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By GEORGE BOWLES
It’s remarkable, in a way, that some member of the press or other highly original soul hasn’t tagged the event with the name by which it cries out to be known. That is “Bustergate.”
I refer, of course, to the allegation that Del. W. R. “Buster” O’Brien of Virginia Beach, the Republican candidate for attorney general, has overstepped the bounds of truth in campaign advertising, assuming that there are such bounds.
Those who support his opponent in the November election, Democratic Del. Mary Sue Terry of Stuart, contend that O’Brien stands guilty of overly hyping — if not actually creating — a professional football career which, they say, is made up largely of gossamer if not out of whole cloth.
In his campaign biographical handout, O’Brien, in a perfectly matter-of-fact manner, lays claim to such a past career as a football pro. The first paragraph of the sketch reads as follows: “Bom in 1946, Buster O’Brien attended Princess Anne High School, where he was recognized as an all-American quarterback, receiving a full scholarship to Notre Dame and the University of Richmond. Buster went on to play professional football for the San Francisco 49’ers, Ottawa Roughriders and the Washington Redskins.”
The accuracy of the first part of the paragraph is not questioned. O’Brien was, indeed, a football whiz in high school. After a year at Notre Dame, he transferred to the University of Richmond where he was also a star. He set a number of personal records and was a key player in the Spiders’ victory in the 1968 Tangerine Bowl.
But now we come to the troubling reference to his professional football accomplishments.
In truth, O’Brien never played in a single regular game for any of the three teams of which he says he was a member, nor is he carried on the rosters of those teams as a former regular player. Still he established connections with each team which, he maintains, were sufficient to justify his claim of having played for them.
According to Greg Burden, communications director for the O’Brien for Attorney General campaign, the candidate’s professional football career, although brief, was as follows.
In 1969 he was a draft choice of the Denver Broncos, but went instead with the Ottawa Roughriders who paid him $10,000 “up front,” plus a per diem for his services. He participated in all the team’s exhibition games, but was “cut,” or dropped from the team, at the end of the exhibition season.
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