The restaurant owner greeted him at the door and pointed to the painting portraying a Raider player wearing No. 12. The Snake shook some hands, walked to a window table and looked out at the rich blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Ken Stabler, the old partying quarterback who says he may have hung on too long in the NFL, is doing fine, thank y`all very much.
”I stayed 18 years old for 20 years,” said Stabler, who will be 42 on Christmas Day. ”I still like to have fun, have some good times, but not like I used to. I have mellowed.”
He was the NFL`s Most Valuable Player in 1974, twice AFC Player of the Year and a four-time Pro Bowler. He spent 10 years in Oakland, three in Houston and three in New Orleans. His career completion percentage was the highest in NFL history until his last year and, at 59.85 percent, still ranks second to Joe Montana`s 63.28. He holds every Raider career passing record.
Now he pursues numerous business interests and alternates between his weekend beach house and a home in Mobile, Ala., about 50 miles away. His trademark gray beard is gone, but he still sports a mop of wavy gray-white hair.
It has been three years since he was lying on the floor of Texas Stadium in a Saints uniform, in his last season. He had just coughed up a fumble to the Cowboys` Randy White in the Saints` end zone. That tied the game, which Dallas won.
”You throw for 30,000 yards and 200 touchdowns, you`re not going to let one game stick in your mind as ruining a career that went 15 years,” Stabler said. ”Anybody that tries to do that is crazy as hell.”
Retirement wasn`t easy for a guy who had played football ”since I was big enough a pick up a ball.” He grew up about five miles north of the beach in Foley, Ala. (pop. 5,000). He picked up the ”Snake” nickname in high school for his ziz-zag running style.
At Alabama, playing for Paul ”Bear” Bryant, he fought the ghosts of previous `Bama stars Bart Starr and Joe Namath.
”I`ll compare numbers with either of them,” he said. ”I`ll compare
(championship) jewelry with them. The best schooling in the world was Coach Bryant. He and I had our problems. He made me what I am as an athlete and had a heck of a lot to do with making me what I am as a person.”
During his Oakland days, Stabler was compared to Namath as much for his extracurricular activities as his football skills. But the man who once proclaimed, ”There`s nothing wrong with reading the game plan by the light of a jukebox,” said he doesn`t regret the partying.
”Hell, no. A lot of people have blown that sort of thing out of proportion. I enjoyed having a good time. I didn`t study the game plan very much. John (Madden) gave us so much room. If I`d have come in at 9 o`clock instead of midnight, I wouldn`t have thrown for more than 30,000 yards? That`s speculation. You can`t pull that bit too tight on a racehorse`s mouth. He won`t run.
”A good athlete will know what his limitations are. I never lost sight of the fact I had a huge responsibility on the field to give people their money`s worth. The owner, coach and, most of all, your teammates. I didn`t really give a damn what the fans thought. I was always concerned what my teammates thought. All you`ve got to do is ask them. My record speaks for itself.”
Stabler held out his finger to display the giant shiny black ring, jammed with diamonds, from his 1977 Super Bowl victory. He said he earned every gem.
”Damn right. It takes somebody to shift the gears. But I had a good car to drive. I played with a good team. I could have gone through a 15-year career and had all the stats I have, and win and win and win, and never get to the game and never win this ring, and I would have retired and felt I hadn`t accomplished what I was supposed to accomplish.”
The party in Oakland ended in 1979. Stabler was traded to Houston for Dan Pastorini. ”I went to a team that wasn`t quite as good, and I was starting to age.” After five knee operations, his legs caught up with him in 1984.
”I could still throw the ball, but I couldn`t move anymore. I enjoyed the game. It`s hard to just throw that in the corner and walk away from it, even though you probably should earlier. A lot of athletes are faced with that. They have a confidence and always believe they can do it one more year. You wind up staying too long.”
Stabler said the NFL Players Association should establish a committee of successful former players to counsel those near retirement on what to expect after football.
”You get out of football at 38, and you`re still a relatively young man. You`ve still got your life ahead of you. I took a year off and didn`t do anything. I went through a transition period all athletes go through.
”When you`re playing, your schedule is basically mapped out for you. What motivates you after you play 15 years and you`ve got all that direction through practice and coaching, the pampering that an athlete gets? You can`t find the same thing that fuels the fire the way playing does–the crowd noise, the locker room camaraderie, everything that surrounds the game.”
Stabler said what finally got him going again was ”Snake,” his biography, which he and writer Barry Stainback wrote in 1985.
”You don`t know if people are going to read that stuff or not,” he said. But the book stayed on The New York Times` top 10 list for about two months, eventually rising to fourth, and now has more than 150,000 copies in print.
Since then, Stabler has developed a Durango, Colo., marketing firm that organizes charity golf tournaments. At one recent event, he met and became involved with film makers producing a new ”Grizzly Adams” theatrical feature. He later agreed to help bankroll the project and two more ”Grizzly” films, gained the exclusive rights to market the trademark items and landed one of the film`s four key roles.
”It was my first time acting, other than trying to convince people I was a football player.”
Stabler continues to dabble in real estate, has driven in charity harness races, conducts public appearances and recently signed to pitch cars for Denver`s Dodge dealers. He opened a sports agent business in Ohio, but later closed it. And he said he now is negotiating with NBC and CBS to do NFL color commentary this fall.
In 1984, he married for the third time–to a former Miss Alabama, Rose Molly Burch, 25, who will debut soon doing weekend weather at a Mobile TV station.
His top priority now is his 7-month-old daughter, Alexa. He has a 16-year-old daughter in Phoenix from his first marriage.
People still ask for autographs, he said. ”You have to take it with a grain of salt. It`s a big ego trip. It makes you feel good that people remember you as an athlete, that somewhere along the line you entertained them.”
