St. Louis Rams fans and fans of food in flake form will be excited about a new product hitting grocery store shelves soon: Faulk Flakes. 

These dried bits of heavily subsidized American corn and high fructose corn syrup can be found on shelves at St. Louis area Shop N' Save stores. Proceeds from the sale of Faulk Flakes go to the Marshall Faulk Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping the same urban youth Faulk's cereal is helping to fatten up. 

Despite the wealth of sports data available on the internet, no list of player product tie-ins exists. (I sense an opportunity for an enterprising pop culture fan). I believe Kurt Warner was the last player from the St. Louis Rams to have his own cereal. Correct me if I'm wrong. Wheaties boxes seem to be reserved for niche marketing or championship teams nowadays. Quite frankly, the Rams haven't have many players worthy of their own dollar store knockoff snack cakes, much less a breakfast cereal. Expect that to change soon. 

I've never been much of a tribute writer. Blame it on some deep-seeded Cold War cynicism, but I never really felt much attachment to heroes. Probably because I learned early on that heroes were just regular people, pressed into some extraordinary situation...or some cliche like that. If you elevate a person to hero status, they will inevitably disappoint, from fathers to presidents to football players, human fallibility is inescapable.

Sounds rather strange and kind of depressing for a sports fan, no? I don't think so. I think most rational adults don't confuse appreciation with worship. And there aren't many football players I appreciate more than Marshall Faulk, who was a big reason I warmed to the St. Louis Rams, a team that seemed like nothing more than a bunch of strange outsiders to a group of Midwestern football fans jilted by their previous team...until 1999. 

The university had spit me out onto the street the year before, with only a history degree to fend off the dangers of the world. Astonished that employers were not lining up to hire me, I had little choice but to go to grad school. Defeated, I needed an outlet. I kind of put my sports fandom aside during college, aside from fly fishing and drinking copious amounts of beer under the clear, cool Western skies, giving over most of my attentions to study and girls...mostly girls, which took up an extraordinary amount of time. 

Living at home at again, girls were most assuredly out of the equation. I need some distraction. And I found it in a curious oddity that I had mostly ignored. The St. Louis Rams of Tony Banks seemed, that summer, to finally be evolving into something worth watching. Having swung a deal for Marshall Faulk signaled that the Rams finally meant business. Maybe this team was worth watching after all.

I was not disappointed. 

Another reason I hate tributes: the adjectives. Sports writing is dominated by cliches, from the nationally recognized writers all the way down the food chain. Yes, Faulk was "electrifying." He really was "awe inspiring," and "amazing," and "like no other." Few players possess the talent to truly "change the game" like he did. 

Taking nothing away from the appreciation I have for Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce, Marshall Faulk made "The Greatest Show on Turf" a real revolution. The Martzist spread offense has since gone viral throughout the NFL, an offense driven league. Teams have tried to find a player like Faulk, but have mostly resorted to recreating him by committee. It still makes for an entertaining spectacle...but it's not like watching Marshall Faulk. 

Faulk is notorious for being not so friendly to fans, having turned away more than one wide-eyed young autograph seeker. I don't really care. And that is why keeping a divide between the entertainer/player and the private person is a healthy thing. Faulk played his way out of life in New Orleans' Ninth Ward, as much as I don't need an autograph, I do still fall for the occasional Horatio Alger story.

However, that's enough human interest story for me. On the field, Faulk made for some of the best football I have ever seen. As a football fan, that's what I appreciate the man for, not some need to connect on a more personal level. I love football. I like to obsess over the Xs and Os. I like to play armchair general manger with free agents, amateur scout with the draft. I, obviously, enjoy it enough to spend a considerable amount of time writing about it. Boil it down the sheer essence, though, and I like football because it's entertaining. Being a fan, identifying with a team, makes it that much more enjoyable, delivering the highs and lows that we feed on for a healthy form of escapism and, more important, a deeper connection with our fellow fans. Another branch on the tree of identity. 

Marshall Faulk was a blessing for Rams fans (maybe not the autograph seekers), making every game three hours of sheer pleasure and breathing life into a team and its fan base. That act, in and of itself, deserves enshrinement. 

So I guess there was something to what Kurt Warner said about Marc Bulger. The former St. Louis Rams quarterback and free agent, who spent last year backing up Joe Flacco in Baltimore, announced his retirement today. Bulger was said to have some opportunities this season, but declined. Instead, he'll focus on his charitable foundation which serves members of the military. 

Taking over for a beloved super star is never an easy thing, and that's exactly what Marc Bulger did with the Rams, replacing Kurt Warner. Both men had the unfortunate fate of playing in a system that saw sacks as a necessary evil. Bulger suffered especially as poor franchise leadership allowed the team to decay around him. 

Bulger finishes his career with a pretty solid 62.1 percent completion percentage, connecting on 1968 or 3171 passes for 22,814 yards, 122 touchdowns and 93 interceptions. All of those number he complied with the Rams. 

His best year was 2006 when his 4,301 yards, 24 TDs, and 8 INT, helped the Rams claw their way to an 8-8 record, which wasn't enough to make the playoffs. 

Former St. Louis Rams running back Marshall Faulk will have someone very special to present him next month when he is enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Faulk's agent, Rocky Arceneaux of the Alliance Sports Management Group, will present Faulk for this honor next month. 

According to Daniel Kaplan of the Sports Business Journal, only twice before have agents been presenters for Hall of Fame inductees. Deon Sanders will also be presented by his agent. Other presenters for this year's class of inductees includes a former college coach, a brother and a son. 

The Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony is Saturday, August 6. The current Rams squad is scheduled to play a glorified scrimmage the next day, kicking off the preseason. However, that game is in very serious jeopardy as the target for NFL owners and players to complete settlement talks is July 21. The Hall of Fame induction ceremonies will happen whether the game happens or not, even if, God forbid, the lockout was still in place at that point. 

Georgia Frontiere hasn't owned the St. Louis Rams since 2008, when she passed away. More than three and a half years away from this world and the professional football team she uprooted from Los Angeles and moved to St. Louis in 1996, has not kept her off a recent list of the most despised owners in professional sports.

Frontiere comes in seventh, wedged right between Peter Pocklington, the man who sent Wayne Gretzky to LA, and the Tribune Company, which owned the Chicago Cubs for almost thirty years of futility. Say what you will about Frontiere, they did win a Super Bowl during her time. 

Our little community of Rams fans includes a fair share of SoCal based fans, jilted in 1996, when Frontiere moved the team back to her hometown. Some lucky fans got stiffed twice with the move from LA to Anaheim. St. Louis fans can kind of understand your pain, but we're glad to have the Rams. 

Front office dysfunction was more the rule than the exception with Frontiere at the helm, starting with the rift between her and Carol Rosenbloom's son, Steve. She gave John Shaw the keys to the front office, which worked only for a brief period when Dick Vermeil was the head coach. Then it all went to hell again. 

Frontiere's children, Chip Rosenbloom and Lucia Rodriguez, made it right upon inheriting the team. They played a role in bringing in Billy Devaney in 2008 to be the team's personnel man and to run that year's draft. After that season, they purged the front office, ridding it of turf-warring bean counters like Jay Zygmunt, made Devaney the GM, hired a smart businessman in Kevin Demoff and no nonsense coaching staff led by Steve Spagnuolo. 

Now Stan Kroenke owns the team and a better product on the field is helping fans forget. Maybe, just maybe, they can be the salve for the still-festering sores left in Southern California. Or, hell, maybe the team will just move back there eventually. 

Remember the 2006 St. Louis Rams? Maybe just a little. Despite glaring inadequacies, it was the last time the Rams finished the season with a .500 mark. That team was also memorable because of a very direct link to Hollywood royalty as the team carried RB John David Washington, son of Oscar winner Denzel Washington, on their practice squad that season. Washington was signed as an undrafted free agent out of Morehouse in May 2006. 

The younger Washington left for NFL Europe in the spring of 2007. He re-upped for a second season with the Sacramento Mountain Lions in the UFL today. In between, he was a co-producer on "The Book of Eli," his father's 2010 film about a post-apocalyptic lone warrior. The film also featured Mila Kunis who was remembered for her kiss in another film out that year (grrr). 

Yeah, so that's it. Here's some past links from TST about Washington:

• Washington ready for an Oscar? (catchy title, huh?)
• Oh, here's a dandy that should have been kind of ominous...it mentions Drew Bennett. 

Tony Banks, remember him? Drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the second round of the 1996 NFL Draft, he was the good enough guy, part of the exciting Rich Brooks era of the franchise's memorable early years under the Arch. Banks is one of sixteen former NFL players participating in the fifth annual NFL Broadcast Boot Camp. 

The program is designed to provide players a route to a career after football...in the media field, duh. Here's a description of the program:

The program, which runs from June 20-23, is directed by the NFL Player Engagement and NFL Broadcasting departments and covers a wide range of topics with instructors from each of the NFL's broadcast partners - CBS, ESPN, FOX, NBC, NFL Network, SiriusXM Radio, Westwood One Radio, plus local radio and TV. It will include hands-on work in areas such as tape study, editing, show preparation, radio production, control room operation, studio preparation, production meetings, field reporting and game preparation. Each player will tape segments as a studio and game analyst and take part in a networking session with television executives. Each player also will serve as a live radio host on SiriusXM NFL Radio.

Of the 90 players who took part in the Broadcast Boot Camp from 2007-2010, 36 have already earned broadcasting jobs as a result of their participation in the program.

They should have a blogger boot camp, but there probably isn't a basement big enough for that many pro football players. 

Mike Mayock is one of the guest instructors at the program, which is really cool. You have to wonder if he'll have detailed scouting reports available on each participant for networks following the camp. 

Ok, I'm all out of hackneyed witty one-offs. 

The St. Louis Rams have taken a break for the Memorial Day holiday weekend...and the lockout, which is like one big long rainy holiday weekend. At this week's informal player-led practices, a few players were able to make an impression based on reports trickling out of the sessions, including some of the Rams 2011 draft picks. 

From a fan's perspective, denying the players' team organized workouts has also denied us the opportunity to better get to know the Rams new draft picks. Turf Show Times will be talking to a few of those picks in the coming days. For now, I thought it might be a good opportunity to talk about a few of the Rams most recent draft picks, since 2008, to get a better sense of the fan favorites. 

Admittedly the list below is incomplete. And it's almost unfair to put a franchise QB like Sam Bradford on the list. Of course he's a favorite draft pick, look at what he's done already. We'll refine this further after today's vote. 

Who is your favorite St. Louis Rams draft pick?