Rams Returning to Los Angeles

What goes around, comes around. The NFL’s Rams, who left Los Angeles for St. Louis following the 1994 season, are headed back to the west coast of the 2016 season. The reconstituted Los Angeles Rams will probably play at the L.A. Coliseum , which was their home in their first stint there, before a new stadium is ready in suburban Inglewood , California, in 2019.

The San Diego Chargers have an option to join the Rams in L.A., and if they chose not to exercise it, the Oakland Raiders would have the opportunity to head down the coast. The reasoning in all three cases is that the franchises do not have an adequate stadium by modern NFL standards.

All three of these franchises have called Los Angeles home at one time or another. The Rams played in Cleveland in the 1930s and 40’s until relocating to Los Angeles in 1946. The Raiders played in Oakland from 1960 through 1981, (originally in the American Football League before the AFL-NFL merger in 1970) before moving to L.A. in 1982. Like the Rams, the Raiders left after the 1994 season, returning to the Bay Area. The Chargers played in L.A. as an AFL team in 1960 before heading down I-5 to San Diego.

The losers in all of this are the fans in St. Louis, who have lost an NFL franchise for the 2nd time. The Cardinals left for Arizona in 1988. The silver lining for those fans is that they, as taxpayers, won’t be stuck with a big bill for a taxpayer financed stadium. A pissed St. Louis mayor Francis Slay says he is done with the NFL and won’t pursue another team, since he thought the deck was stacked against his city anyway.

Here’s some highlights from the Rams’ first tour of duty in Los Angeles: