With HBO and the NFL yet to announce which team will appear on the '14 season of "Hard Knocks," a case can be made that the Rams "might be the most appealing of the pool of eight candidates the league can force to participate in the series," according to Nick Wagoner of ESPN.com. Rams coach Jeff Fisher last week said, "I think I would prefer, actually, to maintain a sense of privacy in our building, as most coaches would. But I think we'll cross that path if we need to" (ESPN.com, 5/18). Fisher yesterday added, "I think it's unlikely. We are eligible, but I think it's highly unlikely they'd ask us to do it. I think this organization has a right to go through training camp with some normalcy" (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 5/20). In St. Louis, Bryan Burwell notes the Rams have "shrewdly figured out how to eliminate one extremely large hassle from their lives by striking down the OWN show and they’re working hard on preventing another distracting sideshow from settling in here anytime soon." It is "still somewhat of a debate what exactly the Oprah Network was planning" with the docu-series on Rams DE Michael Sam, but the Rams "didn’t care." All they knew was that they "wanted it gone because it would do nothing to help Sam make the football team." Former NFLer and You Can Play Project Exec Dir Wade Davis said of OWN, "What they don’t understand is that going through training camp is one of the roughest things a rookie can go through. What they don’t understand is that there is no story if he doesn’t make the team. There is no happy ending." Davis also "doesn’t think the idea of HBO’s 'Hard Knocks' cameras showing up is a good idea." Burwell writes it "doesn’t make it less unpleasant if the NFL shield is stamped on the product or the Oprah brand is behind it" (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 5/20).
