Jeff Fisher made the move from a city sort of near the “Big Easy” to a city sometimes referred to as the “Big Orange” with only one thing on the agenda: make the Los Angeles Rams great again.
An admirable objective and a high-polling slogan, sure — the best slogan, even. Jeff Fisher knows slogans. Jeff Fisher has the best slogans.
But circling the drain of their first season back on the West Coast after nearly 20 spent in St. Louis, and neither 2016 nor LaLa Land have done the Rams or their veteran HC any particular favors.
I mean, if it’s any indicator of how the homecoming has gone so far, I’m pretty sure that Jack Nicholson has yet to be spotted courtside at a single Rams home game, which for Los Angeles sports franchises is kind of a big deal (just ask the Clippers).
At this point, I doubt the Rams could even get Jack Nicklaus in a press box, or my friend Jack (a.k.a. “Simple J.” a.k.a. “Hollywood Jack” of “Hollywood Jack & the lost pair of shades: That time I learned to SUP” fame), for that matter, who isn’t particularly famous aside from appearing in “Tripple Overtime” that time (so not at all particularly famous), but who lives in Los Angeles or Malibu or some other postal code a few integers shy of “90210,” and who could very easily hop an expressway to the Coliseum any given Sunday and four or so odd hours of bumper-to-bumper and a few drive-bys later pay the, like, 200 or so odd bucks for a ticket, but who doesn’t do that ever and who just carries on living his life instead.
With the Rams currently sporting a 4-9 record, there’s even rumors circulating that Fisher could be on his way out before the season’s even through and the aforementioned drain inevitably circled, expected to be chewed up and spit out by Tinseltown faster than Gary Coleman after that time Willis finally explained what he was “talkin’ ’bout.”
Great slogan, great mustache, or no, and that’s bad news for a coach who’s pushing 60 and struggling to keep his career record out of the red.
So what do you do when it looks like you’re going to lose a position of power? Look inward? Ask yourself what you’re doing or not doing, personally or as a leader, that’s brought things to this point and to these not so particularly favorable circumstances?
LOL. Of course not.
What you do is, wax up the ol’ favor-saver, step into a freshly pressed pair of pleats, clip in your best cell-phone holster, and take a page out the book written by our great future president of the United States, who, incidentally, has had an equally as embarrassing 2016 but who has still somehow managed to cling to his own impending position of power like a four-star reviewed cell-phone holster to a freshly pressed pair of pleats.
What I mean by the whole taking-a-page thing is not to take one out of our great future Commander-in-Chief’s literal books (none of which I have ever actually read and none of which I ever actually will read unless he ever publishes a cooking book titled “Commander and Chef: Champagne Wishes & Caviar Dreamed-Up Recipes from Trump Tower”), but to take a page out of one of that great future Supreme Leader’s not so literal books, as in, like, just one of his general everyday go-to strategies on dealing with everyday things — the specific one I’m referencing being to just blame all your problems on the media.
Just like Mr. Trump (a.k.a. “our great future president of the United States” a.k.a. “the guy Alec Baldwin plays on ‘Saturday Night Live’”) called out the mainstream media for making him look bad by, like, taking all the things he said and did and putting them on television, Mr. Fisher is calling out some of the most mainstream sports rags in the soon-to-be-great-again U.S. of A. for doing pretty much the same, i.e., like, showing Jack Nicholson-less highlights from and posting the final scores of all the Rams games so far this season…
Fisher has even gone as far as to accuse Sports Illustrated of completely making things up about the organization, claiming that S.I.’s “Monday Morning Quarterback” was fabricating when it came to their description of his relationship with general manager Les Snead as “toxic,” claiming that an unnamed inside source referred to the whole operation as “Rams junior high,” accusing him of being a Russian operative, a sexist, a racist, a citrus fruit that the city of Los Angeles is sometimes referred to as, etc., etc.
Unlike the Master of Misogyny, the Master of Mediocrity hasn’t gone as far as to try and sue any journalists for libel (as of yet), or to take to Twitter to lash out at the cast of any off-Broadway productions, for that matter. But just like there’s still a few weeks left until Trump officially takes to the White House, there’s probably still a few weeks left until Fisher officially gets canned and has to take to the poor house, too.
While I’m sure there’ll be plenty of opportunities for paychecks via HC jobs opening up in plenty of less earthquake/movies-staring-“The Rock”-premise susceptible cities, maybe it’s finally time for Fisher and football to part ways, and for him to try his luck using one of his other talents.
Already stationed out in Hollywood and considering the ’stache, reading for a “Magnum P.I.” reboot seems like an O.K. option. His experience working under arches makes a future career with McDonald’s seem like it could be a natural fit. And as far as I know, he hasn’t yet lashed out publicly at ESPN, so a spot on “Monday Night Countdown” might still be in the cards until Peyton Manning gets bored of playing mahjong against retirees twice his age and having to be the one to take the garbage out all the time.
Perhaps the best fit for who I guess you could probably consider the Donald Trump of the NFL, though, (at least blaming-the-media wise), is a career alongside the Donald Trump of, like, the free world as we know it, and the government and everything — for Fisher to essentially leave one Big Orange for another, if you will.
Last I heard, that Donald Trump was hiring pretty much across the board, and from what it seems like, if you’re white and you’re not a woman, you’ve got a pretty good shot the gig, relevant experience or no.
With that being the case, as long as somewhere on his résumé he’s got that famous Matthew McConaughey line from “Dazed & Confused” (“alt-right, alt-right, alt-right”), Fisher just might end up trying to make America great again while some new hotshot defensive coordinator worries about fulfilling similar promises made by bumper stickers and red hats in L.A.
Either way, I think I speak for the entire Los Angeles Rams fan base and the entire general American public when I say that at this point, we’d all just as well settle for “pretty good” instead.
Update: Literally as soon as I had punched out the final “alt-right” of that Matthew McConaughey misquote, and then had a good laugh at my own joke, even though it turns out that it actually doesn’t make very much sense, ESPN’s Adam Shefter popped up on one screen or another and let me know that Jeff Fisher had been officially fired as head coach of the Los Angeles Rams.
While I will say that I think Fisher’s experience controlling his own personal thermostat at his own personal home speaks for itself, Trump had yet to announce an official “Secretary of Energy” as of Coastal Point press time on Wednesday, Dec. 14.
Editor’s note: Tripp was apparently so dedicated to his sports coverage and writing this column this week that he missed the news that the president-elect has reportedly chosen former Texas governor Rick Perry as his nominee for Secretary of Energy. Does the Trump White House have a pick for press secretary yet?