A suggestion to those who have recently taken early retirement: get sick.
Please hear me out even if you have an infected ear. Rankman recently welcomed in the flu and has never enjoyed more having his body savaged by viral invaders. We’re talking the kind of ill where combing your hair hurts and walking up the stairs for bed requires rest stops at three base camps.
All Chino Hills precincts have reported making it official: February has once again finished 12th on Rankman’s annual ranking of months.
Order of merit:
No, wait, forget that headline. Jim Mora vs. Rick Neuheisel would actually make a better toilet paper commercial, you know, which is softer?
Mora could pour a pitcher of pomegranate juice on his sturdy two-ply to the gasps of a semi-live studio audience in Studio City.
The juice would repel like water off an Oregon Duck’s back and Mora would say, “See? This is tough stuff.”
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Cam Newton’s post-game behavior was boorish and petulant. It was not “super.” Those who have disliked him since college instantly re-congratulated themselves for being right.
THIS was the spoiled-brat Cam whose father reportedly shopped him to the highest bidder when he was forced to Blinn Community College after getting drop-kicked out of Florida for allegedly stealing a computer.
Ah-ha! We KNEW this guy was a phony at Auburn who played dodge ball with the NCAA all the way to the 2010 BCS title!
But enough about what Alabama and Oregon think.
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My Twitter feed since 2010 says Pat Haden was a lousy athletic director who fumbled more times at USC than he did as quarterback of the Los Angeles Rams.
Haden was the AD who failed to overturn the outrageous NCAA sanctions he inherited from the equally outrageous Mike Garrett. Haden pussy-footed his way around the NCAA when a real Trojan would have busted down the door and demanded a “mea culpa” from president Mark Emmert.
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Sorry to report Rankman can’t weigh in on college football National Signing Day because he long ago committed to a list of previously-scheduled appointments for Feb. 3.
1. Meet old friend from high school who really, really loved Peter Frampton and wants to pick-up on a conversation I walked away from in 1976.
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God bless the Oakland Raiders for turning an ordinary Friday into a preposterous news grab concerning a possible franchise move to Las Vegas.
Former owner Al Davis, one of the first jump-suit Elvis impersonators, would have been proud.
Never mind this plan has a snowball’s chance at the Bunny Ranch of happening. The NFL is not going to allow Cam Newton to swap show tunes with Wayne Newton. “No, danke schoen,” commissioner Roger Goodell would sing to the Raiders in a high-pitched voice.
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Favorite Rams 10-1
10. Fritz Shurmur. This pick involves at least two damn shames. One is that Fritz died too young and the other, at least for Rams’ fans, is that he won a Super Bowl ring with the Green Bay Packers’ coaching staff. Fritz was one of the underrated defensive minds of the 1980s even though his “soft” zone concepts ran counter to the macho “46” Buddy Ryan made famous. Buddy didn’t care much for passive ideas but Fritz got the last laugh when the Rams’ sissy zone stopped the Philadelphia Eagles cold, 21-7, in the 1989 NFC Wild Card game. The Eagles were coached by…Buddy Ryan. The name of Shurmur’s defense, which featured two down linemen and five linebackers? It was called “Eagle.” It remains one of the best game plans ever implemented by a coordinator.
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Favorite Rams: 15 – 11
15. John Robinson. His nine-year record of 79-74 was undermined by a 10-24 record his last two seasons as the L.A. franchise started its death spiral. The Robinson I covered, as a back-up and beat man, from 1983 until 1990, averaged almost 10 wins per year and went to NFC title games in 1985 and 1989. Robinson was a beat writer’s dream, filling your time and notebook so you didn’t go snooping for stories he didn’t want reported. We did anyway, yet Robinson was a master CEO coach who surrounded himself with great assistants and then let them do their jobs. You couldn’t have better offensive and defensive coordinators than Ernie Zampese and Fritz Shurmur. Many of us admired Robinson for not sleeping in his office three nights a week, as some NFL coaches did. He enjoyed movies, arts, food and sometimes we’d have to kick him out of the press room so we could get our work done.
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Favorite Rams: 20 – 16
20. Tom Mack. In my youth “Right Guard” was always a deodorant and “Left Guard” was always Tom Mack. He was our anchor baby, a Michigan man so bright George Allen played him as NFL infant–and Allen generally hated any player under 35. Mack never missed a game in 184 starts,made 11 Pro Bowls, the Hall of Fame and STILL hasn’t moved on a bogus penalty that cost the Rams the 1974 NFC championship game in Minnesota.
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