America at Large:Thirty-four years ago, I collaborated on a book with Tom Beer, a journeyman tight end with the Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, and, briefly, Miami Dolphins. Sunday's Fools: Stomped, Tromped, Kicked and Chewed in the NFL described life at the bottom of the barrel - including Beer's inglorious release by the Patriots, his long-time employers, writes George Kimball.
As the 1973 pre-season drew nigh, Chuck Fairbanks, the new head coach, seemed to take a solicitous view of Beer's attempt to return from knee surgery, encouraging him at every turn. Before he was allowed to practise with the team, the player underwent a physical examination and was cleared by team doctors.
Forty-eight hours later he was summoned to a meeting with Fairbanks, at which he was given the option of announcing his "retirement" or being placed on irrevocable waivers.
"I was furious, sure, but I was also crushed," Beer recalled in Sunday's Fools. "I felt, for the first time in my life, unwanted. Now I knew why Fairbanks was so interested in my damn knee. The only thing he'd said to me before the start of Friday's practice had been to make sure my knee was okay. If my knee was okay, there would be no basis for an injury-grievance claim."
Things have changed little in three-and-a-half decades. Unlike those in other American professional sports, National Football League contracts are not "guaranteed". Stories about those five-year, 37-million extensions rarely note that the pact runs from year to year and is renewable at the team's discretion. The player who actually sticks around long enough to collect on the final years of one of those seemingly lucrative long-term pacts is a comparative rarity.
What, then, are we to make of Jerome Bettis's revelation (in a new book that won't hit the shelves for a couple of weeks yet) that he salvaged his NFL career by faking a training-camp injury? According to Bettis, the ruse prevented the Pittsburgh Steelers from releasing him prior to the 2000 season. (The big man known as "The Bus" went on to play for six more seasons before his career concluded with a fairy-tale ending: a pivotal role in the Steelers' win in Super Bowl XL, played in his hometown of Detroit.) Coming as it did the same week the despicable Michael Vick agreed to plead guilty to federal dog-fighting charges, Bettis's confession is sure to provoke outrage in some quarters, if only because his wholesome image had rendered him the Anti-Vick in the minds of many football fans.
It will make for an interesting moral debate. On one hand, any way you slice it, the episode as described represents fraud. On the other hand, some will say, The Bus only turned the tables by getting the Steelers before they could get him.
I covered pretty much all of Bettis's career, from his collegiate days at Notre Dame through his first three seasons with the Rams and then his decade in a Pittsburgh uniform. Articulate and co-operative, he was as popular with the media as with team-mates. Ten years ago he initiated a foundation called "The Bus Stops Here" to aid underprivileged children. Last year a Detroit-area university, citing his many charitable endeavours, conferred upon him an honorary doctorate of humanities. Since his retirement Bettis has worked as a respected commentator for NBC and the NFL Network.
Bettis's early career had seemingly dead-ended in St Louis. After two productive seasons with the team in Los Angeles, he foundered in 1995, gaining just 637 yards rushing and scoring but three touchdowns. The Rams made him available to the Steelers in an off-season trade, and he bounced back with back-to-back Pro Bowl years, gaining over 3,000 yards and scoring 20 touchdowns over the next two seasons. (During this era he also scored a touchdown in Dublin, when he dived in from three yards out in the Steelers' 30-17 win over the Chicago Bears at Croke Park.)
By 2000 he had put on weight and slowed a step, in part because he was rehabilitating from off-season surgery on his left knee. In Bettis's version he had learned the team had encouraged running back Richard Huntley to spurn a €1.5-million offer from the Dolphins to remain in Pittsburgh by promising him The Bus's job.
Bettis said he had kept quiet about the lingering effects of his still-nagging injury in the belief the team might use it as a pretext to release him. He waited for an opportunity, and when he went down in a short-yardage practice drill, screamed and grabbed his knee.
"Man, did I do a nice job of acting," writes Bettis in the pages of The Bus: My Life inside and out of a Helmet. "The thing is, I wasn't faking that I had an injury. I was just faking that the injury happened on that short-yardage play. I had to fool the coaches and the team's medical department into thinking the injury had occurred on that play. Otherwise, the Steelers would have had their reason to cut me and my salary." Because he had been "injured" in training camp, the Steelers were unable to release him. He went on to author two more Pro Bowl seasons in a career that culminated in January of last year with a World Championship.
"I effectively negated any funny business they were trying to pull on me," Bettis writes in his defence. "I took the pressure off a head coach, who was probably trying to get rid of me.
"In my mind," Bettis added, "what I did was justifiable because the original injury occurred while I was playing for the Steelers."
It is unclear that Armchair America will view the episode in the same light. Jerome Bettis should probably be bracing himself for the inevitable torrent of condemnation that will be directed his way for having boasted of his dishonesty, but none of it will be coming from this direction. More power to him, I say. For once, a player beat the NFL at its own game.
