The Sound of Signings: Practice All That’s Left for Charger Rookies

In case no one noticed, the Charger rookies reported to training camp at UC San Diego Wednesday night and started practicing Thursday.

If no one noticed, it is because good news travels slowly.

Good news? What is this? Time to put on a smiling face? Just because the Charger rookies reported to camp?

Maybe so.

Let me tell you how the opening of National Football League training camps are usually marked.

By noise.

No, not by rolling drums and blaring trumpets.

More like . . .

Headline: “Joe Star Demands Bigger Bonus.”

Small type: “Others Report to Camp.”

Headline: “Star’s Agent Calls Owner Cheap.”

Small type: “Nos. 2 and 3 Also Want More Money.”

Headline: “GM Sets Deadline for Missing Rookies.”

Small type: “Coach Says He’ll Play Guys Who Are Here.”

Headlines like these have been the harbingers of fall for a few years now, and may still be.

But not at UCSD.

It is happy face time.

The round face of the Chargers’ director of football operations, Steve Ortmayer, may be the happiest of them all. At least it will be when he gets all of the veterans signed as well. Eight remained unsigned as of Friday, but they are not due to start practice until next Saturday.

“I feel we’ll have them all in place by the time camp opens for them,” Ortmayer said.

Everyone? No holdouts? Nothing but a harmonious slamming of bodies?

I don’t know who the next president will be, but he might consider this chap Ortmayer for secretary of state . . . or ambassador to the United Nations. Maybe we should send him to the Middle East. Now.

Ortmayer concedes that it is a little unusual to go 10 for 10 on draft choice signees before training camp opens.

“It doesn’t happen in this day and age,” he said. “I’m glad we got everybody signed, because we felt it was so important to get everybody to camp because of the changes in our philosophy, particularly offensively, and because of the fact that we have such a young team in transition. We wanted to get everybody of like mind as early as we can, and part of being of like mind is having everybody signed.”

But wanting to get everybody signed and getting everyone signed are hardly the same thing. Trying to get rookies--particularly top draft choices--to sign a contract sometimes has been about as easy as getting them to autograph rattlesnakes.

That Ortmayer has been able to bat 1.000 in this league should be enough to get him an MVP award of sorts, as in most valuable person.

However, he suggests that it has more to do with image and philosophy, as dictated by the gospel according to owner Alex Spanos.

“The image is twofold,” he said. “No. 1, we are all the Charger organization. There is no division between player, coaches and front office . . . “

Aside: Wait a minute, hasn’t an obstacle akin to the Berlin Wall traditionally stood between Charger players and management?

“We’re all loading the same wagon,” Ortmayer insisted. “We’re all headed in the same direction.”

Aside: OK, folks, no snide remarks about opening the season with a holdover six-game losing streak.

“No. 2,” Ortmayer said, “we will be fair within light of the market in professional football. We will be rewarded proportionately to how the team does. We will do our utmost to take the individual out of the organization.”

Unlike Brent Musburger, who feels the I’s have it, Ortmayer rarely used the world’s smallest pronoun. He seems in this case to be a man without ego, a man who subjugates himself organizationally . . . and expects the same of others.

But there was no hiding the fact that he is pleased that the organization went to camp with its draft choices intact. It had become almost a given throughout the NFL that No. 1 choices would bicker beyond the reporting date.

“It was particularly true in 1987,” Ortmayer said. “The nonexistence of (No. 1 choices) on the scene was almost monumental. It was a weird extension of the strike threat. There was so much pressure on people not to sign until the clubs had guns to their heads. In that climate, it was very tough to negotiate.”

Tight end Rod Bernstine, the Chargers’ top pick last year, was right there with the rest of his peers when camp opened, which was to say missing. He reported late, suffered a hamstring injury and was never the force he was expected to be.

But this year’s top pick, wide receiver Anthony Miller, was there at the start. He will not have to try to fit into a puzzle already in the progress of being solved.

Lo and behold, Bernstein was there with this year’s rookies.

And Ortmayer would be there. He was in his stadium office, clearing his desk and files and packing boxes for the annual migration to UCSD. His headquarters would shift to the west.

“I was driving over there this morning trying to feel what was inside me,” he said. “The word is excitement. I’m excited about the guys getting started. We have some very young guys, but I think the coaching staff will get a tremendous amount of enjoyment working with these guys. Of course, the ultimate enjoyment is what happens each Sunday afternoon.”

This was not a Sunday afternoon, of course, and it was not September or October or November or December. Maybe, just maybe, those Sunday afternoons will be more enjoyable because of what it was like this weekday afternoon in July.

Quiet.