"To have been part of that San Diego State team meant something," says Dryer. "It was a big deal and it still is a big deal. I don't want to sound like I work for the Chamber of Commerce, but our football team helped put San Diego on the map." to a rare camaraderie that united the late-Sixties Aztecs squad and kept its spirits aloft. Haven Moses was an important cog in that Aztec machine. In 1967, the wide receiver was named a first-team All-American by both Sporting News and Time magazine. He played in the East-West Shrine, College All-Star and Senior Bowl games, and was a first-round pick of the Buffalo Bills. Moses played five years with the Bills and nine with the Denver Broncos, and made All-Pro in 1974. Today, Moses is the manager of national military sales for the Coors Brewing Company, based in Boulder, Colorado. Along with fellow football heroes Dryer, Willie Buchanan, Gary Garrison, Dennis Shaw and coach Don Coryell, Moses became an inaugural inductee into the Aztec Hall of Fame on November 4, 1988. Like each of his former teammates, Moses' automatic response to the mention of Dryer's name is a sustained chuckle. "Fred was always loose," Moses related from a phone booth in a Wyoming airport. "But that whole team was such a cast of characters that Fred didn't always stand out. Craig Scoggins, Don Horn, Leo Carroll-these guys were all candidates for the funny farm. Nobody took anything too seriously, and I really think that's why we won so often. We had fun." Moses still has a photo of the Jaguar XKE he bought soon after signing with the Bills. In the picture, Dryer is folded into the front seat, his long legs buckled up under his chin, his eyes hidden behind shades, a lecherous grin creasing his face. "Fred was a good athlete, a great football player," Moses concluded, "but you could tell even then that he was destined for something beyond football." In 1968, his senior year at State, Dryer was honored as the Aztecs' Defensive Lineman of the Year. Nationally, he was named a Little All-America defensive end, and played in the East-West Shrine game, the College All-Star game and the Hula Bowl. The New York Giants made Dryer their first-round pick in the National Football League draft. For three seasons with the Giants (1969-71) and ten with the Los Angeles Rams (1972-81), he was one of the most feared defensive ends in the game. This, despite the "experts'" oft-cited notion that he was too slight of build to play the position in the pros. TWENTY-TWO YEARS after he down-shifted into Aztec lore, Dryer has entered his sixth season as the main character in the hit NBC crime-drama series. Hunter. At 43, he is a TV star to millions of viewers who are unaware of his NFL career, much less of his having matriculated at San Diego State. To these people, he is Rick Hunter, the self- contained, polite-but-tough L.A. homicide detective who -in tandem with an attractive female partner played by Stepfanie Kramer-solves murder cases while dressed in comfortable blue jeans, patterned sport shirt, natty sports jacket and tie. These people are wrong. Those who have followed Dryer's career since before the Hunter days know that he's a flake, a "free spirit." That his gridiron mayhem was a violent lark-merely the most visible, lucrative manifestation of an unorthodox, cavalier lifestyle highlighted by such well-publicized stunts as swimming with sharks in Mexican coastal waters. They wink at how naturally Dryer followed the interference run by other flamboyant athletes who parlayed their press clippings into show-biz paychecks. And they assume that Dryer is content to play a stolid, prime-time cop indefinitely, that he's aware if he tries to reach beyond such pinch-me good fortune, he'll bang his noggin on the Peter Principle. They're wrong, too. Those who would know Fred Dryer must begin by discarding their pegs. While he once made a handsome living chasing-and mauling-rabbit-eyed quarterbacks, in real life it is Dryer who is elusive. Off the field and off-camera, he is a complex, multidimensional man of varied interests and little patience for those with prepackaged notions about his limitations. Most celebrated pro athletes live two- part lives: Act One-jock; Act Two-ex- jock. But Dryer's football career didn't define him, and his post-football life can- not be confined to one of those "Dewar's Profiles"-the slick magazine ads in which we discover a celeb's professional credits, hobbies, most recent read and, of course, favorite brand of Scotch. Be- sides, Dryer doesn't drink. Somehow, the knowledge that Dryer doesn't suffer fools did not ease my ap- prehensions about approaching him for an interview. For one thing, I had been forewarned-repeatedly by sources close enough to know-not to ask him about football. He's sick of talking about foot- ball. That's the distant past, and Hunter is the present. Ask him about the new fall season, in which Dryer will executive- produce in addition to playing the lead. Fine, I thought. But what about para- graph two? I needn't have worried. No matter how hard I had tried to purge myself of any preconceptions, I would still be relieved to find Dryer gracious, informed, intel- ligent, open, loquacious and regular- guyish. He would be comprehensive and candid in detailing his experiences on the TV series and his plans for its future. But despite a threat from Dryer himself that he might "gloss over" certain facts about his football career, he also waxed enthu- siastic when discussing the "f"-word, and became especially animated when re- counting his days at San Diego State. Actually, my first surprise came when I pulled up in front of Dryer's Brentwood condominium to find him gainfully em- ployed. It was one of those muggy, late- July mornings when the L.A. smog clings to one's skin like talc. Standing in the bright sunlight near the door to Dryer's roost were Dryer, comedian/actor Paul Reiser of Aliens and TV's My Two Dads, and a tangle of technicians shoot- ing the two for a segment of a television special. "Cut!" shouted the director when I inadvertently walked in front of the camera. "Who is that guy?" Dryer asked as his publicist, Dick Delson, pa- tiently shoehomed me past the crew and into Dryer's condo. Not the introduction I had hoped for. Once inside, I confronted my second surprise: Dryer's digs were decidedly un- pretentious and un-macho for a wealthy hunk with a hit TV series. The living area was dominated by overstuffed, almost imposing chairs that were nevertheless subtle in hue and line. Pockets of benign clutter said "bachelor pad," but neat rows of books against the far wall de- scribed order, serenity. Their titles im- plied something else. Here was the complete series of Will Durant's world histories. Books on art. On photography. World War II. Ancient civilizations. There wasn't a jockish tome to be seen. In the dining area were racks of com- pact discs and cassettes that betrayed an equally eclectic taste in music-from Sinatra to Jeff Beck, from Vladimir Horowitz to the Georgia Satellites, from Billy Joel to the compilation of classic blues recordings recently issued on the Atlantic label. But even the extensive music collection appeared to be losing the battle for shelf space with numerous pho- tos of Dryer's 5-year-old daughter, taken at various stages of her development. Dryer is divorced, and father and daugh- ter had returned only the day before from a vacation on Maui. I didn't see any pho- tos of Dryer himself. In general, the place had an open, af- fable feel, but there were dark, inacces- sible corners that gave the living area depth, and nearby rooms that one sensed were private harbors, not to be invaded. The condo, I would discover, is a lot like Fred Dryer. The scene outside ended with the smallish Reiser mock-punching the big ex-football player in the stomach, fol- lowed by Dryer doing a comic take in which he doubled over while emitting a cartoonish groan. After it was wrapped, Dryer breezed into his condo, exchanged friendly greetings with the visiting writer and promptly disappeared into an inner sanctum. The house went quiet, and one's first impression lingered behind: tall, lean, toothpaste-commercial smile, firm handshake. A genuine So Cal mensch. WHEN HE EMERGED, Dryer plopped into one of the big chairs, draped one blue-jeaned leg over an overstuffed arm, announced that he was starving and reluc- tantly agreed to field an opening question about football. As a fellow State alumnus who had watched Dryer play in virtually every home game in 1967 and 1968,1 felt justified in asking about his memories of those heady days when the Aztecs were the only game in town. I knew that I might get only a glib statement about how long ago that was and how hazy were his recollections of it. Instead, the question was a divining rod that eventually located deep waters of emotion that I couldn't have anticipated. Dryer, who'd grown up in nearby Lawndale, was an all-league defensive tackle for El Camino College, a junior college in Torrance. He'd always as- sumed that he'd finish his education away from home, and was bound for Florida State University when he discovered that some of his three-unit credits from JC would only transfer to FSU as two units. Six units shy of being accepted at Florida State, Dryer had to choose between at- tending junior college in Florida, or ac- cepting a football scholarship to attend San Diego State. The Aztecs' defensive coordinator in those days was John Madden. He would soon go on to great success as head coach of the Oakland Raiders, and is now CBS's number-one color man on NFL telecasts, as well as the bearish star of Lite Beer commercials. Madden had been making a sustained pitch for Dryer, and when he finally landed the JC stand- out, it made everyone concerned very happy. "Of course, Don Coryell was the head coach then," says Dryer. "I was im- pressed with the sincerity, the simplicity and the honesty of these people. I also realized it was best for me to be closer to my home, for personal reasons. It worked out better that way; my family and friends had an opportunity to be involved in my education and my football playing." If it occurred to Dryer that playing for a small college might adversely affect his chances of being noticed by the pros, it was no deterrent. "It never really both- ered me," he claims. "I always felt that no matter where you went to school to play football, you could at least get an education, even if it was at the smallest school in the most rural setting in the world. If you're intelligent, you'll suc- ceed at what you wanna do. If you're playing football, they'll find you. The fact that a lot of guys were drafted out of State was an added incentive to go there. They had a real good program, and I knew I'd get to play." Dryer realized that a school whose football program relied primarily on jun- ior-college transfers would lose half its squad to graduation every season. "You could see people leaving, and you could talk to the coaches and find out who they planned to bring in," he says. "Madden told me, 'Look, I'm gonna bring in two or three defensive ends, that's it. And you're the one guy I'd like to have.' It was very straightforward; there weren't a lot of promises or hype. They weren't out of character in trying to present themselves as something they weren't. I knew I was around good people." In a recent call from his home in the Bay Area, Madden recalled those days with some amusement. "I knew I was competing with Florida State to get Fred," he related, "so I tried to use the brand-new San Diego Stadium as a sell- ing tool. Only problem was, it was still being built. It was just this huge pit in the ground in Mission Valley. But it was about all I had to go with, so I took Fred down there, and we're walking around in the dirt and I'm going, 'This is where you'll run onto the field when they an- nounce you . . . this is where the end zone'll be . . . '" Madden laughed at the recollection. "As it turned out, I was showing him the wrong end of the stadium!" During spring practice of 1967, Mad- den worked at sculpting Dryer's raw po- tential into skill. "Fred was my kinda guy," he said. "He knew only one speed: full speed." Before the Aztecs' season began, however. Madden accepted the offer from the Raiders and thus missed the opportunity to participate in Dryer's college career. After Dryer's senior year, Madden tried to draft him for the Raiders but couldn't swing it. Although their time together was short, they remain good friends. To Dryer, his relationship with Mad- den was no less meaningful for its brev- ity. "The farther away you get from an experience like that, the more you realize what an important place it has in your life," he says, then leans forward conspir- atorially. "Listen, I had a meeting with some former teammates here about a month ago. Tom Freeman, Tom Nettles, Tim Delaney and I got together and started talking about all that stuff. Cer- tainly, to stay in contact with these people is what keeps you connected to that. Memories are great, but they diminish as time goes by, and I don't want that to happen. "I want to know that those people I was involved with at State are healthy and happy and doing well, and that as time goes by they carry with them the same feelings and thoughts about those days that. I do. Since I can't turn back the clock, the next best thing is to stay in contact. It's tough for me sometimes, be- cause I get locked into what I'm doing and all of a sudden I realize, hey, I haven't been in touch with these guys. So I start making notes-I make more notes than anybody-to call this person and -that person. "So, when we got together we just had a great time talking about people and sharing stories. And we all agreed on one thing: There was something very special going on in 1966, '67 and '68. In the country. On college campuses. Certainly at San Diego State. There was something special about the group of individuals who came together at State for those few years. We saw the same things! It's had a profound impact on me. The whole thing about being alive is people, because peo- ple, uh . . ." Dryer suddenly breaks into laughter. "I almost went into the Strei- sand song!" TIM DELANEY was a star wide receiver for the Aztecs, and their MVP in 1970. He, too, eventually signed with the Gi- ants. Before the start of their only season together on the New York team. Dryer and Delaney drove from L.A. to the Big Apple in Dryer's infamous, white Volks- wagen van, dubbed the "Pus Bus." A week after my talk with Dryer, I spoke with Delaney, who called from his home in Northern California. He re-created his version of the recent get-together with Dryer, Nettles and Freeman. "It was one night this past June. We were all eating in this restaurant in L.A., and I realized at one point that people were staring at Fred because they recog- nized him from the TV show," said De- laney. "It occurred to me that while they saw him as this Hunter character, Fred was just being Fred with us guys. He hadn't changed much at all. "Then, at one point, Fred motioned for me to step outside the restaurant. When I did, he pointed toward the park- ing lot and said, 'There it is-I just wanted you to see the Pus Bus.' He'd kept it in perfect condition; it looked exactly the same as it had 18 years earlier. Show- ing it to me was Fred's way of saying the time we'd spent together meant some- thing to him. It might not seem like a big deal, but to me it was a very touching gesture." Dryer has finished joking about his sudden urge to sing Streisand's "Peo- ple," and is back on his original track. "Really, when it's all over with, and they put you in the big box and lower you into the ground, all you've really left behind are those who knew you. And your work to some extent. But mostly family and friends. The more you keep in touch, the more you're enriched, the more alive you feel." Dryer turns his head as if he were an antenna trying to pull in a weak picture. '"To this day, I don't go very long without thinking about those people at State," he says after a minute. "In fact, I ran into Madden at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel two nights ago. I know he thinks of the State days as very special, too. Of course, the coaches were 15, 18, 20 years older than us, and their family and career considerations probably gave them a dif- ferent perspective on that situation than we players had. But we all had the feeling the coaches liked what they were doing, and had fun. "We always felt they were really the ones competing, more than us. The foot- ball program was competing with USC, UCLA, Stanford, Cal, San Jose State. In the mid-Sixties, San Diego State was fighting for recognition, striving to put together a better football program. I re- member the day Coryell told the team that [State's then-president] Malcolm Love had announced the school was no longer San Diego State College, but San Diego State University. That was a big deal, and the change had a big impact. We started playing schools like Tennessee State, Utah State. And we won 33 games in a row. "So, to have been a part of that, to draw 45,000 people to San Diego Sta- dium to watch us, when the Chargers were lousy and drawing 30,000 or 40,000 -it meant something. It was a big deal, and it still is a big deal. I don't want it to sound like I work for the Chamber of Commerce or something, but what our football team accomplished helped to put San Diego on the map. It helped establish State's football program, brought money to the school, helped individuals." Dryer was building a head of steam. "A lot of people from L.A. would go to school at State and then stay in town af- ter graduation," he says. "Kids from the inner city, from Compton College, Rio Hondo College, Cerritos, El Camino, Harbor College, Pierce College-and 90 percent of them bettered themselves by going there. There are a lot of personal success stories associated with that foot- ball program. The school's faculty was very supportive of the athletic programs, too. It was just a damn good place to be." By comparison, Dryer's prep years had been mostly uneventful. He was an aver- age student, but a fine athlete. He made All-Pioneer League as a defensive tackle at Lawndale High School. He made friends. But it wasn't a binding experi- ence. He hasn't maintained relationships from high school, has never gone to the reunions. "I have good memories of cer- tain high school coaches, teachers and individuals who influenced me," he al- lows. "But nothing that was as hard hit- ting as what happened to me at State in the late Sixties. Because of the people around me in college, I developed in- sights into life and problem solving. My attitude became one of, hey, if you sur- round yourself with good people, and laugh, it makes things a lot better." TO HEAR HIS PALS tell it. Dryer did a lot of laughing while at State, and in- duced others to follow suit. Nettles was one of Dryer's regular audiences. The two were fast friends and stellar counter- parts-Dryer as the marauding vanguard in the Aztecs' swarming defense. Nettles as the MVP wide receiver in Coryell's storied offense. They drove together to State's home games. "I remember Fred would have to stop at the 7-Eleven to get his ritual banana and milk, always two- and-a-half hours before game time," re- lated Nettles. "But mostly I remember how funny he was. Fred has a great gift for mimicry. He did absolutely the best 'Don Coryell' in the world." Apprised of Nettles' remarks, Dryer doesn't deflect the compliment. "Listen, I could fill ten or 12 hours of tape with nothing but Don Coryell stories! Then we could segue into Sid Hall stories. Then we could get to the John Madden stories. Then Ernie Zampese stories. Then Dave Thomton. All the coaches were interest- ing characters with unique personalities." Some of Dryer's favorite Coryell sto- ries involve Dryer's Triumph motorcycle. Apparently, Dryer had once accumu- lated-and ignored-a mound of park- ing tickets. Fearing prosecution, he went to the head coach for help. Coryell di- rected him to a certain judge who might allow him to pay what he owed without pressing charges, but on the way to see the jurist, Dryer got a speeding ticket. He shuffled it into the existing stack of cita- tions and went to court, where he assured the judge they were all parking viola- tions. The judge riffled through them and discovered a speeding ticket that was only 20 minutes old. "Sixty-five in a 35 zone on College Avenue," read the judge. He did not look favorably on Dryer's at- tempt at evasion. Later that day. Dryer was suiting up for practice when Coryell stormed into the locker room. "You've got to sell that damn motorcycle," Coryell thundered, and then addressed the whole team. "I don't want anyone driving motorcycles anymore!" Dryer respectfully submitted that he didn't have any other means of transportation, and asked for dispensa- tion. Coryell, who could be a soft touch when it came to his players, relented, but in a way that illustrated the priorities of a head coach. "Okay," he said, "but from now on, only one defensive player and one offensive player at a time can ride a motorcycle. I don't want to lose two players from the same squad if there's an accident!" Coryell had barely forgotten the inci- dent when one day he was carrying an armload of paperwork from his office. Dryer and middle linebacker Mike Mea- gher were late for a "verse choir" class and were riding the Triumph in their choir robes. As they roared around a corner near Peterson Gym, Coryell stepped into the motorcycle's path. Papers flew in all directions as Coryell dodged the Bon- neville, and when Dryer and Meagher realized who they'd almost hit-and that they were two defensive players riding one bike-Dryer hit the gas and the duo ran a red light to make their getaway. "Those coaches all had such distin- guishing features," Dryer segues, break- ing into a mischievous grin. "Norman Rockwell should have painted these guys. Coryell looked like a duck\ Sid Hall looked like the Michelin tire man. John Madden was this huge, pink, hulking mass that would not exactly walk, but glide, with his arms hanging down and his wrists sort of waving at the ends. They all had a distinct physicality. So we [players] would sit around and speculate, you know, put these characters into different contexts. What would Cor- yell be like as a plumber, under a house in bib overalls with a bunch of wrenches? Or Sid Hall as a rocket scientist in his lab? We'd be hysterical." Dryer's skills at capturing speech and behavioral quirks were so sharp, in fact, that at the football awards banquet at the end of the 1968 season, he performed a one-man skit. Nettles introduced Dryer as "the Aztec coaching staff getting ready to tee off on the first hole of a golf course." In succession. Dryer imperson- ated Coryell, Hall, Zampese, Claude Gil- bert and others. "It was hilarious," recalled Nettles. "He had people falling out of their chairs laughing." TWO DECADES LATER, Madden-a favorite Dryer target-got the last laugh. "I'll tell ya, Fred was a skinny guy," he said. "When I recruited him out of El Camino, he weighed about 220. In those days, linemen were starting to bulk up a lot, and I told Fred I'd have him up to 260, 270 in no time. But he could never gain any weight! I think he's just got one of those metabolisms. "Did Fred tell you about his weight trick?" Madden asked expectantly. "No?" he laughs. "Well, when he was with the Rams, they listed him at 230, 235. But Fred still weighed 225. So, whenever they were gonna weigh him, he'd tuck a little five-pound weight under each armpit, and then wear a T-shirt, and the scale would read 235! He was never over 225 in the pros, and when I saw him the other night, he was still as skinny as he was at State!" Good-natured teasing and harmless hi- jinks were integral to the Aztecs' bon- homie, and Dryer usually was involved in both. One time in 1968, coach Hall was putting his defensive charges through their paces in the bowels of Aztec Bowl. As afternoon turned to dusk, it became harder to see, and the players began grumbling about the long, wearying prac- tice. Hall paid them little mind as the field got darker and darker. At one point, the team seemed to be lingering in the huddle for an inordinate amount of time, and Hall barked for them to move it along. Finally, they broke from the huddle, and as they approached the line of scrimmage Hall saw that Dryer and Meagher had affixed lighted candles to their helmets. He sent the team to the locker room. According to several former Aztecs, such moments were plentiful, and Net- tles, for one, wonders if Dryer has buried his funny bone somewhere in Holly- wood. "Fred's Hunter image is so ironic to me," he acknowledged. "To the me- dia, he projects this serious, tough, al- most 'Dirty Harry' image. But he doesn't allow them to see his tremendous wit. He's one of the funniest guys in the world. If you were to sit down to dinner with him and he got going, you'd end up with indigestion, for sure." Dryer has heard it before. "Well, I've always felt that in order to have an inti- macy with people, you have to open yourself up pretty much. And I don't nec- essarily choose to do that with the press," he explains. "What makes me laugh and makes me do things that make others laugh is personal. Not that you can't be funny or make a joke or whatever. But, for example, I've been on the Carson and Letterman shows, and I'm not comfort- able with those formats. "You know what? It's like walking into a party and having someone say, 'Fred, do the Coryell impression for these people you don't know.' Talk shows are places where you push your personality, where you say something witty, and I often don't have anything funny to say. I mean, I have my share of moments, but my work certainly doesn't lend itself to having that side of my personality come out. "And I understand that, so I don't try to make up for it in public situations. Hey, even my own mom says, 'Gee, Fred, you're so serious all the time on the show.' And then I get to thinking self-consciously, 'What do you mean, "serious"? What did I do that was "se- rious"?' All I'm trying to do is put forth the character I play, this Hunter guy. When people say, 'That Hunter charac- ter's really you,' I say, 'No, it's not, man. That isn't me!' Hunter is only about .01 of 1 percent of what I am." Like a lot of people who hit their stride in college. Dryer didn't notice when life snipped the psychological umbilical cord linking him to his alma mater. As much as it marked the beginning of a new and exciting phase of his public life, being the Giants' first-round pick seemed an exten- sion of his collegiate grid achievements. It would take Dryer a while to gain enough perspective to fully appreciate his experience at San Diego State. "In the off-season, after my first year with the Giants in 1969, I went back to State for a semester and I realized that somehow it was just . . . different," he notes. "After living in New York for a year, my interests had started to grow in all directions, so there wasn't much left for me in San Diego, in terms of work or a future. So I left and came back to L.A. But I still have great friends in San Diego from those years, like Mike Meagher. My time there was just a warm, positive part of my life. But it went real quick. Some- times I wish I could go back and slow it all down, to savor it a bit more." WHEN ROOKIE DRYER arrived in New York City, he went right to the Em- pire State Building. Once at the top, he took out a piece of paper and started drawing everything he saw. Central Park. Fixtures on the West Side. The East Side. North. South. The New Jersey skyline. He took the drawings home and studied them to get a sense of where everything was in his new hometown. Because games were on Sundays, he had Mondays off. One Monday, Dryer took a long, long walk from 64th Street and First Avenue, all the way to the Bat- tery, across to Greenwich Village, up the west side of the street to Central Park and back to his house. The following Mon- day, he walked a similar route beginning on Second Avenue. Then Madison Ave- nue the next week, and so on. In time, he had systematically surveyed an entire grid, all over Manhattan. Dryer found the treks self-enriching. The people, sights, sounds, smells, were almost overwhelming. In the Village, he'd hear live jazz coming from one club, Sinatra recordings from another. Sinatra struck a resonance in Dryer. He would begin collecting his music until he had everything 0l' Blue Eyes had ever com- mitted to vinyl. "I think of all the places I could have gone at the age of 23," he says now, "and I feel lucky to have spent those three years in the Big Apple. It forged many of the tastes and attitudes I have today. Re- ally for the first time, I got a glimpse of what I had to discover in myself, so that I could know what I wanted out of life, and how to go about getting it. Exciting. And ever since, I haven't been willing to settle for less than exactly what I want." While Dryer was growing as an indi- vidual, though, he was being stifled as a footballer. The Giants at that time were a sad lot, mired in losing ways that seemed a millennium removed from the days of league championships, of Giffords and Tittles and Griers and Robustellis. In the oppressive netherworld of a franchise gone sour, this bright, lively kid from California stood out like a struck match. "When I got there, I saw all these guys walking around the clubhouse with big arms and big legs, being serious about being 'New York Giants,'" snickers Dry- er, "and here they'd only won four or five games! All this stuff about the his- tory of the Giants, and being the flagship of the NFL and all that. I looked at 'em and said, 'Hey, you guys are shitty. And here's why you're shitty: You don't have enough guys like me.' And the press heard that and said, 'Yeah, you're right.'" Dryer began a relationship with the press that kept him in the headlines. He was brash, outspoken, different. "Some- thing about coming from that genetic pool of bizarre guys at San Diego State helped me a lot in dealing with the New York media," he laughs. "But I was al- ways amazed at how the press perceived me. The people there are just so rich with personality. I mean, out here, sports- writers are sportswriters; their job is to report and comment on sports in the area. Back there, sportswriters are fans first; they rooted for you. All they wanted you to do was talk to them about what they were interested in. I figured that out right away. "I'd literally sit with the press and talk about the team. It was a sharing. I brought the interest of the press into the locker room, so they could be in on what was happening. Not that I gave away secrets or anything. But I eliminated that us-versus-them barrier that characterizes most athletes' relationship with the me- dia. And a lot of the press guys really appreciated it." When the media did attempt to pry team secrets from Dryer, they saw an- other side of him. Tim Delaney remem- bers Howard Cosell interviewing Dryer on his New York television program, and asking him to comment on a team matter that was particularly sensitive. "Fred refused," recalled Delaney, "and when Howard persisted, Fred used an expletive and said, 'How's that, Howard?' "They shut the cameras down, and Cosell apologized to Fred during the commercial. But when the cameras rolled again, Howard found another way to ask the same question. Fred used another ex- pletive, and this time he warned Cosell that if he didn't drop the subject, Fred would walk off the set. Cosell dropped it, and I think he gained a lot of respect for Fred in the process." After he'd been in New York for three years, Dryer's frustration with the Gi- ants' futility boiled over. As he became more vocal in his criticism of the situa- tion, the press began turning on him. "That's when I started lashing out and telling everyone how myopic and blind the people running that program were," recalls Dryer. "Everyone was reveling in the past instead of pushing forward to make the team better. "For example, I had come to the Gi- ants with very solid football fundamen- tals because of the training I got at State. I was well taught on such things as 'pursuit angles' and stuff. Well, I got to New York and nobody knew what a pursuit angle was. I'm not kidding! So, I had to tell the guys on defense, literally, to stay the hell out of my way during games. They were doing the best they could, but some im- portant techniques were never part of the training there. That's a major reason why I had to get out of New York. Not just because we were losing-that's part of the game. It was because I felt I had to surround myself with better football players." Dryer always had been an unusually graceful lineman. What admirers didn't know was that his agility was serving a dual purpose. "Playing football is not like working in the mill; I could've stumbled over one of my fat tackles and it would all be over for me," he says. "So, I had to be an acrobat out there, dodging my own guys as well as everybody else. They weren't good enough athletes, and the situation wasn't getting any better. It was all very constipated. In my memory of the Giants, there's a grandfather clock ticking. It was like, 'C'mon guys, let's get with it!' But I could see it wasn't happening, so I left and came out west." DRYER'S TRADE to the Rams proved to be mutually rewarding. The team was on an upswing, and in 1976 Dryer was named to the All-National Football Con- ference team and played in the Pro Bowl. Four years later, the Rams made it to Super Bowl XIV, where they lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers. But Dryer already had made a Super Bowl appearance with- out the team. In 1975, Dryer and Rams wide receiver Lance Rentzel scored press credentials from Sport magazine's Dick Schaap to cover Super Bowl IX, pitting the Min- nesota Vikings against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Before leaving for New Or- leans, the two made a pact, both to in- dulge in as much complimentary press food and drink as they could hold and to disrupt the obsequious media carnival that precedes the Big Game by being as obnoxious and irreverent as humanly pos- sible. They'd seen the film Front Page, and they decided to go to the game as 1920s-style reporters. They rented period clothing (including fedoras with "Press" cards on them), procured an old-fash- ioned camera and telephone, and headed for the Crescent City. Their first night in New Orleans, Dryer and Rentzel got roaring drunk, crammed free food into all the pockets of their baggy suits, and then stuffed the suits- food and all-between the mattresses of their beds at the Marriott, to achieve that "rumpled" look. For the next two days, the duo turned the usually sacrosanct NFL pregame ritual into ' 'The Fred and Lance Show." As "Cubby Sweitzer" and "Scoops Brannigan" of the "Daily Steamer," they joined perplexed sports- writers on buses bound for press con- ferences, where they'd sabotage the proceedings by asking outrageous ques- tions in a loud, brusque manner. While one posed a question, the other furiously scribbled "notes." The two pinballed from party to ban- quet, from press conference to photo op, a buffet's worth of fresh food protruding from their clothing. Their behavior made them the story of Super Bowl Week, and curious items began appearing on sports pages all over the country. Who were these lunatics, and how did they get cre- dentials? At one media session with the Steelers' quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, Dryer interrupted a reporter's football query to ask a burning question of his own. "Terry, they say the size of your head determines IQ," he said. "Would you tell us your hat size?" A stymied Bradshaw replied, "Seven and a quar- ter." "Hmmm," concluded Dryer, "I guess you're not very bright." As "other" writers began recognizing Dryer and Rentzel, most of them thought the prank was a scream, but a few boys from the old school were livid. "We wouldn't suit up to play football!" hol- lered the late Dick Young one day on the press bus. "No, because you'd get mur- dered," rejoined Dryer. "But we've prov- en that anybody can do this job." To this day. Dryer swears that his and Rentzel's shenanigans paved the way for the cyni- cal coverage of the Super Bowl so com- mon these days. Throughout his Rams days, such gags contributed to the perception of Dryer as a wacky miscreant. Rumor had it that he was an iconoclastic nomad who lived in his car at the beach, where he couldn't be reached by mail or phone. Equally per- sistent were rumors-frequently spread by rival players-that none of the reports of bizarre behavior were true, that Dryer was putting on the media, feeding them hay and then milking them for all the "pub" he could get. Either way. Dryer's name became a household word in ink- conscious Hollywood. Today, Dryer in- sists the stories about his idiosyncracies were true. "In 1973 and 1974, I lived in my car. That's just what I did," he states matter- of-factly. "In the off-season, I was a guy who drove his van up and down the free- way, who had this weird, nocturnal thing where I just had to get out and drive around the state of California and around the country. I don't know if it was ner- vousness, if it was like pacing around, trying to find my spot, or what. It was a period where I was out of school, I was on my own and-what do I wanna do? I dunno what I wanna do! Well, I'll just go for a long drive and think about it. "All that stuff you've heard about, the living in my car, the swimming with sharks, was all an extension of that anxi- ety. But I loved it! It was fun to do that stuff because I got to be by myself a lot. I got to think about a lot of things and sort it all out." THAT DRYER used his brain as well as his brawn during his football career was to pay big dividends. A lot of profes- sional athletes spend their post-partum years in anguished bewilderment-lis- tening for ovations that aren't there, liv- ing fast on an income that's slowed to a crawl, wondering what to do next. But before he'd sacked his last quarterback in 1981, Dryer was already laying the groundwork to become an actor. Not an ex-jock snarling and mugging through bit parts as a saloon bouncer or bodyguard. Not a cameo-role charity case standing behind real actors like meat on a hook. An actor. In 1980, Dryer began a three-year as- sociation with famous acting teacher Nina Foch. "It was very important to me to find a teacher I could trust," he says, "someone to unfold the craft for me in a logical sequence. Nina knew I had the preparation, the ability and the discipline to study. I wanted to understand the tech- nique of interpretation. Acting is a cele- bration of the life experience. If you can bring to it whatever your life experience offers, and use it to interpret a written script, to make believe that the script par- allels human behavior-and then give it back in front of a camera-you're doing well. But that takes training. Nina has not only a great acting mind, but also a great ability to communicate that knowledge." Dryer knew he could be a good actor, but he didn't know if he could make a living at it. Would the industry perceive him as someone capable of doing lead roles? If they didn't, how could he change their perceptions? To prevent be- ing typecast, Dryer made a risky deci- sion. He would turn down the typical jock roles, and at the same time read for those that would seem a stretch. "I turned down everything you could possibly imagine," he remembers. "Although, I did do one jockish part on a Laverne and Shirley episode, simply because I wanted to do the show." Dryer also tested for the part of Sam Malone, the smooth, randy, ex-jock bar- tender on Cheers. His competition was William Devane and, of course, Ted Dan- son, who won the role and a whole new career. Dryer settled for guest appear- ances in four episodes of the hit series. He played Malone's baseball chum, an ex-pitcher who became a sportscaster. On December 5, 1981, Dryer was in Cincinnati to cover a Bengals/Forty- niners game in his short-lived role as a color man for CBS. He didn't know that Nettles was there to do the telecast for San Francisco's NBC affiliate, KRON. At the Stouffer Hotel, they were traveling in opposite directions on the escalator when they spotted each other. Dryer vaulted over to Nettles' side and the two friends went off to catch up on each other's lives. "Fred told me he'd be acting profes- sionally within the year," remembered Nettles. "I told him, 'C'mon, Fred, you've played yourself in a couple of small parts, but acting's a tough busi- ness.' He said, 'I know exactly what to do, who to go to, how to put it all to- gether.' And he did. There's nothing arro- gant or egotistical about Fred; he just has an amazing, innate sense of himself and his situation at any one time." Between his NFL retirement and his first regular paychecks for acting. Dryer was able to sustain himself because of real-estate investments he'd made with his football earnings. "I knew football wasn't going to last, so I saved a lot of money while I was still playing," he says. "That was the key to my being able to turn down a lot of roles: I didn't have to make a living at acting right away. I could afford to say 'No.'" Soon, Dryer made good on his pledge to Nettles. He read for and landed parts in several TV movies, opposite stars as nou- veau as Gary Coleman (The Kid from Nowhere) and as established as the late Rock Hudson (Starmaker). He even starred in some TV pilots, including the action-adventure Force Seven, the com- edy Girl's Life and The Marshal of Slade Town, in which he played a comic "heavy." In 1983, he did a pilot, The Rousters, for action-show mogul Stephen J. Cannell. In it. Dryer and Robert Davi played brothers who were also psychotic killers. NBC President Brandon Tartikoff liked Dryer's work in The Rousters and gave him a chance to read for a new show, Hunter. Among others who read for the lead were San Diego comedian/actor Tim Thomerson (a friend of Dryer) and Kent McCord of Adam-12 fame. Dryer got the part. "Brandon liked me, he liked Step- fanie, he liked what Hunter was about," recalls Dryer. "He got Cannell to pro- duce, and Steve put a lot of money into making the show go." It didn't go. "That first year, we were 50th, 60th, 70th, 80th in the ratings. Buried at the bottom. But Brandon didn't cancel the show, because he believed in it. He had a vision that we were going to make this thing work. He's the one who educated the audience to us. The combination of his support, Steve's support and the hir- ing of [executive producer] Roy Huggins in 1985 enabled us to establish a firm toehold on Saturday nights." It was Huggins' idea to "transfer" de- tective Rick Hunter from the grimy alleys of downtown L.A. to the posh plushness that begins at Beverly Hills and ends at the Pacific Ocean. Overnight, the show went from "Urban Cowboy" to "Malibu Vice," and the ratings began to climb. Since 1985, Hunter has consistently placed in the top 15. During the regular season last year, it made it as high as number seven; in summer reruns. Hunter has been as high as number two. In the television business, it's unusual when a series pilot actually gets shot, amazing when it gets bought and unbe- lievable when it lasts. By the fifth season, a series is usually in decline. But as it enters its sixth year. Hunter is actually gaining in popularity. As happy as he is with that happenstance, Dryer proffers a qualification. "Personally, I think of the show as being only four years old," he says, "because for the first two years no one even knew we existed. "Unfortunately, the writing never com- pletely established the Hunter character at the beginning of the series. It was very superficially sketched out. The show was about stories, not about characters. If it was up to me, I'd go back to the first year of the show and say, 'Step aside and I'll tell you what this guy is, and let's write to that.' Instead, they had me chasing the minority of the week down an alley, and clubbing guys half my size on the head, and handcuffing people, and getting into fistfights and car chases, with cars ex- ploding and turning and rolling. "I fought for five years with the people involved in the show to be able to tell the stories through the characterizations. Whatever the story's about, if you have two interesting characters and dialog that explains their relationship, that's the story. To the writers, the story might be about a guy who robs a bank, and then runs into someone else who takes the money and runs to South America with it. They'd write that story, but they wouldn't write what Hunter thought about it. And they don't write well-rounded relation- ships. They wouldn't write a scene in which Stepfanie and I sit and talk about the Chicago Cubs; I'd have to write that in myself. And they didn't like that." Indeed, what Dryer describes as the "sometimes painful" process of wresting creative control away from the Hunter brain trust would leave more than a few feathers permanently ruffled. In the Hol- lywood tradition of reducing complex sit- uations and personalities to a single descriptive, Dryer became "difficult." In a survey published in the August 5-11 issue of TV Guide, his name tops the list of "Bad Guys"-TV stars voted the most difficult to work with by a sampling of directors, writers and production tech- nicians. Dryer's voice rises as he defends his methods and reasons. "Here's what they want to do," he says. "They want to give you a vehicle to drive with no brakes and no steering wheel. And when you complain about that, they get angry with you and say you're a troublemaker. The first five years was just hammering that out, trying to get people to see my standards. See, writers don't understand actors. They don't understand what it takes to break down a script so you can do it. Just be- cause they write it doesn't mean you can play it, and they don't understand that. "Now, we're trying to loosen things up a bit, to tell stories but at the same time to inject some color and personality. You know, not every scene has to be a dramatic moment, or even be about what- ever's going on in that episode. Some- times it should step back a bit, to give the story and the characters a little more dimension." In his added role as executive pro- ducer, Dryer hopes to achieve those re- suits. He's already taken steps by hiring two new "executive writers"-Mark Kupfer and David Balkin. "As exec pro- ducer, I hire the director, the director of photography and the writers. I set and approve the storylines. I'm responsible for the editing, the post-production and the handing over of the finished product." For wearing two hats. Dryer gets an ac- tor's fee and a producer's fee. "I'm the boss, so however Hunter turns out this year, you can either blame me or thank me. But it took me five years-during which I directed five episodes-for them to understand that I know producing and directing, that I understand the process. "We're going to improve and update the show this season-the acting, the di- recting, even the locations, the music and the main titles-without making a lot of wholesale changes," he continues. "It'll be fresh-different but not that different. As for Rick Hunter, he'll do more prob- lem solving, more decision making. You'll see him run the gamut of emo- tions, different shades of temperament." But Dryer isn't about to take unneces- sary chances with his character. "We aren't going to get too heavy," he cau- tions. "Hunter isn't a Greek tragedy. There won't be pathos or agony, or a lot of introspection, or Hunter sitting in his house brooding about the state of the world. It's not that kind of show, and people who watch it wouldn't want to see that. "Our goals are quality and commu- nication. A lot of people talk down tel- evision, say that it's so much Pablum. But it doesn't have to be. I think the audience is as intelligent as the material you give them." An overriding goal of the new production team is to break into the top five in the ratings. To do that. Dryer must expand the existing audience. "We know who watches the show," he says. '"Now we have to go get those who don't watch it. "Let's go get something to eat." WHEN DRYER ARRIVES at his favor- ite neighborhood cafe, Santo Pietro's is at full, midday bustle. Instinctively, the ce- lebrity heads for a comparatively quiet alcove. A couple of diners give him the once-over, but no one speaks to him or makes any overt gestures. In smug, tony Brentwood, one assumes, making a fuss over a TV star just isn't done. Dryer doesn't need a menu. Soon, he's munching on broiled fish, a bowl of steamed broccoli and a huge platter of green salad with what looks like trace amounts of dressing. I mention that I'd read where Dryer claimed to have ' 'killed off" his gridiron alter ego, and I surmise that his high-cholesterol training-camp diet must have been one of the first things to go. "Absolutely," he says. "I have a whole philosophy about eating and health and taking care of yourself. But that's another day and another whole inter- view." I ask him if there is still a defen- sive end lurking inside, if any aspect of his football career had gone unfulfilled, if he still follows the game. "That's a tough, all-encompassing question," he issues slowly. "I got rid of Fred Dryer the Football Player for my own benefit-not to satisfy anyone else. Obviously, I'm still recognized as a guy who used to play for the Giants and the Rams. I was just in Hawaii, and the guy running this elevator suddenly says, 'Boy, I sure remember that day in Octo- ber 1969 in Yankee Stadium, when you were playing the Bears, and . . .' He went into this whole thing, and I wasn't even ready for it. I was talking to my daughter and putting lotion on her shoulders, and out of the blue he hits me with this stuff. I just started laughing! But he was dead serious. He was pissed off that I left New York!" Dryer switches from an incredulous to a tolerant tone. " It's always interesting to run across that sort of thing," he says quietly. "I certainly did play ball, and I'm proud of that. But I had to get rid of that guy, because I never was Fred Dryer of the Giants or the Rams. I was Fred Dryer from Lawndale, California. So, in order to see my future as an actor more clearly, to be able to concentrate on what I had to do, and to be perceived correctly by people who otherwise might have pre- judged me, I had to kill Fred Dryer the Football Player." Dryer related how, in the early days of his acting career, he would meet with film or television pro- ducers, and the meetings would be stacked with football fans, specifically Giants fans. "There are more Giants fans in L.A. than Rams fans," he cracks. "I had to learn how to handle coming into a room and hearing, 'Hey, I remember the Cleve- land game in 1971 . . . ' I'd say, 'Great, who's the producer, who's the director, where are the lines you want me to read, good luck with the project,' and then I'd leave. See, I had to change my whole way of looking at myself in order to push through the bullshit of how I was per- ceived by others. But I found that I couldn't really change those preconcep- tions. It's still the same today, and I guess that's okay. But I'm really not sitting with you here today as Fred Dryer the Football Player, or even as Fred Dryer the Actor. I'm just Fred Dryer. "Now, don't get me wrong," he has- tens to add. "I loved playing football. In fact, you know the one thing I miss doing more than anything else?" He pauses. "Sprinting." I fix him with what must have been a puzzled look. Did he mean wind-sprints, those repetitious, up-and- down-the-field exercises that tested one's will to live? Those lung-busting, end- of-football-practice rituals seemingly in- vented by sadistic gulag wardens? "Sprinting," he repeats. "Running full speed. Think about it: What reason would you have to run at full speed, other than to be competitive, to run to some- thing or away from something as fast as you can? Nothing in daily life gives you the motivation to sprint. Now, I can go lift weights, and I can jog, I can do all the yoga and stretching and breathing exer- cises I want. But there's nothing that defines you as an athlete more than sprinting for a purpose-the purpose be- ing competition. It took me years to fig- ure this out." A look bordering on rapture moved across Dryer's face. "I had no idea what it was about my athletic career-from childhood to the day I walked out of Rams Park for the last time-that caused these waves of strong but indistinct feel- ing to hit me. I couldn't harness it, couldn't get a good perspective on it. And now I realize that sprinting is what it all comes down to. Now I understand why, as a kid, you sprint everywhere you go. I see my daughter running out of sheer enthusiasm. Her body tells her to run, her thoughts are so ... exciting, they're exploding inside her, and that causes her to run, to use her energy. As a competi- tive athlete, you have things that engage you, that give you the excitement to sprint. And I miss that." This was an unexpected, fascinating digression, and I wasn't about to inter- rupt. "In football," he continues apace, "it's the environment, it's the threat of physical encounter, it's the desire to use to the fullest what you've been given and what you've developed. What makes you play football is the thought of wanting to play, not the fact that you have strong legs or whatever. The physicality of the game is an after-effect of the impulse to play, to compete. And it doesn't seem fair that you lose that physical impulse just because you're no longer playing sports. The key to my own psyche is developing an understanding of what I used to do, as opposed to what I am do- ing now." Dryer fixed me with a stare. "I have suffered a loss, and I don't like it. At the end of this past season of Hunter, a re- porter from USA Today asked me what I was going to do with my free time, and I said, 'The one thing I'm going to try to do is sprint more.' Of course, he had no idea what I meant. But I intend to leam how to sprint all over again. I'm going to get back to running a 4.6 [-seconds], 40 [-yard dash]." Would he hire a trainer? "Yes. It's funny, this isn't an older guy saying, 'Gee, I want to recapture my youth.' It's well within my grasp to do. I want to feel that good about myself again. I don't feel good after I jog. It puts me to sleep, and it also hurts my knee. There's just nothing like sprinting." I'm glad I hadn't asked Dryer any foot- ball questions; the subject obviously doesn't interest him. "One thing I used to look forward to in my football days were what they called 'pursuit drills,'" he re- members. "I excelled at that. I enjoyed having plays run at me, but I loved having them run away from me. Most guys didn't like it when the play was away from them, because they knew they'd have to pursue it, which might mean run- ning 30 or 40 yards diagonally across the field. But I loved it. I'd be thinking, 'Hey, if this O.J. Simpson guy is lucky enough to get by [Rams linebacker] Jack Young- blood and [defensive lineman] Merlin Olsen over there, I'll get to run another five or ten yards.' "But either way, by pursuing across the field, I'd be sure to get in my 30- to-40-yard sprint. I knew going into a game that I'd be sprinting a couple of miles before the day was over. And I especially loved it when a team was in a passing situation, because I'd get to rush the quarterback. I got to sprint, I got to use my speed. It's fun! I used to get on Merlin and [the Rams' massive lineman] Larry Brooks; I'd say, 'You poor bastards are stuck in those bodies! I gotta run- Stay outta my way!' "So, when I watch football games to- day, it's primarily because I want to run again. It's great to watch [the Giants'] Lawrence Taylor cover the field. It's great to watch these guys sprint. I love it! That's why I watch. And I don't give a damn who wins; that doesn't make any difference to me." He looked up ear- nestly from his second heaping platter of salad. "Have I answered your question?" WHEN YOU are interviewing someone who's had a great past and is enjoying a phenomenal present, there's only one area left open to speculation. Almost from the inception of Hunter, Dryer has made noises about someday moving in- to feature films. He even took a stab at it in 1986, with the poorly distributed, Stalloneish-sounding Death Before Dis- honor. In it, he played a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant leading a small group of "specialists" against terrorists in the Middle East. The poster from the film hangs just inside the front door to Dryer's condo. Hop or no. Dryer isn't afraid to make the quantum leap into the "senior" medium. "Starting over is no problem for me- I've started over a lot of times. At least I have five years of experience and growth in the business. The major difference be- tween producing a television show and producing a film is that with a movie you get more time and more money. I go to movies a lot and compare what they're doing to what I can do. I've been to all the major movies that are out right now, ex- cept for the new Raiders movie. And I can see myself doing the things that Kevin Costner is doing. Harrison Ford. Stallone. I can do that stuff. I can do comedy. I have a wide spectrum of abili- ties that no one has seen. I want to de- velop those abilities, and the way to do that is to be selective, to choose sensible projects and good actors, directors and writers. In other words, to follow through on the good taste that I know I have. "I do know that I don't ever want to go back to doing series television after Hunter, although I might like to produce, direct and/or star in a TV movie. I'd like to star in feature films, but I have no lust to become an independent contractor like Stallone or Eastwood. I want to have the time to live. I don't want to spend my life in front of a camera on a set somewhere in Paraguay because I have an image to up- hold or an obligation to someone or be- cause I have to work to pay my bills. There are other things I want to do. I want to ski for a couple of months every win- ter. I have a feeling I'm going to be in Europe a lot in the next decade. And, I want to build my home." The comfy but unostentatious trap- pings of Dryer's condo take on a purpose when one leams that he's been saving his resources to develop his own custom es- tate in about two years. He already owns the lot-almost four acres on a hill above Bel Air Estates, on Mulholland Drive near Beverly Glen. He's already chosen his general contractor, and the craftsmen are lined up, as well. "I'll be there my- self, pounding nails," says the former Industrial Arts major. "In the meantime, I'm taking pictures of homes that I like, getting ideas. I'm looking forward to pushing beyond the Hunter era to a time when I can relax and settle down." One feature his dream house definitely will have is a piano room. "I wish I'd learned to play a musical instrument," he says with regret. "I tried. When I was a kid, I studied violin and clarinet, but in those days I lacked the discipline to stay with it, and now that time has passed. But I'm looking forward to changing my thinking about that, and thus my patterns of behavior. I can see the possibility that someday I'll make the time to leam to play an instrument. I'm planning to buy a baby grand piano. I know exactly where it's going to go." The subject of music seems to be a colorful thread that pops up from time to time in the fabric of Dryer's conversa- tion. "I don't follow what's on the Top 40," he clarifies. "When I hear some- thing I like, I find out what it is and I go buy it. Like when I got screwed into Si- natra in New York. Now I have every- thing he ever recorded. The Columbia [Records] years, the Capitol years. Those songwriters, those arrangers, his bandleaders-that's an era of music I re- ally love. "And then I'll hear something by the [hard-rock band] Georgia Satellites, and I'll get that, so when I'm in the mood for that specific kind of rock 'n' roll, I'll have the perfect thing to play. I have a collection of classical records that's rep- resentative of the spectrum of that kind of music. Vivaldi, Wagner, Beethoven. I love Chopin. Sometimes I go into my office and I want perfect quiet-no TV, no radio, no stereo. Other times I'll play five or six CDs in a row." Sinatra. Chopin. Baby grand pianos. One gets the impression that this tough guy, who once earned a living decapitat- ing quarterbacks, who now makes a liv- ing scraping hardened criminals off the streets, is really a romantic at heart. Dryer ponders the suggestion for a long time before addressing it. "Yeah, I think I am. Maybe not in the same sense that a woman thinks of 'romantic.' For exam- ple, I like a nice meal, but I don't like to 'dine out.' When I'm hungry, I just wanna eat. When I feel like working out, I go work out. I do things at my own pace-not too fast, not too slow. And when you're with a woman, you tend to be on a different schedule. "But that can be great, too. It's great to be in love, to have those feelings you get in a love relationship. I have my daughter on weekends. I have a great love relation- ship with her, and with my ex-wife. I'm a very good father, and all three of us get along terrifically. It's blue skies. "It's great to have kids, to be a father, to have that responsibility. It makes you alive to feel so many emotions; you're vulnerable, fearful, but you also know you have someone who will love you as long as you're here, and then some. I'm a very passionate person. I love being alive. I'm extremely connected and feel very strongly about the people and things I give my time to. I really try to know and understand things, whether it be a woman, a man, a job, a career move, an automobile. I'm very curious, I like to know how things work. I don't drink, I don't do drugs. I don't live in a fantasy world. I'm right here." AT REGULAR INTERVALS throughout the day, Dryer has mentioned his aver- sion to drug use, especially as it pertains to athletes. He gets heated when talking about the recent death of former NFL star John Matuzak, one whose transition from athlete to actor did not have a happy end- ing. The "Tooz" had appeared on Hunter, and Dryer attributes his "tragic, shocking" demise to his self-abusive ways. He launches into a diatribe about the shared responsibility of the NFL owners and players to clean up their house. "Forget the [drug-] testing," Dryer half-bellows at one point. "Fire the guy who gets caught doing dope! Let him sue the league to get back in. Put it in the players' contracts that if you get caught with dope, or driving drunk, you're fired immediately without pay. You've voided your contract. You start doing that to these guys, and you'll get results." Con- sidering that he was a player, and espe- cially that he freely admits to having gone through a phase of "minimal experimen- tation" with drugs many years ago, Dryer's hard-nosed objectivity is sur- prising. "Athletes live in a nurtured, clois- tered, make-believe environment," he declares. "They're pampered and ca- tered to, treated separately, above and beyond the average person, as though they're special. It isn't reality. And it's the NFL's responsibility to make these guys see the light. [Long-time NFL com- missioner] Pete Rozelle left office with- out answering the drug problem, and it had been going on for ten years. Now the owners are split on who they should hire to replace him. The owners are screwed up; they're worse than the players. They have no standards; the league has no stan- dards. I'm so frustrated and angry with how the league deals with its problems that it makes me not want to be a fan. I love the sport, but I don't want to hear about this stuff anymore." No matter what his occupation at any one time. Dryer contradicts the stereo- type. He was never a "dumb jock," and now that he's in the acting profession he couldn't be further removed from the Hollywood softy who can't do anything without a phalanx of managers and ad- visers. "I solve my own problems, and when I don't understand something, I go find someone who does," he instructs. "I make decisions and stand behind them. I pay my own goddam bills, write my own checks, make my own bed, take out my own trash. One thing I've relinquished is washing my own car. I take it to a car wash. "I like to have things in order-every- thing in its place, whether at my office, at home, or in my life. It took me two or three years to figure out how to take the time and preparation necessary to do the show, and to plug that into the everyday living of life. I get up at 7 in the morning and go to bed by midnight. Every ... night. I play golf, ride a bicycle, ride a motorcycle. It's still thrilling to ride mo- torcycles," he good-naturedly interjects in reference to his days at State. "I lift weights a little. Do stretching exercises. Sure, sometimes I get a little resentful that I don't have enough time to do some of the things I enjoy, like read- ing. I miss sitting down and just reading for enjoyment, for self-enrichment. I don't want it to sound like I'm not grate- ful for the work I have and the oppor- tunity to be in this business. It's just that the longer you do one thing, the harder it gets to pull yourself out of it. Sometimes when I'm working, I get up at 6 a.m. and look outside and think, 'Gee, what a beautiful day to ride my bike to the beach.' And I can't do it. Sometimes I resent not having that freedom. "But that's the great thing about this business. It's so open-ended. If I can see a ceiling on something, I don't want to get involved. But in this business, you can go as far as you want to. It's exciting knowing that you're living the life you really want, that you're going-not by the seat of your pants-but that you are navigating according to your own in- stincts. And when you're successful at that, it says something about your breed- ing, about where you came from. It re- flects on my mother, on my father. On how I grew up. I think about that a lot. I reminisce, I save things, I relish moments in time and special memories. I call upon my past all the time, even in my work." It's one of the few times all day that Dryer has mentioned his parents, but not from lack of sensitivity. It's apparent in the almost reverent way he speaks of them that there is great love there. But he doesn't dilvuge more than is necessary. "My father was a sporting-goods sales- man," he smiles. "That's all he did. When he'd go off to work and my brother Charlie and I would leave for school, my mother loved having time to herself. She listened to all the old radio shows. She'd listen to Arthur Godfrey's show from 2 to 3 in the afternoon. When I came home from school, I'd catch the last little bit of it with her." Dryer's dad died when Fred was 17 and a senior at Lawndale High. "My mother made an interesting comment at the time. She said, 'Fred, you know I loved your father, and I'll miss him terribly. But I like being with myself.' She had her own thoughts. She's 70 now, and still an inde- pendent thinker. My brother plays hand- ball, racquetball. He's involved in his business. He doesn't listen to records, doesn't go to movies, doesn't sit and read. So we don't share those languages. Whatever interests I have, I've developed on my own." Dryer's mood has turned somewhat in- trospective. But an attempt to plumb his innermost thoughts is firmly thwarted. "I don't dodge anybody or any situation, but I do diffuse things," he states. "I like to keep my most private thoughts to myself; I don't give them away by discussing them. Doing Hunter is terrific; it gives me a lifestyle and the freedom and means to do what I want to do. At the same time, it also opens me up to criticism, to public scrutiny. People are constantly wanting in, to talk to me, to know me, to snoop around, to expose, all for their own self- aggrandizement." He catches himself. "It's not neces- sarily a negative thing," he says, soften- ing. "It's simply a fact that what I do just happens to tie in, for example, with what you, as a writer, do. But I have to be selective about who I talk to, what I say, how I say it, the state of mind I'm in. I've been preparing myself for this interview for about two weeks. It's just something I do subconsciously. I think about sitting down and talking to you, about what I want to discuss, about the things I've done that are interesting and what's perti- nent about them. "At the same time, I need to keep my private life to myself, and still make this [interview] work. And that's not an easy thing to do. Some people say, 'Well, if he doesn't want to talk about his marriage, or his religion, or let us into his house to look through his files, then we don't want to do the interview,' and my response is always, 'See you later.' I'm not so sure that it's necessary for people to see my baby shoes." Dryer smiles the enigmatic smile of inaccessible corners, of private harbors. "I keep my secrets."