Mike Freeman - Snake: The Legendary Life of Ken Stabler

I t was several days before Oaklands Super Bowl matchup against the Minnesota Vikings, and Oakland coach John Madden had seen enough. He called off practice.

Ken Stabler had thrown dozens of footballs in that practice and not a single one hit the ground. Deep passes landed gently into the hands of receivers. Short passes moved with great speed but with similar accuracy. Nothing went high or low. Each was thrown perfectly. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw, said Madden.

The Raiders had seen Stabler sharp before. Most of the time, in fact. He was the most accurate passer of his time and, many decades later, hed be known as one of the most accurate quarterbacks to ever play the sport.

But this was different. Stabler had reached a level that had shocked everyone. In fact, the entire Raiders team was nearly flawless that day. Practice lasted twenty minutes, some twenty-five shorter than usual. Madden barely had to explain it to the team. They all knew why. Hed approach Stabler later on: I think youre ready. Stabler didnt disagree. Im ready, he said. Were all ready.

That gorgeous passing demonstration continued what had been a trait of his, the best combination of flamboyance, skill, and coolness under pressure the sport had ever seen. No player was more comfortable in his own body (or chasing female ones) than Ken Stabler.

As Stabler honed his throwing skill, he paid a visit to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles the week of Super Bowl, which was being held at the Rose Bowl. Just went to share a few thoughts about football with some of the librarians there, hed say to me years later, the smile almost coming through the telephone.

That Super Bowl week, in some respects, would be a continuation of the Stabler way. Actually, on the Stabler scale, visiting a few Playboy bunnies was tamethe Stabler equivalent of sneaking a glance at a woman wearing a pretty dress when shes not looking. From the time he was a teenager wrecking a police car, to his Raiders days collecting the undergarments of the women he slept with, he was a destroyer of the myth that a man needed sleep and clean living to play quarterback. In fact, he thrived on obliterating the notion that a football player had to be a robot to be successful. This was a belief hed embrace at a young age and would continue to hold throughout his career. Off the field, all that mattered were women, fast cars, and fast boats. And bourbon. As long as life moved quickly, Stabler was happy. The turmoil, the messiness of it all, attracted him. There was the time his second wife (or was it his first?) caught him cheating on her in the parking lot of a bar. Or there was the repeated drinking up until game time. Stabler needed to push the edge. It was his joy.

Even the way Stabler was covered in the media was different from any other NFL player at the time, different even from Joe Namath, one of the gold standards of high-profile, lady-chasing quarterbacks. This from the December 14, 1987, issue of People magazine: Former football great Kenny Stabler, who wrote about his years of hard drinking and womanizing in his best-selling autobiography, Snake, finds himself between the covers again. This time around, hes the model for the boozing and babe-chasing exploits of the character called Billyjim (the Twister) Thibodeaux in Between Pictures. Its a new novel by Jane Loder, the writer-producer of the documentary Atomic Cafe. Loder says she and Stabler had a romance when she was 15 and he was in his early 20s. In the book Billyjim overdoses, but in real life Kenny got married and settled down, she says. Her name does not ring a bell with me, says Stabler, but adds he plans on getting a copy of the book.

Off the field, in his years as a player, the messier the better; yet on it, there was a gorgeous meticulousness with how he played football. He cherished order and calmness, and these facets of his game would engender respect and even love for him in return from teammates and coaches.