Sport: Csonked-Out

Jamming a chaw of Beech-Nut tobacco into his cheek, Larry Csonka jumped into a blue Chevrolet pickup truck and, with his older brother Joe at the wheel, bounced down a deeply rutted, brown dirt road to get a close look at 80 acres of Ohio potato and corn fields up for rent. "It's real good land," Joe said as they surveyed the rolling countryside in the fresh fall air. "It's got good drainage and you can see the good crop growing here." Larry nodded. "We can use the land," he said. "Let's take it." Before climbing back into the truck, he kneeled down and poked at the loamy soil, picking up a 3-to-4-lb. potato that had been missed by the pickers.

Digging into eastern Ohio dirt was not exactly what professional football's best fullback expected to be doing this fall. He was set for his first season with the Memphis Grizzlies of the World Football League, a team he joined along with two of his ex-Miami Dolphin teammates, Running Back Jim Kiick and

Wide Receiver Paul Warfield. The bait that lured the 6-ft. 3-in., 240-lb. Csonka from the established National Football League and his $60,000 contract: a $500,000 cash bonus and $325,000 a year for three years in bank-guaranteed -salary. His job was just as big: to help give the new league star-studded credibility.

Cinderella Industry. Instead of leading the wobbly W.F.L. to prosperity, though, Larry Csonka had watched the starveling league die midway through its second season. Along with more than 350 other players, he had become a victim of the '70s retrenchment in sport. After a roaring decade of unprecedented growth, professional sport in some ways looks like a Cinderella industry heading toward midnight. Of the 23 teams in the American Basketball Association and World Hockey Association, only one is in the black. "There's no question about it," says Attorney Bob Woolf, who has negotiated hundreds of contracts, "the pendulum is swinging back. We're in a period of contraction."

So last week Larry Csonka, 28, was back at his 400-acre farm retreat in Lisbon, Ohio, preparing to settle in with his wife and two sons for his first fall in 17 years without football. "When my kids register for school here," he told TIME's Jay Rosenstein, "their father's occupation will be listed either as 'unemployed' or 'who knows?' "

Unlike most of the other W.F.L. players sidelined by the league's sudden death, Csonka at first had hopes that he might actually profit from it. Encouraged by his agent Ed Keating, Csonka thought for two days that he would be available for open bidding by N.F.L. teams. "I believe lightning has struck twice," said Keating as he arrived in Memphis the day the W.F.L. folded. "Larry is free to negotiate a deal with the Dolphins or another N.F.L. club and still draw his guaranteed salary from

Memphis." No way, announced Grizzlie Owner John Bassett. "Csonka is with me as long as I pay him."