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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 16, 1994                   TAG: 9402150118
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LINE BACKERS DON'T NEED WEAPONS

When I was a boy in Radford, we thought almost constantly of the Olympics. Wondered a lot about all those Greek statues with no clothes on, but we really cared.

That is why I haven't said much to the greatest station wagon driver of them all about the skater - gosh, you hear so little about her that I've forgotten her name - who got trashed with a pipe or something.

I want the driver to enjoy the Olympics. I think I already ruined Christmas and her birthday.

It hasn't been easy holding my tongue about this incident. I mean, from September to the Super Bowl, the driver clucks about the animals out there on the field trying to kill the quarterback and severely damage the wide receivers:

"Well, I declare to goodness, there's nothing very sporting about trying to murder someone on the field of play, now is there? Honestly and to think those beasts get paid all that money."

I've told her time and time again.

Nobody wishes to actually kill, or even seriously maim the quarterback or the wide receivers. The opposing animals merely desire to hit them sufficiently hard to scramble their thinking.

Having them under the impression, for example, that they are not on the gridiron at all, but in the skating competition at the Olympics.

Or playing jai alai somewhere in South America.

Or causing them to practice their axels on the sidelines.

I've longed to tell the driver that never in the history of professional football has any one run onto the field and hit the quarterback in the knees with a pipe or something.

I would like to say:

"By George. I'll say one thing. Those ice skaters look pretty good skating backwards and everything, but when they want to take you down, they do it like we might have done in back on Arch Street in the 1930s. We knew how to handle pipe in those days, Arnie."

There are, I admit, some of us who would have been momentarily pleased to see somebody run onto the field and hit Roger Staubach with a pipe, but nobody ever did.

Incidentally, Roger is doing this commercial for an exercise machine.

I hate to say it, but he looks quite emaciated. The same cannot be said for this femaleperson who is also featured.

Boy. I'd just die if anything happened to Roger.