Big Names in the Biggest Game

In the violent world of professional football, newcomers can expect to take their lumps early and often. Nonetheless, Rookie Coaches Tommy Prothro of the Los Angeles Rams and Dan Devine of the Green Bay Packers were hardly prepared for the rough reception that they received last week when the National Football League kicked off its 52nd season.

Going against the New Orleans Saints, a team that had stumbled to six straight losses in the exhibition season, Prothro's Rams figured to win in a walk. Instead, they were outrushed and outpassed by the inspired Saints. Rookie Quarterback Archie Manning, the flashy scrambler out of Ole Miss, scored on a keeper play at the gun to give New Orleans a 24-20 upset victory. The New York Giants, another winless team in the exhibition series, were even more disrespectful to Devine's Packers. After scoring on two Green Bay end-zone fumbles, the New Yorkers added injury to insult when 255-lb. Giant Lineman Bob Hyland accidentally crashed into Devine on the sidelines. The coach's left leg was broken in three places. Hustled off to the hospital during the fourth quarter, Devine listened to the wild, seesawing game on the radio right up to the bitter end: Giants 42, Packers 40.

Football Is Football. For Prothro and Devine, two of the most celebrated coaches ever to jump from college football into the pros, the opening games were a rude initiation into the big leagues. For the other pro teams, they were merely proof that the newcomers were, as Dallas Cowboy Coach Tom Landry had predicted, "going to find it's a different game." Devine, who says that he was hit but unhurt "30 to 50 times" while patrolling the sidelines at the University of Missouri, might well agree. Nonetheless he insists that "football is football, whatever the level." Like former Packer Coach Vince Lombard!, he believes that "what wins games are the simple fundamentals."

No fancy Dan, Devine has kept the Packers in the fundamentalist Lombardi mold: solid defense and methodical, ball-control offense. A former quarterback at the University of Minnesota who married the school's homecoming queen, he began his head-coaching career at Arizona State in 1955; three years later he moved to Missouri, where he led the Tigers to twelve straight winning seasons and six bowl-game appearances. Fastidious to a fault, Devine, 46, has a penchant for washing his whistle in alcohol after every practice. "If you're looking for a word for me," he says, "it's fussbudget. The little things bother me more than the big ones." As for the big season ahead, he says: "I'm not naive enough to say we're going to burn up the league. But we're going to think we can, whether we can or not."

J. Thompson Prothro is a bit mystified by the thinking of the Rams. After last week's defeat, he allowed that "we've got good players, but somehow I'm not motivating them." He may be recognizing a reaction to the supercharged reign of George Allen, the former Ram coach who left the team last year to head the Washington Redskins. Allen played each exhibition game as if it were the Super Bowl. Prothro took a more low-key approach, saving his starters and giving the rookies a chance to develop. After the Rams lost three of seven pre-season games, Prothro remarked: "I told them, 'You don't have to play like this is a world championship game.' Well, they didn't."

No Character. Son of a onetime manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, Tommy Prothro, 51, was a blocking back at Duke. After a brief fling as a minor-league pitcher, he returned to football as a coach; in ten seasons at Oregon State and six more at U.C.L.A. his teams won 104 games and lost 55. During a game, he paces the sidelines wearing his porkpie hat, carrying his black attache case crammed with plays and bridge books, chain-smoking two packs of cigarettes ("I don't have the character to quit") and chain-drinking Coca-Colas (he is part owner in a Coke distributorship in Oregon). Though the rituals are the same, Prothro says that he changed to pro football because "I'm immature enough to want to be with the biggest game."

Whether Prothro or Devine become bigger names in the biggest game remains to be seen--and the odds would appear to be against them in the season ahead. The Packers, who play in the National Football Conference's tough "black and blue" Central Division, have only a handful of veterans left from the Lombardi era, and Star Quarterback Bart Starr may be out for the year with a shoulder injury. The Rams still have an experienced club but new men will fill twelve of 22 starting positions and strong-armed Quarterback Roman Gabriel has appeared decidedly off form this year. Nevertheless, the wily old bridge player figures that victory is in the cards. "If I didn't think I could win right away," Prothro says, "I would not have gone into this."

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