defense that can block field goals and run 'em back for TDs, and you've actually got one of only a few defenses to say something positive about. Boston is balanced enough to merit real scrutiny once they get fuller video exposure. Besides, they're the only threat in the division to Philadelphia's otherwise clear supremacy.

Central Division

Michigan Panthers: Probably the only team in the league with a more interesting and potent defense than offense. Already feared for some beefy backers, Michigan also features world-class rookie strong safety David Greenwood, a Ted Hendricks/Bob Baumhower look-alike, blitzing his lanky frame all over the place, very often in the quarterback's face. Michigan is lucky to have his excitement - and his punting - as well as the psychological and strategic relief he provides cornerbacks like Clarence Chapman, who can gamble with Greenwood roaming the streets.

There is also a good quarterback rivalry to watch, though coach Jim Stanley has yet to exploit it, staying with rookie Bobby Hebert and letting Vandy rookie Whit Taylor sit on the bench. This is still not one of your big play/major action teams. Like Birmingham, Michigan will be relatively interesting to see develop over a few years, but expect less and less as this season wears on - unless, of course, Taylor gets a chance to come on like Risher.

Birmingham Stallions: Quarterback Reggie Collier is exactly the kind of great college offensive threat (Southern Mississippi '83) who'd at best end up as a defensive back in the NFL (like Darrol Ray or Nolan Cromwell), but who can continue his offensive career in a USFL that allows a fair amount of quarterback running at three-quarters punishment. A blastoff sweep-runner (or up the middle) whose only other pro shot at offense would've been the Great White North, Collier resembles Oklahoma's J.C. Watts, who led the Toronto Argonauts to the Grey Cup out of nowhere in 1981 (the Generals' Lott was also a wishbone quarterback at Oklahoma, but Fairbanks is almost surely too old-fashioned to try him out under center if things get even worse in the Meadowlands).

Defensive backs have been brought into lots of action so far throughout the league and the Stallions' Billy Cesare is a prime example of how to bottle up outside routes so as to allow pressure coverage of the underneath receivers (Cesare can even do a Jerry Holmes, getting into the backfield before a running play can start).

With little else going for 'em other than a reasonably tough if no-name defense, then, the Stallions' future now depends on how much punishment Collier's body can endure and whether or not he can learn to throw more and better.

Chicago Blitz: Chicago's opener was easily the most convincing game of the lot, the kind you expect from a George Allen-coached team. Balancing Stan White on defense is vet quarterback Greg Landry - never a question to the extent Scott or L.A.'s Mike Rae have been. And unlike former backup Scott, Landry did get to play a fair amount with Baltimore (Bert Jones got hurt often) and so has not just psychological but also physical experience - the toughening will doubtless help preserve him in the USFL. Landry is also fortunate in his receivers, especially rookie Trumaine Johnson (maybe an NFL shot if looked at long enough), an instant star on day one, a Reynaldo Nehemiah or Lam Jones who already has soft hands even if he's thinking about running before catching the ball. He's also one of the few really explosive runners in the league, with more acceleration than almost any of the backs.

Tampa Bay Bandits: Landry can do it for Chicago, and veteran John Reaves (Bengals, Eagles) is doing it up big for Tampa Bay. Reaves got in a seesaw spearchucking affair with Boston's Walton the first day; like Landry's, Reaves's was no short-passing game but the bombardier antics of an old pro. Adding to the offensive push is a running game headlined by Duke rookie Greg Boone, the first back to break 100 yards in a single USFL game.

But will good old quarterbacks like Reaves and Landry make it through an 18-game season? Scott is already more than a question, but even the proven ones are vulnerable. They have experience - bench experience - but the punishment factor, even for Landry, has yet to be assessed. Will there even be any pressure late in the season? Or will people just sigh - or not even notice - when the CFL kicks off July 4th and the USFL finishes its regular season?

Pacific Division

L.A. Express: The simple fact that Hughie Campbell has come should tell everybody else to get out of town. This cool and largely unknown customer is probably the best coach in pro football today. A receiver at Washington State, he coached at little Whitworth College in Washington before going north in 1975, eventually leading the Edmonton Eskimos to five champion Grey Cupa in a row before coming to Los Angeles this year. Certainly Fairbanks's fate and even Allen's mean coaching aren't everything but, like Allen, Hughie is also blessed with talent.

With the one-two punch of veteran quarterback Mike Rae (Oakland, Tampa Bay, Washington) and UCLA rookie sensation Tom Ramsey, the cunning Hughie started with Rae in the opener, switching to Ramsey only after the flutters were gone and getting a fairly exceptional pro debut out of him. By the second game, Hugh's line system was clicking well enough to get even the substitute backs hunky hardage, and well enough too to leave Rae in there long enough (three quarters) to make him the second week's star.

Already rich and balanced in quarterbacks, then, L.A. probably surprised itself when it saw incandescence in a classic backfield combination of swift tailback rookie Tony Boddie and a Sam-the-Bam-style fullback in LaRue Harrington. Even the defense is hitting in harmony, led by linebacker Eric Scroggina. Add receivers like Ellis and a zesty backfield bench and L.A. has got it all, growing not just sounder each week but fierier too.

Oakland Invaders: Oakland's young quarterback Fred Besana (Cal) played as well as Reaves when the Invaders tackled Arizona in their opener. One of the few instances in which offense outdid defense convincingly on opening day, Oakland also produced the league's only defensive shutout the first weekend.

Former Raider, tailback Arthur Whittington gives Oakland some backfield credibility on paper, though its young fullback Ted Torosian who's actually done what rushing damage there's been so far. With only a few old vets to stabilize line play (especially 13-year veteran Cedrick Hardman at defensive end), Oakland will live or die by how well the youngsters jell in a future more secure than Washington's, but less so than Tampa Bay's or even Boston's.

Arizona Wranglers: Even though center Dave Otey wears a horseshoe belt signifying his status as a "bucking" star on the rodeo circuit ridin' bulls, the Wranglers at first didn't look at all like the "roughneck" outfit they've learned to call themselves in interviews. Apparently the dog of the league the first week out (the only shutout victim), their second week's upset of powerhouse Chicago was the biggest surprise yet, and probably the most exciting game. Maybe the Wranglers didn't realize they were really a finesse, collegiate-style team rather than a bunch of gunfighters until Risher turned it all around in the second half of the Chicago affair. Expect anything.

Denver Gold: Coach Red Miller is, of course, a local folk-hero, leading the Broncos to the Super Bowl in 1977. Bob Niziolek and Lionel Phea are Colorado rookie quarterback Jeff Knapple's most dependable targets, even though Knapple himself throws too many floaters, easily picked off on fly patterns. Ken Johnson can at least spell him, though, throwing tighter spirals and showing more pocket poise. At his best, though, Knapple features the USFL's control passing game, tossing underneath dumplings to his receivers and backs - a better way (in this league anyway) of keeping the ball than the largely damp running game it has (un)developed so far. Former Bronco Larry Canada - good for breaking off a few long gainers between stumbles and occasional short-yardage success - is the best Denver has in the backfield, and is probably better at snagging short passes than running the ball with any particular consistency. Look for catnapping fans at Mile High Stadium as the weather gets better.

Predictions

It took the NFL till the last few years to achieve Rozellian parity. It will probably take this league more time than it's got. That makes prognostication easier even if the enjoyment is subpar. And though it's absurdly early, these picks ain't coin tosses either.

Atlantic: Philadelphia will take the division with relative ease and relatively little competition.

Central: Chicago and Tampa Bay will fight for a while, but Chicago will glide in the end.

Pacific: Best race of the three by far. L.A. will eventually take it all (Hughie doesn't lose), though the endurance of Besana's arm at Oakland and Risher's fortunes at Arizona may give the Express some skirmishes before it's all over.

Pick for the championship game: Los Angeles against Chicago, with Hughie a winner all the way.

Originally published in The Village Voice, April 12, 1983

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Marcus Agonistes

An Open Letter of Recommendation to the Heisman Committee

by Perry Meisel

Joe Theismann changed the pronunciation of his name to try to get it in 1970, but this year - despite sophomore Herschel Walker's durable Georgia magic - the Heisman Trophy for best college football player of 1981 will almost certainly go to the University of Southern California senior, Marcus Allen, the first running back in the history of collegiate play to rush for more than 2000 yards in a single season. There is little reason for doubt short of mass amnesia among those casting the ballots (1050 sportswriters, editors, and broadcasters), plus a few other factors presumably mild under the circumstances: a sentimental slant toward the youngster Herschel (last year's third-place entry behind Pitts Hugh Green and Saintly winner George Rogers from South Carolina); the typical mouthing that USC wins it too often (Mike Garnett in 1966, O.J. Simpson in 1968, Charles White in 1979); and, most genuinely problematic, dazzling quarterback performances by Brigham Young senior Jim McMahon and Pitt junior Dan Marino.

Despite Walker's improvement over last year's unparalleled freshman display (1666 yards so far for 1981, with one game to go, compared to 1616 in 1980), even these legendary stats pale next to Allen's almost inconceivable total of 2342 yards. Last year, Marcus (or M.A., as he's called, even without his B.A.) piled up 1563 yards and 14 touchdowns (second in the nation), but didn't even place in the top 10. Compared to Walker, he was still a virtual unknown this September. But with 2123 yards even before USC's final game against UCLA two Saturdays ago. Allen had already surpassed Tony Dorsett's record of 1948 yards at Pitt in 1976.

Whether the difference between Allen and Walker is the difference between a sophomore and a senior or between Shaw and Shakespeare is probably impossible to tell before they reach the pro ranks. What is predictable when the award is announced on December 5, however, is that (1) the Heisman will, as (almost) always, go to a running back or a quarterback (the only exceptions were receivers in 1936 and 1949); and that (2) sportspeople across the country will ritually apologize for the purported - and in fact real - bias among the voters against those players who do not handle the ball.

The list of past winners is enough to convince anyone that the bias is quite deliberate among the numerous achievements of Coach John W. Heisman - including a 220-0 Georgia Tech victory over Cumberland - was the legalization of the forward pass in 1906. Besides, there are equally deliberate compensations. Case in point: Hugh Green finished a historically significant second in last year's voting, then went on to receive the Vince Lombardi trophy for collegiate defensive player of the year. To be sure, the record shows other prophetic high-ranking Heisman finishes by defensive players (Dick Butkus in 1964, Ted Hendricks in 1967, Brad Van Pelt in 1972), but history also proves the Heisman to be no particular guarantee for prostardom at all - witness double winner Archie Griffin (1974-75) or the beleaguered Charles White today at Cleveland.

It's also clear why the bias toward backs exists on an ideological level. Linemen and even defensive players simply perform too technical and, to the nonexpert, too invisible a task for the amateur eye to delight in (add to this the inherent bias of the camera). After all, the price of pleasure in any art, or the enjoyment of any commodity, lies in the successful erasure of the way what you see gets made. Even if the line and the blocking backs open the holes, the game's most obvious thrill lies in spotting the men who handle the ball. Add to this obvious line of argument that Vietnamization of the tactile senses necessary simply to watch without getting a headache, and boom! the Heisman comes to represent a virtually institutionalized repression of football's interior means of production.

The following brief portraits of some key Heisman candidates (and some early prospects fading rather faster than anticipated) are, however, productions of a different sort, due largely to the growing availability of college football on cable television (especially the new 24-hour rivalry between the USA Network and ESPN).

Along with Lady Di's tiara, the space shuttle, and replays of the Sadat assassination, Marcus Allen has been this fall's greatest visible sensation (for opposing defenses he has also been - like inflation or herpes - among its greatest invisible ones, too). To compare any back with Herschel struck me as a mad occupation when Georgia opened its season against Tennessee and Walker ran 30 times for 161 yards, toppling people down like dominoes (more Vietnamization). But only two weeks later - watching a replay of USC against Indiana - my throat grew dry when I realized that Marcus had almost jumped the 100 yard mark before the close of the first quarter (he went on to average almost 213 yards a game for the season).

Though he plays for the Trojans and not Arkansas, Allen is a razorback in the true sense of the word, cutting through gaps sometimes as tiny as those cajoled into seams by the Giants' offensive line at the start of the year. Of course, Allen's uncanny slicing ability is heightened by an outstanding USC offensive line and by his superb blocking fullback, Todd Spencer. If you could make a single athlete out of Bruce Harper and Dave Winfield, you'd come up with Marcus Allen.

If not Marcus Agonistes, then Herschel Walker. My gut prediction - and, frankly, my advice - is that Herschel will go pro next year. As a freshman, he reminded me most of Earl Campbell - he'd run you down even if he didn't see you standing there. If Marcus squirts by you like O.J. Simpson, Herschel mauls you the way the Oil of Campbell does. Walker also has the added advantage of the picky stutter-step of a Franco Harris and (last year more than this) the vision to accelerate through a seam once the opportunity is there. Still, Herschel doesn't seem to have what Howard Cosell has called the "gears" of a sleeker runner like Dorsett. Indeed, the affinities to Campbell include not just an equivalent symmetry of frame (big up and down, not just leg-strong like the Pruitts, or headstrong like the Muncies). They also include a faint but creeping kind of danger; you can see it in the minuscule loss of instant blastoff power behind the line of scrimmage at decision time. And yet the same evidence may also suggest a more confident Walker, a patient and masterful student of downfield opportunities.

To sum up the classic differences between Allen and Walker: Herschel features quickness and Marcus speed, a difference nonexistent in only one runner I've ever seen - Jim Brown. Herschel runs at and over you, Marcus by you or (even scarier) through you, as though he were some kind of spirit or goblin. If Herschel is brawny brains, Marcus is brainy brawn (each stands at six foot two inches, though Walker has a weight advantage of 18 pounds). Not, mind you, that either is in any way lacking in what predominates in the other. Far from it - it's just a matter of accent or inflection. Marcus can cut too (and Herschel can fly in the open field), though it's perhaps Allen's better vision that makes up for his propensity to move straight ahead rather than to pick his spots.

Though not a factor in this year's Heisman due to an injury that caused him to miss four-plus games, University of North Carolina junior tailback Kelvin Bryant was easily en route to smashing the NCAA season TD record of 29 (held by Lydell Mitchell) with 15 in his first four games. He is arguably more awesome than either Allen or Walker because of what looks like an even greater efficiency in the use of his physical assets.

With the exception of Dan Marino and Jim McMahon, the season's early quarterback contenders for the Heisman, chief among them Ohio State's Art Schlicter and Stanford's John Elway, have, as one cable commentator recently put it, "simply fizzled out."

Ohio State's starting quarterback for 47 consecutive games and sixth in the 1980 Heisman voting as a junior, Schlicter is doubtless an irritating enigma to many pro scouts. Theatrically jockish in that nonchalant, Bert-Jonesy, pigeon-toed kind of way, Schlicter can look both too slick and too sloppy. His staggered, and staggering, run to save the season's concluding game against Michigan (it kept the Wolverines out of the Rose Bowl even if it didn't put OSU in) declared his strengths and quality more eloquently than his accurate but wobbly way of throwing the ball. Like Herschel, he actually had the chutzpah to stop in his tracks and think about it behind a wall of blockers, near enough to the goal line to turn what looked like indecision into choice and judgment.

It is, however, passing that is both his signature and his weakness (172 for 324, 2392 yards, 21 TDs, nine interceptions). If, mercifully, he is no Nolan Ryan, he may perhaps err too far the other way by putting too much touch on the ball. If the difference between speed and quickness is hard to see in a runner, the difference between touch and plain old lobbing is only a hair easier to discriminate in a quarterback; Schlicter seems "too touchy" as a passer, a bit of a (s)lob about it.

I have not seen Jim McMahon at all. McMahon himself complained about BYU's underexposure before the start of the season. Answer: if Utah interests Norman Mailer, it's good enough for the rest of us. Here are some of the fundamental stats for a senior year in which he's broken (at last count) no less than 47 NCAA records: 272 for 423, 3555 yards, 30 TDs, seven interceptions. McMahon may be the sleeper candidate.

Dan Marino I've seen aplenty, and I wonder if maybe he isn't as good as you can get, especially as a junior. This guy is cool - like an NFL veteran, he backpedals away from the center at least as often as he drops straight back (after all, he grew up in Pittsburgh watching Terry Bradshaw). Nor is his arm anything but perfectly adopted to the throwing circumstances, whether they require the placement bullet, the lob arc, the low shot, or the touchy sideline cruise-out. No wonder Pitt has held the number one ranking longer than any other team in this year of big-college parity. And with an offensive line of unfair size and power, the question of Marino's mobility is hardly even an issue (including last Saturday's surprise debacle, he finished with 200 for 339, 265 yards, 36 TDs, and, alas, 36 interceptions).

Stanford's Jim Plunkett won the trinket back in 1970, so there is even less reason to believe Stanford senior John Elway will get it this year. Elway's most characteristic - and most touted - faculty is his rifle throwing arm (no wonder George Steinbrenner has already bought him and assigned him to Nashville for next summer; my hunch is he'll end up a pitcher or shortstop). But a rifle arm is an ambiguous virtue in a young quarterback; it's a potent resource but it can also become a thoughtless habit (no matter that Elway's dad Jack is a respected head coach at San Jose State). Along with his admittedly impressive stats (214 for 366, 2674 yards, 21 TDs, 13 interceptions), the gunslinging habit is too central to his reputation. Firing redhots to his receivers, Elway is like the power hitter who refuses to go to the opposite field with an outside pitch. Of course, if he puts his mind to it, he can lob or float the ball out to a release back - as he did on an exemplary scramble late in the second quarter against Oregon - but the result, alas, was an interception. With 13 on the year, even the rifle is liable to backfire.

Let me conclude this anthological appreciation by rashly impaling myself on the following predictions: Allen will win, going away, unless sleeper McMahon has gotten into enough bonnets (and video screens) to turn the tide; Walker will place third behind Allen and McMahon unless McMahon wins; Marino, as a junior, will do better than Schlicter's junior year sixth place, coming in fourth or fifth behind the first four. After that, your guess is as good as mine.

Originally published in The Village Voice, December 2, 1981