NFL Coaches Will Suffer Big Losses to Give Charity a Fat Chance

Dan Henning was talking, and the subject was losing. Please, no nasty asides here. In this case, losing is for a good cause.

Maybe “losing” is not even the right word. Maybe “shedding” is.

Tommy Lasorda started this concept . . . or at least popularized it. The idea is to lose weight and, at the same time, make money for charity.

Lasorda, you will recall, responded to challenges from Kirk Gibson and Orel Hershiser last spring and earned substantial amounts of money for his favorite charities by becoming less substantial himself.

Now, Dan Henning does not exactly have the Michelin Man contour of the pre-diet Tommy Lasorda. Indeed, Henning has never struck me as being particularly overweight. If anything, he seems more trim pre-diet than the post-diet Lasorda.

“That’s why I always wear my jacket on the sideline,” he said with a laugh. “It hides my waistline.”

Henning is one of six National Football League coaches who will earn $500 from a diet company named Slim Fast for each pound they lose. The money will go to the Miami Project, which funds research on paralysis.

Henning’s colleagues in this endeavor have much more noticeable profiles, a couple in particular. While Henning weighed in at a modest 222 pounds, the Raiders’ Art Shell crushed the scale to the tune of 338. Philadelphia’s Buddy Ryan weighed only 258, but those pounds are condensed on considerably less height.

For the record, the three others are Washington’s Joe Gibbs (240), Seattle’s Chuck Knox (236) and New York’s Bill Parcells (265). It was Parcells who once said losing a few pounds, to him, would be “like throwing a deck chair off the Titanic.”

“Some of these guys,” Henning mused, “could lose my entire body and still be walking around.”

Henning, for example, hopes to trim to 195 for the July 1 deadline. That would be a mere 27 pounds, or about what Buddy Ryan could afford to lose in chins alone. However, those 27 pounds would be worth $13,500 to the Miami Project.

And so, Henning will spend much of the off-season in competition with himself, though there seems to be some camaraderie among the three AFC West coaches.

“I’ll keep in touch with Art and Chuck,” he said, “and try and keep ‘em pumped up.”

It would be nice to beat the NFC in something, even if you have to lose to win.

It would seem that these fellows have volunteered for a level of anxiety in what should be, for them, the most relaxed time of year. Dieting has caused folks to turn fingernails into snacks, though a coach’s fingernails are probably at risk as one of the occupational hazards.

Why not diet during the season when the mind is occupied by two-minute drills, third-and-12 situations and Monday afternoon confrontations with the media?

“During the season,” Henning said, “it’s almost impossible because of the hours and the travel. This is a great time of year to attempt something like this. You have a decent chance any time you’re in a period of regular sleep, exercise and eating.”

This particular program, according to Henning, calls for two milk shakes in the morning and two more in the afternoon followed by a balanced meal at night.

And . . .

“No snacks,” Henning said.

No snacks? No eggs over easy with hashed browns and a slab of ham for breakfast? No macho burrito with rice for lunch? And no snacks?

And I just leaned over and bummed a carrot from the guy at the next desk. Henning would have to resist such temptation or risk the ignominy of Art Shell beating him to his target weight, although Shell has a hefty, literally, 39 pounds to pare to get to his target of 299.

Given this type of regimen, I would think a balanced dinner would be one with a 16-ounce steak on one side of the plate and a baked potato with absolutely everything on the other.

Rather than risk hearing that a balanced dinner consisted of bran muffins and bean sprouts, I didn’t ask. I didn’t think a football coach would want to admit to subsisting on spinach quiche and tofu.

But it did occur to me that Henning will be looking for ways to supplement his diet with exercise. Bobby Beathard, the new general manager, is an avid runner. Perhaps the coach will keep him company.

“I don’t like to jog,” Henning said. “Racquetball and golf and tennis, but not jogging. I like to do something athletic that takes my mind off of being bored.”

And, maybe, starved.