LITIGATING LOSERS

You don’t have to go too far back to recall games where one team was somehow “robbed” of a championship while the other basked in glory. To this day, I’m sure guys like Bill Buckner and Scott Norwood still deal with the inner turmoil that made them household names. Thankfully, what’s still nice about the increasingly tarnished image of professional sports is that no matter what the outcome is, the books are shut -- end of story. That is until now, where former St. Louis Rams’ player Willie Gary, along with two Super Bowl XXXVI ticket holders and a Rams seat license holder, have filed a $100M law suit against the New England Patriots. Gary, who for the past six years has earned a living playing for the Arena Football League’s Georgia Force, alleges that the outcome of Super Bowl XXXVI, where the heavily favored Rams were beaten 20-17 by New England, would have been different had the Patriots not illegally videotaped a Rams practice earlier that week in February 2002.

In a country that never fails to outdo itself when it comes to litigious absurdity, this suit could be the sports equivalent to Liebeck v. McDonald’s; which was that infamous case involving the criminal negligence of selling hot coffee to those who spill it in their laps. The lawsuit seeks $35 million in damages covering, among other things, the loss of Super Bowl rings, bonuses and endorsements for the 45 Rams players and cost of $400 tickets for 72,922 fans.*

I’m not a lawyer, but if Bob Kraft called me to represent his defense, I’d raise these key points after we agreed on my fee of $850 an hour.

• The Rams only led 3-0 early in the second quarter. On the Rams’ first offensive drive of the second quarter, they got the ball down to the Patriots 34 yard line. The Rams failed to convert on third down due to an incompletion and had to settle for a field goal. They missed. Show the jury how an alleged videotaping of the Rams’ practice impacts the kicker missing a field goal.

• Again, in the second quarter with 8:49 remaining in the half, New England defensive back, Ty Law, intercepts a pass intended for Isaac Bruce and runs the ball back 47 yards for a touchdown. Show the jury how an alleged videotaping of the Rams practice impacts the poor judgment by Kurt Warner on this play. At this point New England led 7-3.

• With less than two minutes in the first half, Rams receiver, Ricky Proehl, has the ball stripped at the Patriots 40 yard line. New England recovers, of which they subsequently score another touchdown with 31 seconds remaining in the half. Show the jury how an alleged videotaping of the Rams practice impacts the fumbling by Ricky Proehl. At this point New England led 14-3.

• In the third quarter, New England defensive back, Otis Smith, intercepted a pass after its intended receiver, Tory Holt, slips and falls. New England again capitalizes from this turnover with a field goal. Show the jury how an alleged videotaping of the Rams practice impacts the stumbling by Tory Holt. At this point New England led 17-3.

• Later in the third quarter, Kurt Warner fumbled on a fourth- and- goal quarterback sneak. The ball was recovered by Patriots defensive back, Tebucky Jones, and returned for 97 yards. New England would have had a commanding lead of 24-3 had the play not been nullified by a defensive hold by Willie McGinest. Even if that play counted, show the jury how an alleged videotaping of the Rams practice impacts Kurt Warner fumbling the ball. As a result of the penalty, the Rams got a first down and scored two plays later. New England led 17-10.

The Rams scored once more tying the game at 17 apiece. With a minute and a half remaining in the game, the Patriots marched the ball to the Rams 30 yard line of which Adam Vinatieri made a 48 yard field goal to win in the game’s final second of play.

Regardless of whether New England videotaped the Rams’ practice or not, the total points forfeited or not accumulated due to Rams’ miscues is 20: Three for a missed field goal in the second quarter, and 17 scored by New England off turnovers. Even if New England had acquired the Rams’ entire playbook, how does such a purported advantage translate to spontaneous game time mistakes made by St. Louis? The answer is it doesn’t.

As for a possible motivating factor for Willie Gary, the suit’s primary plaintiff…

• The average salary for an NFL player is $1.1 million per year. The average salary for an Arena Football League (AFL) player is $40,000 per year. Based on these averages, Gary, in six years in the AFL, would have made only 21.8 percent of what an NFL player makes in one year. While this is only speculation, perhaps Willie Gary is living beyond his means after having a taste of the high life in the NFL. For $850 an hour, I would surely dig a little deeper into Gary’s financial history.

While this suit gets underway, perhaps the Oakland Raiders should team up with the Rams to file another law suit just in case this one doesn’t work out. After all, the Patriots would have never reached the Super Bowl that year had it not been for the extremely controversial game involving the “tuck rule” on January 19, 2002. In the six-plus years since that game was played, the arcane interpretation of that ruling is still being debated. So why not sue? Assuming that Walt Coleman, the referee who called that game, isn’t quite as well-heeled as Mr. Kraft, I’d solicit my legal expertise for a mere $625 an hour.

And since piling on the New England Patriots is as in vogue as watching Britney Spears’ life implode in real time, why don’t the Miami Dolphins sue the Pats for losses tied to the infamous “Snowplow Game” as well? Granted that game was more than 25 years ago – December 12, 1982 to be exact – so there may be a statute of limitations here. But since such a suit is unprecedented, maybe it’s worth it to see if the Fish can extort a million or two from their hated rival. With the likelihood of New England’s legal team being busy for a while, perhaps Miami should also sue John Deere in the meantime. After all, they’re an accomplice for manufacturing the tractor that removed the snow before New England kicked the game winning field goal. You’d figure a company with an apple pie image like John Deere would want to avoid any negative publicity. Surely they’d settle with the Dolphins to make this matter quietly go away.

As for this law suit regarding Super Bowl XXXVI, hopefully the courts in New Orleans, which is where this suit is filed, will see the same ridiculousness as the rest of us. The last thing our society needs is yet another frivolous lawsuit. The last thing New Orleans needs is more high profile nonsense to distract from their rebuilding efforts. And the last thing the average fan needs is more legal rigmarole to dilute whatever purity still remains in the world of sports. For God’s sake, just lick your wounds and move on. This is football…isn’t it?



*Specific information about the suit taken from the Boston Herald.

CROWN OF ZORNS

With all that’s going on in Washington this week with the steroids hearings, it’s no wonder the Redskins got second billing when they announced Jim Zorn as their new head coach. This isn’t really what the Redskins are about of course, and if Daniel Snyder had his way, even a presidential assassination would take to the back pages behind what’s going on at Redskin Park. But Zorn’s quiet press conference, which already is best remembered for his flubbing the team’s colors, is proving more and more that Dan Snyder has become the incarnate of Al Davis with a larger bank account. It’s also an indication of how much owners are willing to gamble…or settle…on coaches with marginal experience at best.

Personally, I like Jim Zorn. He represents a sentimental time when I was first starting to follow football. Zorn, of course, was the starting quarterback for the expansion Seattle Seahawks in 1976. For me there was always a fascination about this team, being that they were tucked up on nation’s northwest corner…in a galaxy far, far, away. Considering that I was living outside of Rochester NY at that time, I assumed that I’d just as likely step foot in Damascus before ever doing so in Seattle. The Seahawks were also the lower key of the two expansion teams that came into the NFL that year. The other team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, grabbed much of the attention with their Creamsicle jerseys and winking pirate for an insignia. Add in the self-deprecating wit of Bucs’ coach John McKay and their historic futility, the Seahawks remained the mysterious new team from a provincial land known for its overcast skies and serial killers.

As a quarterback, Zorn was fun to watch. An improvising scrambler who by also wearing the number 10 on his jersey, often had himself described as a left-handed Fran Tarkenton. Zorn didn’t really have much choice in his style of play, as much of what he had to work with were jettisoned scraps cast off by other teams in order to create the expansion draft. The lone exception, of course, was Zorn’s go-to guy, the future Hall of Famer and U.S. Congressman, Steve Largent. Though despite Zorn’s popularity and support from the Seattle fan base, the Seahawks remained perennial also-rans while their laughable expansion counterparts became playoff contenders. Changes were looming, where in 1983 the Seahawks brought in the NFL’s top “fix up” coach at the time, Chuck Knox, after sacking Jack Patera the year before. Zorn remained the team’s starting quarterback when Knox first came on board, but change in that position was looming as well, where later that season back-up QB Dave Krieg would replace Zorn and remain as Seattle’s starter for years to come. In a period of NFL history that was rife with quarterback controversies, questions of whether Jim Zorn should have been replaced by Dave Krieg provided lots of fodder for sports pundits to discuss. However, compared to other notable quarterback controversies at the same time, the attention on Zorn and Krieg took somewhat of a back seat to the likes of Danny White and Gary Hogeboom in Dallas, Lynn Dickey and David Whitehurst in Green Bay, or perhaps the bloodiest of all quarterback controversies, Gary Danielson and Eric Hipple in Detroit.

As for the present, Zorn hasn’t inherited any quarterback controversies with the Redskins. Jason Campbell is his man despite the impressive resurrection of Todd Collins’ career to finish the season. And with the buzz surrounding the Skins’ interest in Chad Johnson, Zorn could have some new toys for his kindred quarterback to play with. If there’s any cloud surrounding Zorn’s hiring, it’s the perception that he’s probably Dan Snyder’s seventh choice as head coach. But how much is that really a blemish on Zorn as it is on Snyder? After all, Snyder has pulled every gimmick and coup his billionaire empire can buy; only to receive lackluster results before getting jilted by his latest coaching panacea. He tried to do the same thing again, only that those who were available this time, such as Jim Fassel and Steve Mariucci, didn’t have the same cache as Steve Spurrier and Joe Gibbs. Even so, would they want the job anyway? Mariucci’s last NFL employer was the Ford family, for Fassel it was the Mara’s and Tisch’s. Why would they now want to work for meddling punk with a Napoleon complex? As for the Zorn Era in Washington, it’s hard to believe that he’s nothing more than a stand-in collecting a seven figure salary while Snyder tries to woo Mike Ditka, Dick Vermeil or unleash the cloned DNA of George Allen behind closed doors. Should Zorn’s presumably short leash get cut, he’ll simply be an even wealthier, more experienced quarterback coach than he was before. For Snyder, he’ll yet again have to confront his latest coaching bust. I can see the headlines already: Snyder Explains the Zorn in His Side.

NEW YORK SOFTENS TO A TOUGHER BIG BLUE

Well it’s Friday night now, already less than 48 hours before Super Bowl XLII. There’s a wide eyed excitement in the air about the Giants that I haven’t seen in a very long time. Dare I even undermine my own New Yorkness for a second, and say that I find it quite refreshing to see this town lose its cynicism and view their “underdog” Giants through the same lens as the “Little Engine that Could.” Even the media seems to be taking a bit of small town stance, chatting up Big Blue as if they were some Midwestern high school team en route to the state championship game. Funny how things change. New York fans aren’t known for being fickle; at least not in the way they perceive their team. It’s been nearly 30 years since the infamous fumble by Joe Piscarcik, and that’s still talked about as if it were yesterday. Going into Christmas, you’d be hard pressed to find many Giant fans truly excited about making the playoffs. Even though they got into the post season on their own merit this year, it again felt that they backed their way into the playoffs thanks to the widespread mediocrity in the NFC. After all, they blew their chance to wrap up with an extremely pedestrian home field showing field against the Washington Redskins on December 16th. And while the Giants did have a second chance to “control their destiny” a week later in Buffalo -- a game which they won -- there was something anticlimactic about that victory, as it again reinforced the Giants as that maddeningly bipolar team that only comes up big against the league’s sub-par clubs.

So when the Giants did get into the playoffs this year, there was an uneasy concern, much in the way a despised manager barely meets his corporate objectives; then manages to survive for another year…again. Up to, say, six weeks ago, this was the vast majority’s viewpoint of Tom Coughlin and the Giants. Yes he’s made the playoffs before with the Giants, only to the have their noses rubbed in caca in the most humiliating fashion. Going into Tampa Bay several weeks ago, it looked early on that the Giants might again follow the same script as other recent playoff appearances: get beaten, go home, and then have the front office maintain the status quo a few days later. After all, they were a playoff team...right?

And so with several years of that same repetitive history, not to mention the still lingering bitterness from the Jim Fassel era, how could Gotham’s take on the Giants not be skewed? But alas, the Giants woke up after that anemic first quarter in Tampa, and won. They went to Dallas…and won. They went to frigid Green Bay…and won.

And so after tagging victories in three different cities with three different climates, the mood for Big Blue going into the Super Bowl is quite loose. The same goes for the mood of New York City. Despite the excitement that goes with any New York sports team going into a championship game, there’s a certain “what the hell” feel to this Super Bowl that’s so nice and so uncharacteristic it’s almost a little strange. In recent years when teams like the Yankees got into the post season, one could almost sense an extra tenseness in the air; as it seems to be less about the fun of another World Series these days, as it is the need to stem any potential embarrassment of the world’s richest team failing to live up to snuff. If anyone in New York looked into a crystal ball four months ago and saw it read Big Blue was going to the Super Bowl, they’d likely track down the street vendor who sold that crystal ball and jack him against a wall in Times Square. Now everyone’s giddy about the possibility of what the Giants can do, as if we’re 8 million extras in the five borough version of “Hoosiers”. Cynicism be gone…

That said, should the Giants win the Super Bowl, the celebration might not be quite so innocent. But what’s not to love? It’s been nearly a generation since the Giants brought home the Lombardi trophy. It’s OK to let it rip…
Just not so cynically.