New Rams Look Like Old Ones

I see where the St. Louis Rams have hired a new head coach.

Are we supposed to care?

Did we care when the St. Louis Blues hired their new coach? Or when the St. Louis Cardinals fired their general manager and lost their No. 3 hitter to the Phillies? Was this big news in the 714 area code? Did it make you jump out of the chair, shake your fist at the ceiling and shout, “What the hell are they doing?”

It really is a complicated time in the life of a Ram fan. The home-away-from-home-team has one foot and four toes out the door, but the door hasn’t quite closed yet. So a fan’s rooting interest is muddied: Are they ours or theirs? In or out? Headed somewhere--most likely out of Anaheim Stadium, league approval pending--so what’s the call? Going, going . . . or gone?

If they’re gone, why should we bother? The St. Louis Rams are not our problem. They are Missouri’s mess, the soon-to-be-NFL-licensed property of the Show Me The Extra Strength Tylenol State.

If the St. Louis Rams tomorrow announce they have signed Neil Lomax--wholly plausible; among active quarterbacks, only Chris Miller’s knees are worse--L.A. and Orange County can share a good laugh.

If the St. Louis Rams decide to burn the sixth pick in the draft on the guy who backed up Wayne Gandy at Auburn, let the St. Louis newspapers and TV stations vent their spleens, not ours. St. Louis newspapers and TV stations need the practice.

Look at it this way:

The Rams’ chances of playing their home games in Anaheim this season are, perhaps, 1%.

The Seahawks’ chances of playing their home games in Anaheim are about 1% less than that.

So why should the Rams’ hiring of Rich Brooks be considered “major local news” and the Seahawks’ hiring of Dennis Erickson not?

Remember, these are the St. Louis Rams, not the Los Angeles Rams. Big difference.

The Los Angeles Rams would never hire a coach who has been described as “humorless,” “dull,” and “businesslike;” who never won a major bowl game; who has a reputation for taking subpar talent and getting it to play .500 football, maybe a game or two better, never much more; whose finest season ended in crushing postseason defeat; who is 18 games under .500 at his last place of employment.

Why would they?

That was the coach they just fired.

The St. Louis Rams, having missed the second coming of Chuck Knox, could be inclined to hire Chuck Knox II. Consider: At Oregon, Rich Brooks was known as Mr. 6-5. In the NFL, Knox was known as Mr. 9-7. At Oregon, Brooks went 91-108-4 in 18 seasons--18 games under .500. At Anaheim, Knox went 15-33 in three seasons--18 games under .500. At Oregon, Brooks coached Chris Miller. At Anaheim, so did Knox. Some weeks, anyway.

Eerie, wouldn’t you say?

No, the Los Angeles Rams would go in the opposite direction. They’d want to cleanse the palate, purge the system. They’d need to win back some fans, so they’d want someone with a proven track record, a Super Bowl ring on his left hand. They’d want a dynamic personality, a household name, someone who would stir things up, grab some headlines and fire a tempestuous shot across the bow of Al Davis.

The Los Angeles Rams would hire someone like Mike Ditka.

Or, they would hire someone who understood the concept of the modern passing game, as in the post-John Hadl era. Someone familiar with the delicate science of baby-sitting NFL quarterbacks, who squeezed the last decent Ram season out of Jim Everett. Someone with something to prove in the L.A. area after getting prematurely run out of USC. Someone who speaks in complete, witty, articulate sentences, instead of cliches. Someone who could give the fans more to laugh about than just the final score.

The Los Angeles Rams would hire someone like Ted Tollner.

The St. Louis Rams, they don’t know any better. The St. Louis Rams just hired a new head of football operations, Steve Ortmayer, who used to hold a similar position with the San Diego Chargers. Six years ago, Ortmayer had a coaching vacancy to fill. Among the candidates he interviewed were George Seifert and Marty Schottenheimer. His two finalists were Mike White and Dan Henning.

Henning got the job.

The St. Louis Rams were afraid Ditka would be too controversial, so they went the bland route and hired a coach who’s reputed to be big on Xs and Os, but not much on what appears between quotation marks. They were afraid Ditka would be too loose a cannon, too rambunctious to constrain, so they hired a coach they believe they can control. Even hired some of his assistants for him, in case he might miss the point.

The St. Louis Rams thought Tollner would be too tough a sell to the fans. Fired as USC coach, fired as Charger offensive coordinator, so-so first season as head coach at San Diego State. The fans want a winner, don’t they? And Brooks won . . . well, let’s see . . . all right, he won the Pac-10 just last season. He went to the Rose Bowl. The St. Louis Rams know this. They looked it up.

Brooks also lost the Rose Bowl, 38-20, to Penn State.

And in 18 seasons at Oregon, Brooks’ teams played .500 or worse in 11 of them.

And before 1994’s 9-4 finish, Brooks’ teams went 3-8 in 1991, 6-6 in 1992 and 5-6 in 1993.

And after Oregon began the 1994 season 1-2 with losses to Utah and Hawaii, Brooks was heckled at Oregon home games by fans wearing “Ditch Rich” T-shirts.

But Brooks went 8-2 down the stretch, and eight victories are twice as many as Knox managed in 1994. In the eyes of the St. Louis Rams, this is a genuine step forward, so Brooks today is the happy owner of a four-year, $2.4-million contract.

But those are the St. Louis Rams for you.

This would never happen here.