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SEEING RED: FLAKES AT ONE BILLS DRIVE HEARTILY DESERVE THE FLUTIE BACKLASH

By S.K. Brown

Hey folks, want another reason to despise S.K.? I was rooting for the San Diego Chargers during the Oct. 27 match with the Buffalo Bills. Yeah, the Chargers! Put that in your Johnson and smoke it! And when Chargers quarterback Doug Flutie surged over the goal line during the last 70 seconds of play, I screamed with glee and thanked the powers that be that Buffalo wasn't given the victory.

The Buffalo Bills during that game got a touchdown they in no way deserved. I don't know what rule book the officials that day were using, but mine says if the ball carrier is down, as in not moving forward, as in under an avalanche of opposing players, he is not allowed to snake his arm out of the pile on top of him and sneak the ball across the line. Travis Henry cheated.

And I hate cheaters.

I hated Bobby Day, who cheated on a sixth grade math test and aced it. Bobby is now in prison for securities fraud. I hated the married editors who hit on me when I was a very young reporter, telling me to put out or get nowhere in the business. I got to be Canadian correspondent for Knight-Ridder Newspapers and at least one of those lecherous editors is working at a two-bit newspaper to pay his alimony bills. And I hate football players who forget it's a bloody game and if you have to cheat to win, you haven't won a damn thing. But you do teach kids watching the game that winning, not sportsmanship, is the only thing that matters, don't you, people?

And that makes me see red.

I was a major fan of the Buffalo Bills when I lived in South Florida and cheered them on even when they played an archrival, the Miami Dolphins. You think I'm politically incorrect now? Try living in Bay Harbor Islands and screaming in ecstasy when the Bills squished the fish. Those Bills and especially Jim Kelly were the finest examples of a game that demands strength, endurance and smarts. I very much admired Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino and many of his teammates. But the Bills were my team, much to the chagrin of my father who thought I should be loyal to the Detroit Lions.

An aside: Detroit is a franchise that hasn't won anything ever and enough addlepated fans go to enough games to give the Lions a big, new stadium. Daddy says the Lions have a chance for a perfect season this year: No wins. I can be loyal, but never a masochist.

Buffalo was my team long before I moved to Western New York, but when they dumped Flutie as quarterback for Rob Johnson, I lost all interest in the team. Flutie was a sensation, you flakes at One Bills Drive. A dynamic crowd-pleaser who does wonders for a struggling team. And he's tough.

Enter Johnson, from stage left, stumbling, dazed, eyes wide like a deer caught in the headlights of -- oh-oh, here it comes -- another blitz. Whoa, and down he goes. How many times must a man be sacked before you pull the cinch and ship him off to Outer Mongolia? Talk about a boxer with a glass jaw, Johnson has a glass head. He gets a hard tackle to get him out of bounds on a run, no unnecessary roughness, and by a man with a groin injury who is doing a running limp to get to him. And Rob goes down, somehow managing to bang his head on the ground all by himself, no one near him.

This explains why he has had, what, 100 concussions? Couldn't someone in this new and unimproved Bills organization teach that graceless lummox to fall, tuck and roll? I learned that playing tag football, for pity's sake. (The girls at my school were vicious little beasts.)

Flutie is about 5'10" and has managed in a 20-year career not to get so badly injured that he's on the disability list more than he's on the playing field. Johnson is 6'4" and, as my own little running back says, is the hypochondriac of football. The Chargers had Junior Seau playing with a groin injury and a tackle playing with a broken foot. And we've got Rob "I've Got a Headache" Johnson.

Nor did our prejudiced local sports press even comment on the fact that the Henry goal was bogus. I'm thinking about sending the officials of that game "Football for Dummies," not to mention to certain reporters. Two seconds, three seconds, if Travis Henry is on the ground outside the goal he does not get to shove the ball across the goal line and get credited with a touchdown.

No, our sports reporters concentrated their erudite commentary on how well Rob Johnson played despite having some new sprain or another. Hello!? Boys and girls, this is football. Players get hurt and a lot of them play hurt and if Rob is such a winkie that he can't take a righteous tackle, get on a bus, boyo, and get out of Buffalo. And do take Gregg Williams with you.

I understand loyalty to a team. But Johnson is making more money a year than you and I do in half a lifetime. He should have been playing as well every Sunday as he did Oct. 27. Only an ego-tripping male thing got him to stop whimpering about his injuries and start playing football.

The Buffalo Bills are a bunch of losers. Okay, with the exception of Peerless Price, whom I'd adore even if he hadn't done that absolutely wonderful job of catching a 61-yard Johnson pass. I just love that man's name. Mama and Daddy must have loved that little boy to name him Peerless. And here's to you, peerless Peerless, for living up to your name. That was one fine catch. And of course Eric Moulds, who gave Flutie a postgame hug and can always be counted on to work hard for his money. But a good portion of the Bills are losers, and not only because they lose games. They are losers because they cheat.

Travis Henry, who on Oct. 27 went down a foot from the goal line and snuck his hand and the ball across the line, knew he didn't deserve that touchdown. But he took it. Did a little dance, thinking the Bills had now won. I believe other Bills boys did as well. They needed a win, you see, and that was what was paramount. But scrappy Flutie scrambled forward in that final two-minute drill, as he used to do for the Bills, and won the game for the Chargers.

Ralph Wilson had said earlier winning that game was as important as winning the Super Bowl. Well, Ralph, you won't be winning a Super Bowl anytime soon, but the Chargers will. Maybe this year.

The Bills and the Chargers are just about opposite in the standings as where they were last year. The Bills were kicking butt with Flutie, and now the Chargers are riding high. If that isn't poetic justice for the flakes and losers at One Bills Drive, I don't know what is.

Sometimes I know there is a God because she punishes cheaters. Sooner or later. Just wait and see. What goes around, comes around.


S.K. Brown is a freelance journalist who worked for 14 years for Knight Ridder Newspapers in Detroit and Toronto.