Ram It!

The is year is 1995.  I am a senior in high school (please don’t do the math to figure out how old I am), graduation is coming up, and soon, I will be a freshman at Cal Poly. At this point in my life, I had grown up a Los Angeles Rams fan. My family were season ticket holders. We used to wait around after games hoping to run into players. My favorite player was current USC Athletic Director Pat Hayden (and if you know how much I hate USC, you know how insane that last statement was), and one of my fondest birthdays was on my eighth birthday when Eric Dickerson broke O.J. Simpson’s (remember he played football) single season rushing record.  So, you can image what I felt when on a cold (this was Orange County, so not cold.  Let’s say brisk), no brisk, March night when I learned that Georgia Frontiere decided to move my Los Angeles Rams to St. Louis.

There she is. If you look closely enough, that Georgia Frontiere smile is actually a mosaic of thousands of sad Orange County Rams fans. By Jamal Farmer, via Wikimedia Commons

I was more than a little heartbroken.  This was my team.  These were my guys.  Jerome Bettis. The Battering Ram.  The Rams had just finally benched Jim Everett.  I mean things were looking up for us, and then, it was gone.  For those of us who have had a team leave you, it’s just like a lover leaving you for someone else.  You are all alone, yet you look over and you see your former lover smiling and having a good time.

Why do they get to have all the fun?   Why do they get to run their trucks through a fake finish line, as if the Rams were in a race to get the hell out of Southern California?  Well, I guess I could become a Raiders fan?  Wait, what, the Raiders are moving too?  Well, I wasn’t really a Raiders fan anyway.  So what did I do?

I was too hurt to still support the Rams in another city, so I thought well, San Diego is only an hour away, so I guess I’ll become a Chargers fan. I have to say it was hard to get with the Chargers at first, especially in 1997, when they had Jim Everett on their roster, and God, if that didn’t bring up some scars. I tried to follow my new team, but like a person in a rebound relationship, it was hard to be all-in on the Lightning Bolt. I mean, it was exciting in some ways, but some of my heart had gone to St. Louis.

And then came the greatest show on turf, the 1999 Super Bowl.  It was the dating equivalent of your girlfriend having sex with her new boyfriend in front of billions of people.  That was hard to watch. Add in a trip to St. Louis a few years later, when I told fans that I used to be an LA Rams Season ticket holder, and was met with only chants of, “they’re our team now”, I decided it was time to close the book on the Rams, and just be a Chargers fan. There were a lot of great seasons as a Chargers fan. We had Flutie, Brees, Rivers, Tomlinson, Gates — Hall of Fame players. There was a string of playoff runs, and the only bump in the road was the fact that I couldn’t stand Norv Turner as a coach. But I was happy as a Chargers fan. I even went to watch them practice at the StubHub Center in Carson. (side note: watching an NFL team practice is CRAZY BORING).  And this became my favorite sports themed song.

Then, about a year or so ago it started.  Stan Kroenke bought some land in Inglewood, and there were talks about the Rams coming home to LA, and the Chargers moving from San Diego to Los Angeles (the Raiders were also involved in this, but as previously stated, I am not a Raiders fan).

A wave of mixed emotions came over me. My former lover, and my current lover both vying for me love? I couldn’t take it. I checked out. I didn’t really follow the NFL too closely (not even the Bolts), because I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Seriously. I did this. I quit paying attention. Guys, I have told you in the past, I am a total weirdo, and in this case a somewhat shellshocked one. I didn’t want to invest too much time in the NFL because I had been hurt once, and I did not want to get hurt again.

And then it happened. Last week, it happened. The Rams are coming home!

Leading into the meetings with the league, I didn’t really think it would bring up some emotions in me when the Rams came back, but it has. I have such great memories of going to Rams games as a kid. You know that token memory of walking into a ballpark for your first baseball game, that they use in about two to three car commercials each year? That was the Rams for me. Maybe because they played less games than a baseball team did, but every time we went to a Rams game it was special, and all of those good feelings came back right away. All my favorite players were Rams, Jackie Slater, Pat Hayden, Kevin Greene, Eric Dickerson, and Pete

“mother f***ing” Holohan.  Not many people latch- on to Pete Holohan when it comes to famous LA Rams, but to me Pete Holohan is pivotal to my Rams experience growing up because having season tickets, we sat in front of a man who was probably the President of the Pete Holohan fan club, and every down on offense, this man would yell, “Give the ball to Holohan!” Every down. So it’s hard for me to not think of the Rams without thinking of tight end Pete Holohan.

So thinking about Holohan, and Dickerson, and those great times going to Angels Stadium with my Dad and brothers, I have to say, I am excited about the Rams coming back to LA. My lover has come home, and while she may have had some good times with her last boyfriend, I know that she really loved it with me the best. Now, with the Chargers maybe coming too, I may have both of my teams in one place. It’s like your old-girlfriend comes home and is cool with your new girlfriend, and you get to date both of them. A dream scenario. However, there is something special to having my childhood team, that I literally grew up with (they left when I was 18, which is legally an adult). I am even thinking about putting a $100 deposit down for season tickets, so I can carry on the tradition from my family. I’m excited for the Rams to be back. You should be too.

Let’s RAM IT!