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

DATE: MONDAY, January 31, 1994                   TAG: 9402010026
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CAN'T WAIT TILL NEXT SEASON

And, oh, the things we have to look forward to starting in September.

The Washington Redskins will have a new coach, who in all probability will wish he had taken up medicine instead of football before the season is very old.

I don't know about the Redskins. I've been told they don't have a cheerleader who could start for Dallas.

The only people you can depend on in Washington these days are the members of the Redskins' band. And I understand that if things don't get better, most of them are going to ask to be traded.

John Madden will be saying Boom! and Bam! and Biff! on another network.

Despite this good news, many of us are now afraid the new network also will hire Terry Bradshaw.

Meanwhile, I want to look back at this past post-season. One thing that impressed me was the inspiring language I heard during the playoffs.

All the men in the booth became terribly serious, and there was this monologue about Joe Montana - who is still as handsome as ever but obviously a bit more fragile - that might have been written by Walt Whitman.

Of course, old Joe struck his head very hard on the carpet up in Buffalo and sat on the bench with his eyes glazed; the look of a man who has been condemned to hours of watching the Geraldo Rivera show.

But it was a nice touch, despite Joe's misfortune.

Just about the same thing happened to young Troy Aikman out in Dallas. If they had a tone poem about Troy before the game, I missed it. On purpose, I suspect.

(Incidentally, the Aikman injury caused a certain person to insist that I kind of enjoyed it. Calling on an extremely brief career as an editorial writer, I vehemently denied this.)

I'm sure that this post-season eloquence will inspire men in the booths to ever greater efforts next year. (I won't, however, expect much from the analyst who commented on the early injury to Redskins' ex-quarterback Mark Ripien as follows: "The city of Washington are holding their breath.")

If this trend continues, I'm sure the networks will encourage it and will advertise professional football as the sport of good old boys as well as English majors. And we'll eventually have regular-season football poetry.

If you don't mind, however, I think I'll stay with Boom! and Bam! and Biff!.