Gabriel Takes Baton From Coach Allen

At first, Buck Fowler wasn’t sure what to think. He knew it was late, 11 p.m. to be exact. He knew the past few weeks had been full of stressful moments.

But he never expected this.

Here was his boss--Roman Gabriel--dancing around in a Durham, N.C., hotel meeting room. Singing too.

“What a show,” Fowler thought.

And this was the Roman Gabriel, former Ram quarterback, father, TV broadcaster, businessman, actor and football coach of the all-new-but-not-yet-proven Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks.

“Roman makes it fun and loose around here,” said Fowler, a Ram lineman in the late 1970s and the Skyhawks’ offensive line coach. “But you can tell when he starts to get

tired.

“And when it builds up, all the stress and the pressure, he just breaks loose into a jig or a dance and starts singing. He’s a pretty good singer.”

Strange? Maybe. But this is the World League of American Football, and strange is almost the norm.

Gabriel, 50, knew there would be late-night film sessions and meetings.

The late George Allen told him it would be this way. He now understands what Allen meant several years ago when he told him “leisure time is the five hours you sleep at night.”

Gabriel has lost some sleep. He has been planning, organizing, scouting and worrying about a 40-man roster that includes:

Two Soviet players who can barely understand audibles. Can you blame them? They understand very little English.

Peter Busch of Australia, a former French pastry chef who moonlighted on the Australian rules football circuit. Busch will split time between punter, defensive back and wide receiver with the Skyhawks while Gabriel works with him on his quarterback skills.

Wide receiver Clarkston Hines of Duke, whose 40-yard dash time was incorrectly listed as 4.95 during the supplemental draft. After other teams passed on Hines, Gabriel, realizing the time had to be a typographical error, drafted the receiver with the ninth pick in the first round. Hines’ time turned out to be 4.45 seconds.

Webbie Burnett of Western Kentucky, who’s listed at 683 pounds. Another typo. Gabriel was relieved to learn Burnett was a slim, trim 283.

So, is the WLAF nothing more than the acronym implies--a laugh?

Gabriel says no.

He likes the league’s international appeal with franchises in Frankfurt, Barcelona, Montreal and London as well as six U.S. cities. He likes four international players on his team--Busch, running back Nicolay Aslaken of Norway and Soviets Vladmir Georgiev and Oleg Sapega.

“The league has a concept of training international players so the teams overseas can one day have their own players,” Gabriel said. “The league might have thought the international players would make a bigger impact sooner.

“We have some fine athletes, guys who are just now realizing they can play.”

A salary cap limits players’ yearly salaries to $20,000, thus eliminating the huge contracts that contributed to the death of the U.S. Football League in the mid-1980s. The World League also has two-year television contracts with the USA and ABC networks.

“I’d be surprised if this goes the route of the USFL,” Gabriel said. “They more or less killed themselves because the owners paid too much for players. And if they would have stayed with a spring schedule, they would have been all right. I think the only way we (WLAF) won’t make it is if people don’t watch it.”

He’ll find out Saturday, when the Skyhawks open their 10-game schedule at Sacramento.

“The talent’s here,” he said. “We have players here who can play in the NFL. We may not have 6-foot-5 players who are able to play in the NFL, but we have guys who are 6-3 and 6-2 and could play there.”

Gabriel’s no newcomer to the front office. He has been trying to bring pro football to North Carolina since 1985, when he and businessman George Shinn bid on a USFL franchise for Charlotte.

Although the football plans fell through, Gabriel helped Shinn land Charlotte’s NBA franchise.

In the meantime, Gabriel was president of Shinn’s minor league baseball teams--the double-A Charlotte Knights and the Class-A Gastonia Rangers.

When Shinn received a World League franchise last year, he didn’t have to look far to find a coach. Gabriel was his first--and logical--choice.

“We were interested in this when we first heard about it a couple of years ago,” Gabriel said. “The last two years, I’ve been running the baseball teams and following the progress of the league.”

The new job was a homecoming of sorts for Gabriel. He was raised in Wilmington, N.C., just down the road from Raleigh, and was a three-sport star at New Hanover High School.

By his senior year, 75 schools were recruiting him for football. He turned down a baseball contract from the New York Yankees in favor of playing football at North Carolina State.

After graduating from North Carolina State in 1962, Gabriel played 11 years with the Rams, earning All-Pro honors four times. He’s still the Rams’ all-time passing yardage leader with 22,223 yards.

“If I had to summarize my career, I would have to say I was very fortunate to become a pro player and compete in the league for 16 years,” Gabriel said.

But he also looks back with some bitterness.

Drafted as a quarterback in the first round in 1962, Gabriel felt more like a utility baseball player in his early years with the Rams.

“During those years I was the third-string tight end, the third-string quarterback and was the middle linebacker for the scout team,” he said. “Each year, I played more and more at quarterback.”

Gabriel became the team’s full-time quarterback by the end of the 1963 season. But the Rams were struggling, going 9-17-2 in the next two seasons.

In 1966, Allen arrived as head coach and began one of the biggest turnarounds in franchise history.

The Rams were 8-6 in 1966. The next year they were 11-1-2 and won the Coastal Division championship, their first title of any kind since 1955. They lost to Green Bay in the Western Conference championship game.

“Coach Allen made a believer out of you,” Gabriel said. “He worked us harder than most think. He got your attention.

“He had a way of dealing with each person separately, and that resulted in fewer problems as a team.

“He’s one of the few coaches I know who as long as you were loyal, you didn’t have to like him.”

Gabriel led the Rams to the Western Conference championship game again in 1969, losing to Minnesota, 23-20. He was named the league’s most valuable player.

The Rams traded Gabriel to the Philadelphia Eagles after he had arm trouble in the 1972 season. At the time of the trade, the Rams said Gabriel had told them his arm felt numb. It was later reported that he had been given too strong an injection of painkiller to ease an arthritic condition.

“The Rams just felt I wasn’t a player any longer,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel spent five years with the Eagles, was named the league’s comeback player of the year in 1973, and was the team’s man of the year for three consecutive seasons. He was released in 1977.

Gabriel was willing to forget his grudge with the Rams when Allen tried to bring him back in 1978. But the comeback was short-lived--he failed to pass a team physical because of a knee injury.

“They’ve killed my career,” Gabriel said at the time.

His playing career over, Gabriel worked as a TV sportscaster, doing color commentary for CBS on college football games and even picking up a few NFL assignments.

He later became a volunteer assistant coach at College of the Desert, where his oldest son, Robin, played quarterback. Roman coached the receivers.

In 1980 Gabriel took his first head coaching job, at Cal Poly Pomona. He also married his third wife, Lisa Katolin, a former sports information director at Pomona.

It was at Pomona that Gabriel met Fowler, his Skyhawk assistant. Fowler’s career with the Rams had been cut short by an elbow injury, and Gabriel hired him as an assistant.

When the USFL started in 1983, Gabriel took a job as the Boston Breakers’ offensive coordinator. He held a similar position in 1984 with the Arizona Wranglers, who were coached by Allen.

“I have a lot of admiration for Coach Allen,” Gabriel said. “I was well-versed in life after football. And at this time of my life, I’m trying to make these players aware of the same carry-over value that football has.”

Allen’s death in late December left Gabriel stunned.

“I remember when I got the call from my wife,” Gabriel said. “I just felt there are some people that you think should never leave the earth. Coach Allen was one of those people.”

Gabriel was working late when he heard the news.

RAMS’ ALL-TIME PASSING YARDAGE LEADERS

Player Years Att. Comp. Pct. Yards TD Int. 1. Roman Gabriel 1962-72 3,313 1,705 .515 22,223 154 112 2. Norm Van Brocklin 1949-57 1,897 1,011 .533 16,114 118 127 3. Jim Everett 1986-90 2,038 1,154 .566 15,345 101 73 4. Bob Waterfield 1945-52 1,618 814 .503 11,893 99 128 5. Vince Ferragamo 1977-84 1,288 730 .567 9,376 70 71 6. Pat Haden 1976-81 1,363 731 .536 9,296 52 60