Karlis Knows That Life Isn’t Always a Kick

SAN DIEGO —  The small, red-headed man with one white shoe, Rich Karlis, walked through the curtain, out onto the stage, in front of a studio audience and millions of television viewers, three days before the Super Bowl was to be played, and took a seat next to the gossip-happy talk-show hostess, who asked him who he was “shacked up” with.

Karlis couldn’t say. He couldn’t say, because there wasn’t anybody.

Soon thereafter, Super Bowl XXI was played. The barefootin’ Denver Bronco tried a field goal from 23 yards. He missed it.

He tried one from 34 yards. He missed it.

Later in the game, Karlis kicked one 48 yards long, but by then, the Broncos were on their way to a big defeat, and all his good deeds, in the American Football Conference championship game and others, regrettably, were forgotten.

Karlis remembers as if it were yesterday.

“It was an incredible two weeks for me,” he said. “You have to remember, here’s this kid who came from this small town. He was a walk-on in college. He was a walk-on in the NFL. Never given a chance.

“All of a sudden, he gets a kick to win the AFC championship. He’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He’s asked to be on the Joan Rivers TV show. Then he plays in the Super Bowl, misses a couple of kicks, and everybody dwells on the negative.

“It was all-encompassing. It was a great two weeks, but unfortunately, it ended with the negative.”

Even Joan Rivers’ show got canceled.

“I hope they don’t hold me responsible for that, “ Karlis said.

When you’re a kicker, you brace yourself for the worst. You might not be a defeatist--you’re more of a feetist--but already you have endured the crowds, the critics, the cramps, the corns, the bunions and all the various miseries that eventually lead you either to a head doctor or Dr. Scholl.

For example, Karlis is 28 years old now, but he will be 38 before people at parties stop asking him why he kicks the football with one shoe on and one shoe off.

“All the time, the same thing: ‘Does it hurt to kick barefoot? Does it hurt to kick barefoot? Does it hurt to kick barefoot?’ They must think I’m into sadomasochism,” Karlis said. “Yeah, that’s it. I think that’s what I’ll say from now on. ‘Yeah, it hurts like crazy! And I love it!’

“Of course it doesn’t hurt. It did when I first started out. But it also taught me to concentrate more. Even in winter games, I became more careful about what I was doing than a lot of guys wearing shoes.”

Where Karlis started out kicking was Salem, Ohio, population small, and later at that ever-popular college football academy, the University of Cincinnati. Nobody scouted him there, possibly because no living American has ever admitted to watching a football game played by the University of Cincinnati.

Even the Cincinnati Bengals never heard of him. The Karlis kid used to hop over the fence at Spinney Field, as soon as the pro team finished practicing. At night, after leaving college, he kicked field goals by himself, at the only stadium in the neighborhood with NFL goal posts. Yet, the Bengals, who went through four kickers that season, never hung around long enough to watch.

One May day in 1982, Karlis got invited to a tryout camp sponsored by the Broncos. “The only thing I hadn’t realized about the invitation-only camp,” Karlis said, “was that they invited everyone in the world who wanted to come.”

There were 478 amateur players there, including 75 kickers, including 6 or 7 good ones, not including the guy who came barefoot with his toes taped together, not including the guy who showed up dressed head to toe in a complete, store-bought Denver Bronco uniform and not including a guy from Mexico who brought his personal agent and personal trainer.

“We waited around at least two hours, because everybody got 10 kicks,” Karlis recollected. “And the guy from Mexico went last. Well, we were all eager to see what he had, because he was supposed to be Mexico’s best kicker or something. They gave him his 10 kicks. I think he made one of them.”

Ah, kickers. Or “keekers,” as Alex Karras used to call them. They come from anywhere and everywhere. They are weird and strange and flaky. They are small and fragile and sometimes don’t know the difference between a crackback block and a Cracker Jack box.

Karlis takes exception.

“A lot of the negative publicity for placekickers started with the influx of kickers from out of this country, who never played football before,” he said. “All of a sudden, everyone thought a kicker’s got to be a flake. They didn’t understand the game. They can’t pass the football. They can’t do this or that.

“Then, in the 1980s, kickers started coming along who grew up in America kicking, kids who knew how to play the game.

“I’d like to think the reason we don’t fit too well into some football teams is that we’re such individuals. When I get together with kickers, it’s interesting, because kickers can always carry on a conversation with people they’ve never met before. They stand well on their own, probably because they’ve all got big egos. You just can’t do this job without having a big ego, because your ego takes so many shots.

“You get booed. You get cursed. People want to run you out of town. Same thing with the quarterbacks. There are certain personality traits you have to have to be successful in these jobs, and, if you don’t have them, you go through the strain of psychiatric suffering.”

The strain of psychiatric suffering?

Oh, you must mean like hearing that, after a particularly bad day, a Denver restaurant owner has put a sign in the window, to attract business, that reads: “Rich Karlis Doesn’t Eat Here.”

Yeah, like that, Karlis said.

“You’ve got to believe in yourself, because so many others don’t. Maybe it’s because it looks easy. It’s so easy to sit in the stands or watch TV and say, ‘How the hell could he miss that?’ It’s like in golf, like being able to hit the ball 250 yards down the middle of the fairway every time. Even the greatest golfers in the world hit it in the rough.

“You’ve got the wind, the field condition, the coordination with the center, the holder. . . . You can’t see it on TV, but if that holder misses the spot by two inches, it can affect the whole flight of the ball.”

Or, maybe it’s nerves.

“Are you married?” Karlis asked.

“No,” a man next to him replied.

“Well, somebody here must be married. Think of the feeling you have before you get married. That’s what it’s like before a big game. You get butterflies. And unfortunately, I don’t normally get to hit somebody to knock out the butterflies. Just as, hopefully, somebody doesn’t get to hit me and knock the butterflies and everything else out of me.”

Well, when were your nerves worse, before your wedding, or before your last Super Bowl?

“Hey, the Super Bowl only lasted a couple of hours,” Karlis said. “Hopefully, the marriage will last a lot longer than that.”

What’s more, there’s always the chance both things will work out. The marriage looks good, and the kicker’s wife is pregnant, if not barefoot. Today’s Super Bowl chances look good, particularly if Karlis can make up for what happened last year.

“Well, they say talking about it is the best therapy. So, after this week is over, I ought to be completely healed,” Karlis said.

Yeah, boy. The shoe will be on the other foot.