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The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 25

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Los Angeles, California
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25
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SP OR TS san Dies Tuesday, November 17, 1981 CdO AtlflCleS SThWCO CCtPart III Seahawks Join the Crowd, Rout Chargers Touchdown on a Fake Field Goal Helps Seattle to 44-23 Victory; San Diego Is Now 6-5 By DAVE DISTEL, Times Staff Writer SEATTLE-When last the nation looked in on the Chargers on a Monday night, Air Coryell soared to a 44-14 win over Cleveland and looked quite invincible. A very different Charger team is alive and not too well these days. This team was blown away Monday night by the Seattle Seahawks, of all people, 44-23. These are the Seahawks the Chargers had beaten in all of their eight previous meetings. They went to their book of tricks to score on an 18-yard pass from field-goal formation while building a first-half lead and then broke the game open with an 80-yard pass from Jim Zorn to Dan Doornink when the Chargers were threatening early in the second half.

Thus, the Chargers slipped to 6-5 for the season and, more importantly, dropped to third place in the AFC West. They trail first-place Denver by two games with five to play. "We've got to forget about this," Coach Don Coryell said. "Look at the films, and then block it out of our minds. You can't play "em over." While they are at it, the Chargers will also be forgetting about last week's 40-17 loss to Cincinnati.

They have much more to forget of late than they do to remember. "I sure don't see any lack of effort," veteran guard Ed White said. "It's very frustrating." "If there's a way to come back," defensive tackle Gary Johnson said, "we're going to have to find it. I guess we need help now, but the only people we should be looking to are ourselves." With Denver winning Sunday, the Chargers were in a position in which it was more important not to lose than it was to win. Winning would not get them into as much as a share of first place, but losing would take their destiny out of their hands.

They do need help. Indeed, the Chargers entered this game after a rather disruptive week shrouded with controversy. John Jefferson's assertions that "at least eight" players want out caused renewed dialogue regarding unrest between players and management. The players finally held a team meeting to try to get unified in a positive direction. However, the trip to the Northwest got off to a belated start when the team's chartered plane sat on the runway in San Diego waiting for Michael Klein, the owner's son, to arrive on a flight from Los Angeles.

It did not sit well with the athletes. Upon arriving in Seattle, the power was out in the hotel. The team went straight to the Kingdome instead for a practice. Not exactly an auspicious buildup for a game with a team it should beat and, in fact, had always beaten. Such teams are giving everyone fits this year, and Seattle had beaten Pittsburgh only a week earlier.

Even Monday started on a losing note. The Chargers tried to sneak defensive lineman John Lee through waivers to get him off the injured list, and New England claimed him. They also lost wide receiver Billy Brooks on waivers to Houston. Into this scenario came the game itself. The Chargers were without injured Rush Washington and Mike Williams, and would lose Chuck Muncie, Louie Kclcher and Doug Wilkerson before it was over.

Muncie had a big game before he went out 151 yards and two touchdowns in 20 carries but a few inches he did not make early in the second half were pivotal in the outcome. Down at the start of the second half, 24-17, the Chargers drove from their own 40 to a first down at the Seattle 4 and seemed to be in a position to tie the score. Muncie got two to the 2 and one to the 1, and then was turned away on back-to-back plays. "I thought I was in on third down," he said, "for sure." After Seattle wedged the ball out from the 1 to the 20, the play triggered what would become an avalanche. Zorn flipped a little pass to the right to Doornink in the backfield.

He got a block from center John Yarno and Please see CHARGERS, Page 5 To Cowboys and Saints, It Isn't So Funny Losers Unable to Find Humor in Rozelle's Jokes About Officials' Errors From Times Wire Services National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle tried to make light of costly mistakes made by officials in two games Sunday, but to the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints it was no laughing matter. Detroit's 27-24 victory over the Cowboys is final, even though the Lions had too many players on the field when they kicked a frantic game-winning field goal as time expired. And New Orleans Coach Bum Phillips is having a tough time excusing line judge Boyce Smith, who called back an apparent Saints touchdown in a 20-10 loss to the Minnesota Vikings because he "inadvertently" blew his whistle just before defensive end Frank Warren caught a blocked pass and rambled into the end zone. "I'd like to congratulate all 12 or 13 (Detroit players) who participated in the winning field goal," Rozelle laughed as he opened a news conference Monday. "It was certainly a dramatic ending to one of the great games I've seen.

"We have no provisions in our rule book for the Awoclated Presa p. jJm -Ji Sure enough, there are 12 Detroit Lions on the field for the game-ending, game- Minninn fiolH final anainst th Dallas at Pnntiar Slinrlav. I An Ex-Official Shows He Can Still Blow the Whistle Officiating professional games is among the most difficult things in sports, and the men who work the National Football League are particularly on the spot because of the great amount of television exposure the league has. Sunday, there were two controversial situations regarding officials in the NFL, and those are reported here, along with an interview with a former NFL official, Fred Swearingen, who gives an unusually candid and controversial look at how it is for the men who wear the striped shirts. By BILL DWYRE, Times Sports Editor For 21 years as an official in the National Football League, Fred Swearingen existed somewhat like a child at a formal dinner.

He was there to be seen, not heard. It wasn't that he got into the part-time business of throwing flags and blowing whistles on Sunday afternoons to become rich or famous. But occasionally noticed, or occasionally treated like something other than a puppet on a string by his superiors, would built a floundering sporting goods business into a thriving one in his home area of Athens, Ohio, and who is currently the executive vice president of the Chamber of Commerce in Oceanside, named some names, pointed some fingers and painted some surprising pictures of the way it is for an NFL official. His pictures are of men programmed to be silent, obedient robots; of George Orwell workers whose Big Brothers all have offices on Park Avenue in New York City; of good soldiers who march only to the NFL's tune and never consider complaining about sore feet. The soldiers get enough out of the travel and the pay that supplements whatever they do in have been nice, he reasoned.

"I always figured there are three parts to a football game," he said. "There are the players, the coaches and the officials. But as far as the NFL is concerned, officials don't even exist." Swearingen's change in the outcome of a play in a game. The game just stands. "Tex Schramm (Cowboys president) is always gracious about officials' mistakes, and I don't anticipate any difficulty with Dallas." Schramm, however, was miffed and said the commissioner could order the game replayed "if he wishes to be bold." But an NFL resolution empowering Rozelle to order replays involves extraordinary circumstances far greater than an official's miscount and Schramm said it is unlikely Rozelle would take such a step.

Dallas game film shows and Lions Coach Monte Clark confirmed Monday that 12 Detroit players lined up on Eddie Murray's 47-yard field goal as the clock ran out. Clark, asked on a radio show Monday if he knew how many Lions were on the field at the time of the kick, replied, "I sure do only 12." If the Lions had been penalized for having one too many players on the field, the game at Pontiac, would have gone into overtime. The field goal would have been wiped out, but the down would not have been replayed because the offensive team committed the foul. But the officials called no penalty. "There are going to be mistakes with six people Please see NFL, Page 4 1.

1 nf i I career as an official in the NFL, which ended with his involuntary retirement last April at age 60, had relatively normal ups and downs. But the 21 years left him with an itch to say some things that have seldom been said before by an NFL official. In a wide-ranging interview with The Times, the man who once won a Navy Cross for heroics as a pilot in World War II, who their full-time professionand get the status that goes with being a part of a pro sport to keep coming back for more. But they have no leverage, even if they were accorded a voice. "The stock answer for any complaint is that they have a roomful of applicants just waiting for jobs," Swearingen said.

In April, Swearingen was told that his con-Please see REFEREE, Page 6 GEORGE CAREY Los Angeles Times Could Revolutionize Off-Road Racing New Concept Emerges From Baja 1000 By SHAV GLICK, Times Staff Writer ENSENADA, Mexico-Jack Baja old-timers greeted Mehta and his navigator, Michael Doughty, with the same skepticism. Except for a few primitive notes used in the early days of Baja, running down the peninsula has been a seat-of-the-pants proposition, drivers racing from memory, many driving solo. Brabham and Mehta have something else in common. Both were i recognized winners before coming to the U.S. Brabham was the world Grand Prix champion and Mehta is a four-time winner of the East Africa Safari, one of the world's most prestigious rallies.

Mehta, 36, drove a Datsun pickup approximately 400 miles of the 805-mile Pcrnod-SCORE Baja 1000 with Doughty calling out "every deflection in the road, every turn or curve, every rise or dip, every bump or ditch." Jim Conner of El Cajon, the owner of the truck, drove the other 400 miles by himself including the final 200 into Ensmndn. He finished Please see BAJA, Page 6 Brabham finished only ninth in the Indianapolis 500 when he came out of Australia in 1961 with his rear-engine car, but the concept revolutionized American racing. Shekhar Mehta finished third in the last Baja 1000 mini-pickup class when he came from Kenya with a European rally type method of pre -paration and it may revolutionize off-road racing in the same manner. The old front-engine roadster crowd at Indy laughed at Brabham's little rear-engine car, saying it would never last. A few years later there wasn't a front-engine car in the race.

Del Mar Entries -19m; h. Associated Press This is the type of rugged terrain drivers encountered in Baja 1000. Of the 280 vehicles, 84 finished. Page 2.

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