Other than a brief spurt of success from 1998-2001, in which the Rams were nicknamed “The Greatest Show on Turf” and the team won the Super Bowl in 1999, the St. Louis Rams were always a very mediocre football team. This was also the case in the final years of the Los Angeles Rams in the 1990s, as four consecutive 10-loss seasons and no playoff appearances contributed to declining fan interest and attendance. Then-owner Georgia Frontiere made several attempts to move the Rams to other cities, eventually ending up in St. Louis. Fans in the Los Angeles area were furious, and when the Raiders left for Oakland in the following months, the nation’s second-largest city was left without an NFL team for over 20 years.

While it makes sense to return a football team to the nation’s second-largest media market (as opposed to St. Louis, which is only the 18th-largest media market), it is still infuriating to fans when their teams are moved around at the whim of the league and team owners. These billionaire owners and NFL bureaucrats seem to have no loyalty towards the fans and cities they serve, which is definitely a correct observation; for example, Rams owner Stan Kroenke is a born-and-raised Missouri resident, yet he subbed a city in his home state in favor of Los Angeles, a seemingly more attractive market. Not even proposals by the city of St. Louis for a new $1 billion riverfront stadium could stop Kroenke from moving the team to California. This reveals the true motive of the majority of NFL officials and team owners: money. Money is king in football, and where there is more to be made, the league will follow. Fans are merely the source of that money, and Los Angeles just so happens to be home to more potential Rams fans than anywhere else. A shiny new stadium and a re-branded team is sure to appeal to new fans, right? Actually, the answer to that is exactly the opposite. While these things certainly make a football team more appealing, the thing that people really want is a good team to cheer for. As game attendance and ticket sales in St. Louis began to slip, there were calls for a new stadium to attract more fans to games. However, the stadium (which was built in 1995) was not the problem; it was the team. The Rams were putting up dismal performances season after season, and fans were having trouble supporting the team through these extremely long rough patches. As the Rams move to Los Angeles, the team is still the same, just in a new location in a new stadium. The Los Angeles Rams will be new and exciting at first, but the novelty of it will wear off very quickly if the team under-performs, which is to be expected considering the mediocrity of the team year after year. Only time will tell if the Rams will be successful in Los Angeles, but currently it seems like this controversial move by the NFL will end in disappointment for both Los Angeles and St. Louis.