Any Nation That Distrusts Coaches Is to Be Admired

The Rams are making a serious mistake, opening their exhibition season in London.

Apparently they had no choice. They wanted to play in a city where their quarterbacks wouldn’t be booed, and Rangoon doesn’t have a suitable stadium. In some ways, though, London can be tougher than Anaheim.

John Robinson will be in for a rocky trip, certainly. I was in London recently, covering a lawn tennis tournament, and I happened to notice a road sign. I took the snapshot seen below.

The sign was posted at the entrance to a roadside rest-and-snack area--a truck stop, basically--about an hour north of London. Somebody at the rest area told me the sign had something to do with soccer buses, but I ruled out that explanation. What possible connection could there be between football coaches and soccer buses? None of the football coaches I know even like soccer.

No, the meaning rang clear. Football coaches are not welcome, unless booked in advance. The “booked” part I’m not sure about. That probably means football coaches are admitted only when handcuffed and accompanied by a bobby.

How this anti-coach sentiment came about, I don’t know. Maybe Woody Hayes passed this way years ago, and roughed up a motorist or two. All I know is, this sign is a bad omen for John Robinson and his crew of coaches. In a city beset by terrorists and tourists, the only species of human not welcome at a truck stop is the football coach.

Maybe it’s because the English people know about football coaches. Even truck stops have dress codes, and what proprietor wants his greasy spoon overrun by beefy guys wearing bright polyester shorts and doubleknit, team-logo golf shirts?

Also, football coaches tend to doodle on napkins, tableclothes and wallpaper. Imagine John Madden terrorizing an English roadside diner by violently diagramming plays using squirt jars of ketchup and mustard.

Yes, these people have been tipped off about coaches. English people are generally jolly, and just about any football coach will put a quick damper on a rollicking happy hour at the neighborhood pub. Coaches are chronic worriers, passing along their pessimistic thoughts in the form of cliches. Ask a football coach how his summer vacation was and he’ll say, “I won’t really know until I look at the films.”

What does all this mean? I’m not sure, but I think there is an indication here that the Rams have pitched camp in a hostile climate. If the English people don’t like football coaches, how will they react to interior linemen? Or football radio-TV announcers?

Besides, don’t forget, the Rams are lousy tourists. Last season Robinson took them to New Orleans a week early for a game with the Saints. He figured the week away from home would be relaxing for the troops. If the Rams had relaxed any more, they would have needed headstones. The Saints beat ‘em, 6-0.

London can be even more relaxing than New Orleans. In fact, when it comes to fun times and fast lanes, London makes New Orleans look like Dubuque.

Weakened by the normal tourist activities, and a training-table diet of cucumber sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off, the Rams will be too drained to fight off the local media. London’s tabloid reporters, a small army of persistent newshounds often referred to as the beastie boys, work so hard at digging up scoops that they often hit themselves on their heads with shovels.

These journalists have been swarming around Eric Dickerson, quizzing him about his personal life. The tab boys love sex and scandal angles, and when they learned that Eric was mixed up in a paternity suit, with guns and large sums of money involved, they must have thought it was Christmas morning.

During Wimbledon, the tabloids turned Ivan Lendl and Boris Becker into raving sex maniacs simply because each had a girlfriend. One shudders to think what the tabloids will do with Dickerson, who might have more than one female pal. I would advise Eric not to get too chummy with Princess Di, or Boy George.

The game, if the Rams make it that far, will be the easy part. English sports fans are not hard to please. They are geared to the pace of cricket, the intensity of darts, and the scoring and body contact of soccer. To these action-starved fans, an NFL game, even a sloppy, lackluster practice game, will look like World War III on fast-forward.

I just hope the grueling ordeal of a week in London doesn’t knock the Rams out of kilter for the entire season. It’s a tough place to open, but you have to admire the civility and charm of a country that doesn’t allow football coaches in its truck stops.