"GLASSES. MAYBE HE NEEDS GLASSES"

Don Coryell reintroduced me to pro football three decades ago. As a kid I can remember team names such as the Chicago Cardinals, San Francisco 49-ers, Green Bay Packers, and New York Giants and thinking they were funny. They weren't at all like the baseball cities team names I had grown to know. I had no idea what a Packer was or where Green Bay was, but I thought they sounded tough.

Not long afterwards, the team from Chicago moved to St. Louis kind of validating my young social strata order. I mean the St. Louis Cardinals was now a good fit. And while there had been a New York Giants baseball team, I hadn't known of them.

Feebly the Cardinals limped into the NFL in St. Louis and proceeded to unimpress. Once in a great while I'd hear about Charley Johnson or some other borderline star, but St. Louis has always been a baseball town, so there wasn't much interest until Coach Coryell took over.

A masterful college coach with an unasssuming personality and slight lisp, no one would have expected his success at the pro level. But he changed pro football as it had been played. And he was doing it in my (almost) hometown. Jim Hart, Mel Gray, Terry Metcalf, Jim Otis, and one offensive line that was the best ever. They became the Cardiac Cards with their last minute excitement.

But he could never get control of the draft, of personnel matters, of say-so that so many coaches demand. So dull George Boone drafts Steve Pzarkewitz, a Missouri Qb, and passes on Robin Cole, Hall of Fame LB drafted later by the Steelers.

At one of the Qb's first practices, he couldn't complete a ten yard slant over the middle with no one rushing. Exasperated, Coach Coryell says to one of his assistants,"Glasses. Maybe he needs glasses." He was that bad. And Cole was that good.

It was the beginning of the end for Coryell in St. Louis. No more Cardiac Cardinals. Now in Az, the Cardinals are still floundering/ still messing up on draft day. This year, we'll soon see them in action again. Or should inaction be one word?