CHARGERS ’90 : THE QUARTERBACKS : A Calm After McMahon

SAN DIEGO —  Let’s try to figure out exactly what’s going on here, shall we?

For weeks on end, we heard it was going to be the red-head, Billy Joe Tolliver, who would start at quarterback for the Chargers this season. But people would ask about Mark Vlasic and his chances to win the spot.

And Coach Dan Henning wouldn’t really bite, instead saying: “The door is always open.”

Through three exhibition games, Tolliver kept it shut. He started. Vlasic mopped up.

But because Vlasic’s numbers were better than Tolliver’s, the questions continued.

In the Chargers’ 29-28 victory over the 49ers two weeks ago, Tolliver was average, Vlasic very good.

Henning announced afterward that Vlasic would start the final exhibition against the Raiders. Ted Tollner, the quarterback coach, wouldn’t commit, saying it was nothing more than a reward for Vlasic’s consistent performances.

Then Vlasic played well against the Raiders, and Tolliver again was only so-so. In the final exhibition-season count, Vlasic had completed 72% of his passes, Tolliver 49%.

Monday, after Henning talked to each, the announcement was made.

Vlasic would start in Sunday’s regular-season opener at Dallas.

The Pickle was back.

The Pickle part is easy. Vlasic . . . pickle. It’s a nickname. Get it?

The rest isn’t. Mark Vlasic grew up in western Pittsburgh and, like every other little kid in the neighborhood, he naturally was a Steeler fan who wanted to be the next Terry Bradshaw. That part of the country is rich in quarterback tradition. It also brought us Joe Montana and Jim Kelly.

With a successful high school career under his belt, Vlasic went to Iowa on a football scholarship and spent four years waiting. Chuck Long, the runner-up to Bo Jackson for the Heisman Trophy in 1985, was ahead of him. When Vlasic finally got his chance, he jumped out to a quick start and led the nation in passing efficiency until the third game, when he went down with a shoulder injury against Texas El Paso.

After missing three games, Vlasic came back to finish as the nation’s fifth-best passer. That spring, the Chargers made him the 88th selection of the 1987 draft. In his first season, he attempted six passes and completed three for a total of eight yards.

Once again, he was waiting.

His opportunity came the following season. He was named the starter in Week 11. In that game, the Chargers broke a six-game losing streak, defeating the Atlanta Falcons. One week later, Vlasic suffered torn knee ligaments and cartilage damage when he was tackled by Ram defensive lineman Shawn Miller. Knee surgery followed.

Nearly 22 months have passed since Vlasic’s football future was put on hold. He didn’t lose confidence in himself but, as his wife Amy points out, sometimes it’s not a matter of that but of someone else losing confidence in you.

The thing is, Vlasic is not like Jim McMahon or, for that matter, Billy Joe Tolliver. Unless he is playing good football, he doesn’t call attention to himself. McMahon piqued everyone’s curiosity last season with his unpredictability and devil-may-care attitude. He blew his stack. He blew his nose. Everyone watched.

Then there’s Tolliver, who has that down-home, aw-shucks charm. Hard to dislike a guy who says “Goll- lee “ the way Gomer Pyle does.

And Vlasic? Well, let’s see. He’s sort of quiet. Even-tempered. Doesn’t raise his voice a whole lot and doesn’t create much of a stir.

He likes to fish and go to the movies. He’ll play a round of golf on his day off.

The funny thing is, the man’s heroes were Bradshaw and Broadway Joe Namath, which makes you wonder if there isn’t a party-animal hidden behind the collected demeanor.

How about it, Mark? Got any wild, night-on-the town stories? Or, if you wouldn’t mind, could you rip into somebody for us and create a little controversy?

“I’d rather let whatever I get done on the field, good or bad, speak for Mark Vlasic,” he said. “And I’m confident that what comes out will be good.”

Maybe just one good line, like your teammate, Burt Grossman, gives us?

“No,” said Vlasic, laughing. “If you want quotes and anecdotes, I’d go to Burt right now, because he’s the man. That’s not me.”

It could be that Vlasic, 26, isn’t quite ready for all the hype that goes with the job, but he said he doesn’t mind the attention, the interviews and the television spots. It’s the questions that make him leery.

“Sometimes you tend to feel like everybody is trying to pull something out that’s negative,” Vlasic said. “At least, that’s the way I perceive it sometimes.

“I was asked last week if Billy and I got along, because I didn’t go with him over to lunch at training camp. It takes one of those questions every once in a while just to keep that frame of mind.”

There are also the comparisons. Put a guy at quarterback who has a beard and long, skinny legs and next thing you know, he’s the second coming of Dan Fouts. And it isn’t that he minds being compared to Fouts. Far from it. He considers it a compliment. But he doesn’t want this to get out of hand before he takes another snap. Two professional starts with a third forthcoming don’t exactly make him a star.

“I haven’t done anything yet to warrant it,” he said. “I’m no different than you. I’m just another person like anybody else. I’m out here playing football, something I love to do. I just go at it. That’s my job. Just the same as somebody else going at their job.

“You run into guys that think they are above somebody else and usually they get put back in their place somewhere along the road.”

What Vlasic enjoys most is being able to talk to kids, but even that leaves him questioning his place. An NFL quarterback can grab a kid’s attention a whole lot easier than the fourth-grade math teacher.

“It’s just amazing,” he said. “You step back and say ‘Who am I to tell them anything?’ They’re all just sitting there with their eyes wide open, and they’re all listening.”

Yet sometimes Vlasic wonders if what he has to say should be taken as gospel just because he can throw a football.

“It’s not a doubt of ‘Oh, I shouldn’t be a starting quarterback,’ ” he said. “It’s a doubt of me being able to tell somebody else: ‘Hey, this is the way it is, and this is the way you should do it.’ ”

It’s hard to look in the mirror and realize that all of a sudden, everybody wants your opinion on this, that and everything else. Particularly when you don’t feel any different.

“When you’re in the position, I guess to other people you seem bigger than you are,” Amy Vlasic said. “But to yourself, you don’t change.”

Nor to your friends and teammates. Even Tolliver, who would be king of the hill right now if not for Vlasic, doesn’t harbor ill feelings.

“He’s a nice guy,” Tolliver said. “If I had a daughter, I’d let her date him.”

All kidding aside, now that Vlasic is the starter, there is a little more pressure. He was good during exhibition season, but what will he do now that it really counts?

The phrase he likes to use is: “Get the job done.” He has confidence, but what may be more important is he knows the way this business works. One day things can be great; the next, you can be standing on the sidelines.

“You have ups and downs, but there are other guys around that have gone through the same things,” he said. “You have some days where you do real well, and you come back the next day not being able to do the things you did the day before, and you get frustrated.”

Frustration is something he has always been able to deal with.

“He’s a very even-tempered guy,” Henning said. “That’s the way he is in the game, that’s the way he is on the sideline, and that’s the way he was when we told him (he was starting).”

Now it’s time to test it on the NFL.

Other than regaining the starting quarterback position, what Billy Joe Tolliver would like most is to find a Mexican restaurant in San Diego that serves food with ground beef rather than shredded. No lie. That’s the way they do it in Texas. And he misses it.

For than matter, he misses a lot about Texas, where he grew up in a small town called Boyd, population about 1,000.

This San Diego stuff, with all its traffic, isn’t exactly his idea of paradise, though he’s happy enough to be collecting a check for playing football. But the family man in Billy Joe Tolliver, whose wife Sheila has a Southern accent thicker than pancake syrup and whose 2-year-old son, Austin, walks around after practice with his dad’s helmet engulfing his head, hankers to live in the simple, down-home surroundings in which he grew up.

Back in Boyd, people are too busy to worry about what the guy down the block is doing. Fun is a beer, a cookout, a football game on television.

Work isn’t 40 hours a week. That’s a part-time job. Work is 50 hours or 60 or until you finish. Billy Joe worked 40 to 45 when he was in high school, sometimes until three or four in the morning. He caught up on his sleep in class.

“It’s just a different way of life,” he said. “I think it suits me a little bit better. There’s not such a keep-up-with-the-Joneses attitude where I’m from. You keep everything in a little better perspective back home. Seems like everybody’s so busy working and trying to take care of their own business that they ain’t go time to worry about everybody else’s business. And, uh, that doesn’t seem to be the case out here.”

Out here, he didn’t even let Sheila and Austin go to Los Angeles for the Raider game. Tolliver had heard and read about all the crime and decided it would be better if his family watched on television.

Maybe he is overprotective, but that’s the way he was reared. Where he’s from, men are supposed to take care of women. If the girls in the family need a car, their father pays for it. If the boys need one, they work and save their money.

Chauvinism?

“It’s kind of chauvinistic,” Tolliver said, “but I guess Texas has been accused more than once of being a chauvinistic place.”

How does Sheila figure into all of this?

“The thing about her is her daddy spoiled her,” Tolliver said, with a little more Texas chauvinism about to shine through the smile on his face. “She was a spoiled little brat. She was one of three girls, and her dad’s been spoiling them. It’s unfortunate for me that I took her over with her being spoiled like that, but I’m trying to break her. I’m trying to raise her the best I can.”

How long you been married, Billy Joe?

“Goll- lee ,” he said, scratching his head. “I hate to get this in writing because I may get it wrong. I think I was married a year in college. I’ll tell you, it seems like forever. It seems like I dated her for 20 years, but I only dated her a little while.”

The wedding date, Billy Joe, the wedding date.

“It’s hard to say. Oh, man. Eighty (five second pause) seven or eight. Goll- lee . That’s embarrassing. The only thing I got going for me is she always reminds me.”

Sheila?

“Jan. 9th, 1987.”

There you have it.

The next topic is shopping. You get the idea Billy Joe is a guy with simple tastes, who doesn’t spend time in the nightclubs and doesn’t go in for glitter and flash. Shorts and a T-shirt are fine.

Long pants?

“I’ll wear them when I have to,” he said. “On the golf course.”

He doesn’t care for fancy clothes. Sheila is different.

“I’m not saying we don’t spend money, because Lord knows she keeps Nordstrom employees in good pay,” he said. “Those sales girls, they go on commission I’m sure, and she does her share.”

But other than that, the Tollivers have maintained their Texas values. Last year, after Billy Joe signed his contract, they treated themselves to a few things they hadn’t been able to afford on their $380-a-month scholarship check at Texas Tech. Sheila got a new car. They took a trip to Hawaii. It was fun.

Now, as Billy Joe puts it, they’ll begin saving for when they’re old and gray. Time to put away the extravagances and get back to sensible, Southern-style living.

Tolliver, 24, doesn’t appear the type to get a swelled head from a swelled checking account.

“Billy Joe will always be the same,” Sheila said. “I don’t care if he makes $3 million or one penny, he’ll always be the same.”

And no matter how much money he makes, and how many touchdown passes he throws or doesn’t throw, the town of Boyd will love him like a son. Billy Joe’s buddy, Don Patterson--no relation to the sports writer--was around to watch him guide the Boyd High School Yellowjackets to the Class AA state football championship in 1983. He said half the town is going to attend Sunday’s game against the Cowboys.

“He’s pretty much talked about everywhere you go,” Patterson said. “He’s the biggest thing that ever came out of here.”

If you’re thinking of swapping trading cards in Boyd, leave your Joe Montanas and John Elways at home. Billy Joe’s card brings a better asking price.

Crusher Orr, 13, figured that one out. Once, when Billy Joe was home during the off-season, Crusher came over every day to get him to sign an autograph. Finally, Billy Joe asked why he needed so many.

It turns out he was selling them. Billy Joe doesn’t figure there’s anything wrong with that.

“He’ll probably be an owner of some business when it’s all said and done,” he said.

Billy Joe will always be the town’s hero. A place like Boyd, which didn’t get its first stoplight until Billy Joe was a senior in high school, stands behind someone who goes out and makes a name for himself, and Billy Joe has done that.

“Since he couldn’t be president of the United States, I guess this is the next best thing,” said Sharon Tolliver, Billy Joe’s mom.

Granted, things would be better if he could regain his starting position. But he’s putting the demotion in perspective. Things could be a lot worse.

“The way I look at, at least I didn’t get cut,” he said. “I still got a job. I’m a pretty confident guy. I still believe I’m good enough to start in this league.”

In the meantime, he’ll go on being Billy Joe Tolliver. A guy from the heart of Texas who is no better or worse than the next-door neighbor.

“I’m just an easy-going guy who worries about paying the water bill just like the next guy,” he said. “Sure I make six figures. But I’m still an average Joe.”