Gerald Riggs fumbled a bit past 4:15 EDT Sunday. Through the magic of television, he fumbled again on CBS at 4:17, twice at 4:18 and at 4:19. Later that evening, he kept fumbling, nearly two dozen times on Channels 4, 5, 7 and 9. He fumbled on all of the Baltimore news stations, and he undoubtedly fumbled deep into the night in Philadelphia. He fumbled on ESPN and CNN. He just kept fumbling.
A day later, he couldn’t stop fumbling. On WTTG-TV-5’s “Redskins Playbook” Monday evening, Riggs fumbled eight times. On Glenn Brenner’s sportscast—uh, Redskinscast—on WUSA-TV-9’s 5:30 news, the Riggs fumble was shown six times. Even Channel 9’s 4 o’clock news—which doesn’t have a sportscast—showed the replay twice.
They kept running the play, and each and every time Riggs coughed it up. Regardless of the angle, he just couldn’t hold onto the ball. We saw the fumble more than we saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. If football players got replay royalties like rock stars do for records, Gerald Riggs and Wes Hopkins could own NFL Films today.
Naturally, the locals were a bit flustered by it all.
Not since Dec. 7, 1941, had the broadcast media in D.C. seemed so upset over a turn of events. Channel 9 news anchor Chris Gordon said he was “furious,” Channel 7 news anchor Renee Poussaint said she was “reeling” and Channel 5 sportscaster Steve Buckhantz called the loss “disgusting.”
Then there was ex-Redskin George Starke, who carves out a comfortable part-time living by showing up wherever a Redskins show is taping. Immediately after the game, he was “in shock” on Channel 9, then the next day on Home Team Sports’s “Redskin Report,” Starke said he was so distraught, “I haven’t slept.”
The mourning began on Channel 9’s postgame show minutes after the fumble. Brenner, who looked as if he were suffering from postpartum depression, was joined by Starke following the Redskins’ improbable come-from-ahead 42-37 defeat. After running highlights—which, naturally, included our first look at the fumble since the game ended moments earlier—they corralled Russ Grimm and Monte Coleman for interviews. Amazingly, Starke kept searching for the positive—asking Grimm about how wonderfully the offensive line did against the Eagles—and both Brenner and Starke repeatedly talked of how the Redskins “contained” Randall Cunningham (yeah, in much the same way Custer kept the Sioux from overrunning Montana).
By Monday night, the color had returned to Brenner’s face as he joined Sonny Jurgensen and Jeff Bostic at Redskin Park. Still, at the end of the all-Redskins sportscast (we do mean all-Redskins; no other sports news was mentioned during the nine-minute report), Brenner said he wanted to end the news on an upbeat note. So, Brenner finished with videotape of a Kentucky man doing impersonations of internal combustion engines. Words cannot do justice to this rare footage; all we can tell you is that the impressions were fabulous—though we had no previous internal combustion engine impersonators to compare it with—and that only Glenn Brenner can get away with such shtick on the leading newscast in the most important city in the world.
At Channels 4 and 7, the fumble actually was downplayed the day after. In George Michael’s 10-minute chat with Gibbs on WRC (there was a single Orioles highlight shown during a brief Redskins intermission), the fumble was seen only once. At 7, Frank Herzog—who managed to get in items on SMU football, the Washington Capitals and local golf—showed the fumble twice and attempted to calm down referee baiters by saying, “There are some people who would like to make an issue out of that big play… but folks, it was a good play.”
Diehard Redskins fans, meanwhile, vented their frustration in the usual way—by phoning Ken Beatrice’s “SportsCall” on WMAL radio. (Redskins fans also let it hang out on the town’s other talk radio outlet for sports, HTS, which is a curious home for such activity since it’s TV.) The callers whined and whined and whined to Beatrice about Gibbs’s decision-making, the Redskins’ defense and, most of all, the officiating. It wasn’t talk radio as much as radio therapy. Beatrice’s callers were in such distress, it seems they should’ve been dialing 911 instead. Beatrice, remarkably, was momentarily the voice of reason (well, sort of) but quickly lapsed into his famous “most NFL games aren’t won, they’re lost” patter.
3By midweek, Riggs mercifully had stopped fumbling on local TV. Alas, it’s only like the pause button on your VCR. Michael’s “Redskins Report” and Brenner’s “Redskins Sidelines” are on Saturday night, Johnny Holliday’s “Redskins Weekly” and Jurgensen’s “Countdown to Kickoff” are on Sunday. Riggs is bound to fumble again.