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Catching It All
Ahmad Rashad Has Gone From All-Pro Receiver to
All-Network Announcer
by Ken Shouler
Former television announcer and NFL star Ahmad
Rashad strides safely into the Plaza Hotel's Oak Room--the same room
where, in North by Northwest, Cary Grant is kidnapped for an
improbable journey to South Dakota. In a linen summer suit, Rashad
navigates the tables without being tackled, fouled--or
kidnapped. Looking as fit as a receiver, hauling a leather bag over
his shoulder, he weaves across the floor, heading for the plush
leather booth in the corner. The alcove is made to order for two-hour
lunches and one-hour-long smokes.
In a few minutes, Rashad talks about everything: from basketball and
football, to Islam and vegetarianism; from Marv Albert and television
to his good friend Michael Jordan. And cigars. Rashad possesses a
fresh stock of ideas on a broad spectrum of subjects--in and out of
sports. But that's not out of character. Marv Albert, America's best
play-by-play voice in basketball, says of Rashad: "When you look at
the athletes who turned broadcasters, he's one of the best out there."
His bright-eyed television persona isn't far from the way he comes
across in person. Rashad is not one of the athletes who took the Lite
Beer trail after retirement, but looks as if he could step back on the
field and snag a touchdown pass on a post-pattern. "I work out every
day. I run or I ride a bike when I'm tired of running. I have a gym in
my house and I work out there. I never lifted a weight until two years
ago. Then Michael Jordan gave me his routine, and I went through it
with him. It takes about 45 minutes. It's light weights with a lot of
repetitions, but you go through four or five stations three times a
week and that's it. And I play tennis, sometimes two or three times a
day."
We come around to his age and he says, "I'm 44--I was trying to figure
out if I was 44 or 43, but I think I'm 44." In November he turned
45. "I eat whatever I want to eat because I work out so much." Indeed,
Rashad--with an earring and jet-black hair--still looks youthful, even
boyish.
"I don't eat [red] meat. I was a vegetarian before I changed the name
(from Bobby Moore, in 1972). I went to school during the late '60s
and early '70s," he says, shifting gears but keeping to the same
road. "Oregon was a hippie school. People were into good food and good
health, eating grains and not so much red meat. We didn't have guys
who had steaks for pregame meals; we had guys who came in with some
kind of bag of grain or something--that's probably why we got beat all
the time! Half of our guys had their hair pinned up or their hair
beneath their helmets all down the back. We didn't win any national
titles, but we had very well-rounded people on the team. We weren't
football jocks." Rashad then orders the Caesar's chicken salad and
clam soup, after repeated assurances from the waiter that there is no
bacon in it.
He quickly gets back into his story. "Our coach, Jerry Frei, was one
of those guys who said you could miss practice if you had a good
reason. Guys would come to practice and say 'I couldn't make practice
yesterday because there was a protest. Dow Chemical was on campus and
we don't think that's right during the Vietnam War.' With Frei, that
was fine. He wanted guys to be successful human beings, and that was
more important to him than turning out good football players. Football
was never primary. It wasn't primary when I got out of high school and
when I got out of college it still wasn't primary.
"As I was driving here I thought about this one coach I used to
have. I was with St. Louis, about 25 years old, and he was a short,
stocky guy who smoked big, fat, long cigars. I wasn't practicing one
day. This coach saw me talking to someone who wasn't on the team and
he just went ape shit. He looked at me and yelled 'Hey, get your ass
over here. You keep your head in the game. I don't care if you're not
practicing, I want you to stand over here and watch everything we're
doing. Get over here now.' I was thinking to myself 'how funny is
that?' I thought this guy was going to have a stroke," Rashad smiles
that boyish grin. "I thought 'Hey, chill.'
"I didn't have a relaxed attitude. I just had priorities," Rashad
continues. "When it was time to practice, I practiced. But in between
plays you didn't have to have this crazed look all over your face. I
didn't feel like I played better if I got myself into some
frenzy. Some people did and that was fine. I watched guys get ready to
play by knocking their heads on walls. I talked to people on the
sidelines, I talked to fans if they were close, I talked to the other
team, I talked to refs. I talked to everybody. Then one morning, it
dawned on me that I didn't want to do this anymore."
Not playing football was nothing new for Rashad. For most of his life
he didn't know it would be his future. Born in Oregon in 1949, Bobby
Moore was raised in Tacoma, Washington. He was the youngest of six
children--three boys and three girls. And if ever a child needed a
life lesson, young Moore had his--a trial that served as constant
motivation. "When I was six years old, I started developing a skin
disease. And they never did figure out what it was. It was something
that drove me inside a lot. It was ugly; I had it on my ears, hands
and elbows and wrists and everything. Big bumps. I'd be embarrassed
about them. Crueler kids called me 'Bumpy' or 'Raisin Ears.' I felt
like a freak. If I caught a ball the bumps would burst and spill blood
all over me.
"I remember when I was 12, my mother and I got on a bus to go to a
medical convention where they had all these unknown diseases. I
thought of myself as being pretty normal, but when I saw these people
they had at this convention, man, they had the most deformed people I
had ever seen in my whole life! All the people were kept in one wing
of a hospital and doctors would come around with their assistants and
pinch you and do all kinds of things to you and take notes. I can
still remember a nurse nod toward me and spell out l-e-p-e-r. Just
because I had bumps all over, she didn't think that I could spell out
a two-syllable word when I was 12-years-old? I just remember that was
my lowest point ever. I would always draw on that and make sure that
gave me strength rather than tear me down. I remember my mother crying
all the way home from Vancouver to Tacoma." But Rashad's childhood
trial ended almost as mysteriously as it began. After a doctor cut the
bumps off, they stayed away.
"I realized I was good at football in tenth grade. During the summers,
football players at the University of Washington would play touch
football in the park. I was picked one time, the guys were all PAC-8
[the PAC-10 today], some were coming up for All-American, and I
remember holding my own with those guys. My cousin was supposed to be
a big star at the University of Washington. He was covering me one
day, and I caught one pass and took off about 60 yards, he couldn't
catch me and that gave me so much confidence. I knew I could play. I
could run; no matter where I caught it, I could run with it."
The success continued at Oregon, where Rashad was the No. 1-rated wide
receiver and running back on the team one year. But leaving college,
he didn't want to be a back anymore. "You get beat up," he
explains. "I was the first offensive player picked in the 1972
draft. With salary plus bonuses I made about $65,000. But that didn't
matter much to me either. I just didn't think that all life was
wrapped up in that. I was just into living, the experience of life. I
just knew there was a bigger experience outside that practice field. I
knew that. My brothers and sisters weren't playing football and yet
were enjoying themselves. I used to wonder what everyone else did
during the fall?"
Rashad's first experience in the pros was far from memorable. "A guy
from St. Louis calls and says 'we just drafted you.' That was it;
nothing more. Nothing like 'glad to have you aboard.' Most guys were
like 'yeah, I got drafted by so and so and they're glad to have
me....' But St. Louis started negotiating right away. They figured 'if
we act like we don't like him, then we don't have to pay him so much.'
The strategy backfired because I didn't want to be there."
Rashad, mindful of his father's counsel to "always have options," had
another option. "I was really into my religion at that time. It was
very important for me to spend time developing myself as a Muslim;
reading, learning, things like that. My teacher was a guy named Rashad
Khalifa, who lived in St. Louis. Football was like a job; I couldn't
wait for practice to end so I could go over to Rashad."
Then he changed his name from Bobby Moore to Ahmad Rashad. "That was
funny. We had coaches who would say 'Goddamnit, your name is Bobby
Moore. Coach Don Coryell would say 'get over here, whatever your name
is!' I went from being Bobby Moore to 'whatever your name is.' I put
my name on the front of my helmet. 'My name is right here,' I'd tell
him. So I always had that attitude, which pissed him off. He would
say: 'Where's that wide receiver 'A-med Rash-id?' " Rashad laughs,
recalling the time.
Rashad's career as a football player didn't take flight until he was
with the Minnesota Vikings for seven years beginning in 1976. "Playing
with Fran Tarkenton was one of the biggest reasons. I had never played
with a QB of that caliber before. Joe Ferguson was young, and we ran
the ball all the time in Buffalo because of O. J. Then I wrecked my
knee my second year there. In St. Louis we sucked: Jim Hart was pretty
good, but we didn't have a line. So we didn't throw any passes. So all
of a sudden I've got Fran Tarkenton, and me and Fran are like
connecting." With Minnesota, Rashad went to four consecutive Pro
Bowls, where he was also the MVP in 1979.
After 11 years in St. Louis, Buffalo and Minnesota, the 33-year-old
Rashad decided to call it quits in 1983. "All the great players we had
were gone. We had a lot of young guys who didn't really want to make
the commitment. Here I was busting my ass every day, and we had a lot
of young guys who didn't really care whether we won or lost, but were
just glad to be in the league. That killed me. Before we had
Tarkenton--and Jim Marshall, Carl Eller, Alan Page...." Rashad breaks
the thought, naming the great "Purple People Eaters" on the defensive
line. "These guys were never late; they would never miss a practice.
"My last year, guys would show up whenever they wanted to. Oh man, I
just couldn't take it! No commitment, just no commitment; when
there has to be a commitment that you guys are together, you're gonna
play--you can't play half-assed or they'll kill you! You can't be
lollygagging out there or you'll lose your head. 'I'm taking a night
off,' " Rashad mocks. "It's not like basketball or baseball. You take
a night off in football and that'll be the last night you'll play."
And Rashad was surprised to happen into hotel rooms and find young
players doing lines of cocaine; so casually they didn't even try to
hide it. "When I decided to quit and go home I never went back--I
never even went back to clean my locker out. Bud Grant didn't try to
talk me out of it."
Despite his early departure, Rashad left his mark on the league. One
day, before retiring, Grant came up to him and pointed out Charley
Taylor's total of 649 catches, then the all-time leader. "See that,"
Grant said. "You can do it." Three more years of 60 catches a piece
and he would have done it. "I was physically able to play, but not
mentally able," Rashad says, weary of the antics of the new
players. He retired with 495 catches, 10th on the all-time receiving
list at the time.
But the hard reality of retiring was softened for Rashad. He had
already begun broadcasting at a CBS affiliate, WCCO television in
Minnesota. "I was working in television and after practice I went to
the studio to work on my craft in television."
Now Rashad is involved with several NBC programs. "NBA Off the Court,"
a more in-depth show than his "NBA Inside Stuff," will premier for the
1994-95 season with profiles of players and coaches and longer
features. But he admits his biggest current gig is cohosting "NFL
Live" with Greg Gumbel on Sundays. He is also host of "Notre Dame
Saturday."
The table is cleared as Rashad lights up his Don Lino Robusto. "I just
had one the other day. It's a great daytime cigar." Rashad believes
that the right choice of cigar is necessary: some cigars are too
strong to smoke before a full meal. His taste in cigars is
eclectic. He enjoys a Cuban Partagas Series D No. 4. "I like different
cigars at different times of the day. I light one Avo Intermezzo
cigar. If I light up in my driveway, it's finished by the time I reach
New Jersey [the location of the NBA Entertainment studio]. So I tell
time by cigars. Don Lino is a little shorter. It has a lighter, milder
taste. I like a fat cigar with a 50-ring size. After a meal some are a
little heavier. But the Don Lino is very smooth. You can't smoke a
Cuban in the daytime; it's too strong. I also like the short, fat
Cohiba Robusto. But you can't smoke that in the daytime either."
Rashad cannot get away with smoking in his home, however. His wife,
Phylicia, once a regular on "The Cosby Show," won't tolerate it. "I
built a separate shack behind my house just for my cigars. The cigar
shack has a television and a couch.
"There's an old saying: 'Smoke less, smoke better.' I smoke probably
four or five a day, maybe too many. I was coughing the other day, and
my daughter goes with me to the doctor and the doctor says 'you
smoke?' And I say 'Yeah, I smoke one or two a day. And my daughter
cuts in and says, 'Dad, you smoke more than one or two a day.' 'OK,
three or four,' I say.
"It's funny, I always wanted to smoke a cigar, but I used to think I
would be too young to smoke. I started smoking when I was playing for
the Vikings. I was reading books on cigars. Cosby was smoking, and I
used to take his. So that would give me a chance to test them. But
they would be big, long ones, and I always thought I would look funny
with big, long cigars. And then as time went by and I ended up getting
married to Phylicia, people thought I smoked cigars because Cosby
smoked cigars. I have known Cosby since I was in college," he
says. "Since I was 19 or 20. He introduced me to her on the set."
Rashad's proposal to Phylicia was a famous
break-in-the-football-action betrothal on television on Thanksgiving
in 1985. "I proposed on the set. She didn't know it was coming. That's
probably my single biggest moment on TV. I meet people that I know
aren't sports fans who have seen copies of it and say 'that was such a
wonderful thing.' She was in the Thanksgiving Day parade in New York,
so the parade ended and she was at Macy's. I had told her when she got
off the float to go in and look at TV. She went nuts."
Despite Rashad's foray into cigars, his partner Marv Albert claims he
knows nothing about it. "I have never seen him smoke," says
Albert. "He'll do anything for publicity. The next thing he'll claim
is that electric trains are his favorite hobby, just to get into
print." With Albert, one needs the grin or the slight alteration in
the voice to detect the humor. "He is the dean of sideline reporting,"
Albert says dryly, "setting new standards every time, game by
game. He's replaced the czar of the telestrater [Mike Fratello]."
The Albert-Rashad connection is one of perpetual one-upmanship. "He
basically laughs at anything I say, and then he says it's not funny,"
Albert says. Despite Albert's constant zingers--during the Dream Team
II games he hoped that Shaquille O'Neal wouldn't tear down the basket
because the delay would lead to "20 more minutes of Ahmad"--Rashad
feels he has the last word, since when the Knicks decided to have a
"Marv Albert Night" for his long service to broadcasting, they made
"Mike and the Mad Dog" of WFAN the masters of ceremony. Rashad refers
to them as "Dog and the Fat Man." "The one guy [Chris Russo] looks
like a deranged idiot," Rashad says. "And the other [Mike Francesa] is
swelling out of his suit."
If the comments seem a bit strident, it is because Rashad was stung
hard by the WFAN pair after his Michael Jordan interview several years
ago--right after reports surfaced that Jordan had suffered huge
gambling losses. Rashad was widely criticized for not asking Jordan
"tough" questions during the interview. Jordan, feeling the lash of
the press after his midnight jaunt to Atlantic City during the
Knicks-Bulls series in 1993, wouldn't talk to reporters for days.
Then one day Jordan saw Rashad at Chicago Stadium and said 'get a
camera; let's get this out of the way.' Says Rashad: "I asked, 'Do you
have a gambling problem?' 'No.' 'Are you sure you don't have a
gambling problem?' 'No, I don't.' 'Does your wife think you have a
gambling problem?' 'No, she doesn't.' So what else am I supposed to
say? 'No, you're lying?' I know the answer before I ask it anyway. I
know he doesn't have a gambling problem.
"Everyone knows that Michael and I are the very, very best of
friends," says Rashad. "So they see us doing an interview and say 'how
can he ask him tough questions if they are good friends?' I asked him
the same questions that anyone else would have asked. I took the
questions, I showed them to the producer [Rick Diamond]--we wrote them
up together--and I said 'do you think we should ask him anything
else?' He said no. Diamond agreed with me that had anyone else done it
they would have asked the same questions. They have a couple of gangs,
a couple of talk-radio stations here--Fat Dog and the Mike
Man--whatever the hell they are. They like went off on me for two
weeks."
Says Albert: "It's tough. As his friend, I would probably not have
done the interview." Then he jokes: "I would like to have seen Ahmad
with the sunglasses, instead of Jordan." One thing seemed
certain. There would not have been an interview if not for Rashad.
But then because television is, as Rashad says, "subjective," he later
drew praise from some of the same people who had criticized him. When
Rashad grilled Scottie Pippen for taking himself out of the final 1.8
seconds of the Knicks-Bulls playoff game last spring, New York
Post writer Phil Mushnick praised him.
What he won't talk about at all is his friendship with O. J. Simpson,
who was his roommate when they played together on the Buffalo Bills in
1974 after Rashad's unhappy stint with the St. Louis
Cardinals. "O. J. and I were very good friends, and he knew I was
going to quit pro football," recalls Rashad. "He said 'don't quit;
maybe we can get you here.' " Rashad was traded to Buffalo, but he
tore up his knee that season. The friendship endured even though
Rashad moved on to Minnesota in 1976. "He was the best man at my
wedding in December 1985," says Rashad, expressing some surprise that
he's been spared grilling by the media about his friend. But all that
Rashad will say about the murder charges leveled against Simpson is "I
have no comment."
There are viewers who think that "crossover guys" like Rashad can't
really be taken seriously. The notion here is that basketball is an
intellectual exercise akin to splitting the atom. Actually Rashad
thinks it's an accomplishment that people look at him announcing
basketball and forget that he was a football player. It means he has
crossed over.
"We used to have a coach who said 'the ship is sailing,' " says
Rashad. "What that meant was the ship is sailing with or without
you. You're on the boat or you're not on it. Well, that became my
saying. The ship is sailing. Hey, we're out of here," he says,
recalling his thoughts about his future during one NFL year when he
suffered a knee injury. Then his next thought was "let's make sure
I've got another boat to get on."
With NBA basketball, NFL football, "Notre Dame Saturday," "NBA Inside
Stuff" and "NBA Off the Court," Rashad is now sailing a fleet.
Ken Shouler is an author and regular contributor to Cigar
Aficionado. He lives in White Plains, New York.
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