If Rams Go, Bettis Must Stay

They used to give guys who did what he does nicknames. In the old days, Jerome Bettis would have been “Bronko” as in Nagurski, or “Tank” or “Bull” or “The Big Bang.” A few of the Rams call him “J.B.” And that’s as close as he gets to a nom de guerre.

Bettis with the football leaves as much devastation in his wake as anyone who ever carried one, but he had a hard job getting his hands on one. That’s because Bettis doesn’t look like your basic Galloping Ghost or Fourth Horseman. He looks more like your basic middle linebacker. He should have a quarterback or flanker in his paws, not the ball. He’s not big--5 feet 11. He’s fast but not blinding--4.5 in the 40. But there’s a lot of him--245 pounds.

Usually a guy with that configuration gets his hands on the ball only when he falls on it. Coaches used to take one look at that silhouette and conclude they only had to decide whether he was to be on the offensive or defensive line.

He got all the way to college before the brain trusters figured out that if Bettis didn’t have access to the football, someone had made a terrible mistake.

Even then, Notre Dame didn’t figure it had another George Gipp on its hands. The Irish put him at fullback, which is a kind of compromise. They told him, “Now when you see these guys come through that line, you get between them and the guy with the ball--he’ll be named Reggie or Ricky or something--and you knock them down, then get out of the way.”

Occasionally, on third and one, they would let Bettis carry the ball and tell him to simply fall forward.

It’s hard to pinpoint when the perception changed. Veteran Notre Damers think it was the day they gave him the ball to make a third-and-one first down and he made a 60-yard touchdown while he was at it. But by 1991, they were giving Bettis the ball enough so that he scored 20 touchdowns with it. Now that, as it happens, is 12 better than Gipp in his best year and two more than any other Notre Dame running back ever scored in any year.

And, in a way, Bettis did his own blocking. That is to say, he did what blockers do--knock the tackler down and keep going.

Outlined against a blue-gray sky was a lot of horse. Bettis scored three touchdowns in the Cotton Bowl victory over Texas A & M. He had scored three the year before in the Sugar Bowl victory over Florida, one on a 49-yard run and one on a 39-yard run.

Bettis says that when he went to the scouting combine tryouts the next year, he was outrunning all the Heisman candidates. The Rams had no qualms about giving him the ball. They drafted him No. 1 and with no hesitation put him at running back.

He was a throwback. To the days of Nagurski, Ernie Nevers, even Marion Motley and Larry Csonka. A big man with the moves of a scatback and the speed burst of a quarter horse. The Rams had once had a backfield of Bettises. They called it “the bull elephant” backfield--Tank Younger, Dick Hoerner and Deacon Dan Towler--and they used it interchangeably with a small, fast backfield of V.T. (Vitamin) Smith and Tommy Kalmanir.

Bettis wasted no time becoming the new bull elephant. Also rookie of the year and, maybe, Ram of the decade. He rolled up 1,429 yards. Those, it so happens, are Jim Brown-Franco Harris statistics. He carried 39 times in one game and averaged slightly less than five yards a carry for the season. He caught 26 passes. He attracted more coverage than the O.J. Simpson trial when he got the ball but he had six 100-yard games and one 200-yard game. He was harder to stop than a bride’s tears.

In a league in which the headlines go to Barry Sanders, Marshall Faulk, Barry Foster, Chris Warren and Emmitt Smith, Bettis has rolled up more yards than any of them except Sanders. He has more than any of the half-dozen running backs who finished ahead of him twice in Heisman balloting.

He is the big reason the Rams are the junkyard dogs of the NFL this season. You never know whether they are going to lick your hand or bite it. The biting is done by the Rams’ sure Bettis.

He stood toweling off in the locker room after the Rams’ home victory over the New York Giants on Sunday and looked out at the congress of white lights, microphones, notepads, pencils and cassettes thronged about him. This spotlight interrogation makes some players frown. Bettis enjoys it. He grinned as he pulled on a pair of pre-faded jeans, a bowling shirt and a pair of shoes built for climbing telephone poles in bad weather.

“Your day job fixing downed telephone lines?” he is asked.

Bettis smiled. “High fashion,” he said. “Going to a prom.”

Was the Giant victory a turning point?

“Well, it’s a plus,” he said. “We can be a good team. The people we play know it. We have to convince our own fans.”

Did he know the Rams were considering trading up in the draft by skipping him to get Garrison Hearst (third in the Heisman voting)?

Bettis smiled. “Nah. The Rams got what they wanted. They got a gem--me!”

Does he take a position on the proposed move of the Rams to Baltimore or St. Louis?

“I hope we stay,” he said. “Who wants to leave California?”

Who indeed? Ram fans only hope if the Rams do move, they leave Bettis here.