[Nick]

Rams owners are allowing anarchy in front office
By Bernie Miklasz
Of the Post-Dispatch
Saturday, Feb. 26 2005

The St. Louis Rams have been an eccentric organization. Win or lose, from team
ownership to head coach Mike Martz, the Rams operate from a different kind of
playbook.

But keeping that quirkiness in mind, I still can't help but look at the Rams
and wonder who is minding the store at Rams Park.

Team owner Georgia Frontiere lives in Arizona. Ownership partner Stan Kroenke
is busy with his Denver Nuggets of the NBA and other sports holdings in
Colorado.

Team president John Shaw, the detached ruler, tries to magistrate things from a
suite of offices in the Century City district of Los Angeles. The football
squad may have moved to St. Louis, but a part of this team's psyche remains in
LA.

Perhaps this explains the dysfunctional nature of the franchise. With the
bosses away, chaos ensues on the ground at Rams Park. The peculiar game of
rock-paper-scissors continues between Martz, president of football operations
Jay Zygmunt, and general manager Charley Armey.

When Post-Dispatch football writer Jim Thomas recently pressed Shaw with
questions concerning the Rams' front office, the best the dodging Shaw could
offer was a vague possibility of "reshuffling."

It's confusing.

Armey has the general manager tag but no GM authority. He's been pushed out of
the way.

I've said many times that giving Martz the freedom to call the shots on
personnel is a mistake, because it distracts him from devoting his full
concentration to coaching.

Lesson: be careful of what you wish for.

Zygmunt has degrees in law and business management and is an expert in handling
those tricky NFL salary-cap dollars. But Zygmunt now fancies himself as a
football expert and has become increasingly aggressive in throwing his power
around in personnel matters.

Zygmunt has made personnel moves without telling Martz. And because Zygmunt
controls the cap dollars, he also controls free agency. If Martz requests that
the Rams sign a certain player, Zygmunt will say no, the money isn't there, we
can't do it - even if there's a way to make it work. Martz has no way to
challenge Zygmunt, because Martz isn't a salary-cap specialist. So Martz
surrenders, and nothing happens. Zygmunt in effect has strong veto power,
because he can use the salary cap as a hammer. And Martz can't get around that
obstacle.

This explains, in part, why the Rams have been a nonstarter in free agency in
recent seasons. The other problem is the Rams' skeletal pro personnel
department. It consists of the semi-retired Jack Faulkner, who evaluates game
video from his home office in Los Angeles, and an inexperienced scout, John
Macini. With this combination, how can the Rams truly expect to keep up on the
available talent around the NFL?

Zygmunt instead relies on evaluations provided by Mike Giddings, an independent
scout who provides analysis for many NFL teams. Where's the wisdom of tapping
information from a scout who also supplies the same insights for other teams?
The Rams need to stay in house and upgrade their pro personnel department.

Facing an important offseason, I wish the Rams had a stronger foundation of
trust and that all hands were joined together to solve the problems. Instead,
there's a helter-skelter mess at Rams Park.

The Martz and Zygmunt relationship has unraveled, and that has everyone on
edge. As one member of the football operation told me, people are on pins and
needles, afraid to offend Martz or Zygmunt by appearing to take sides.

Martz is often depicted as the heavy, the bad guy, but Zygmunt and Armey are no
angels. Other team employees are mortified, for example, by the way Zygmunt and
Armey brazenly rip Martz to others in the organization behind his back.

Is this any way to run a football team?

For John Shaw, the sun of LA must be awfully pleasant.

It's keeping him from doing something about the storms at Rams Park.