The Chris Moeller Archives

Garry Shandling was possibly the most gifted comedic talent of his generation, and that’s a generation that includes Robin Williams, Steve Martin, David Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld, and Larry David. He was that good. His stand-up career was par excellence. It was long-lasting, uniformly polished, and endlessly quotable. He can lay claim to two remarkable TV shows that were specific to his voice-- It's Garry Shandling's Show, an early Showtime and Fox network absurdity that channeled George Burns and Gracie Allen, and The Larry Sanders Show, the HBO masterpiece that is the greatest single-camera comedy series of all-time. Only Letterman and David can also claim two great series.

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A St. Louis radio and print journalist, Howard Balzer, is claiming that the then-St. Louis Rams, owned by Stan Kroenke and coached by Jeff Fisher (two men that have mustaches), only selected the openly-gay collegiate player, Michael Sam, in the 2014 amateur draft after they had first secured a deal with the NFL that the selection would protect them from being featured in the HBO pro football reality series Hard Knocks. (We know for sure that the team nixed a plan Oprah Winfrey had to film a documentary at Sam's first training camp.) Sam was selected by St. Louis in the seventh and final round, the 249th pick in a 256-player draft. He was the first SEC Defensive Player of the Year in a decade not to be chosen in the NFL draft's first two rounds.

Fisher denies the charge vehemently. "Who in their right mind would think that you give up a draft choice to avoid doing something like that?" he told reporters. But Sam, who was released during his first preseason despite leading the team in sacks at the time, tweeted out that he wouldn’t be surprised if the story were true. I'm just not sure, personally. I was so excited when Sam was drafted by my favorite team. At the time, an entity known as the St. Louis Rams still existed. The conspiracy narrative that seems most likely to me is that Kroenke and Fisher agreed to draft Sam if the city of St. Louis agreed to pay his salary.