Category Archives: NFL

This just in: February still stinks

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febAll Chino Hills precincts have reported making it official: February has once again finished 12th on Rankman’s annual ranking of months.

Order of merit:

  1. April (Masters\Rankman’s birthday\Hitler offed self)
  2. June (also Alice Cooper’s favorite month because, you know, school’s out)
  3. July (trashy novels at beach while sipping umbrella drinks under an  umbrella)
  4. May (merry month and, unlike February, easy to say and spell)
  5. March (NCAA Tournament, favorite month for dimes)
  6. November (college football rivalries trump Kennedy assassination)
  7. January (naive hope of better times to come)
  8. December (Boxing Day, college bowl picks, Charlie Brown Christmas Special)
  9. August (too many nightmares involving Pop Warner practice, Hiroshima and Manson Family)
  10. October (um, Columbus didn’t discover America)
  11. September (back to school…February’s bastard child)
  12. February (shortest\longest month)

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Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas? They’re caught in a trap

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howard hughes

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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Top 25 L.A. Rams of all time: the final countdown

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deaconjones

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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LeRoy to Robby: these are a few (more) of my favorite Rams

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LeRoy
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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Mack to Hack: these are a few (more) of my favorite Rams

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Tom Mack1bFavorite 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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Sound of L.A. music: these are a few of my favorite Rams

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Rams helmetRankman tried his best to act like he didn’t care when the Rams bolted for St. Louis in 1995. It was the journalist in me, feigning indifference to another money-grubbing owner ripping a local institution from its historical moorings. But of course I was pissed off and could not even stomach watching Georgia Frontiere lift the Lombardi Trophy after winning a Super Bowl for St. Louis. The LOS ANGELES Rams came on to my radar as a boy around 1966, when lip-licking coach George Allen raised my NFL consciousness in leading our heroes to the pinnacle of greatness. It was a period of thrilling highs and gut-wrenching heartbreak and all my memories are in black-and-white. Rankman was lucky to end up covering the Rams, for the L.A. Times, in the period roughly from 1983 until 1990. With the Rams coming home after all these years, I thought it would be fun to roll out my top-25 list of all-time favorite Rams. Your list should be different.
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It took a Lott to change the course of L.A. Rams history

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jim-chris-everett

The story you are about to read is true. Nothing but my memory has been altered. This REALLY happened.

“You son of a bitch.”

Jim Everett said some variation of that as he walked across the room to greet Ronnie Lott. It was a few years ago, at a Lott Trophy spring luncheon in Newport Beach. “I still can’t believe you got to that ball.”

Three of us were standing there: Everett, Lott, and me. I was chatting up Lott about something or another when Everett, still looking boyish in his 50s,  walked over. A quarter century after the fact, we all knew. We were all at Candlestick Park that mid-January day in 1990.
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This Old Timer Is Starting to Sound Like A Broken Record

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A_young_Jerry_WestDisingenuous congratulations to the Carolina Panthers and Golden State Warriors for their fabulous so-far seasons.

No, seriously, some of us wished you nothing but the worst.

The guy who said records were meant to be broken would have been in a headlock sitting next to me Dec. 11 as I put historical rancor aside to root for Boston to chuck the Warriors off the Golden State bridge.

It took a lot for a born-and-bred Lakers fan to root for the Soylent Green, but sometimes in life you have no choice.

(Spoiler alert: never count on Boston for anything except decent fish soup)
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