WHAT? DO I REMEMBER THE first World Bowl? Like it was last week,
kid. Those were great days back in 1991. Those were young days 20
years ago. The fans and the game and the players all had a freshness
to them, as though nobody had told them the game didn't matter. Not
like now, not like the monster hype vehicle you see today. You know
how many American sportswriters flew to London to cover the first
World Bowl? One. Me.
   You laugh, but I'm serious. This was before the shoecam and the
pigskincam and even the pom-pomcam. The World League of American
Football was zilch back then. I'll never forget the week before the
World Bowl. At a charity dinner, the WLAF president, Mike Lynn,
bumped into Prince Charles, whose charitable trust benefited from the
game. Lynn says to the prince, ''So, you coming to the game?'' And
the prince goes, ''What game?''
   Those were the days when nobody was sure whether the World League
was football or something held over from the Wilson Administration.
The WLAF was sort of like Jerry Lewis -- very big in France but
couldn't get arrested in the States. That made media access to the
players ridiculously easy. I rode on the London Monarch team bus back
to the hotel one day. Can you imagine that now, with the, what, 3,000
reporters around? The Moscow coach would have you hung in Red Square
if he caught you on his bus.
   There was even a question of whether the first World Bowl would be
a sellout. The WLAF tried just about everything to get one. ''We're
ready for the New England Patriots,'' said Monarch general manager
Billy Hicks in the week leading up to the game. ''We could hold our
own.''
   Of course, they almost did sell all 63,500 seats. Wembley Stadium
was rockin' that day, with 61,108 banner-waving, mostly pre-40,
American-pop-freak fans ready to make history. Here's how new
everything was: The MVP of the game, London cornerback Dan Crossman,
didn't even know that he got a $16,000 van for winning the award.
''Guys kept coming up to me during the game, telling me I was going
to win the car,'' Crossman would say later. ''But I thought they were
kidding. I mean, I'm thinking, This isn't the Super Bowl.''
   He was right. This was more fun than the Super Bowl. When London
won -- 21-0 in a blowout over the Barcelona Broncos, er, Dragons --
the Monarchs did  something I'd never seen in pro football. They went
into the stands to get their trophy from Lynn. Then they romped
around Wembley carrying it over their heads, dancing to
excruciatingly loud music, waving the Union Jack around as if it were
their very own (all but four players were American) and generally
carrying on as if they cared, which -- and this is the funny thing --
they really did. The fans cared too. Twenty-five minutes after the
final gun, maybe 1,000 people had left.
   In those days, the World League broke all the rules. The Monarch
players spent the season living in some 100-year-old, vacant
university dorms, which were a (pounds)30 ($50) cab ride from town.
It was quite lovely. The dorms had shower heads at navel level, no
telephones in the rooms, one television in each lounge, next to no
heat, even less hot water and, as the sole source of amusement, a
bedraggled dart board. It inspired various tournaments of backward
darts, blindfolded darts, steeplechase darts (competitors had to come
running into the room at full speed, leap over a couch and fire) and,
of course, lucky darts, in which outside linebacker Danny Lockett,
who also happened to be the league's defensive co-MVP that first
season, would suddenly decide to bury the darts as hard as he could
into a wall and everybody in the room would duck to avoid being
punctured.
   The other coaches in the league, whose players lived in hotels and
apartments, said the Monarchs had an advantage in enduring this hell,
because they ''lived together, like a family.'' Right. ''We were
lucky to keep them off each other's throats,'' said the Monarch
coach, London Larry Kennan. Actually, they weren't that lucky. The
Monarchs had half a dozen shouting matches on the sideline during the
year, plus one in the huddle during a game. Didn't bother Kennan
much. He once had been an assistant coach with the L.A. Raiders.
   Back in 1991 the World Bowl was practically run out of the back of
a VW. The stadium crew at Wembley couldn't even begin painting the
WLAF logo and the team names on the field that year until a schoolboy
soccer match ended at five o'clock the night before the game.
   And even once the historic event began, you weren't sure what in
the world was going on. For instance, after London fumbled away the
opening kickoff, Barcelona lost 12 yards on three plays and screwed
up a field goal try. The holder dropped the snap, and kicker Massimo
Manca tried to kick the ball while   it was squirting on the ground,
figuring the big guys chasing it would leave him alone. London
recovered, went nowhere and punted, and then Barcelona was
intercepted. Anyway, after almost 15 minutes, the score was 0-0, so,
naturally, the soccer fans at Wembley felt right at home.
   But on the last play of the first quarter, a pass from the London
41-yard line, Monarch wide receiver Jon Horton -- yes, the Jon
Horton; believe it or not, at that point in Horton's career, the NFL
didn't think he was any good -- totally embarrassed Barcelona
cornerback Charles Fryar (Irving's cousin), letting Fryar think he
had an interception, then stealing the ball out of his hands at the
Barcelona 19. Fryar fell down, and the safety sideswiped Horton and
missed. Horton could've scored the first World Bowl touchdown in a
Beefeater's uniform: London 7-0.
   Every fifth catch Horton made that year was a touchdown. Not bad
for a guy who couldn't make it through one season in the Canadian
Football League and had to make a living playing pro basketball in
Mexico, eh?
   Barcelona quarterback Scott Erney threw his next two passes to
Crossman, the second of which was returned for a score. Crossman just
sneaked inside a down- and-out, ''squeezed the ball like a baby,'' he
said, and floated in for a 20-yard TD. Crossman would get a third
interception later in the second quarter. Up in the royal box, actor
John Cleese and the Moody Blues (who did not lip-sync God Save the
Queen) were having a bloody good time. London was up 14-0.
   Then, with 52 seconds left in the half, Monarch quarterback Stan
Gelbaugh threw a rope to halfback Judd Garrett -- they hooked up 12
times that day -- for a 14-yard touchdown. Bring on the marching band
from Central State University, in Wilberforce, Ohio, which the
Wembley crowd greeted like a Beatles reunion. London 21-0, and you
know the rest.
   Back in the States, you probably could've heard the Nielsen
ratings dropping through the floor, but in London, what one veteran
Fleet Street writer called ''as fine a celebration as ever seen at
Wembley'' was building. When the game ended, the idea was for
Gelbaugh to go into the stands and accept the trophy, a 40-pound
glass globe (it lit up, too) from Lynn and his pals Pete Rozelle, Tex
Schramm and Tom Landry. However, Gelbaugh's shoulder was hurting, so
he asked Crossman to accompany him into the stands and help him lift
the  globe. Next thing you know, all 41 players and the coaches were
stomping up to   the royal box to get their big paws on the globe.
Then came the Stanley Cup lap.
   ''The NFL should do that,'' I remember Lynn saying afterward.
''The NFL just goes in the locker room, and nobody gets to see the
celebration.''
   That's the way that first World Bowl went down, kid -- almost 25
years to the day after the NFL and the AFL agreed to merge -- in
front of a crowd that was 838 short of the attendance at the first
Super Bowl, in Los Angeles in 1967.
   There was something wonderfully honest, low-rent and delicious
about World Bowl I. Afterward, the Monarchs, who finished 11-1,
dressed in a ''locker room'' that was nothing but some partitions put
up in the middle of a giant exhibition hall, with portable showers
trucked in for the World Bowl. The game was dreadful and terrific at
the same time: You didn't know whether it was the beginning or, who
knew, the end of something.
   ''If that wasn't big-time football out there,'' said London Larry,
''I don't know what is.'' Across the way, Monarch head trainer
Mayfield Armstrong was showing off his new and very permanent tattoo,
a Monarch logo on his butt.
   And to think England's favorite sport used to be soccer.



Copyright 1991 Time Inc.