LOS ANGELES, CA — There will be a professional football team in Los Angeles next NFL season, according to reports from ESPN’s Adam Schefter. As a result of a 30-2 vote by NFL owners, the Rams, formerly of St. Louis, will return to their pre-1995 home of Los Angeles and could be joined by either the Chargers or the Raiders, or possibly both.
image via 49ers webzone
Where exactly the teams will play is still being hammered out, but Sam Farmer of the L.A. times described the proposed home stadium for the Rams as “the league’s biggest stadium, a low-slung, glass-roofed football palace with a projected opening in 2019 and a price tag that could approach $3 billion.” The stadium would be housed in nearby Inglewood, on the site of the old Hollywood Racetrack. A proposition for a joint stadium for the Raiders and Chargers in Carson, California is also being tossed around.
Rendering of proposed Rams stadium complex in Inglewood
America’s second biggest market has been a rumored destination for nearly every team with low attendance, ever since both the Rams and the Raiders departed after 1995. The NFC West finally makes sense, without the random midwest team thrown in. That is little consolation for the fans who have loyally supported their franchise, in some cases the only one they have ever known.
“It’s been seemingly inevitable for the last two seasons, yet the official announcement leaves me with a sick feeling” says Thomas A. Nauman IV, a longtime St. Louis Rams fan. Tom and his family have had season tickets since the Rams moved to St. Louis in 1995, and have attended games for twenty years. Suddenly, that particular Sunday activity is gone.
It hasn’t been easy for Rams fans these past few seasons, torn between supporting the team they love and giving money to management keen on moving their team to what they deemed as greener pastures, all the while watching a frustratingly mercurial team that hasn’t made the playoffs since 2004 and lacks the star power to consistently draw crowds. Given the headache the team has been for the fans and the bitter nature of their departure, Rams management shouldn’t count on fans of the previous incarnation of the team to make the trip out west, including Mr. Nauman.
“My affiliation with the Rams is at an end” he states firmly. “Of course there are players I’ll still follow, but I refuse to support a product that [Ram’s owner Stan] Kroenke is a part of.”
Image via Socal Industrial Real Estate blog
Stan Kroenke is a Missouri resident and native son at that. This is what makes the betrayal doubly nefarious and greedy to think that Kroenke is depriving his friends, family and neighbors of their hometown team, especially considering his pledge to do everything in his power to keep the Rams in his home state upon his acquisition of the team in 2010. It’ goes without saying the proposed complex that will house the Rams in Inglewood will produce a ton of revenue, but will Los Angeles –notorious for its blasé sports fans and cavalier attitude towards showing up on time, and having twice lost NFL teams already–consistently fill that gigantic stadium when the product is as subpar as it has been over the last decade? Unlikely.
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