For Rams, Advice Is Too Cheap

In Anaheim, hub of happiness, a problem of identification seems to have developed.

What folks there are trying to identify are those responsible for the untimely sinkage of the football Rams.

Once rated a Super Bowl prospect, the Rams today are engaged in finger-pointing, some blaming the coach, others blaming the executive vice president, still others the players.

There are even Bolsheviks in Anaheim blaming the owner.

We would like to put an end to this ugly wrangling by placing the blame where it belongs, namely, on the shoulder of the famed Rams Advisory Board.

Not long after Georgia Frontiere inherited the Rams from her husband, Carroll Rosenbloom, she began modestly by selecting an advisory board of six individuals, of diverse worldly interests.

Well, the Rams Advisory Board would soon expand to nine, on its way gradually to the number it embraces today--26.

We are talking heavy hitters, folks--Bob Hope, Henry Mancini, Danny Thomas, Maureen Reagan, James Roosevelt.

We have a board member from England who is a lord. He doesn’t see the Rams, but wants to know when they are going to play in the test matches.

Advisers include captains of industry, lawyers, physicians, politicians, movie producers, real estate developers. The adviser from the church is Roosevelt Grier, listed as “evangelist.”

And a prominent board member is the sheriff-coroner of Orange County, whose function with the Rams, it is believed, is to determine the cause of death.

Now, you ask, what are those advisers doing today to stabilize the Rams, plan their growth and chart their course?

Bob Hope goes off to entertain the troops. He is only 87. What input has he committed to the Rams?

And there is Henry Mancini, playing with his sharps and flats. What is Henry doing about X’s and O’s?

Georgia, who takes voice lessons from a coach whose job isn’t threatened right now, is deep into music, listed as a member of the Los Angeles Opera Guild, the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Orange County Opera Pacific.

A number of years ago, she made the suggestion that when her players left the hotel and boarded their bus for the ride to the stadium, they sing.

Singing, explained Georgia, did wonders for the spirit.

It wasn’t revealed whether she wanted the players to sing an aria from “Aida” or “Mexicali Rose,” but her coach at the time, Ray Malavasi, put a damper on the plan.

What he did, actually, was send word to Georgia that the idea looked like something big. He would discuss it with the staff and get back to her.

But, caught up in the press of detail, he never did, possibly explaining why the Rams, failing to follow this procedure, have yet to realize their potential.

It isn’t Georgia’s fault. To bolster spirit, she used to go down to the field before each game and kiss all her players. She kissed the water boy, the trainer, the team doctor and the coaches. One day, she kissed a sportswriter--and didn’t even like him.

If Georgia was doing her share, what was that advisory board doing? Respectively, members were entertaining on aircraft carriers, writing hit music, developing shopping malls, treating patients and attending opening day at Ascot.

And all the while, the Rams are going to pieces.

“What you don’t understand about the Rams Advisory Board,” a member once explained, “is that it never meets.”

Which, of course, is all the more reason it can offer no excuse for the team’s ineptness. Show us a board that never meets and we’ll show you the perfect board.

The Coliseum Commission meets every month. Look what’s been happening there for the last 40 years.

By never meeting, the Rams Advisory Board should be creating the ideal climate for success on the field, but this body is a failure.

So don’t put the knock on John Robinson. Don’t put the knock on Georgia. Fire the Rams Advisory Board. You want to see a headline that reads:

“RAMS SHAKEUP: HOPE, 25 OTHER BOARD MEMBERS OUSTED.”

Georgia should put them on a bus and ask them to sing on the way out.