Wall Street Richard

As the limo sped toward a West Side studio where Todd would tape two television commercials for a New York newspaper, he looked out at the soft, orange winter sunset that was silhouetting the skyline, and said, "It's pretty tonight, isn't it? This city is just amazing. If you can do it here and lick all the problems here, then you ought to be able to handle anything anywhere else in the world. I've caught a lot of abuse. Fans are unreasonable everywhere. Fans are fans. They expect you not to make any mistakes. But this is a humbling game we play. There are no supermen. There are great players, but no supermen."

Except, as far as New York is concerned, Namath—the perfect New York quarterback. Brash and outrageous. Broadway Joe. Eat-drink-and-be-merry Joe, who then quarterbacked like crazy the next afternoon. He was still drunk, he says, when he passed for three touchdowns to beat Boston 38-28 in 1966. Rich. When Jets owner Sonny Werblin lured Namath to the AFL with a $427,000 contract in 1965, the figure seemed stunning. The women. Always the women. In his book, I Can't Wait Until Tomorrow..., Namath says, "I'd like to tell you about what was actually the finest performance of my rookie season, but, shoot, I promised her I wouldn't." And most of all, The Prediction, Namath's perfectly wild and wacky boast that the Jets of the upstart AFL would beat the Colts of the proud NFL in Super Bowl III. Boast, hell. He guaranteed it. And when the Jets won, the Namath legend was immediately carved in stone. It didn't matter that in eight more seasons in New York Namath produced only one more winning record.

Ever since Namath limped off into the L.A. sunset in 1978 for an ill-fated last fling before retiring, the Jets have vowed to bury the star system. Still heard around the New York locker room is a plaintive scream from the equipment room, "Hey, you're no Joe Namath. Put your stuff where it belongs."

Because of Namath's long shadow, Todd has never been able to establish an identity of his own. For his part, Todd—definitely no Broadway Richard, but charming if given a chance—gives the question of image short shrift. "I'm not working on identity," he says. "I'm just a working guy trying to make it in the big city."

Be that as it may, Todd has sent out contradictory messages concerning who he is and wants to be. He stopped and changed a tire for a woman on the Grand Central Parkway in New York two years ago, politely declined a $10 tip and drove off. "Ah," he says with a snort, "we do that kind of thing all the time in the South." Good guy, that Richard. The same month, he got into a row with a New York Post sportswriter and stuffed him into a locker, a terrible, terrible thing to do to a gentleman of the press. Bad guy, that Richard. Is Todd benevolent or is he a bully? Says Todd, "I've always been a big, sensitive kid. Often, too sensitive." But, says his agent, Gary Wichard, "Richard Todd has finally become a New Yorker. He's callous."

Lulu, who hails from Florence, Ala., recalls that when she met Richard while attending summer school at Alabama in 1979, "He dressed like a hobo, acted like God's gift to earth and had hair longer than mine. He was real cocky and had no reason to be. He looked like surfer boy come to New York. A real freak-o. I thought he was obnoxious." But her view changed on their third date, when they played tennis. Says Lulu, "With just him and me, he seemed human. When others were around, they brought out the worst in him." Richard and Lulu were married in February 1981 in Fort Lauderdale. Among the guests: Namath.

In retrospect, it was logical that Namath and Todd were lumped together. Both came out of the University of Bear Bryant (as did Super Bowl winners Ken Stabler and Bart Starr), and Todd signed on with Namath's agent, Jimmy Walsh. They threw balls to each other on the Alabama practice field when Todd was an undergraduate, and if Namath hollered, "Keep your elbow up," Todd took it to heart. In a conversation two days before he died last January, Bryant said, "Joe was more skillful than Richard, but I'd sure like to have either one of 'em back even on their bad days."

Todd recalls, "When I came to New York, I was in awe and scared to death of the city. First of all, Namath was here. There were things I'd never had, like Chinese food and French food and all that. But hanging around Joe was fun." Once, when asked if Namath had influenced his social behavior, Todd replied, "Well, I liked girls even before I met Joe." Quips like that made the papers. Two dangerous forces were converging. Todd was trying to act like Namath and the press was trying to make him seem like Namath. But the fans were quick to notice he didn't play like Namath, at least the Super Bowl Namath.

The booing started in Todd's rookie season. He had a slight stutter, which he has since overcome, that made him the target of malicious fans. Things got worse in his second year, when he was sent to the hospital by the Jets' team doctor for what was thought by the other players to be a very minor injury. It turned out to be just that. Walt Michaels, then the Jets' coach, was livid when he learned Todd had been hospitalized and made his displeasure public. The incident brought Todd's toughness into question and prompted Richard Neal, one of New York's defensive co-captains then, to say, "We can't have a Namath situation here. We had Joe receive special treatment and we were losers."

In '79 a two-quarterback controversy raised its invariably ugly head. Richard Todd or Matt Robinson? The debate began in 1978 when Todd broke his collarbone, and Robinson stepped in and threw for a crowd-pleasing 11 touchdowns in 11 starts. On opening day 1979 Todd was second-team—and sullen. He got his starting job back the next week, but a lot of fans felt Robinson should have been quarterbacking the team. Once, leaving Shea, Todd wouldn't let Lulu walk with him because he didn't want her to see him being humiliated—and showered with garbage. "The fans didn't hate him," says Lulu charitably. "They just wanted him to do better. They knew he was a good quarterback." Maybe. Subsequently, Todd made a lewd gesture to the fans, which was caught by a photographer. He laughs about it now; the picture hangs on the wall of his family room. In 1980, after Robinson had been traded, the Jets were losing at home to San Francisco 37-27 to make their record 0-5 when it was announced that Todd had set an NFL record for completions in a game with 42. Fans responded by hollering, "We want Matt."