If Pig-Push Comes to Shove, Go With the Panthers

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Walking through the Carolina Panthers’ locker room, one can’t help but look for the reincarnation of Michael Landon, a director screaming “action” and some assurances that this is indeed another TV episode of “Highway to Heaven.”

This team has somebody named Bucky Greeley. OK, so he’s a practice-squad player, but by game time of the Super Bowl, he probably will be on “Good Morning, America” making like Nuke LaLoosh in “Bull Durham.”

You have to go to the local morgue to find more stiffs than what this team has assembled in this locker room: Andre Royal, Matthew Campbell and Dino Philyaw. Rookie Norberto Garrido is going to block Reggie White, and this had better be some kind of made-for-TV movie with a scripted happy ending or Carolina quarterback Kerry Collins is going to be planted in the frozen tundra.

Ray Nitschke, Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor--they all could still be playing for the Carolina Panthers, who obviously have no age restrictions--when you have 17 players over age 30, what’s three more geezers?

It’s like a convention of rejects. Sam Mills, considered one of their best players, was cut by the Cleveland Browns--in 1981. Shoot, the 5-foot-9 linebacker tried to make it with the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts, and they didn’t want him. Mills became a photography teacher, and finally made it in football only because they invent a league for rejects and call it the USFL.

Consider this: It has been 29 years since the Packers played in an NFC title game at Lambeau Field, and the only thing standing between them and the Super Bowl is Les Miller and Co.

If this were some cow-chip throwing contest or noodling tournament, Miller’s the favorite. Noodling? Get with it: Bare-hand fishing in which you jump into the creek, hold your breath and pet the fish before grabbing them. Miller caught a 43-pounder on his best day. This guy still holds the Rodeo Meat Packing slaughterhouse record of pushing 32 pig carcasses all at once on a track, and around a corner too, into the cooler.

“You don’t know how good that is,” said Wayne Jackson, Miller’s “wrastling” high school coach in Arkansas City, Kan., pronounced “our-Kansas” or they know you’re a foreigner. “I could push six, and I saw some big old boys push eight to 10, but 32 is a pretty big accomplishment.”

Last week Miller hogtied Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman, and the fellas down in the Panthers’ locker room awarded him a game ball. Tell me this isn’t Tom Berenger in “Major League.”

Les Miller in a professional football uniform in an NFC championship game at Lambeau Field is science fiction. Last season, Miller, known as “Big Country” by his teammates, was out hunting pheasant and quail with Pete and Max, his dogs. The guy didn’t play a down of football, but for the Panthers last week he lined up at every position along the defensive line at some point in the game.

“He called me the other day and says, ‘Hello, Ma, my picture was in the New York Times,’ ” said Peggy Matney, Miller’s mother. “I said, ‘That’s great, son; call me when you’re on the cover of Rolling Stone, and buy five copies for your mama.’ ”

No respect. Les Miller and Co. have been cut, re-signed, signed and released so many times that, until now, no one has cared who they are or what they do. An Arkansas City paper, the Traveler--costs 50 cents a day--didn’t do an article on their favorite son until last Saturday and only because Miller’s wife’s grandmother called the editors and chewed them out.

“I was done playing football after being cut twice by New Orleans,” said Miller, 6 feet 7 and 305 pounds, who began playing in the NFL 10 years ago as a replacement player for the San Diego Chargers during a strike. “Look around this locker room, there are a lot of guys like me. I think that’s what this team is all about--many of us have fought losing battles and still haven’t given up.

“Ten years ago, I was back home working in a factory; that’s what folks do back there. I was making 12 bucks an hour, good pay, good benefits, and the only reason I went to San Diego to try football was because it was the only chance I’d ever get to see the ocean.”

He kept his Charger paychecks in a shoe box under his hotel room bed because he expected to be cut any day. He would sit on his hotel balcony watching the cars go by on the nearby highway because he never saw so many cars going somewhere in such a hurry. Most every chance he got, he went to the beach to watch the sunset, and looking like Bill Walton in Walton’s early Grateful Dead days, Miller appeared to be sleeping on the beach every night.

“I was a hick,” he said, and he’s still driving an extended-cab pickup to work every day. “OK, I’m still a hick. When I went to San Diego, man, I could order pizza and they would deliver it to my house. It was so cool.

“I guess I’m still raw in many ways. To me it’s a simple game: They snap the ball and your job is to get the guy with the ball.”

One game away from the Super Bowl. Robert Redford hits the home run into the lights and there are sparks flying everywhere, but he was the Natural. Les Miller and Co. are training camp fodder, whose names make it into the paper only when they go on the waiver wire.

“God’s blessed me and, yeah, I know, it’s an amazing story,” Miller said. “It’s just perseverance for all of us. I had high school coaches telling me I was too wild to make it in college.

“I mean, I have put a lot of draft choices out of work, and I was just a free agent out of Fort Hays State. I’m not supposed to be here, and that’s what I thrive on. None of us are supposed to be playing Green Bay. Tell me I can’t do it, and I’m going to do it.”

No way Les Miller and Co. can beat the Packers unless this is some sort of Hickory High “Hoosiers” remake.

SUPER BOWL XXXI

Carolina against Jacksonville. It’s unclear if football fans would be interested in an all-expansion Super Bowl, but the Panthers would like the opportunity for revenge.

The Jaguars knocked off the Panthers, 24-14, in Jacksonville on Sept. 29. In that defeat, Carolina lost first-round draft pick, running back Tshimanga Biakabutuka, for the season because of a torn knee ligament.

SUPER BOWL ODDS

Cesar Robaina, odds manager for Las Vegas Sports Consultants, doesn’t look for a very competitive Super Bowl.

“If it’s Green Bay and New England, you’re probably looking at Green Bay by 11 1/2, 11,” Robaina said. “If it’s Green Bay-Jacksonville, you’re probably looking at 17, maybe 16.”

The Panthers are as much as 12-point underdogs in some places for Sunday’s game against the Packers. Had the Cowboys beaten Carolina, Robaina said they would have been 6 1/2-point underdogs because of the injury to wide receiver Michael Irvin.

“When all the fans in the [Lambeau Field] stands were saying, ‘We Want Dallas, We Want Dallas,’ we were saying, ‘Boy, are they stupid,’ ” Robaina said. “I understand they want to beat Dallas and get that monkey off their back. But with Carolina, you get a much easier route to the Super Bowl. Who’s going to ever remember that you lost to Dallas eight straight games when you win the Super Bowl?”

THE WALSH FACTOR

Marc Trestman, expected to be fired as 49ers’ offensive coordinator, directed the NFL’s No. 2 offense in 1995 when San Francisco scored 457 points, converted 48.9% of its third downs and averaged 380.4 yards a game.

With Walsh peering over his shoulder this season as offensive consultant, Trestman’s offense ranked No. 6--San Francisco’s lowest ranking since 1981--scored 398 points, averaged 344.1 yards a game and converted 35.2% on third down.

Walsh is expected to assume personnel chores, including the draft, with the 49ers, while the team seeks a new offensive coordinator. In the last two drafts, San Francisco has selected J.J. Stokes and Israel Ifeanyi, two players who are now considered busts.

“I want him around,” said Carmen Policy, 49er president. “I haven’t talked to him in detail about it, but I think he’ll be around the Niners next year.”

49ER FALLOUT

The 49ers finished the season with an 0-5 record against the NFC’s three top teams--Green Bay, Carolina and Dallas. San Francisco never reacts well after failing to win a Super Bowl, and while Trestman will be the scapegoat, Coach George Seifert is expected to become a lame duck.

Seifert’s contract expires at the end of the 1997 season, and the 49ers don’t appear interested in locking him up any longer, although he has a .755 winning percentage and two Super Bowl titles.

“This is a year-to-year business,” Policy said. “George Seifert is going to coach the San Francisco 49ers in 1997. I don’t know that George wants to be the coach in 1998. Your future and present is a season. In terms of looking forward, it’s impossible for us to go beyond that.”

THE NEXT MONTANA

Walsh, who knows something about quarterbacks, has said of Seattle’s Rick Mirer, “He reminds me a lot of Joe Montana.”

And yet the Seahawks are expected to trade Mirer this off-season. If so, the Chicago Bears want him.

The Bears offered Seattle a second-round pick and an unnamed player shortly before the trading deadline earlier this season and Mirer agreed to take a pay cut to play for Chicago.

The deal didn’t happen, but the Bears probably will be asked to surrender a first-round pick now to acquire Mirer.

“It would seem like he can be a Pro Bowl-caliber quarterback from all outward signs,” Walsh said. “He appears to have all it takes to be a great quarterback. . . . It’s not unusual for a quarterback to not play up to expectations initially. Most don’t. I think he’s on a track to where he’ll mature and be a very effective player, much like Jim Harbaugh has done.”

EXTRA POINTS

--The Arizona Cardinals haven’t won a playoff game since the franchise was in Chicago in 1947. Jacksonville and Carolina are one game away from the Super Bowl in their second year in the league.

--If Arizona’s Jim Fassel becomes the New York Giants’ coach, he has a chance for a good first year. The Giants will play Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, Baltimore and New Orleans at home. Those four non-playoff teams combined for a 21-43 record.

--The Giants ran 1,000 plays in 1996; they gained more than 25 yards on 12 of them.

--Starting Denver guard Mark Schlereth underwent knee surgery this week, his seventh in the last 13 months and the 16th in his 12-year college and pro career.