No one played better than Rice because no one worked harder
The most comforting thing about Jerry Rice flaming out as a professional golfer is this: If he had actually mastered the game well enough to qualify for the U.S. Open as he had intended, we would never have been able to enjoy his work ethic as a football player quite as much again.
But this way, Rice remains not only the best wide receiver ever to play professional football, he also remains the hardest working one.
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| Practice makes perfect, and no player took it as seriously as Jerry Rice. (Getty Images) |
In other words, he was lucky, and he was talented, but he worked his way to the top. If he had become the next Tom Watson, we might have suspected he was in fact talent beyond all else. This way, no conceptions of what made Rice Rice are broken.
His induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame is the highest form of anticlimax. He knew he was going in 15 years ago, and so did we. The only question was who was going to introduce him.
But in recreating Jerry Rice the football icon, we also have to remember that he was also the first true wide receiving diva. He didn't mind complaining that he didn't get the ball often enough before anyone else ever thought of speaking out on the subject, which was a big deal back in the day. Now, everyone does it, so nobody's listening any more.
He was also capable of contriving the odd training camp holdout so that he wouldn't have to wear himself down in training camp. Bill Walsh also objected with a wink to let us know that he knew that Rice wasn't doing a contract dance but saving himself for when it mattered.
Now, that is nothing on the diva scale, but he opened the door through which Michael Irvin and Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco and Brandon Marshall and all the others strode.
In fact, he jumpstarted Owens' divahood, as his final game in San Francisco, the day of his big sendoff, was also the day Owens, still a 49er, caught 20 balls and got the easily understandable feeling that he was the inheritor of Rice's crown.
He wasn't, of course. Nobody has gotten close to it yet. The talking it is better; the walking it, not nearly so.
In fairness, Rice did his heaviest lifting with Joe Montana and Steve Young throwing him the ball, which beats a groin pull every time. He also broke in with San Francisco when the 49ers were the double platinum standard for all things offense.
But the thing about being great on a great team is that you are playing to the toughest audience there is -- great peers. You lay down at your peril. You take a play off, the smell lingers. You bitch without providing the payoff, you lose respect.
Rice paid off, though, and the numbers don't resonate the way the visions do. They don't have to. Nobody, not even Owens or Ochocinco or Irvin or any of the other Div-ettes, would offer an argument without a laugh track.
And yet the essence of Rice is that everything he did came because he put in the time. He was a terrible receiver for the first 10 games of his career, something he freely admits, but he fought through the boos and the mockery of a demanding audience to become the best in the game by the beginning of Year Three, and even if he stayed two teams too long (The Raiders? The Seahawks?), it didn't matter. He was Jerry Rice, damn it, and that was the card that won the hand every time.
And best of all, he didn't dilute his legend by becoming a great golfer in a couple of years. His work really was his work, and nobody worked at it better.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for Comcast Sports Bay Area in San Francisco.
