A Namath tale, Snyder's outburst and Zidane reaction

	Joe Namath's training camp shenanigans kept many a sportswriter preoccupied. Walter Iooss Jr./SI
	MAILBAG Dr. Z will answer select user questions each week in his NFL mailbag. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

I keep telling you correspondents out there, if you have a serious shot at the E-mailer of the Week award (actually it's every two weeks in the offseason) and the quite liberal cash honorario that goes with it, please include your last name. To Paul of Travis AFB -- which isn't all that far from America's leading wine institute, UC Davis -- you are our award winner this week. No. 1, I loved your story. No. 2, you said nice things about me, although I have also been known to hand the award to a ripper.

First my training camp piece, which, to quote Paul, "reminded me of my high school football team from Louisiana. One day during two-a-day practices it was hot (heat index around 114) as always, and the starting center went mental. He just left practice and was gone for two days. The police finally found him parked on the side of a deserted road, still in his practice gear. He finally returned to practice and made all-state that year."

Well, I loved the story, except for the ending. Too much of a Hallmark ring to it. Now if you had said that he wound up in a tower with a rifle, or "Guess who that boy turned out to be? JAY LENO," I would have liked it better, but why quibble? Your suggestion that I become a camp holdout -- for more money -- got the Flaming Redhead laughing so hard that she had to lie down with a wet towel on her head.

More camp stuff ... these two keyed in to my assertion last week that it just ain't much fun anymore. Will of Cincinnati, although friendly enough, lays it off to the media's constant search for gossip items. Danny of Jacksonville shares those sentiments. Well, fellas, I hate those "sound bite" guys with their nasty little microphones as much as you do, but everything isn't our fault, and fasten your seat belts because here comes a story.

I'm covering the Jets' camp in the Joe Namath era, and Joe is pulling one of his usual holdouts, or walkouts, or something, and my wife is well into her pregnancy and I've promised to take her to dinner that night. Except that the hours are dragging by and we have to stay on the Namath Watch. I mean who knows when he might show up? And I keep calling my wife to make the dinner later and later, and finally I have to cancel it entirely, and she is in tears.

A few hours later, after putting together some kind of half-assed story, I figured the night was blown anyway, so I might as well go into the office and check my mail. There was a letter there from a woman berating me and "the rest of you animals from the press" because we just wouldn't leave poor Joe Willie alone. It was late and I was tired, but I sat down and wrote her a reply. I wrote all about my pregnant wife and the dinner we missed and I ended it by asking her if she really thought we preferred chasing around a Joe Willie story half the night instead of writing a nice upbeat piece about some rookie, and wrapping it up early?

"Yes, you do prefer it," she answered. "You bastards!"

I still have that letter she wrote. I keep it in the smallest room in our house.