Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, September 25, 1993                   TAG: 9309250155
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A CHILLING LOOK BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE NFL

Each night after finishing work as a defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons, he would sit in front of a laptop computer, searching for the right keys.

Sometimes his fingers were swollen and bloodied from the day's work, but he pounded away. Often his entire body ached, but he stayed in his chair until he was out of words.

Soon, he was typing on team airplanes and in team hotels before games. He was even writing in darkened film rooms, on scraps of paper torn impulsively from his play book.

"I figured if I could just write two pages a week, in four years, I would have 400 pages," he said.

The actual page count is 298. But little else falls short in Green's equally fascinating and disturbing novel, "Ruffians," recently printed by Turner Publishing Inc.

The book, which should receive its first national exposure when Green appears with the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night against the Pittsburgh Steelers, is officially a work of fiction.

But few football books have ever been so real.

Based on his experiences as a seven-year veteran with the Falcons, Green takes the reader into the locker room as no active NFL player has done before.

Curious about steroids? The book allows you to see inside a bathroom stall before a game as a player is injecting the drug into his hip.

Wonder about the lifestyles of young and rich NFL players? The book eavesdrops on young stars as they exploit anyone, particularly women and boosters, who want to touch their popularity.

The book would be another "North Dallas Forty," except it's deadly serious.

"A lot of what goes on in the book are my own experiences, things I've seen, and things I've heard," said Green, currently struggling with a knee injury.

"The characters are composites of people I've dealt with. But it's still a novel. ... I never could have gotten away with writing it as nonfiction."

If this were written by someone who had not played, it would be simply another bit of hard-to-believe sports fiction.

But knowing that the deep thoughts and inner conflicts are coming from a player make this a chilling work.