Excellence by the Yard

By Tom Callahan

Franco Harris and Walter Payton: doing it up Brown

The jarring sight of an old athlete in a new uniform is common, though these images fade with such dispatch that the players are wise not to do the same. No one pictures Babe Ruth, Johnny Unitas and Bob Cousy as a Boston Brave, a San Diego Charger and a Cincinnati Royal. Joe Namath's farewell passes wobbled not in the cause of the New York Jets but on behalf of the Los Angeles Rams. The sweeping fullback of the Green Bay Packers, Jim Taylor, was swept out with the New Orleans Saints.

Taylor is the only man who ever outrushed Jim Brown in a National Football League season, Brown's infirm year of 1962, when the Cleveland runner gained only 996 yds. Over nine seasons, back when N.F.L. schedules were two to four games shorter, Brown accumulated 12,312 yds. in 2,359 carries, an average of 5.2. At the top of his game after gathering 1,544 yds. and 21 touchdowns to become the M.V.P. of 1965, he called a press conference on the movie set of The Dirty Dozen and retired at 29. Brown had always been something of a bad actor and decided to enter the profession formally.

In all the years since, despite every accommodation that rule changers have made to the offenses, only in attempts has Brown been passed. Going on 13 seasons, Franco Harris has logged 549 more carries, and Walter Payton has counted 370 more in his tenth year. Both are breathing heavily on the yardage record, Franco wheezing slightly. Eternally a Pittsburgh Steeler, he is presently a Seattle Seahawk, having miscalculated the breaking point of the Rooney family's sentimental nature. Since Franco's familiar 32 was spoken for in Seattle, he took 34, his old college number but also his age.

Thirteen yards in ten stabs against New England a week ago inched him over 12,000. It was an embarrassing game that the Seahawks led by 23 points and lost by 15. Patriot Rookie Irving Fryar caught the first touchdown pass of his pro career. Even before Harris had shed all of his armor afterward, Fryar appeared at Franco's stall and quietly sat down next to a bald man with an amiable smile, Bill Gordon, who happened to coach them both in high school. Gordon regarded the two players with the pleasure of an architect imagining his last house adjoining his first. To Fryar, 21, the thought of just having shared a field with Franco Harris was stupefying. For Harris, these episodes of This Is Your Life do not let up. Lynn Swann, his old Steeler roommate, materialized to unsnap his shoulder pads for him, the way he used to.

"He has told his new teammates that he isn't here for the yardage, but to win," said Swann. "If they believe him, he'll help them grow." Franco's class has graduated: Swann, Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Mel Blount. "Nobody was bigger than the team," Harris said. "Right now, I'm not even thinking of the record, because I've got to get myself squared away in the system." But he wants to break it, and he would like to be first.

On Harris' 13-yd. afternoon, Walter Payton had 110 yds. in Green Bay to close within 34 of Franco and 337 of Brown. It is descriptive of Payton's decade in Chicago that the Bears required every foot of it to win, 9-7. While Harris has celebrated four triumphant Super Bowls, Payton has never won so much as a playoff game. Though 6 ft. 2 in., 225 Ibs., Harris is the discreet player; at 5 ft. 10 1/2 in., 202 Ibs., Payton is the fire-eater. In fact, Brown's resentment of Franco's economy and caution had him threatening to come back at 48. He approves of Payton, who often tackles the tacklers.

Payton only seems singleminded:

"I'm 30 now. Every time I had to do some hard therapy [after double arthroscopic knee surgery last April, I'd think about the record. It worked." But now that he is sound, is his promise to beat Harris to the mark so important? "Well, I'd like to keep my word. But when it's all over with, I don't want to be remembered as a statistic."

One of Franco's new blockers, one of O.J. Simpson's old blockers, Reggie McKenzie, 34, dressed a few lockers away. "You play football first because you like it," he observed. "Pride. Money. Records. Yeah, but you play because you like it." And, to no particular point, he mused, "You know, O.J. would have given back a lot of yards to be called champion." When Simpson, who gained 11,236 yds. in eleven seasons, was at the height of his powers, the running argument was three-sided: Brown, O.J. or Gale Sayers, though Sayers' injuries had held him to five full seasons. One afternoon Simpson was analyzing the numbers brightly when abruptly he stopped. "It's Sayers," he said solemnly. "All you had to do was see him." So maybe they can't be measured by the yard.

--By Tom Callahan