ORANGE COUNTY HALL OF FAME : Ferragamo’s Style Part of Ram Lore : Football: Quarterback who led team to the Super Bowl also played for Buffalo, Green Bay and in the CFL.

Vince Ferragamo stood near midfield before the Rams played the Giants at Anaheim Stadium Sunday, that toothpaste-commercial smile splitting his tanned face, and acted as referee for a baby derby sponsored by a diaper company.

When Ferragamo--whose mind wanderings are the stuff of NFL lore--looked down at the grass, though, he must have briefly relived a Sunday afternoon on this field a decade ago, a day like a dream, a day of perfect spirals and headlong catches. A day when he passed for more than 500 yards.

“We were playing Chicago and we were behind the whole game, so we were just going for it,” Ferragamo said. “I was drawing up plays in the dirt and we were throwing post patterns and go patterns and corners and outs. There wasn’t a pattern that we didn’t run.

“We were on such a roll, such a high. Guys were making one-handed catches and diving all over the place. It was so much fun.”

It could have-- should have--been just one of many such Fantasyland days of pure-and-simple joy, but the real world got in the way.

Ferragamo, once dubbed the quarterback of the ‘80s with the salary of the ‘60s, took the Rams to the Super Bowl after the 1979 season. Two years later, however, after contract negotiations with the Rams had collapsed, he was leaving town to play in Canada. He ended up back with the Rams in 1982 and hung on for two more seasons, but it was never really the same.

You think he might have some regrets?

“Actually, not being able to come to any kind of agreement with the Rams and then having to jump to Canadian football and then come back and move around,” he said. “You don’t know it at the time, of course, and you don’t know how long you’ll be able to play, but if you can remain on one team, I think your career will be greatly enhanced as a result.

“When I started moving, I really tried to make the best of every situation, but it’s not the same. You just don’t have the same feelings of loyalty as you do for the team that drafted you and brought you up and developed you.”

Loyalty is the one word you least expect to hear from Ferragamo when talking about the Rams. His contract battles with then-general manager Don Klosterman began at bitter and deteriorated.

Still, he can’t deny the warm feeling that envelopes him when he looks around Anaheim Stadium on game day.

“Even though I was booed here at times, I never took it as being that personal really,” he said. “I mean I love these fans. They made me. They brought me the media attention that brought on the quarterback controversy that ultimately got me the chance to play.

“I mean I wanted to play and worked very hard to get the chance, but I really got the opportunity because the media kept talking about it.”

“Right now, he’s pleased with himself and everything he has accomplished. He figures it should all be downhill from here. Now, it’s just a matter of seeing how the rest of his career goes . . . and where.”

--Vince Ferragamo Sr., in 1980.

Downhill, indeed.

Ferragamo threw for 3,276 yards and 22 touchdowns for the Rams in 1983, but the Rams were a team in transition. They had a new coach, John Robinson, and a star running back, Eric Dickerson, and a new offensive direction that dictated more handoffs and fewer 50-yard passes.

By 1985, Ferragamo had been shuffled off to Buffalo. By 1986, his NFL career was over when the Green Bay Packers released him midway through the season.

But the beginning of the end had been signed, sealed and delivered six years earlier.

In 1980, Ferragamo made $52,000, the lowest salary of any starting quarterback in the NFL. Second-lowest was Joe Montana’s.

History tells us that Montana hung around with the 49ers and made a lot of money throwing footballs and modeling underwear. Ferragamo, determined to stick to his principles, fled the country and now makes a nice income selling real estate and running boards for trucks.

“We were both young in the league and it was different then,” Ferragamo said. “It wasn’t like now when you come out of college and become an instant millionaire. We had to work our way up and then be in a position to negotiate.”

When Ferragamo finally found himself in a negotiating posture, it was hardly a conciliatory stance. Still angry that the Rams had failed to renegotiate the final year of his four-year contract after the ’79 Super Bowl season, he turned down a $325,000-a-year offer from the Rams and agreed to a four-year, $2-million deal with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League.

In 1981, Ferragamo led the CFL in interceptions. The Alouettes went 3-12 . . . and, shortly thereafter, belly up.

Ferragamo, who didn’t have a guaranteed contract, got paid for one year and returned to the Rams in an entirely different posture.

He crawled.

“OK, the move to Canada wasn’t a good career move, but it was something that had to be done at the time,” he said. “It was the last avenue.”

And, as it turned out, a dead-end street.

*

“Sometimes Vinnie isn’t in the here and now. Basically, he’s shy. And sort of spacey. But spaceyness doesn’t reflect on his ability to play football. If we do find him in a foggy state, someone takes a little rubber hammer and hits him over the head to bring him back. But we all dig Vinnie. If you don’t like him, you’re sitting next to the wrong guy. The problem is yours, not his.”

--Fred Dryer, in 1980 When they said he could be the quarterback of the ‘80s, were they talking about his IQ?

When they said he could be the next Terry Bradshaw, were they talking about his IQ?

Vince Ferragamo was accepted to med school, which pretty much ends the debate about his intelligence. He will, however, admit to suffering from what his wife, Jodi, calls “selective thinking.”

Maybe it’s just an enhanced power of concentration, sort of an absent-minded professor syndrome. He was wont to forget plays, or call plays that didn’t exist, endeared him to his teammates and has made for lots of anecdotes over the years.

These days, his easy-going, non-intimidating approach goes a long way in the real-estate business, or when he’s working as spokesman for the company that builds running boards, or hosting a golf tournament to raise money for the Special Olympics, or just glad-handing for the Rams.

Ferragamo is one of six former Rams who do promotional work for the team, speaking, signing autographs, meeting with VIPs and talking about the game at parties in luxury suites.

“Everybody loves Vinnie,” says Pete Donovan, the Rams’ director of suite sales and promotions. “Maybe he’s a little flaky, but in a totally delightful way.”

Ferragamo is now concentrating on trying to make that charisma come across the airwaves. He has done a lot of commentary on cable broadcasts of Santa Ana area high school games in the past few years and this summer worked as an analyst on KCBS during the Rams’ exhibition season.

“Working with Jim Hill was really a lot of fun and a good learning experience,” he said. “I went to sportscasters camp this year and that was helpful, too.

“I think quarterbacks have a big advantage doing color commentary because they understand defense, blocking schemes, line play, strategy, play calling, time management, the whole thing.”

Ferragamo remembers vividly how the whole thing came together for the Rams in the winter of 1979 as they marched toward the franchise’s only Super Bowl appearance.

Ferragamo, who had taken over the starting job late in the regular season when Pat Haden broke his finger, threw touchdown passes of 32, 43 and 50 yards during a playoff victory over Dallas and arrived at Super Bowl XIV a remarkably relaxed young man, considering he had started just six games in the NFL.

“The games leading to the Super Bowl were the biggest games of my career,” he said. “I was pretty inexperienced and I was a little nervous going into the game, but after one play it was gone.

“The best games are the last game of the season. You leave it all out there and you come away completely physically, mentally and emotionally drained. You don’t recognize the importance until the years pass. I was so young, I thought we’d be back a few more times and win a couple.”

His may be a story of missed opportunities, but it’s certainly no tragedy. Ferragamo is 38 years old. He has a good job, a number of them really. He has a nice house in Orange, a loving wife and three daughters--Venessa, 10, Cara, 9, and Jenna, 7--to dote over.

And Tuesday he will be inducted into the Orange County Hall of Fame. It isn’t Canton, Ohio. It isn’t what might have been. But it’s an honor that means something special to Ferragamo.

“As an athlete, I think the greatest compliment you can ever be paid is to have someone say, ‘I really enjoyed watching you play.’ And isn’t that sort of what this is? To say, ‘Thanks for the great years.’ ”

And why dwell on what might have been.

Hall of Fame Banquet

Facts and Figures

What: 12th Orange County Sports Hall of Fame Banquet.

Where: Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim.

When: Tuesday (cocktails at 6 p.m., dinner at 7).

Highlights: Tickets, $100 each, or $1,000 for a table of 10, can be purchased by calling (714) 935-0199. The event will include the induction of Steve Busby, Al Carmichael, Doug DeCinces and Vince Ferragamo.