Monday, August 31, 1998

Cowboys' 'Bullet Bob' leaves mark on NFL

By Frank Luksa

The Dallas Morning News

(KRT)

Twenty-odd years after leaving the game, he still ranks as the best player with the least post-career recognition in NFL history. The story of Bob Hayes remains less a case of how soon they forget than how few seem willing to remember.

The life of Hayes is a melancholy tale. It began on the back streets of Jacksonville, Fla., where he believes the seed of later personal disgrace lay hidden. It ascended to world-wide fame in the 1964 Olympic Games, revolutionary influence in pro football, a jail cell in Huntsville, Texas, and a sense of drift thereafter.

Hayes is now 55. The day when he set a 100-meter world record in the Olympics wearing a borrowed shoe and ran anchor on the winning 400-meter relay team is in the care of misty history. So is an All-Pro receiving career spanning 10 years with the Cowboys (1965-74). A career in which he averaged an astounding 20 yards per catch, and with speed beyond all others, forced evolution of the zone defense.

Bullet Bob was a singular rarity. He changed a game. Pity that he couldn't change the trials of later life.

Hayes has come full circle. He left Dallas and has lived with his mother in Jacksonville for the past five years. We met by chance in the locker room last Thursday night after the Cowboys-Jaguars exhibition an encounter that stirred memories of happier times when he caught a total of 71 touchdown passes and I wrote about them.

A belated form of post-career notice has come to Hayes with completion of a video entitled, The Olympic Cowboy. He mentioned it as a project that has kept him busy between full-time jobs. It's the story of his life, available at a bargain price.

"It'll only cost you $19.95," he teased. A promotional sales pitch followed: "It's the whole story. The good, the bad and the ugly."

The good will tell of Olympic immortality. Maybe a recounting of how Joe Frazier, future heavyweight boxing champ, upended his duffel bag in search of chewing gum and inadvertently kicked Bob's right shoe under the bed. Hayes didn't miss the footwear until he reached the field. Teammate Tommy Farrell loaned Bob his shoe for a fraction more than nine seconds, which is how long it took Hayes to prove he was the world's fastest human.

More good will follow in a reprise of Hayes' impact on the Cowboys and NFL. He averaged almost one touchdown catch for every five passes (71-of-365) over his career. He is still the team's all-time punt return leader 24 years after his last game in Dallas. Unable to cope man-to-man with Hayes, defenses adopted zone defenses to negate his speed.

The ugly may note that Hayes did time in prison on a cocaine-distribution charge. And perhaps that he spent a term, paid for by Roger Staubach, in a substance abuse clinic to address an affinity for alcohol. Video highlights end there.

The bad befell Hayes as he began to wander back home. The worst was to wind up as once-great-turned-footnote. The prison sentence ruined his planned induction into the Ring of Honor that year. It cast a pall over his name and prevented his rightful inclusion into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

"I think it's unjust. It's a deep, hurtful feeling," Hayes said, referring to the Hall of Fame's lockout. "All the guys who've been inducted deserved it. But how many of them revolutionized the game? That's what is disturbing."

Reaction to Ring of Honor exclusion carries the same emotion. There's more resignation than anger in his voice.

"Almost everyone I meet says, 'I saw your name in the Ring of Honor.' I have to say, 'No, I'm not.' They think I'm there because I deserve to be. Maybe someday," he said.

Hayes has reflected on how things turned out the way they did. He thinks a rough childhood left him poorly equipped for the longer run of life as an adult.

"I didn't have a normal teen-age life. It was hard and tough...pool halls and shoeshine parlors. Even with church on Sunday. It was the fast lane on street corners with my dad."

Hayes knows regrets, but they are past-tense and beyond recall to alter. He sounded to have reached an accommodation with who he was years ago as opposed to who he is today.

"You have adversity in life. Nobody is perfect. That's why you have to live on life's terms. I'm comfortable and peaceful," he said.

I hope it's true. Hayes is a kind heart with natural inclination to please others, a trait that often led him in the wrong direction. Yet when the next Ring of Honor nominee is named and a forgotten Hall of Fame candidate revealed, he should be first in line for both honors.

(Frank Luksa is a sports columnist for the Dallas Morning News. Write to him at: Dallas Morning News, Communications Center, Dallas, Texas 75265.)

(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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