THE GREAT ZAMPESE : Rams’ Offensive Coordinator Has Now Passed Into a Class by Himself

The man the Rams hired to run their offense, the football genius who swirls X’s and O’s in his head and logs more meeting-room time than there is available chalk, once needed what amounted to a National Guard escort to get him into a classroom.

Funny, but now they can’t drag Ernie Zampese out of one, which still has former USC fraternity brothers rolling in the aisles.

Ernie Zampese? With a notebook? Zamp? The same party animal from (How ‘Bout A Night) Kappa Alpha, the take-two-aspirin-and-don’t-wake-me-in-the-morning-fraternity in the mid-1950s?

“Of course, what was wild then is nothing now,” Sam Tsagalakis, former USC kicker and fraternity brother, said in defense.

The same Zampese who danced on table tops and ceilings, the one who never met a Singapore Sling he didn’t like?

And wasn’t that Zampese a regular riot during rush week, when he’d grab goldfish from a bowl and stick the squirmy things into the nostrils of quivering pledges, just to make sure they were Kappa Alpha material?

Columnist Joe Jares of the L.A. Daily News, another of Zampese’s fraternity brothers, remembers.

“He used to say, ‘See how these goldfish have been mistreated?’ ” Jares said. “‘Well, now you’re going to have to take care of them.’ ”

If Zampese wasn’t doing striptease dances to Louis Prima records on the hoods of cars, he was making famous midnight taquitos raids on Olvera Street.

Zampese’s idea of sleeping was an occasional plop-down on a pile of rumpled sheets and blankets. On a good night, he’d wrap the garments around him. Not exactly bouncy television commercial stuff.

His room, insiders say, had fire marshals biting their fingernails and reworking building codes.

Zampese was a work of art, or so the legend goes, a guy who could paint the town Trojan Red at night and be seen whistling at sunrise the next morning, a Daily Racing Form folded under his arm, a soda in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Let’s just say he wasn’t headed for biology class.

“He used to pass us going the other way on our way to class,” Jares said.

Yes, there was this little nuisance known as school. Zampese actually was on scholarship as a gifted athlete. He had been Southern Section Player of the Year at Santa Barbara High School. He still holds the USC record for longest punt, 85 yards against Wisconsin. (Tsagalakis: “He kicked it 5 yards, and it rolled 80.”)

As a running back, though, Zampese made a few mistakes. His first was enrolling at USC during the era of Jon Arnett.

Arnett got all the yards, so many that the best Zampese could do was name one of his sons, Jon, after him.

His next mistake was to be an innocent bystander in an under-the-table payment scandal that hit USC, UCLA and California. All players from Zampese’s senior class were stripped of their eligibility.

With no football to play, Zampese decided to make the best of it. He flunked out during the second semester of his senior year.

“Most of those stories probably weren’t true,” Zampese said, indicating that at least some of them were. “Everybody embellishes everything. The thing that happened my last semester was that I never went to class. I took Incompletes and they turned to F’s, and I blew the whole thing off. At that time, I wasn’t real interested and I had no direction, other than having fun.”

So, some of the stories are true?

“I loved USC,” he said. “I loved going to parties. I went to all the damn parties.”

Fair enough. Still, how did that wild-eyed boy get to be this wise middle-aged man?

Ernie Zampese, 51, is reputed to have one of the National Football League’s keenest offensive minds. In eight seasons as an assistant to Don Coryell at San Diego, the Chargers led the league in offense six times.

Zampese is renowned as a football teacher, of all things, a supreme strategist. He’s a gentle, pleasant, meet-you-for-coffee man, one who would no sooner jump on a table top than take a position as head coach.

“I wouldn’t like to do it and I don’t have to do it,” Zampese said of leaving his assistantship.

It certainly isn’t lack of talent holding him back.

“He’s the best offensive coach I know,” said Coryell, who maybe sees the second-best in the mirror each morning.

Zampese was so good that the Rams hired him away from San Diego last February as offensive coordinator at a reported $150,000 a season. His orders were to take a sad song, the Rams’ passing game, and make it better.

Zampese’s hiring sent shock waves through the league, and Super Bowl odds for the Rams flip-flopped across betting boards.

Finally found, perhaps, was the missing link.

John Madden, the former coach and present television analyst, gave Zampese his first coaching job, at Hancock Junior College in 1962.

“He very well may be the top offensive mind in the game,” Madden said “Some guys can argue, but if you had a contest, I’d put him in there.”

This, the same guy who dented hoods to the sounds of Louis Prima?

No, the Ernie Zampese story makes little sense without the transition. He’s not even the same guy. So now, the rest of the story . . .

After Zampese left USC without a degree, he headed north for a tryout, arranged by Al Davis, with the Ottawa Roughriders of the Canadian Football League. After being cut, he ended up in Bakersfield and drove a sugar beet truck through the summer.

Then it was back to Santa Barbara, his hometown, where Zampese took a job as a postman.

In that time he married, and it was his wife, Joyce, he says, who kicked him in the mail pouch.

“I ended up getting lucky and married some gal that sort of straightened me out,” Zampese said.

Joyce says it took only minor prodding.

“Nobody really wants to be a mailman all their life,” she said. “At the time, he did what he had to do. But that’s not what he wanted to do the rest of his life.”

What Zampese wanted to do was coach. But to coach he needed to go back to you-know-what.

“He was real nervous about it at first,” Joyce said. “Once he got in, though, he knew he could do it.”

Zampese went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in search of a degree and a future.

“For the first time, I sat down and really did the work,” Zampese said. “I was really proud of myself. The first year I ended up with a 3.0 average and, boy, that was big stuff.

“The one thing I could really do was memorize. I was a Physical Ed major so I had to take quite a bit of biological sciences, which is memorizing. It’s not abstract ideas, it’s this is a muscle and this is an organ.”

Zampese was working on his master’s degree, which he later received, when Madden called to see if Zampese would assist him at Hancock. Zampese said yes.

Naturally, Madden and his keen sense saw something special in Zampese.

“No!” he said. “I just wanted a coach. And Ernie was a good guy.”

When Madden left in 1964 for San Diego State, Zampese became the head coach, a nightmare he never wishes to repeat.

Zampese hated everything about being the boss. He had to cut players, speak at booster club meetings. He detested press conferences. He deplored making non-football decisions.

The memory lives on.

“I did it once, and I wasn’t good at it,” he said. “Why? I don’t know. I don’t like to be the out-front guy. I’m not comfortable in that position.”

Zampese moved on to Cal Poly SLO in 1966 and then joined Coryell’s staff at San Diego State in 1967, where he remained for nine seasons.

Coryell said he was and is the perfect assistant.

“He takes great pride in being the best in what he’s doing but he doesn’t have that ego problem,” Coryell said. “He won’t step on toes to further his own goals. He’s just an ideal guy to have on your staff. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have great admiration for Ernie.”

Zampese moved on again in 1976, becoming a secondary coach for the Chargers under Tommy Prothro.

There, he ran smack-dab into failure again.

“I’m not sure I was prepared to go into the NFL at that time,” he said. “I just didn’t do a very good job of coaching.”

After his firing, Zampese spent two seasons as a scout for the New York Jets and then was reunited with Coryell and the San Diego Chargers in 1979.

Zampese joined Coryell, quarterback Dan Fouts and receivers such as Charlie Joiner and John Jefferson. They began developing what eventually became the most prolific NFL offense of the 1980s.

Zampese takes little credit for it.

“I think you guys are trying to make something out something that’s not there,” Zampese said. “There’s no mystery, no secrets. I’m just me. I just kind of picked it up. And I watched Charlie Joiner run pass patterns. I learned as much watching Charlie Joiner run pass patterns as anything.”

After Coryell was fired in mid-season last year, Zampese felt much the same way he had felt in the postal service. It was time to move on.

Offers of head coaching jobs have come in over the years.

“A lot of times, I felt he should have taken it,” Joyce Zampese said. “But that’s me, not him. He’s happy in his little niche, doing his little thing. He doesn’t need the recognition. As a head coach, he’s said, you get the glory and you get the garbage.”

But when the chance came to move up the road and coach the Ram offense, Zampese jumped.

The situation had almost everything, in order: a young quarterback in Jim Everett, a passing offense that had only one direction to go, up, and a winning organization that seemed intent on improving.

“It all happened fast,” Zampese said of his move north. “It was bang-bang.”

And now a football world awaits.

“It’s the ideal marriage,” Madden said of Zampese’s joining the Rams. “John Robinson’s background is in the running game and with Eric Dickerson, that’s a smart thing to do. But when you get Everett, you’ve got to bring in Zampese to get a balance. John’s idea of a forward pass is when Dickerson fumbles the ball downfield and (Dennis) Harrah jumps on it. Zampese is the other extreme.”

In some ways, Zampese has attacked his new job with the same spirit he took to USC fraternity parties. It’s just not as loud, that’s all.

“I love it,” Zampese said. “Coaching’s like stealing money. I’d bet you 99% of all football coaches would do it for nothing if they could afford to do it for nothing.”

It sure beats carrying letters.

Ram Notes

Player representative Carl Ekern held a team meeting Thursday to tell players the status of negotiations between the NFL Players Assn. and the NFL Management Council. He also wanted to prepare himself for a Monday meeting of player representatives in Washington. “I gave them the latest news I had and tried to get a really good feeling for what they want,” Ekern said. “I’ve talked to them several times, but we have some decisions to make Monday and I want a firm handle on how my teammates are feeling.” . . . Ekern says his injured right knee is feeling pretty good and he’s on a timetable that should mean he will be ready for “the first, or maybe second” regular-season game. “I need to get it a little more loosened up and hope to be able to run hard on it by Saturday,” he said. “When I can run hard, I’ll need one good week of practice to be ready.”

The Rams have discussed the possibility of offering released players $1,000 contracts to serve as a form of strike insurance--as a number of NFL teams have already done--but Coach John Robinson said a decision hasn’t been reached yet. “We have nothing to announce,” Robinson said. “If they’re going on strike, sure, we’ll start calling (players who have been cut). We’ve got all the phone numbers and I imagine we’d get back a lot of the guys who were here.” . . . Robinson said cornerback LeRoy Irvin, who is unhappy with his contract and has asked to traded, will play in the regular-season opener against Houston. “There is no trade we will accept or even consider,” Robinson said. Irvin left practice early Thursday because “his groin was bothering him,” Robinson said.

Injured center Tony Slaton (knee) also is expected to play against Houston. “His knee needed rest and a chance to come back,” Robinson said. “If it’s really inflamed after the Houston game, we may have to go the other way (injured reserve).” . . . For the first time since moving to the facility, the Rams put a tarpaulin on the chain-link fence bordering their practice field at Rams Park. Are they installing a secret offense? Not exactly. The tarp was purchased by the NFL at the request of the Giants, who practiced at Rams Park before the Super Bowl. “I wouldn’t have gone out and bought one, but since we have it, I thought we might as well use it,” Robinson said. “Just to avoid temptation.”