[Elvis]

[BuiltRamTough]

NFL players would hate to play in LA and I think the NFL coming back to LA is a bad idea. If you don't believe me just ask Janoris Jenkins.

[Hacksaw]

Well I'd say that the media is getting on board. Man that SAS is one blowhard. lol ESPN offices, I'm there.. (If) Once the Rams announce in December the talk will change to how it never seemed right to call them the St Louis Rams. Opinions will leak out here and there. It will be healing.

[kayfabe]

So that's about as much First Take as I can take (although if Skip and SAS ever
agree on something -- like they did here as to the football appeal of LA --
then by definition it must be true).

But as Skip also implies in the clip there are some serious LA roots on that show:
Cari Champion grew up in LA, went to UCLA and still is a big Lakers and Bruins fan.
And Skip was out here two years -- as an LA Times cub reporter -- and apparently was
making as many friends back then as he does now. From his Wiki page --

[He] was hired away by the Los Angeles Times in August 1976. There, he was best known for
investigative stories on the Los Angeles Dodgers' clubhouse resentment of "golden boy" Steve Garvey
and his celebrity wife Cyndy, and on Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom's behind-the-scenes decisions to
start different quarterbacks each week (James Harris, Pat Haden or Ron Jaworski). For his coverage
of Seattle Slew's Triple Crown, Bayless won the Eclipse Award in 1977 for Outstanding Newspaper Writing.

Which got me to Googling, especially the LA Rams part. First off though another story from
his LA Times days, about his scoop that Joe Namath was about to retire from the LA Rams and
the one time in his life he ever got drunk.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/dallas ... sports.ece

The only time Bayless says he got drunk was with Joe Namath.

In 1977, as a 25-year old sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times, Bayless had the exclusive that
the legendary quarterback was retiring. Namath agreed to meet at a bar, but Bayless didn't drink.
He ordered red wine to be social and politely sipped his way through two glasses while Namath told
old stories and welcomed new friends.

"I looked at my watch and realized I had to leave," Bayless says. "I got up, planted to turn and
completely lost my equilibrium and crashed into a man at the next table, falling on the floor.
I looked up and Joe was leaning over me and said in an Alabama accent, 'Son, you're drunk.' "


So yeah, you know how you know if you're drunk? Because JOE NAMATH has to tell you.

And here's Skip's original writeup of the Dodgers clubhouse resentment of Garvey. It's actually
not that inflammatory; way more interesting was his recollection of it on ESPN, which involved
Tommy Lasorda (because, well, of course it does) --

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid= ... 7695&hl=en

As a cub reporter for the Los Angeles Times in the late 1970s, I was assigned to cover the opening
of Steve Garvey Junior High in Lindsay, Calif. Garvey had a leading-man profile and Popeye forearms,
and when he wasn't hammering game-winning hits for the Dodgers, he was living the Perfect Life as
the Perfect Dad with the Perfect Wife and Perfect Children.

Or so many Dodgers fans believed.

Actually, Steve was a pretty good guy -- for being a highly paid, hero-worshipped athlete surrounded
by more Hollywood temptations than most of us can imagine. As I always say, pro athletes
invariably make the worst role models.

The school would later regret naming itself after Garvey.

But that day I rode up to Lindsay -- three or four hours by car from Los Angeles -- with Steve and his wife Cyndy.
Somewhere near Bakersfield, she stunned me by saying: "What's all this BS you guys write about the Dodger 'family'?"

That's how manager Tommy Lasorda's team was portrayed -- as one big, happy, Dodger-blue family.

She told me her husband's teammates were jealous of him, and that their wives and girlfriends had ostracized her.
She was all but daring me to write about it.

A few days later, I asked Steve if he would go on the record about this. He said he would -- if his teammates would.
So I went to spring training in Vero Beach to talk to his teammates, then to Steve.

I spoke first to third baseman Ron Cey, who seemed shocked that Garvey had agreed to talk if his teammates would.
Cey tried to talk me out of writing the story. When he failed, he tipped off Lasorda, who soon called me into his office.

At first Lasorda affably tried to talk me out of doing a story that "wouldn't be good for our baseball team."
I sensed a subtle suggestion that I was a part of "our." When I affably resisted, saying, gee, I was just trying
to do my job, Lasorda said: "I thought we were friends."

I smiled and said: "Tommy, I wouldn't say we were friends."

That was it. Lasorda's smile disappeared faster than the lasagna he ate after games. I had given him the excuse
he needed to tear into me. I had questioned our "friendship."

He came around the desk and began screaming in my face the way he would at an umpire after being ejected.
I distinctly remember tiny pieces of spittle flying.

I knew Lasorda fairly well. I had gone to hear him when he spoke one Sunday morning at my sports editor's church.
But I didn't socialize with him, and he couldn't have told you one thing a friend would know -- my then-wife's name,
where I lived, where I was from, nothing.

We were "friends" only because he had given me colorful quotes and some background info for several stories I had written --
and in exchange I was supposed to protect him and his team.

But now Lasorda had realized I'd made no such deal, and I was hearing words I did not hear from him in church.

This was the longest and loudest any athlete or coach has ever yelled at me. Lasorda yelled me all the way out into
the hall -- to the shock of a passing TV reporter -- finally threatening never to talk to me again if I wrote this story.

To their credit, Dodgers executives pretty much ordered Lasorda to let me interview him the following day about how
the team treated Garvey. Then again, Lasorda answered nearly every question with "yes" or "no" or "I don't know."

I wrote the story.

And to this day when I pass Lasorda, he looks the other way.


And finally the Rams three QB story; I couldn't find this one online, but he did recount the
aftermath years later to the Chicago Tribune --

In those days [Carroll] Rosenbloom owned the Baltimore Colts. In a 1988 article for Washington magazine Regardie's,
veteran crime reporter Dan Moldea did an expose on NFL owners that said of Rosenbloom: "According to federal agents,
underworld sources and professional gamblers, he was an all-pro gambler accused of betting for and against his team,
and he maintained business relationships with several organized crime figures."

"The Godfather," [Former LA Rams coach Chuck] Knox called Rosenbloom. Knox bitterly told me Rosenbloom sometimes entered
the locker room shortly before games and told the coach which quarterback to play.

The Rams had three pretty good ones--James Harris, Pat Haden and Ron Jaworski. But of the three, young Jaworski,
the Polish Rifle, could be the most scatter-armed and scatter-brained. Knox couldn't help wondering about
hidden agendas when Rosenbloom ordered him to start Jaworski over, say, the more mature and efficient Harris.

Rosenbloom scoffed at the suspicion. But, smiling all the while, he leaned over his soup, fixed me with his
icy blue eyes and said, "You know sometimes bad things happen to people who write bad stories."

"Is that a threat?" I said.

"Oh, no, no, no," Rosenbloom said, grandly leaning back, raising his hands and acting offended. I wrote the story,
feared starting my car for the next few days and was never invited back to C.R.'s estate.

[Hacksaw]

Why are they using a Farmers Field splash screen or first frame. Rams are in the jumbo tho.