Some might consider it a subpar hire

Nine years after Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf were pick-’em potential No. 1 choices in the NFL draft, their polar-opposite post-college careers have recently reached important milestones.

Manning, the No. 1 selection in the 1998 draft, finally won his first Super Bowl with the Indianapolis Colts this month.

Leaf, selected right behind Manning by the San Diego Chargers and out of football since 2001, has finally found new work.

As a coach.

Head golf coach at West Texas A&M.;

“He embodies many of the qualities we look for in coaches,” Michael McBroom, West Texas A&M;’s athletic director, said on the school’s website. “Coach Leaf understands the concept of team golf.”

For starters, Leaf can tell his young competitors that it helps to have a lot of free time to spend at the driving range.

Trivia time

Who was the third quarterback selected in the 1998 draft?

In search of rugged individuals

Clint Eastwood likes his golf the way he likes his movies.

“I was thinking of the old days,” he said recently, “when all the great players came and played in lousy circumstances. Now, if there’s a hair out of place on a green, they don’t come.

“You long for the more rugged individuals.”

And golfers who wanted more from the game than just “A Fistful of Dollars.”

Cold day in L

How many frozen brain cells does it take to ponder the possibility of putting the Super Bowl in Green Bay?

For years, the very concept was so preposterous that it became a running joke at NFL owners’ meetings. Whenever the discussion turned to future Super Bowl sites, Art Modell, then owner of the Cleveland Browns, would automatically announce, “Cleveland and Green Bay don’t want to be involved.”

But that was before the 2007 Super Bowl went belly up in Miami, with torrential rains turning Dolphin Stadium into Sea World.

If a Super Bowl can be played amid those conditions, why can’t Green Bay be in play?

That rumor was floated on Wisconsin television Sunday with a report that the NFL had approached the Green Bay Packers about playing host to Super Bowl L (the big five-oh).

Packers’ chairman Bob Harlan, however, denied the rumor, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that there would be enormous problems with “the weather, which would be unbelievable, obviously, and your hotel space.

“When cities make presentations to us at league meetings, they brag about their airports and where you can park your yacht. We could show them the Fox River, but I don’t think it would do the same thing for them.”

Green Bay wants next

The Minnesota Timberwolves and the official league of rock, paper, scissors are co-hosts of a tournament to be held March 2 at the Target Center before the Timberwolves’ game against the Utah Jazz.

Yes, rock, paper, scissors has its own league. But that’s nothing. You should check out the rock, paper, scissors fantasy leagues.

Trivia answer

Charlie Batch, drafted by the Detroit Lions in the second round with the 60th pick overall.

And finally

Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer played under Hank Bauer, who died last week at 84, on the Baltimore Orioles’ World Series championship team of 1966.

“He was the ideal manager,” Palmer told the Kansas City Star. “He didn’t make it very complicated.

“If you were a high fastball pitcher, he said, ‘You can’t pitch high in this league,’ so I’d bounce a couple of pitches, and he’d run out to the mound and say, ‘I didn’t mean you.’ ”

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mike.penner@latimes.com