Charger Notebook : Hoping to Succeed, He’ll Fly, Fly Again

The depths of agent Harold Daniels’ frustration with client Chip Banks are apparently limitless.

Banks is the Chargers’ free agent holdout linebacker. Daniels has spent most of the summer unsuccessfully trying to talk him back into a Charger uniform.

“I’m just doing something I think I should,” Daniels said Friday after telling Chet Franklin, the team’s player personnel director, that he would board a plane this morning and fly to Banks’ Atlanta home for the second time in a week.

“He’s on my side,” Daniels said of Franklin. “He’s cheerleading me.”

Daniels said that if Banks makes good on his threat to sit out the 1988 season, it will cost him $1.65 million. “And there’s no way he could ever make that up in the 28% tax bracket,” Daniels said. “They (the Chargers) would have to give him $3 million the next year, and there’s no way they’ll do that.”

Daniels said he plans to return to his home in Los Angeles Sunday night.

The Chargers might have a new player representative soon.

The position used to belong to Wes Chandler. Then they traded him to San Francisco. Cornerback Gill Byrd was the alternate.

Byrd now describes himself as the “acting player rep.” But he might soon beg off of a position he isn’t sure is worth the time it costs him.

He already has told his teammates he will spend the next several days trying to decide if he still wants the job.

“My problem with the job is I just get discouraged,” Byrd said. “I think there are a lot of guys on this team who need direction. That’s what’s pulling me toward the job. But by the same token, there are guys who have been around who don’t care.

“That draws me away. They get the same benefits that you get, without doing any work. It’s a Catch-22 situation.”

The Raiders are just as image conscious, in their own iconoclastic way, as the NFL is in its squeaky-clean manner.

Don’t look for this woman to sing the Star Spangled Banner at Super Bowl XXIII in Miami. But she will be on the field belting it out Sunday in the Coliseum.

Her name: Vanessa Williams

Williams, in case you don’t watch Entertainment Tonight or read People, is the former Miss America who lost her crown when nude pictures of her appeared in a national magazine.

Raiders will be Raiders.

This was going to be the game in which the Chargers would show the Raiders and the public that tackle John Clay wasn’t the poor excuse for a player so many people thought he was when they got him in the controversial Jim Lachey trade.

The jury is still out on Clay here. Way out.

Clay is healthy now after a series of minor injuries. But he will be on the bench when the season opens Sunday in Los Angeles.

“He’s basically new into the system,” says Coach Al Saunders. “But he’s progressing every day.”

Saunders says Clay has improved his upper body strength working in the weight room with Phil Tyne, the strength and conditioning coordinator.

“Hopefully John Clay will do nothing but get better,” Saunders says. “But we’re set at the two tackle positions right now.”

The starter at left tackle is Gary Kowalski. The starter at right tackle is David Richards. “We’ll go with them until we’re dissatisfied,” Saunders says. “But I don’t plan on us being dissatisfied with Gary or Richards. Those guys are getting better, too.”

Charger Notes

Expect the Chargers to activate defensive lineman Joe Phillips today. Phillips will back up nose tackle Mike Charles. . . . Charger Coach Al Saunders on the fact that the Chargers are six-point underdogs to the Raiders Sunday: “That has no effect on how we play.” . . . Saunders on the talent of the Raiders: “Their backup wide receiver (Notre Dame rookie Tim Brown) is the Heisman Trophy winner.”