Word: tarkentons
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First prize for the Best Individual Costume at the professional level goes without question to Fran Tarkenton, who looked more like a Lebanese dermatologist than a quarterback on Super Bowl Sunday. Fran had the advantage of working on his costume ahead of time, boning up for Sunday's dismal performance with a passing day in the NFC championship game two weeks earlier that was almost as bad. It was a Jekyll-Hyde job without peer...
While we're on the subject of Sunday's game, Oakland Raiders George Atkinson and Errol Mann deserve at least a pair of Spiegel gift certificates. Atkinson was a runner up to Tarkenton for Best Costume, dressing in a Spider Lockhart outfit instead of the Richard Speck-type garb that he's known and loathed...
Still, the matter of lodge membership rankles. Always there is the implication that without it, a man of his talent is unfinished, his gifts somehow flawed. Says Tarkenton: "Of course it bothers me not to have played for a Super Bowl champion. But a failure? Lord no. I have played with and against the best players in football since 1961 and I have to believe I belong with the best quarterbacks ever. I don't give a damn about artistry or how much velocity my pass develops or how many tight ends I can knock through a brick wall...
...Athletes and actors are interchangeable on commercials. O.J. Simpson earns $1 million for telling us what car to rent; Rex Harrison earns $ 1 million for telling us what car to buy. Our old preoccupation with what Clark Gable was paid at Metro has been replaced by speculation on Francis Tarkenton's net worth. Most significant, where the athlete once was an individual, scratching and drinking across a brevity of fame, the successful athlete today is both a person and a property. He moves not only in locker rooms, but with lawyers, agents and accountants, even as Steve McQueen...
...Fran Tarkenton's near misses to Chuck Foreman caused something close to cardiac arrest for many there