Ventre: Suh is a dirty player, but far from the first or worst

NFL history is filled with 'bush league' tactics that come in heat of battle

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Former NFL defensive lineman Mike Golic says that old-time players chuckle at the publicity given to Ndamukong Suh's recent antics. They've all seen worse.

OPINION

updated 10:28 a.m. ET Dec. 13, 2011

Michael Ventre

Like millions of other football fans, Conrad Dobler saw the Ndamukong Suh stomp of Evan Dietrich-Smith. And he didn?t approve.

?What he did was totally bush league,? noted the former offensive lineman for the Cardinals, Saints and Bills. ?But it was no more bush league than when I played against the Rams and Merlin Olsen grabbed my shoulder pads and Jack Youngblood tried to come and hit my legs from the side. I was kicking Merlin?s ass, and even (Dan) Dierdorf (his Cardinals teammate at the time) shook his head and said, ?I can?t believe they did that.?

?But if you?re man enough to hand it out, you better be man enough to take it.?

Suh, the Lions? star defensive lineman whose two-game suspension for the aforementioned indiscretion ended Monday, and who has had several such moments in his short career thus far, certainly is not a pioneer in the art of dirty deeds. For years, before there were multiple camera angles and myriad platforms from which to display NFL video clips, there were large men in pads performing underhanded stunts on one another.

Jack Lambert of the Steelers had a few disreputable moments in his playing days, including the time he took the Cowboys? Cliff Harris and slammed him to the ground because Harris had taunted Pittsburgh kicker Roy Gerela.

In 2004 and 2006, Rodney Harrison was voted ?dirtiest player? by his NFL peers in a Sports Illustrated poll, and again in 2008 in a poll of coaches conducted by ESPN. Bill Romanowski once was ejected from a game for kicking Cardinals fullback Larry Centers in the head; he also once spit in the face of 49ers wide receiver J.J. Stokes.

The late Johnny Sample, a defensive back who played a key role during the Jets? run up to, and victory in, Super Bowl III, had such a reputation he decided to capitalize on it with a book called, ?Confessions of a Dirty Ballplayer.?

In 1986, Charles Martin of the Packers performed one of the filthiest moves in pro football history when he picked up Bears quarterback Jim McMahon from behind well after he had released the ball and slammed him to the turf. And of course, there was Albert Haynesworth, who drew a five-game suspension for stomping on the head of defenseless Cowboys center Andre Gurode.

When it came to handing it out ? the pain, that is, dispensed in methods that challenged the boundaries of the rule book ? there might not have been anyone in NFL history more notorious than Dobler, whose legend often obscures the fact that he was a three-time Pro Bowl selection. His menacing, mustachioed mug graced the cover of the July 25, 1977, issue of Sports Illustrated under the headline, ?Pro Football?s Dirtiest Player.?

Although that might have notified the rest of the world about Dobler, it was hardly a secret in NFL circles. He had been making enemies in the trenches since shortly after his arrival as a fifth-round draft pick out of Wyoming in 1972.

?When I played against people, I had a lot of penalties thrown against defensive players who played against me,? said Dobler, who now runs a medical staffing business in Overland Park, Kan. ?What I did was try to make them lose their poise. When they lose their poise, then they can?t concentrate on what they?re doing. If he?s more concerned with beating me up, then my job is half done.

?What irked Merlin Olsen ? right up until he died he kept talking about it ? was that he lost his poise when he played against me, and he always prided himself on not letting that happen.?

Football is a sport in which anger is fuel. The high stakes, brute force and intense competition often create situations that would cause meeker souls to duck for cover.

Toi Cook, a former defensive back who played 11 NFL seasons with the Saints, 49ers and Panthers, remembers some less than diplomatic moments during his playing days when anger bubbled over.

?Usually it?s the linemen who get involved in those things, because they cut block,? he said. ?We had a guy named Tony Elliot, who passed away, who tried to stomp on a player like Ndamukong Suh did. I remember being in the meeting room watching film of it and our defensive coordinator saying, ?This is unacceptable,? because at the time we were a team that couldn?t afford to give up 15-yard penalties.?

Elliott was a defensive lineman who once got into a fistfight with teammate Ricky Jackson on the practice field, Cook remembered. ?Tony left the field, went to his car, got his gun, came back to the field, and we?re all standing there, and then everybody got away from Ricky like he had the plague,? Cook said. ?We were not going to be in the line of fire.?

Elliott, who had a troubled life and was paralyzed in a shooting in 2000, died at age 48 in 2008.

Bob Levey / Getty Images

Mike Golic, co-host of the popular ?Mike & Mike in the Morning? show on ESPN Radio, played nine years in the NFL as a defensive lineman. Although he does not approve of what Suh did, he scoffed a bit at the attention it has received.?I?ve talked to a couple of current players, linemen, both offensive and defensive, about Suh,? Golic said, ?and to a man they just kind of chuckled. The worst thing he did were the ridiculous comments after the game trying to justify it. All he did was do it in the open, and he got caught.

?For all the people who were unbelievably appalled and say he should be thrown out of the league, guys who played the game kind of chuckle. Was it smart? No. Was it dirty? Yes. The biggest thing is that he has to learn that it hurt his team.?

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