Read Online Life Its Ownself by Dan Jenkins - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dan Jenkins
Tags: Fiction, General, Performing Arts, Texas, History & Criticism, Television, Football Stories, Television Broadcasting
Ads: Link
contract with the team you belonged to—because they drafted you out of college—you couldn't go to another club unless that club "compensated" the club you were with. That was the kicker. Let's say I had wanted to leave the Giants and play for the L.A. Rams because the Rams offered me a higher salary. Fine, Burt Danby would say. If the Rams pay the Giants ten million dollars, they can have you. But the Rams wouldn't do that, so I would be stuck with the Giants. Collusion was what the players called it.
The owners argued that if it weren't for compensation, the best athletes would choose to play only in the glamour cities, places like New York, L.A., San Francisco. Nobody would want to play in Cleveland, Buffalo, St. Louis, K.C., Detroit. The owners were dead right about that in my case.
Dreamer now said, "If we don't strike, we're never gonna get the free-market value for our services."
I couldn't hold back a laugh. "Dreamer, what would your old daddy do if he heard you use a phrase like 'free-market value'? I thought we played the damn game because we loved it."
In that singular remark, I had hit upon the main reason I was opposed to a strike. Granted, the owners were richer than doctors, but they needed some deductions. We were paid better than sheetrockers. The average salary around the league was $130,000 last year, and that was for only working half a year playing a game. And guys like Dreamer and I probably made more money than the chairman of the board at Chrysler.
"Do me a favor, Dream Street," I said as he left. "Before you call a strike, give me the name of your broker."
Everyone had been right about television. That same day, an NBC executive called on the phone and offered me a lucrative contract to sit in a broadcast booth and babble.
Then the CBS executive came to see me in person.
Richard Marks was his name, and I decided he had been the head of CBS Sports for at least thirty minutes. He took a seat by my bed and began cleaning the lenses of his tinted glasses with a pocket spray and a Kleenex.
Richard Marks was a fit-looking thirty-five. He wore a black suit, a white shirt, and a regimental tie with a collar pin. He had an alarmingly short haircut, and his nails had been done. His face was boyish but humorless. It was a good guess he ran in marathons and had conquered wok cuisine.
He explained how it would be a major coup for him, being new in the job, if he could "bring Billy Clyde Puckett aboard." I would be his first notable acquisition.
Like the three men who had preceded him as the president of CBS Sports, all of whom had come and gone within the year, stepping over corporate bodies to loftier jobs, Richard Marks had been unearthed from the Business Affairs division of the network. This meant he was a lawyer.
But now he knew everything about television production, live or tape, and he had a "vision" of what CBS Sports should be.
"We have to become more dimensional," Richard Marks was saying as I admired his nails and envisioned a pedicure. "We have to redefine our goals as broadcast journalists. The best announce teams have what I like to call an 'interplay,' n'est-ce pas ? Do you like Summerall and Madden?"
I uttered an approving sound.
"I take a little credit for putting their act together," he said. "The idea was to marry Pat's infectious believability with John's scatalogical humor and informative expertise."
"Informative expertise is the best kind," I said.
Richard Marks said I had "potential" as an announcer because I was "natural." I was also "current." He considered it to be an inducement that I would work with Larry Hoage on NFL games.
"Excellent traffic director," Richard Marks said of Larry Hoage.
Larry Hoage was possibly the worst play-by-play announcer in the annals of television. He was a man who had successfully defended his Fluff Dry Award against all comers for a decade. More to the point, Larry Hoage had a way of making an off-tackle run for no-gain sound like a
The owners argued that if it weren't for compensation, the best athletes would choose to play only in the glamour cities, places like New York, L.A., San Francisco. Nobody would want to play in Cleveland, Buffalo, St. Louis, K.C., Detroit. The owners were dead right about that in my case.
Dreamer now said, "If we don't strike, we're never gonna get the free-market value for our services."
I couldn't hold back a laugh. "Dreamer, what would your old daddy do if he heard you use a phrase like 'free-market value'? I thought we played the damn game because we loved it."
In that singular remark, I had hit upon the main reason I was opposed to a strike. Granted, the owners were richer than doctors, but they needed some deductions. We were paid better than sheetrockers. The average salary around the league was $130,000 last year, and that was for only working half a year playing a game. And guys like Dreamer and I probably made more money than the chairman of the board at Chrysler.
"Do me a favor, Dream Street," I said as he left. "Before you call a strike, give me the name of your broker."
Everyone had been right about television. That same day, an NBC executive called on the phone and offered me a lucrative contract to sit in a broadcast booth and babble.
Then the CBS executive came to see me in person.
Richard Marks was his name, and I decided he had been the head of CBS Sports for at least thirty minutes. He took a seat by my bed and began cleaning the lenses of his tinted glasses with a pocket spray and a Kleenex.
Richard Marks was a fit-looking thirty-five. He wore a black suit, a white shirt, and a regimental tie with a collar pin. He had an alarmingly short haircut, and his nails had been done. His face was boyish but humorless. It was a good guess he ran in marathons and had conquered wok cuisine.
He explained how it would be a major coup for him, being new in the job, if he could "bring Billy Clyde Puckett aboard." I would be his first notable acquisition.
Like the three men who had preceded him as the president of CBS Sports, all of whom had come and gone within the year, stepping over corporate bodies to loftier jobs, Richard Marks had been unearthed from the Business Affairs division of the network. This meant he was a lawyer.
But now he knew everything about television production, live or tape, and he had a "vision" of what CBS Sports should be.
"We have to become more dimensional," Richard Marks was saying as I admired his nails and envisioned a pedicure. "We have to redefine our goals as broadcast journalists. The best announce teams have what I like to call an 'interplay,' n'est-ce pas ? Do you like Summerall and Madden?"
I uttered an approving sound.
"I take a little credit for putting their act together," he said. "The idea was to marry Pat's infectious believability with John's scatalogical humor and informative expertise."
"Informative expertise is the best kind," I said.
Richard Marks said I had "potential" as an announcer because I was "natural." I was also "current." He considered it to be an inducement that I would work with Larry Hoage on NFL games.
"Excellent traffic director," Richard Marks said of Larry Hoage.
Larry Hoage was possibly the worst play-by-play announcer in the annals of television. He was a man who had successfully defended his Fluff Dry Award against all comers for a decade. More to the point, Larry Hoage had a way of making an off-tackle run for no-gain sound like a
Similar Books
