Chargers Taking a Page From Saunders’ Book of Discipline

Staff:

Pay attention, because there will be a quiz later.

A few changes are in the works. We simply must be more disciplined around here.

1. Henceforth, at staff meetings, there will be only one chair. Mine. You minions will assemble yourselves respectfully at my feet. You will kneel on your right knees, unless you are left-kneed.

2. Henceforth, you will come to work with two pairs of shoes, finely polished dress shoes and white sneakers. You will use the sneakers for running to and from assignments, switching to your dress shoes at your destinations.

3. Henceforth, you will wear coats and ties and socks at all times, except for season-opening games. To those, you will wear tuxedos.

4. Henceforth, I will be the sole spokesperson for the department. If anyone asks how you are or who you are or what time it is, refer them to me.

5. Henceforth, visitors to the department will sit on a stool in the corner, where they might observe without being obtrusive.

These rules may seem inconvenient, but you will ultimately agree they will result in the production of a better newspaper.

Your Humble Leader dd I know. My rules aren’t original.

Let’s just say I borrowed them from Charger Coach Al Saunders, who seemingly is rewriting The Book on discipline.

Apparently, this club was populated by unruly ruffians under Don Coryell. They probably walked through hotel lobbies in their jock straps, voted according to their own political beliefs and turned team meetings into campfire scenes from “Blazing Saddles.”

No more.

This team is now disciplined. These players would have run through a wall for Coryell, if you can imagine anything so lacking in discipline. A more proper thing to do for a coach is to get down in front of him on bending knee.

As long as you’re down there, Dan, why don’t you polish the coach’s shoes . . . as if they would ever be tarnished by a speck of dust. That would be indicative of a lack of discipline.

The Chargers may never make it to a Super Bowl, but they’ll be a nice bunch to invite to dinner. I am sure the playbook will have a chapter telling them which fork to use for the salad, which knife for the butter and which spoon for the sherbet. I guess Saunders grew weary of watching them try to eat peas with their knives and tucking napkins into their T-shirts.

I can hear the shouting from the lunch room: “Darn it, Charlie, your napkin goes in your lap, folded diagonally with the point down. How do you expect to run the proper pass route if you can’t master such a basic discipline?”

The Chargers may be the only team in football history with backfield coaches, line coaches, special teams coaches and etiquette coaches.

Is it true that Amy Vanderbilt has been hired as a consultant?

Respect to elders being a basic tenet of discipline, I can imagine rookie Leslie O’Neal gently tapping Jim Plunkett on the shoulder.

“If you will excuse me, sir,” he will say, “I must deposit you on your posterior.”

The next thing we’ll find out is that meetings start with a pledge of allegiance. The Chargers no longer have a day off. It’s called recess now.

This regime is simply not going to tolerate anything that smacks of a lack of discipline. I suppose there will now be bed checks both at home and on the road. I figure there will be two bed checks a day, one at night to make sure the players are in them and one in the morning to make sure they are made.

No detail is too small when a coach is determined to establish the level of discipline necessary to compete with heathens such as the Broncos. No bed should be left unmade.

I wonder which assistant coach is assigned to the parking lot. You show me a Mercedes with spots on the windshield, a smudge on a fender and ashes in the ashtray and I’ll show you a player I wouldn’t want in my lineup with a minute to play and the score tied.

These guys simply have to get their lives in order.

Al Saunders certainly is a refreshing new face. Coaches and managers hereabouts have been described as intense, cantankerous, pleasant, nice and feisty, but never fastidious. Now we have fastidious.

It even sounds a bit tyrannical, but that word has such nasty and totalitarian connotations.

Such a word could not be applied to a clean-cut fellow such as Al Saunders, could it?

Naw.

The man definitely has the right idea. He has this team moving in the right direction.

Who knows, without such a firmly disciplined leader the Chargers could turn out to be just like the Chicago Bears or the Los Angeles Raiders.

We wouldn’t want that, would we?

No way. Fortunately, Al Saunders is going to give us a football team we can take home to mom or invite to an ice cream social or maybe even hire as a butler.

These guys will wear shirts with collars, clear their own dishes, stand at attention during the National Anthem and maybe even vote Republican. I don’t know for sure about the last item, because I haven’t gotten to that page in the playbook.

I do suspect that the Chargers will have to come up with a different job description for the assistant coaches.

How about drill instructors?