Emmanuel Burgin
The thing about playing sports is you never know what life lesson you are going to take away from the game. I do not think any of us really thought that much about the lessons learned while we were playing. We were just trying to get better. I am certain we all had occasions when a coach tried imparting some wisdom, some life lesson to us, like the word assume. How many of us have heard that one?
However, for every shiny nugget of wisdom a coach tried to impart upon us, it was merely one rock in the riverbed of lessons learned from playing the game. Lessons immersed in our subconscious.
These lessons shape us, build our character. If we were lucky, we receive a lesson which gives us that moment of illumination; be it a technique or a mental aspect of the game, but something clicks, a path opens, we incorporate it into our game and the game becomes easier. But how many of us can remember a lesson which becomes a brick in the foundation of your life philosophy?
I suspect there are some lucky enough to know of what I write. A lesson so infused in us it becomes part of our DNA, becomes as natural as breathing. Take a moment, listen to the words passed down. What do you recall? What stands out? Is there a correlation between the life you are living, and a lesson learned?
For me, it was during a pass blocking drill when my offensive line coach, Charlie Cowan, drew a line on the field with the heel of his shoe.
I had signed my LA Thunderbolt contract in the summer of 1980 in the Century City high rise office of Bruce Allen, the General Manager and head coach of the newly minted team that was to play its games at the Rose Bowl. The World Football League had folded five years prior, and no one had heard of the USFL. Steve Young, Herschel Walker were freshmen at BYU and Georgia respectively, and Donald Trump was just another developer in New York.
When I think back to that time, I cannot, for the life of me, recall wondering what league I was going to play in. The NFL draft had come and gone, free agents signed (my roommate had signed with the Denver Broncos), and it looked for me to be a long summer, until I heard about a tryout at the Rose Bowl. As best as I can recall, I had just gone to an open tryout and made the cut.
It was at the tryout that I met the Los Angeles Rams’ great offensive lineman Charlie Cowan. I knew a lot about him, had several of his Topps football cards and having grown up in a Los Angeles, I had watched him play on television many times. Listed at 6’4”, 270lbs, he played his entire career from 1961 to 1975 with the Rams. He played in 206 games, missing only four games in fifteen years, and selected to the Pro Bowl four consecutive years, beginning in 1969.
Now he would be my offensive line coach and to say it excited me would be a gross understatement.
But let me return to the high-rise office and Bruce Allen. He was, of course, the son of coaching great George Allen, who had taken the Rams to several championship games and who coached the “Over the Hill Gang” Washington Redskins to the Super Bowl. Allen had a penchant for trading for veterans and had a disdain for rookies. Like Lakers’ basketball coach Phil Jackson’s philosophy. Allen, the elder, would one day be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
A beautiful junior secretary with long legs and shiny black pumps escorted me through a large, carpeted reception area which ended at two large dark wood doors that the secretary opened and then closed behind me as I entered. The office was immense, with large windows and a view of Century City and its high-rise office towers. Bruce sat behind a large desk that dwarfed him. He was small of stature to begin with and now, sitting behind the desk, it looked like an optical illusion. Standing beside him was his lawyer.
I sat down in a comfortable, armed leather chair. My contract negotiations were to begin.
Mr. Allen stated I had no experience and was not of a ‘skilled’ position (not a lot of love for offensive linemen in those days) therefore, he would give me $12,500. I said I was hoping for $32,500, the minimum contract in the NFL. He looked at his lawyer and then back at me. He said that there was only one player on the team that was going to make the maximum of $30,000, which was the quarterback. The quarterback was the onetime Buffalo Bill’s Don May. I had read about him in the papers and had seen him at the tryouts. May had been one of the first black quarterbacks in the NFL. I had his football card.
“Ok.” I said, “Where do I sign?”
We practiced at the Rose Bowl. We wore a team issued gray t-shirt with LA Thunderbolts printed across the chest in dark blue lettering. Our shorts were dark blue.
Those first few days, we worked on flexibility and fitness with stretching exercises and wind sprints, followed by breaking into units and working on our individual skills. Later, we came together with our counterparts and finally a few reps as a complete unit: offense and defense at opposite ends of the field. At the end of practice, the full units drilled against each other.
Coach Cowan was a quiet man. He observed from a distance only stepping in to say a few words before stepping back, and it always seemed out of view of his offensive linemen. It was in one of those moments when he gave me the advice that would help to no end, turning on the proverbial light above my head, making it all click.
During a team passing drill, I was playing right tackle and having trouble staying in front of the defensive end. He was quick and strong and came at me juking and jiving, bobbing his head and flaying his arms. It was taking all my quickness, strength, and skills to keep him in front of me. Coach Cowan saw that. He came over to me in the huddle and, looking down at me, said, “Son, you’re thinking too much.”
Then he eyed the line of scrimmage, walked over, and stood about four yards directly behind my position on the line of scrimmage, and, with the heel of his coaching shoe, made a line about a yard long parallel to the line of scrimmage.
“When you drop back to here, if your defensive end is inside you take him inside, stuff him and if he is outside, then you go after him and ride him outside.”
After that it got easy for me, like riding a bike, like breathing.
Emmanuel Burgin is the author of Vagabond Blues, a novel about his season with the 1981 Minor League National Champion Twin City Cougars.