Letters to Sports: Rams in Super Bowl evokes spectrum of emotions

It doesn’t get any sweeter than the Rams preventing the 49ers from getting to the Super Bowl unless it’s the Dodgers stopping the Giants from advancing in the playoffs.

Russell Hosaka
Torrance

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The biggest play for the Rams to secure a Super Bowl berth occurred the week before when their nemesis (49ers) beat the Packers.

Due to that victory, the Rams avoided playing the NFC championship game at Lambeau Field against you know who. Having to play against Jimmy G instead of Aaron Rodgers was a true blessing.

Wayne Kamiya
El Segundo

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By calling Rams owner Stan Kroenke a “modern-day robber baron,” and making coach Sean McVay “a target of widespread criticism,” Dylan Hernández seems to have forgotten who got L.A. to the Super Bowl. Twice! Guess he misses Georgia Frontiere and Jeff Fisher.

Jim Fredrick
Manhattan Beach

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A dropped interception by the 49ers was all that stood between Coach McVay from being a hero or an idiot.

David Wilczynski
Manhattan Beach

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Rams trip to the Super Bowl? Best staycation ever!

Gary B. Ross
Beverly Hills

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To the NFL, and to those who are scalping their tickets to the Super Bowl: Want to know why so many of us in Los Angeles were complacent about pro football after the Rams and Raiders left, and are wishy washy now? We are priced out of attending the big games. Heck, many in this city are priced out of attending regular-season games. But the prices for this year’s big game are just stupid.

David Ross
Burbank

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Who wants to spend almost $40,000 for tickets to watch the Super Bowl from the luxury boxes at SoFi Stadium? Elitists, that‘s who. With forty grand one could buy a nice car, pay off part of your mortgage, or send your kid to a Cal State for almost three years. The city of Los Angeles should be the better angels and hold a lottery for interested participants and allow the real Rams fans a chance to see the game for free.

Mark Walker
Yorba Linda

Repealing moment

I noticed that almost no one was wearing a mask at the Rams game last Sunday even though L.A. County requires mask wearing for outside events of 5,000 or more. If you’re not going to enforce the rules, then it’s time to stop pretending and get rid of the law.

David Waldowski
Laguna Woods

Statuesque

With the Rams set to play a Super Bowl game at their sparkling new SoFi Stadium, I would like to respectfully suggest they consider a halftime tribute to two former Rams and UCLA players, Kenny Washington and Woody Strode, who broke the pro football “color line” in 1946, the year before Jackie Robinson integrated baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

There are several L.A. sports greats who have statues honoring them in front of the arenas they played in and I think a statue of Washington and Strode together, who were perhaps the two most important African American football players of all time for what they accomplished in opening up pro sports for future generations of black athletes, is highly appropriate.

Doug Weiskopf
Burbank

Deflating time

What is with Bill Plaschke? His unbridled praise for Tom Brady drools across the text. While never a Brady fan, I, not even begrudgingly, agree about the stature of Brady and his affects on the game over the last 22 years.

But at what cost does Plaschke praise Brady? By not so subtly diminishing the talents of the Rams? The game is 60 minutes long — both teams played within that timeframe and the Rams won. Leave it at that. Plaschke doesn’t have any crystal balls, yet espouses given more time Brady would have won the game.

Barbara Boozell
Palm Desert

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Accolades after fawning accolades by Times writers on Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowl wins, nary a mention is made of Mr. Brady’s direct involvement in and subsequent four-game suspension after footballs were discovered deflated during the 2014 AFC championship game.

Danny Marquez
Redlands

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All I can say about the retirement of Tom Brady is, it’s quite deflating.

Fred Wallin
Westlake Village

Languishing Lakers

The Lakers season was on full display against the Clippers on Thursday night. Even without LeBron James, this should’ve been an easy win. After all, the Clippers were without three starters: Paul George, Kawhi Leonard and Ivica Zubac. Yet, the same issues haunted the team. Poor shooting. Poor defense. Poor rotations. Enough already. The Lakers are a bad team. The Lakers are a poorly constructed and poorly coached team. As dysfunctional as last year’s team was, they were 33-20 after 53 games versus 25-28 this season. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’ve played without AD and LeBron for many games, but look at the Clippers who are 27-27 and have played all season without Leonard and most of it without Paul George.

Rob Pelinka destroyed the team and handed Vogel an uncoachable one. I will say this until I’m blue in the face, they traded away Kuzma, KCP, Harrell and a first-round pick to pay WestBrick over $90 million for the next two season. Because of that trade, they were also unable to sign Carruso. Vogel will most likely take the fall, but Pelinka should be escorted out of the arena and set sail for an island never to return.

Geno Apicella
Placentia

King-sized rebuild

During this lengthy Kings rebuild I have been particularly critical of Rob Blake. But it seems as though his pulling the trigger on scooping up dynamic vets like Victor Arvidsson, Phillip Danault and Andreas Athanasiou were just what was needed. That, along with Todd McClellan’s new system and the emergence of young stars-in-the-making.

It looks like a very heavy lift for any team to be able to beat this team in four, even three, games in any series. This is an exciting group to watch, and they appear capable of doing things even the big team of 10 years ago could not.

Dan Johnson
Salem, Va.

Coliseum quandary

I have attended motor racing events stretching from tracks in Watkins Glen, to Daytona Beach, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Long Beach, Gardena and Monterey. I have never seen such a bad idea as laying down 14,000 yards of asphalt inside the Los Angeles Coliseum to stage a quarter-mile NASCAR oval race. Inside the stadium the noise will be deafening, the air will be poisonous, and the racing will be an extremely dangerous waste of effort.

Kevin H. Park
Westlake Village

Tennis snub

Shame on the Los Angeles Times Sports section. Pages and pages plus gigantic photos of football and an incredibly small area for the extraordinary final championship game in the Australian Open tennis match between Medvedev and Nadal. After 45 years of religiously watching tennis I have never seen a match of that caliber. I felt profoundly disappointed.

Myriam Soler
Los Angeles

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Today’s front page contained a color photo of Rafael Nadal’s win at the Australian Open. No such homage to Ashleigh Barty, who squared off against an American player, Collins, in no less an impressive win. Although the tennis coverage didn’t warrant a mention until page 4 or 5 on either day, I wish the sports department writers would occasionally elevate something other than the Rams and Lakers to better coverage.

You might say, “Women don’t care about sports…” Well, how will they ever care if they never see themselves or their sports covered in your paper? To build readership, I invite you to “mix up” the Sports Section from time to time and feature stories that might not be quite so gender biased.

Loretta Redd
Santa Barbara

Women’s lack of equality

Considering the lack of coverage by the L.A. Times of female athletics, I was not surprised that the announcement of a new channel focusing on female athletes was in the Calendar section. Conceiving of women as entertainers and artists is a lot less threatening than conceiving of them as athletes worthy of coverage in the Sports section.

Jessica Abrams
Long Beach

Land of Lincoln

So Lincoln Riley claims that after he left Oklahoma he had “zero communication” with Caleb Williams. Apparently, Jaxson Dart entered the transfer portal without knowing Williams would come to USC and the team could have ended up with neither quarterback. Whew! The Trojans are lucky and boy, Lincoln Riley thinks we’re stupid.

Brian Gotta
San Diego

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I realize that getting a nationally prominent coach is a big story — for USC fans. However, as a UCLA alum, I recall no such hosannas when UCLA appointed Chip Kelly. And as a UCLA alum, I find the L.A. Times’ USC fanboy bias insulting and appalling. Where is the balance?

It’s not even football season! How can stories on Lincoln Riley and USC’s new quarterback keep leading the whole sports section?

Seth Chandler
Sigtuna, Sweden

Sensational Skalij

One reader sends along his congratulations on the splendid photos of Wally Skalij in his coverage of Sunday’s NFC championship game.

Anyone who has ever held a camera in shooting sports action is in his debt.

Gordon Cohn
Long Beach

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