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Dirty Dogs: An Inside Look
For a nasty breed of NFL players, anything goes
Posted: Wednesday October 21, 1998 01:55 PM
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Peter Read Miller |
Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Silver takes a
hard look at the NFL's dark side in this week's issue,
which reaches subscribers and newsstands beginning today.
In an exclusive interview,
CNN/SI talked with Silver about the
piece.
CNN/SI: How willing were people to discuss this
issue?
Michael
Silver: It was funny—contrary to what
I thought going in, people were pretty good about talking for
the story. If a player had something dirty done to him,
he's still mad enough about it, feels wronged enough that
he doesn't mind going out on a limb and
voicing his displeasure. Coaches, obviously, were less willing to
be named, but then again, other than
Jimmy
Johnson and a couple others, what coaches are willing to say
something potentially inflammatory, ever? So that didn't
surprise me. But players were surprisingly unafraid to be
quoted. It's also one of those stories where if you talked
to 60 people, you
could've talked to 120. There was no way I was ever going to get
enough input on this story to do it
justice.
CNN/SI:
Is it generally accepted that these things are part of the
game?
Silver:
Yeah, except there seem to be two different kinds of dirty
play. The first kind is the punching below the belt,
spitting, tit-for-tat-type of interaction between two
players that generally tends to work itself out. If a guy
punches you in the stomach,
you might wait until you have a clean shot on him and knock
him in the helmet. But what really seemed to bother people
is when players go for the knees, doing things that could
be construed as career-threatening or season-ending
injuries. And a lot of
times those things aren't even illegal. We talked about
Erik
Williams cut-blocking
John
Jurkovic in the '95 playoffs and Jurkovic blowing out his knee on
the play—yet it was a legal cut-block. So I think it's
accepted that this stuff will go on, but there's definitely
a code that most players adhere to. But if you violate that
code by doing
something so totally disgusting as spitting in a guy's face or
doing something that appears to be gratuitous and
threatening the well-being of another player, then
I think that's considered
taboo.
CNN/SI:
Are some of the more flagrant violators not afraid of
retaliation? What's going through their
heads?
Silver:
I think some of them rationalize what they do in the
context of, "I'm just trying to win the game."
Take
Steve
Wisniewski , for example.
I don't think he's super-flagrant now but he has really been
in the past. His mentality is, "Hey, a defensive player can hit me and
knock me
off-balance and use his hands, and he's considered a good,
hard-working player if he does it, but as an offensive guy
I'm always sort of at a disadvantage based on the
rules." So he's thinking, "I'm just trying to do
on offense what a defensive guy is allowed
to do on defense, and I'm going do everything
I can." If he takes a guy down and the play is still
going, even if the guy doesn't really have a hope of
getting up and making a tackle, Wisniewski doesn't see why
he shouldn't stay on the guy, pin him down
till the
whistle.
Conversely, you get a guy like Seattle's
Chad
Brown on defense who says, "It's easier for an offensive
guy to take a cheap shot at me because all they have to do
is block. I can't take the time to try to retaliate at them
because I've got to worry about tackling somebody with the
ball." So each side has
the perspective that the other side has it a little better.
Then you also get people like
Kevin
Gogan of the 49ers who takes a great delight in standing up to
the other team's bully. And so he's not worried about other
guys cheap-shotting him, because in his mind what he's
doing is he's telling the
Corey Fullers
and the
Bill
Romanowskis of the world, "Hey, pick on someone your own size. If
you want to fight, I'll take you
on."
CNN/SI:
You mentioned that at one time Wisniewski was on his way to
being considered the dirtiest player in the league. Is
there a consensus as to who that is
now?
Silver:
The way
I look at it is, Kevin Gogan, by kicking
Neil
Smith in the balls in the Pro Bowl and getting kicked out of the
game, has sort of made a very strong campaign statement.
And if you were campaigning for a job, that would be an
excellent platform on which to launch your candidacy. There
didn't seem to be a
clear-cut, "Oh God, this guy's absolutely the
worst." But in my mind Gogan has sort of elevated
himself. He also is willing to have fun with it and play
along, which made him very attractive to us for this story.
When
I first approached Gogan about it,
I said, "Hey, listen, I'm making a list of the dirtiest
players in the league," and he said, "I either
want to be in the top three or not on it at all." So
right there I knew he was going to be a good sport.
CNN/SI:
You write in the story how things have improved since
Gene
Washington took over as the league's police chief. But when you
see Hardy
Nickerson spitting at
William
Floyd last weekend—is there anything more that can be
done?
Silver:
You're always going to have some extracurricular activity
when you get 22 large-bodied, emotional men fighting for
something important and beating on each other. But I think
the league has significantly reduced the blatant-type of
dirty play that may
have existed before. At least now, if you're a player and you
lose your cool and you do something flagrant, you know
you're going to get fined. Is it worth $7,500 to spit in a
guy's face? Maybe at the time it is. But are you going to
think about it the
next time you clear your throat and get ready to launch another
lugie? Probably. And so ultimately you either have to lose
so much money that it drives you nuts or really pick your
spots.
CNN/SI:
Would suspensions rather than fines make more of a
difference?
Silver:
Only because coaches would get angrier. Coaches don't
really care if their players get fined; coaches care if
there's a penalty called or certainly if they lose a
player's services. If coaches start screaming at their
players in meetings, "Don't take a
chance at getting suspended," then it might have an
effect. Paradoxically, coaches also, either through subtle
means or overt means, tell players to be tough, be
aggressive, don't take that, this guy's going to try to
take you out of your game, this
guy's going to try to test you, he's testing your manhood. And
they're essentially telling their players to stand up and
do whatever it takes to be tough.
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