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Also in 1969 he signed a $15,000 contract with the Washington Redskins, but was cut after only a few weeks work at the team’s Carlisle, Pa., training camp. Subsequently that year he ‘ played for the Roanoke Buckskins which Burden described as “a sort of semi-pro team.”
In 1970, Burden said, O’Brien joined the 49’ers. He was paid a $1,000 signing bonus and given a $25,000 season contract. Again, however, he failed to make the first team and spent the season as a member of a “taxi squad,” a body of players held in reserve who are primarily used to scrimmage with the first string.
After that, O’Brien apparently gave up on football and entered law school at William and Mary.
He strongly contends, however, that there is nothing inaccurate or overstated about his football years in the biographical sketch.
“I was on the teams and I got a paycheck,” he said. “I got checks from all three ball clubs. I think that’s what you do when you play professional football.”
Well, maybe yes and maybe . no.
It appears that while O’Brien’s bio sketch is true as far as it goes, it falls considerably short of being, as they say in court, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The sentence, “O’Brien went on to play professional football for the San Francisco 49’ers, Ottawa Roughriders and Washington Redskins,” certainly implies a far more exalted performance in the ranks of football professionals than his record reveals.
Also some of O’Brien’s critics maintain that the reference to football was inserted to the bio sketch for a specific campaign purpose. It was done, they claim, to enhance his macho image among the voters and to remind them that his opponent is a woman.
Will the episode have any lasting adverse effect on his campaign for attorney general? Let’s just say it is a negative blip. Voters would, of course, probably prefer that a candidate for attorney general, their chief law enforcement officer, deal in truths which do not require tortuous explanations.
It was, at bottom, a hype that failed.
But these things can be cumulative, and a candidate seldom gets more than one bite out of this particular kind of apple. Another similar eyebrow-raiser, however minor, could have far more serious consequences.
Because then, for certain, the cry of “Bustergate!” would be raked in the land.
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