A loss and a win for L.A. fans of NFL

For local NFL fans, Monday was a mixed news day.

Discouraging words: The Saints reached an agreement with Louisiana state officials to remain in New Orleans for at least four more years. At this rate, Reggie Bush will be retired before L.A. gets an NFL team.

Reason to go on watching “Monday Night Football’: ESPN announced it is breaking up its maligned team, replacing Joe Theismann with Ron Jaworski.

As the Deadspin.com headline read: “Your Long National Nightmare Is Over.”

What this means for Tony Kornheiser is anybody’s guess.

We might finally find out whether Kornheiser is any good, now that ESPN is pairing him with Jaworski, who has demonstrated an easy rapport with Kornheiser and all his neuroses during frequent appearances on “Pardon the Interruption.”

Or we might find out just how bad Kornheiser is. With the Theismann Factor gone, millions of football fans are now considering going back to watching “Monday Night Football’ with the sound on.

Trivia time

Jaworski played for the Los Angeles Rams from 1974 to 1976. How did the Philadelphia Eagles acquire him?

From a long list

According to sources, Jaworski was only one of several former NFL quarterbacks considered as a possible successor to Theismann. Others included:

* Joe Namath: He’d be up in the press box, Suzy Kolber would be down on the sideline. It wouldn’t be a problem.

* Billy Kilmer: Turnabout is fair play. Always the people’s choice at Redskins reunion parties.

* Jim Plunkett: He finished 1-2 to Theismann in the 1970 Heisman Trophy race and the 1984 Super Bowl.

* Johnny Unitas: True, Johnny U isn’t with us anymore, but he’d have been an improvement.

Complete control

Ben Howland -- “wicked witch of Westwood?”

That is how the UCLA basketball coach was described in a Santa Rosa Press Democrat headline over a column in which Lowell Cohn characterized Howland as “Bobby Knight Lite.”

Writing about Friday’s pre-Elite Eight news conference in San Jose, Cohn said Howland “showed himself to be -- let me find the proper adjective -- annoying, rude, obsessive, obtuse, insensitive, controlling and just plain bossy.”

Cohn wrote that he watched Howland repeatedly interrupt the session to complain about background noise, give the moderator instructions on how to run a news conference and cut off questions that didn’t meet his approval.

“Does the phrase control freak come to your mind? How about obsessive-compulsive?” Cohn wrote before eventually concluding: Howland is “a pain in the neck so his team can be great. And so far it has worked.”

That’s ‘Mr. Control Freak’ to you

Long before “Knight Lite” took hold at UCLA, the Final Four was treated to a more serious strain, once known as “Hoya Paranoia” -- made infamous by former Georgetown coach John Thompson during the 1980s.

According to John Feinstein, writing in the Washington Post, Thompson “used to storm into rooms, railing at the media, screaming that he would do things his way, all the while demanding to be heard -- as if it was possible not to listen when he was talking.

“He had opinions on everything and he was so secretive ... that the phrase, ‘Hoya Paranoia,’ became part of the basketball vernacular.

“ ‘I was paranoid,’ he said recently, laughing. ‘It was the only way I knew how to do things. I was on a mission and nothing was going to stop me from accomplishing it.’ ”

Trivia answer

In a 1977 trade for former USC tight end Charle Young.

And finally

Jay Leno, on last week’s meeting between the pope and boxing promoter Don King:

“Do you think the pope’s going, ‘Hey, my wallet? Where’s the collection plate?’ ”

mike.penner@latimes.com