White Heading Out After Four Visits to the Mountain Top

Offensive linemen, as produced in today’s factories, tend to stand somewhere between 6-feet 5-inches and 6-7 and weigh somewhere between 280 and 300 pounds.

They have upper torsos like triangles and legs like tree trunks.

Indeed, they look as if they all step out of one giant mold . . . or telephone booth.

Pro scouts would look at a guy standing maybe 6-1 in cowboy boots and weighing 271 in his socks and ask him if maybe he would like a job in security. This would be especially true if they saw him run and his choppy stride--which was hardly a stride at all--seemed more adaptable to crushing grapes.

To suggest that such a player would actually make it in the National Football League would have today’s scouts rubbing their eyes and wondering about the veracity of their computer printouts. And then tell them that just such a man played for 17 years in the NFL and probably will eventually land in the Hall of Fame.

Big Ed just retired from the NFL. No, that’s not quite right. Big Ed retired from the Chargers two years ago. Coach Ed retired as a Charger assistant this week. He’s Mr. Ed now, a sculptor who has retreated from the insane intensity of pro football to the pastoral woods of Julian.

Ironically, Ed White has fled just when pro football is about to reach the most insane intensity hereabouts. Super Bowl mania was knocking on the front door when White went out the back.

And no one in San Diego is quite as familiar with what Super Bowls are like than Mr. Ed . . . because Big Ed played in four of them.

“It’s the top of the mountain,” he said. “It doesn’t get any bigger than a Super Bowl is made out to be. It’s the ultimate for a football player.”

Unfortunately, White never played for the winning team in a Super Bowl. He was with Minnesota in each of those--1970, 1974, 1975 and 1977--and the Vikings came away with an 0-for-4 that stills sticks in their craw.

And, in fact, it still sticks in White’s craw.

“Up to game time,” he said, “it was fun. But there’s such an emotional buildup that the fall after not winning is devastating.”

Of course, this would seem to fly in the face of the oft-repeated statement that merely getting there and being a part of it is The Thing.

“You feel good about getting there,” White said. “You feel good about being the best in your conference. Getting up to that is exciting because you have had to win a couple of big games to do it. By then, you have the community involved and the media focused in. You even get attention from outside the country. There’s such an emotional buildup.”

He laughed.

“Heck,” he said, “they even interview interior linemen.”

Anything that moves or grunts gets interviewed.

And maybe, White suggested, that was part of the Vikings’ undoing. They did not play in a media center, and the coach at the time, Bud Grant, was not inclined to expose his players to whatever vultures might be circling.

“We were sheltered by Bud,” White said. “He kind of kept us away from the media. We dealt with one or two guys all year long, and all of the sudden there were 30 and 40. By the time it came to play the game, our hearts were pounding in our throats. We got so we were wondering if we were beaten before we went out there. It was like any other losing streak, kind of the way the Chargers are now when they go to Seattle.”

The Vikings bombed in all four Super Bowl games, losing, 23-7, to Kansas City in 1970, 24-7 to Miami in 1974, 16-6 to Pittsburgh in 1975 and 32-14 to Oakland in 1977.

It was never pretty for the Vikings, and White got so he wasn’t sure he wanted friends to watch.

That brings the subject to tickets, a hot item for scalpers but a nuisance for players.

“I really tended to stay out of the ticket business,” he said. “I couldn’t afford to buy tickets for everyone, and no one seemed to understand that the players have to pay, too. I’d get calls from people I hadn’t heard from in 10 to 15 years.”

He laughed again. He laughs heartily and often.

“You wouldn’t want to pay to have people come and watch you work, would you?” he asked.

Such was the nature of White’s work that people did want to pay to watch. Such is the nature of the Super Bowl that people will pay a fortune to watch a group of men working their way through a day at the office.

And such is the nature of Ed White’s life at the age of 40 that it was time to get away from all of the hassles.

Playing was fun.

“When it was great,” he said, “it was super.”

It was literally super in Minnesota, even if the final results on those final Sundays were not to the Vikings’ liking. There were also super times in White’s eight years as a player in San Diego, but the Chargers never took the final step into Super Sunday itself.

And so White was to retire as a player without that elusive Super Bowl victory.

That he retired into coaching was a surprise. He did not seem the type to spend 16 hours a day on what was suddenly more of a job than playing ever was. And this was a sensitive man with a family and artistic interests to occupy his time.

“As a player,” he said, “you do your work and go home. As a coach, you spend the time that the players are off figuring out what you want them to do. Coaching only seemed to get more and more time-consuming. I guess burnout is a good word for it.”

And so two years were enough.

“It was probably good for me,” he said. “It helped wean me away from the game.”

White was calling from a foundry in El Cajon. He had sold a sculpture that had to be reproduced. A buzzer sounded. The piece was almost ready. He now answers to a new two-minute warning, one with a little less urgent intensity.

Of course, Ed White does not much look the way a sculptor might be expected to look. But that’s fine. He has never looked like one who would be doing what he has done. And he has always been one of the best.