LAT Sports Review - Sunday, April 18, 2010

Bill Plaschke leads off with an article complaining that not everything is perfect with the Dodgers. There aren’t enough fans or a strong enough lineup for him. It is true that they were humiliated 9-0 by the San Francisco Giants the day before, but this is really an example of how the perennial success of The Lakers has spoiled the expectations of people like Plaschke for all other local sports teams. The Dodgers will be fine. They are 5-6 to start the absurdly long baseball season and the fans will come out when it feels like baseball time again, in about a month. By that time Plaschke will either be calling the Lakers the greatest team in NBA history or the biggest flop (neither statement will be true) and the Dodgers and their fans will have caught up. Man, some people really overreact.

T.J. Simers wrote an interesting column about famous NFL bust – Ryan Leaf. There is nothing I loath more than a celebrity that screws up over and over again and acts like such a dick that we just stop caring about him, only to come back with a bunch of excuses that were pounded into his head through therapy or incarceration after discovering that he is no longer famous, but this isn’t that story. Leaf was an idiot of epic proportions. People now scoff that there was a debate over whether Leaf or Peyton Manning was the best quarterback before the 1998 draft, but they forget that while both had success leading big programs to victory, Lead was taller, more athletic, and had a stronger arm. It was a legitimate debate. If Leaf was a knucklehead back then, everyone kept it a secret. He went on to embarrass his teams, his family, and himself numerous times, until he was out of the league, hooked on painkillers and with an arrest record. It was a Marinovich-like waste of talent.

So, this redemption story would be total bullshit if Simers had not been able to get something completely unexpected out of it. But he did, he got a self-deprecating, open, and (gulp!) mature Leaf. It was a good column and a good story because he will never be famous again unless he does something terrible, and seems to understand that and he finally seems comfortable in his own skin.

I really like reading Sam Farmer’s thoughts on the NFL Draft. He is reasonable more often than not, which is really impressive considering that most football “experts” are really just huffing and puffing about who is a can’t miss prospect and who is sure to fail. Today he writes about the strength of the Offensive Tackle position in this year’s draft. I like Trent Williams of Oklahoma more than the rest, but I agree that there is exceptional depth in this class.