Frank Merriwell Turns Pro

By Tom Callahan

Herschel Walker takes the money and runs for the U.S.F.L.

In this unromantic age of professional collegians, it is kind of funny and sort of sweet that people still believe in Jack Armstrong, All-American, or at least want to believe. Georgia Football Hero Herschel Walker has been Frank Merriwell himself. Walker gained more yards (5,259) than any other runner ever has in three seasons, and more than everyone but Heisman Trophy Winners Tony Dorsett (Pittsburgh, '76) and Charles White (U.S.C., '79) has in four. When the Heisman went to Walker this winter, some considered it two years overdue. He also ran track and dreamed of the Olympics. He wrote poetry. "I wish they could see/ The real person in me."

The shock last week of Walker turning pro in his junior year was not that he is special, but that he is just a man after all. He signed a contract Feb. 17 with the newborn United States Football League (whose first rule turns out to be expediency) and then lied about it for almost a week. Nobody, not even the yapping Dog lovers of Athens, Ga., blamed him for signing, as the price was said to be $5 million for three years. But everyone was a little disillusioned by the lie.

Exactly as reported in the Boston Globe Feb. 19, Walker struck and signed an odd pact with the New Jersey Generals, the U.S.F.L. franchise handiest to Madison Avenue. The deal carried an oral escape clause he exercised the next morning, the same day he told a press assembly, "I didn't sign anything."

Ever since he started putting people in mind of Jim Brown, which is ever since he started, Walker has been the object of enough philistine affections to know the National Collegiate Athletic Association's book of rules and manners. Merely by negotiating, emphatically by signing, he met the N.C.A.A.'s classic criteria of a pro. The Canadian Football League romanced Walker two years ago. The N.C.A.A. permits a man to hear an offer. More recently Chicago Blitz Coach George Allen, never one to wait for a draft choice in his National Football League days, simply mailed Walker a contract to play in the U.S.F.L. That may have been what started drawing Herschel offsides.

Pleased with its free collegiate farm system and persuaded that few undergraduates can step right into pro football, the N.F.L. has a 50-year-old rule prohibiting teams from enlisting players before their college class graduates. Twelve years ago, unable to defend roughly this same restrictive position in court, pro basketball gave in to University of Detroit Underclassman Spencer Haywood and since then has grabbed a few children from high schools. Baseball always preferred that teen-age prospects matriculate in the minor leagues.

When Walker threatened the N.F.L. with a restraint-of-trade suit a year ago, Commissioner Pete Rozelle invited him to sue. The N.F.L. is forever pitting the laws of the league against the laws of the land and, of course, loses every time, but this figured to be in litigation longer than Walker figured to be in college. Walker dropped the threat, picked up last week like a fumble in the open field by U.S.F.L. Commissioner Chet Simmons, who ran with it. Supposedly it explained the overnight reversal of Simmons' ringing stand against underclassmen signings. Walker had not threatened the U.S.F.L. with a lawsuit, but if he had, counsel for the league were already agreed it would be indefensible. Something like that.

After Walker changed his mind on the Generals contract, multiplying news reports, too knowing not to have been planted by one of the parties involved, failed to stir N.C.A.A. investigators. Then, seized by an overpowering new passion for truth, the U.S.F.L. dispatched an attorney to the University of Georgia to tell the whole story to school authorities. Said Simmons: "We wanted to make certain that the university was aware."

Hurriedly, Walker's attorney, Jack Manton, shopped him to the N.F.L., which still declined to admit an underclassman, let alone grant a stunning demand: that he be allowed to play in the city of his choice. "O.K.," Manton signed off cheerfully, "we'll see you in three years." Walker's first statement was not so effervescent: "In denying I signed a contract, I made a mistake. No one realizes more than I that I am a human being. I wish to apologize to Coach [Vince] Dooley, the University of Georgia and all the people who have been my loyal friends. I ask for your forgiveness and ask God for his forgiveness."

That seems a lot of apology just for acting like a human being, a 20-year-old one at that. Dooley said gently, "He played with fire and got burned. I know my children have lied to me too. I still love him." State senators in Georgia wore black-and-red armbands in mourning, but no speeches were heard against Walker. At least in an Orlando, Fla., training camp the spirit was festive. "Can I get his autograph?" asked Dave Boisture, the Generals' third-string quarterback. Walker has this week to get ready for next Sunday's opening game against the Los Angeles Express, ABC's first windfall in what is, as much as anything, a $20 million TV experiment.

A dozen teams, from N.F.L. cities primarily, commence an 18-game season this week, with playoffs beginning the 4th of July weekend and the "Swelter Bowl" scheduled July 17. A number of good college seniors have been signed, and a few N.F.L. free agents are being wooed (Washington Fullback John Riggins, for instance), but it falls to Walker now to sell the league.

Whether his celebrity will have a Joe Namath effect is at least as dubious as whether most of the country will abide football in the springtime. For $427,000 over four years, a lot of money in 1965, Namath was the star who brought the old American Football League to Broadway. In 1979, O.J. Simpson drew $806,668 from the San Francisco 49ers, the richest annual salary in the sport until last week. According to Manton, Walker's deal is guaranteed by Generals Owner J. Walter Duncan "regardless of skill, injury or death" and consists of cash entirely. No more will Walker be gambling millions on hamstrings and knees. However, come the Olympic trials next year, when the sprinters are taking their marks, wherever Walker is, he may wonder a moment or two about the price on dreams. At least he got a very good price. --By Tom Callahan This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.