I used to have a lot of respect for former UCLA head coach Jim Mora. Now I think he is a knucklehead.
What he’s saying about his former quarterback, Josh Rosen, and how he fits into the top echelon of the NFL Draft, and in particular to the Browns, is a real head-scratcher. It doesn’t make sense on a lot of levels.
But you’ve heard all that by now. Here’s something, though, you haven’t heard about his comments: I’m insulted with what Mora said about Rosen not being “a good fit” for the Browns and the Cleveland community. He went on to say how intellectual Rosen is. So I’m making the connection that, according to Mora, the intellectual level of the people living in Cleveland is lower than that of Rosen and thus the area would be a turn-off for the quarterback.
After all, who would someone as smart – and as cultured and as refined and as deep-thinking and as avant-garde – as Rosen talk to here with all of the Neanderthal grunts?
Who the heck is Jim Mora, after getting fired as head coach by UCLA, the Seattle Seahawks and the Atlanta Falcons, an expert on anything football-wise? Perhaps now that he’s in the media, he’s trying to say sensational stuff to cause a stir?
Whatever the case, but when he drags my team and the region in which I grew up, through the mud to make his point, he’s crossing a line with me and he’s just a … well, knucklehead.
In addition, Mora made another ignorant point when he said that because Rosen is a millennial and millennials ask questions, the quarterback is always asking why he must do something. No wonder Mora was let go by UCLA. He is so out of touch.
If he thinks millennials are the first generation to want to know why, then he’s delusional. They’re only about the third generation to do it. It’s been going on since at least the 1960s.
Understanding that, then, perhaps it’s Mora – and not the people in Cleveland – who is living under a rock.
And finally, here’s something fun – and interesting – to think about that, thankfully, has nothing to do with Jim Mora or his dad, also a former coach named Jim Mora, he of the yelping, “Playoffs?!,” fame: There is definitely a resemblance between Villanova head coach Jay Wright, 56, whose men’s basketball team won its second national championship in three seasons by routing Michigan on Monday night, and former Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano when he was the same age 30 years ago. That would be four years after he left the Browns in 1984. Rutigliano will turn 86 on July 1.
