Rams Aren’t Only Ones Getting Hammered

When do they finally throw the flag for unnecessary roughness?

How many more late hits, illegal chucks and cheap shots are the last few huddled Orange County Ram loyalists supposed to endure?

Sunday’s Football On Fox telecast begins with a rapid-fire round of teasers plugging the afternoon’s schedule and propping up some of the sorriest dogs in the league.

On 6-8 Atlanta: “By George, the Falcons have gone airborne while Terance flies high!”

On 5-9 Tampa Bay: “Quite frankly, this Rhett really gives a damn and his Bucs are looking to make it four straight!”

On 2-12 Washington: “But don’t count out the ‘Skins, because they’ll just turn up the heat!”

Then, the Rams get their turn. Video images of empty Anaheim Stadium seats take over the screen and the narration turns derisive: “Lately the Rams have been been MIA and Mr. Bettis has been out to pasture.”

Later, studio host James Brown addresses the inevitable head coaching vacancies in Philadelphia and Anaheim, noting that 49er offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan is the leading candidate for the Rams’ job--a positive blip on the radar screen, no?--except for one snag: Shanahan says he doesn’t want to leave San Francisco.

Later, Howie Long describes Chuck Knox as “the kind of coach players like to play for. He treats you like a man.” Conversely, or perversely, Long adds with his next breath that Knox “is very disappointed in the effort. He feels like some players are not putting their best effort forward.”

Later, as the Rams are turning a 10-3 second-quarter lead over the Chicago Bears into a 17-10 halftime deficit, the camera pans Roman Phifer and Shane Conlan, prompting color commentator Jerry Glanville to call them “two of the best linebackers in the league” before adding with a voice that registers half disgust and half amazement: “And they’re playing for a team with a losing record.”

Later, Chris Chandler leaves the game because of a a bruised kidney, Chris Miller replaces him and we are told that this will be the seventh time this season the Rams have finished a game with a quarterback other than the one who started.

Later, the Rams enter the fourth quarter down, 20-10, and we are told the Rams are 0-7 this season when trailing after three quarters.

Later, Troy Drayton has an apparent touchdown catch waved off by the officials, claiming Drayton trapped the ball, and the Rams settle for a field goal and give up another touchdown and the Bears win, 27-13.

Then, as Knox and his players slump off the field, play-by-play man Kevin Harlan muses, “For the L.A. Rams now, the question is this: With the finish next week against the Washington Redskins, does Chuck Knox remain the coach going into next season and do they even remain in Anaheim, in the L.A. area, and will they still be known as the ‘Los Angeles Rams?’ ”

To which a crowing Glanville retorts, “I think they’re all movin’! I think everybody’s packin’ up and headin’ cross-country. Load the vans, put the dog on a long leash and start drivin’!”

Glanville then bellows into the microphone, sounding like a pig farmer calling one of his strays:

“ SAINT LOUIS! “

Really sets you in the mood to plunk down $30 to bid the boys adieu in Saturday’s Anaheim Stadium finale, doesn’t it?

To be a Ram fan in December, 1994, is to be abused, ridiculed, beaten up, pushed around and torn down. As if the people buying the tickets were the ones who spent $9 million on Miller, got rid of Kevin Greene and Henry Ellard, drafted Wayne Gandy and refused to throw to Drayton for a season-and-a-half.

John Shaw has categorized you as lousy fans, fair-weather supporters who are moved to the turnstiles only when the team is headed for the playoffs. The pro football columnist at The Sporting News wholeheartedly agrees with Shaw, slotting you 28th, or last, in his personal ranking of the truest-bluest fans in the NFL. Georgia Frontiere says, with a straight face, that more loyal support can be found in St. Louis, which lost its NFL team to Arizona seven years ago due largely to fan indifference.

Yet, Shaw and Frontiere have never quite addressed the reasons--any reason--why you should spend a perfectly good Sunday afternoon at the park watching their hopeless forgone conclusions trip over hash marks.

Since 1989, what has been in it for the Ram fan?

Including Sunday’s loss in Chicago, the Rams are 23-56 in the 1990s. That’s the worst record in the NFC--Tampa Bay is 25-54--and tied for next-to-worst in the entire league. Cincinnati is one game worse at 22-57. New England stands even at 23-56, but the Patriots have nine victories this season, Bill Parcells having turned around a 2-14 disaster in less than two years.

Knox has been at it for three, and Ram victory totals under his watch have slipped from six to five to four. His three-year winning percentage of .319 is now worse than Harland Svare, the coach whose name is synonymous with the bleakest period in Ram history.

Or used to be.

Should the Rams lose to Washington Saturday--and I have to say I like the Redskins in this one--their winning percentage for the last five seasons will be .287, a near match for the .285 mark compiled during the plague years of 1959-63.

In other words, the Rams have dumped the leanest five-year stretch in the history of the franchise on Orange County and demanded blind, unrelenting devotion in return. Or else.

It has been a hold-up, nothing less, and if the Rams placed any truth in their advertising, they’d peel the yellow horns off their helmets and replace them with a cartoon revolver pointed at a fan’s temple. You can almost hear Shaw intoning in the background, “Go ahead, stay away, make my day.”

It didn’t have to end this way, as Ram fans were hammered over the head one more time Sunday. Dave Wannstedt didn’t need three years, four years, 12 years to turn it around in Chicago. Just 22 months. Now the Bears are 9-6 and if things fall right for them next week, they will be division champions--two seasons after finishing 5-11.

That could have happened here, too, but that wouldn’t have been in the best interests of the franchise-jackers, would it? A winning team. Fan enthusiasm. Can’t be having any of that, not when the grand plan is to move on and cash out.