Manning exit nothing like Gretzky’s
The Colts are letting a tired player go; Pocklington dumped a star in his prime
With Manning, the Colts are letting a tired player go; with Gretzky, Pocklington dumped a star in his prime. Cam Cole makes the comparison.
Peter Pocklington, long shed of his ankle bracelet and speaking from exile in Palm Desert, Calif., last month told the Indianapolis Star’s Bob Kravitz that trading Wayne Gretzky in 1988 was a simple matter of necessity.
By which, presumably, the former Edmonton Oiler owner meant that after getting arguably the greatest player in the history of hockey at a bargain salary for 10 years, he was going to have to pay him market value in his next contract.
And Pocklington, basically a small- timer trying to play with the big boys of NHL ownership, couldn’t afford to do that, couldn’t possibly make an exception even for the game’s most exceptional player without having his entire financial house of cards collapse.
The Super Bowl week interview was apropos of the Indianapolis Colts’ inevitable parting of ways with quarterback Peyton Manning, and Kravitz had sought out Pocklington and former San Francisco 49ers executive Carmen Policy — who traded Joe Montana to Kansas City at the tail end of his career — to testify to the public- relations hell that Colts owner Jim Irsay could expect to face the day he let an icon go.
Well, Wednesday was the day.
And Irsay, against all odds, came out of it not too badly battered, largely because when the TV cameras came on, the everclassy Manning was note- perfect in his emotional parting words for the city, the Colts, their fans, the equipment guys, and even the embattled owner, who he knew was in a near nowin situation.
Gretzky, on the day he was packed off and shipped to L. A., couldn’t manage to paste on a smile and feign a kind word for Pocklington and a strong case can be made that the owner’s reputation also went irretrievably south that day, though it was, frankly, a short ride from blowhard to pariah.
Accusing The Great One of faking his tears probably didn’t help.
What the two scenes had in common — Gretzky alongside Glen Sather and Pocklington at Edmonton’s Molson House on Aug. 9, 1988, and Manning standing with Irsay at the Colts’ training complex Wednesday — was the unknown: how would the media take it? How would the fans?
Could the principals spin it as win- win? Sad but necessary? Would anyone buy that?
Pocklington, who had the element of shock weighing against him, couldn’t pull it off.
But Manning’s departure had been fait accompli for weeks.
That didn’t make the actual moment of the announcement any less moving. To see Manning standing there, fighting tears and choking up as he said goodbye to the only National Football League club he has ever known — a franchise he nearly single- handedly raised from doormat to regular- season juggernaut — was still a powerful, lump- in- the- throat passage.
“We all know that nothing lasts forever,” Manning said. “Times change, circumstances change, and that’s the reality of playing in the NFL.”
No matter which team signs him, he said — and the lineup will probably be 10 deep — “I’ll always be a Colt. That’ll never change.” And to the fans: “It’s been an honour to be your quarterback.”
The topic of money — specifically the $ 35.4 million in bonus and salary for which the Colts would have been on the hook this season, if they hadn’t released Manning this week — never came up except for Irsay’s contention that “this was never about money.” Cough, cough. Even in the NFL, where money grows on trees, $ 35 million is considered serious coin. So no one — well, other than diehard Colts fans — is really blaming Irsay for not feeling it was owed to a guy who may not be able to play at anything like the same level, or whose health is now an ongoing issue.
At least Irsay didn’t say: “A brave man only dies once; a coward dies every day. Sometimes, as unpopular as it is, you have to do the brave thing.”
That was Pocklington’s line in the Indy Star story, as if to suggest that it was a bold move to sell/ trade Gretzky, and history had proved him right. That assertion was about 11 kinds of wrong — one for each season Gretzky would play, in three different cities, after leaving Edmonton.
Not to dredge up the sordid past, but Pocklington’s tacit acceptance of the rather generous comparison to Irsay’s dilemma with Manning — and Policy’s with Montana — ignores a couple of facts.
Like: Manning is about to turn 36, missed all of last season with a neck injury that has required several cervical procedures and could yet limit his effectiveness as an NFL quarterback. The Colts also finished last in 2011, draft No. 1 this year, and if Stanford’s Andrew Luck is as good as advertised, they could again have a very viable QB within two or three seasons.
Like: Montana was 37 years old when he was traded, and had missed most of the two previous seasons, and had already been supplanted as the 49ers’ starting QB by another future Hall of Famer, Steve Young.
Gretzky? He was 27, two months past bringing Edmonton its fourth Stanley Cup in five seasons. A historic dynasty was sitting right there, dying to be completed. There was no $ 28- million bonus payment needing to be made by Pocklington, no fledgling superstar waiting in the Oilers’ wings. Gretzky was still young and healthy, with another pretty darned good decade in the NHL ahead of him. Only in his 21st and final season, in New York, was he less than a point- a- game scorer.
So yes, it was about money — certainly not bravery — and ’ twas ever thus.
Jim Irsay may sound like a kook, and quote rock ’ n’ roll lyrics on Twitter as if they’re speaking to him alone, but he knows about money and infamy. His father moved the Colts out of Baltimore in March, 1984, packed the moving vans in the middle of the night and took the franchise off to Indianapolis. The late Bob Irsay’s name is still mud in Baltimore.
His heir let another franchise get away Wednesday, one made of flesh and blood and loyalty that is just apt to suit up with some more successful outfit for the next three years and hand the Colts a few of the many losses they’re going to suffer while trying to find their way again without their leader.
Notwithstanding Peyton Manning’s words of kindness and understanding, the owner isn’t likely to be Indy’s Man of the Year any time soon.