Post by TheShadow on Sept 18, 2006 20:09:14 GMT -5
www.sbsun.com/
Southland moves on - as if the NFL were never here
Paul Oberjuerge, Staff Writer
ANAHEIM - Listen my children and you shall hear ... of the times when
gridiron pros played here.
Twelve years now. An eye blink, cosmically. But there are
seventh-graders who weren't alive when the National Football League
left the Southland in its rear-view mirror.
If you're not at least 20 years old, you probably have no clear
recollection of the Rams and Raiders in our midst. And the relentless
tide of time is swamping what memories remain for the rest of us.
It was right here, Anaheim Stadium/Angel Stadium that the Rams played,
for 15 seasons, before bolting for St. Louis.
Second Sunday in September, 12 years ago? The Rams probably would have
had their opener here. If not, the Raiders would, up Interstate 5 at
the Coliseum. We were an NFL hotspot, kids.
What was it like, back then? When the NFL bothered to have a team in
the nation's No. 2 media market?
Well, some of us saw games in person. Rather than on TV, our vantage
point these 12 years past.
For anyone born before 1980, it was if the NFL always had been here.
And always would be. Like smog and freeways.
The Rams moved to Los Angeles in 1946, the first ``major
league''franchise on the West Coast. They were embraced immediately.
Winning the 1951 NFL championship didn't hurt.
They sagged in the early 1960s, but they managed 20 winning seasons in
a 24-year span (1966-89), and they rivaled the Dodgers as the market's
biggest sports story.
The Rams were bigger than USC football. Bigger than UCLA basketball.
Much bigger than the Lakers. Regular folks argued over who should play
quarterback. Whether George Allen was nuts for signing so many old
guys.
Whether Chuck Knox was too conservative or John Robinson too in love
with the power-pitch.
And then the interest ratcheted up even more. With the arrival of the
Raiders.
The Rams moved to Orange County in 1980, with the idea of escaping a
tough neighborhood and developing property around Anaheim Stadium.
And Al Davis filled the Coliseum void in 1981. He thought he could make
a killing in cable TV, or something.
Or maybe he just wanted to tick off Pete Rozelle.
It only heightened NFL interest. You could be a Rams fan or a Raiders
fan.
Stereotypes grew up around the two sets of fans.
Rams fans were stoic, upper-middle-class Republicans from Orange
County. They rarely cheered; but they didn't boo, either. Games in
Anaheim were safe, tasteful but often dull, even when the club was
winning.
Raiders fans were edgy, often chemically impaired and prone to
brawling. Their politics were nihilist, and games in the Coliseum
during the Silver and Black Era were like prison riots. Both on the
field and in the stands.
The Raiders often were good. They brought their Oakland Biker mentality
with them, and were among the league's elite four of their first five
seasons here. They even won a Super Bowl, in 1984.
If you are a romantic, you probably remember the NFL with fondness.
The reality? By 1990, the NFL and Southland were becoming estranged,
and their differences were calcifying.
The NFL wanted new facilities, which wasn't going to happen. L.A.
couldn't conceive of the NFL leaving; but it was about to.
Here, in Anaheim, the Rams and Angels shared a neither-nor stadium. Bad
for baseball, wretched for football.
Oddly shaped, with oodles of bad seats.
The Coliseum continued to decay, as did the area around it. That charm
and enthusiasm that USC fans bring to the place? Raiders fans never
did.
The Rams fell apart, competitively. After Jim Everett took the Phantom
Sack in the 1989 conference title game at San Francisco, they turned
into doormats. Team owner Georgia Frontiere, never popular even when
the team was winning, began looking elsewhere. By 1994, the team was in
its fifth season of double-digit defeats, Georgia was despised, people
couldn't remember they used to adore her team and lots of folks were
eager to drive the Rams to the airport and put them on a plane for St.
Louis.
What was weird was the Raiders part of it. Frustrated in his dealings
with the Coliseum Commission, Al Davis also was looking. He got what he
thought was a sweet-heart deal from Oakland, and he bolted, dropping
that bombshell only a few weeks after Georgia's announcement. Returning
to East Bay squalor when he could have had the L.A. market to himself.
Yeah, Al is a visionary.
And 12 years later, that's where we stand. Outside the NFL, no team in
sight and zero political will to jump through the hoops (and build the
stadium) to make it happen.
Sometimes, it's almost as if the NFL were never here. We watch it on
TV; like European soccer or prize fights from Las Vegas, with no sense
of connection and arm's-length affection.
No traces of the Raiders or Rams remain at the Coliseum or Angel
Stadium. The former is all USC all the time. The latter is about the
Angels; indeed, the hideous enclosed stadium was ripped apart in 1996
and rebuilt as a baseball-only yard.
And, that, kids, is the nutshell history of the NFL in Los Angeles.
Some good times, more bad times than we care to admit. And no new times
on the horizon to displace our fading memories.