Better things to do?
It looked like a great time the members of the 1972 Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins were having with President Barack Obama last week. Too bad three members of that team decided they had better things to do that day.
NFL Hall of Famer Jim Langer, the center on that undefeated team, told a Florida newspaper, “I don’t want to be in a room with those people and pretend I’m having a good time. I can’t do that. If that [angers] people, so be it.” Of course, the “people” Langer was referring to was the president.
Langer believes, “We’ve got some real moral compass issues in Washington,” so he took a powder.
So did Bob Kuechenberg, the Dolphins’ offensive lineman back in ’72.
“I just don’t believe in this administration at all. So I don’t belong,” says Kuechenberg.
OK. That’s fine with me. Except, the mere reason the Dolphins weren’t given their customary White House visit 41 years ago was because President Richard Nixon snubbed THEM.
Nixon was so busy walking that Watergate tightrope back then, that he, like Kuechenberg and Langer, had better things to do.
Manny Fernandez, another of the Dolphins’ no-shows, also contributed to that irony. The Dolphins defensive lineman, proved, once and for all, defensive linemen have the capacity to be multi-syllabic.
“I’ll just say my views are di路a路met路ri路cal路ly (Six whole syllables. Well, knock me over with a cross-body block.) opposed to the president’s.”
Meanwhile, the president and the other team members who showed up at the White House had a ball.
I was heartened to see one of my former co-workers in Cleveland, Paul Warfield, standing right there in the front row as the president honored him as his teammates. (When we worked together, I would jokingly tell him that if he’d played for the Steelers, he wouldn’t even have been on the first string. He took those jokes in good stride — the same way he did when he caught 427 passes for 8,565 yards while playing for the Dolphins and Cleveland Browns during his Hall of Fame career.)
Langer, Kuechenberg and Fernandez are hardly the first athletes who’ve taken a pass on Obama’s attempts to honor them.
In fact, Obama is hardly the only president that has been snubbed. Presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan have each had their White House invitations ignored.
James Harrison, the ex-Pittsburgh Steeler, holds the distinction of having nixed two White House invitations by two different presidents.
“This is how I feel — if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don’t win the Super Bowl,” Harrison said. At least it wasn’t because he didn’t share the “diametrically” opposing political views of the two presidents.
Even the man many people believe is the greatest basketball player of all time – Michael Jordan – caused some controversy when he famously decided to go elsewhere after his World Champion Chicago Bulls were honored by President George H.W. Bush in 1991. He claimed it was a “scheduling conflict.”
“As you know, my schedules have been very hectic,” Jordan was quoted as saying. “You guys have seen me, I’ve been every which way, and because I choose to take my private three days somewhere no one can call me, it’s my prerogative.”
Yep! That was his prerogative. Or, “pre路rog路a路tive” (only four syllables, but he meant it).
There’ve actually been nearly two dozen cases of high-profile athletes who’ve gone fishin’ rather than be seen in the presence of presidents.
Larry Bird (Reagan), Manny Ramirez (George W. Bush), golfer Tom Lehman (Clinton) and NASCAR drivers Greg Biffle, Carl Edward, Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart (Obama) have each had their reasons not to pay visits to the respective “Most Powerful Men on Earth” when invited.
I’m one of those people who truly believes that sport is a very valuable part of American society. It draws people together more than we might imagine.
But the athletes who play those sports? Some of them need to get over themselves.
Uniontown native Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.