Hopefully, Hoss Gets In Last Word on This Subject

Here in a city of nasty, hateful little stories, none of us needed this one. Maybe we can blink and make it go away, now that Raider quarterback Jeff Hostetler has said that, to the best of his recollection, his African-American coach made no derogatory comment about Caucasian quarterbacks, the kind that would have led to serious repercussions were the shoe on the other foot.

We got it Tuesday, straight from Hoss’ mouth. “To drag somebody through lower than a sewer . . . “ Hostetler said of the Art Shell bombshell, reported Sunday on national TV. “This is bad news. I mean, it’s almost in the realm of unbelievable.”

Tabloid television being preoccupied with bigger, juicier stories from Los Angeles nowadays, this one thankfully can vanish as quickly as it came, unless someone digs up a sound bite of Shell actually making some remark, or unless a book about the secret lives of Shell and Hostetler gets written by Faye Resnick or Prince Charles. Good riddance to this rubbish.

Granted, it was not an unimportant issue, even if said in jest. But if nobody can prove Shell said such a thing, and if Shell contends he never said it, and if Hostetler never heard him say it, then there is no story here, no issue. Al Campanis was not misquoted. Jimmy the Greek was not misquoted. Misguided, maybe. Misunderstood, both insisted. But never misquoted.

We presumably can let both coach and quarterback get back to their business, without dredging this up ever again. Hostetler says his relationship with Shell not only is OK, but never stronger. He says they now understand things about each other they never understood before. He denies having heard anything about being “another white quarterback, just like Schroeder,” a quote attributed to Shell in which the biggest insult is debatable, being singled out as white or being compared to Jay Schroeder.

In hiking boots, denim shorts and sunglasses, Hostetler strode into an interview room in El Segundo, actually smiling all the way along the sidewalk. Upon arrival, he pressed his palms against a podium as comfortably as Bill Clinton at a Rotary luncheon and asked the mike-carriers assembled, “Ready to roll?”

Then he tried to clarify the very thing he should have clarified 24 to 48 hours earlier, when he first heard about it.

Hostetler was a hypocrite to a degree, first angrily denouncing the reporter from the all-sports cable channel for not personally consulting him as to the truth of the matter, then conveniently absolving himself for not coming to Shell’s defense sooner by insisting that the report “didn’t deserve comment.”

That left Shell twisting in the wind. The player could have spared his coach considerable aggravation had he stood firm after Sunday’s game at the Coliseum and responded to the nationally televised allegations with the very words he used Tuesday. Instead, still steamed about reaction to his very public quarrel with Shell, Hostetler irritably shouted across the locker room, “Let it go!”

Contacted again the next night, when the “white quarterback” story began to snowball, Hostetler again declined to say point-blank that Shell never had made any such crack.

Only 48 hours after the fact, and after three independent sources had backed ESPN’s report in The Times, did he became indignant.

“I feel extremely angered that Art had to go through this,” Hostetler said. Hey, no kidding.

In standing beside his coach--with less gesticulation than in Miami--the quarterback also made the observation, “We’re talking about a guy’s livelihood here, a guy’s life. I mean, he spent many, many years building a reputation that a lot of people hold up extremely high.”

Well, the exact same thing could be said, word for word, for the correspondent from ESPN who put his own reputation on the line, going public with such Raider-baiting inflammatory stuff. Remember, this was not “A Current Affair” or “Hard Copy” stirring up this black-and-white contretemps between the black-and-silver. This was good old, athlete-friendly ESPN. So either somebody has gotten some very bad information, or somebody is lying through his teeth.

Accountability is at stake here.

Where is Judge Ito when you need him?

Hostetler said, “We’ve got one person who has started a blaze that I don’t feel has . . . anything to back it up.”

The quotation in question is not the most insulting one in recorded history, and only a dimwit would completely dismiss the possibility that Shell did indeed say it, not necessarily meaning much by it. Hostetler concedes that a lot of hot topics got covered in that Miami discussion, and that, “A lot of them I can’t remember. If there was something, he was talking to me. OK? He wasn’t talking to anybody else. It was in the heat of battle.”

And things get said there.

The retired Raider player, Howie Long, pointed out that when confronted at practice, having his authority questioned even in the slightest, Shell has been known to say to Chester McGlockton, a very large and strong player, “Big boy, you want a piece of me?” Football players recognize this as nothing more than Practicespeak, stuff that gets said from time to time.

But several unconvincing voices among the Raiders kept insisting that the sideline scrap between Shell and Hostetler “happens every day,” while knowing full well that such a loud and hostile conversation is very rarely visible to millions during a game. At practice, sure, but not in front of everybody.

Shell said some things. Hostetler said some things back. The two principals are willing to forget it.

So, unless somebody has something else to say, the rest of us can lay it to rest ourselves.

“We’re not just talking about the little game of football. This is a guy’s whole life, his whole reputation,” Hostetler said.

Let us discuss this no more.