The Bare Facts Are He's A Star

Critics persist in the notion that Chandler is too slow, but his defenders point out that on an 80-yard scoring play in Super Bowl XV he ran half the length of the field stride for stride as a blocking escort for fast, fast Kenny King. "I have an advantage now," says Chandler, "because when you have never had speed, you don't lose it." Still, he's sensitive about the rap that he has lead feet, and once, as the result of a hot barroom discussion, he went outside with a tormentor, raced him and beat him down the block. But it occurred to Chandler that "I can't convince people that I'm fast by meeting them in bars and racing them one at a time."

Sprawled on a couch at home—one of the Playgirl pictures is framed over the TV—he muses, "When you are a pro football player, most people think much more of you than they should and you convince yourself you're a lot neater than you are. The importance people put on the game is silly, but I could never say that pro football is silly when I have given up so much to it." Then he digs out a poem he wrote, which includes the lines:

"This odd little pigskin is often caught
But don't get brash—because then it's often not."