Rams' move back to L.A. OK by me

It was something I’ve known about for some time and from earlier reports during the past two years or more, as a fan of this team, it had the strong feeling it was inevitable.

The ‘it’ I’m referring to is the St. Louis Rams announcing they will make the move this fall into a new stadium with a retractable roof and glass ceiling to the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, Calif., to become what it was from 1946-1995, the Los Angeles Rams. Of course, they were more like the Los Angeles Rams of Anaheim from 1980-1994, since they played at Anaheim Stadium. Think about that as if the Seahawks played in Tacoma, but I digress.

For the next three seasons, my Rams will play in the Los Angeles Coliseum, before moseying on into their new 80,000-seat stadium to play in 2019. I will do everything I can to buy a ticket and show up to their first game in the new stadium, assuming I can snag one on StubHub.com or somewhere.

According to nfl.com, there are also rumors that, after the NFL Scouting Combine runs through 2020, it along with the NFL Draft could move to the Rams’ stadium, which also has plans for a 300-acre entertainment complex. This 3.1 million square-foot area with an estimated cost of $3.6 billion is the world’s most expensive stadium complex and it will be located on top of the old Hollywood Park racetrack.

It is adjacent to the Forum, where the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers used to play before moving to the Staples Center in downtown L.A. On Nov. 27, 1987, my parents and I watched one game from the cheap seats in the late-1980s, where we could barely see the top of 7-foot-2 Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s bald head. I also got an autograph from one of the best play-by-play announcers, Chick Hearn, on his birthday.

FORTUNATELY, IN the late-1980s my parents and I were able to watch Bo Jackson, Marcus Allen, and the “other” Los Angeles team — OK, the Raiders were way more popular back in their heyday in the 1980s, “Just win, baby” — as they pounded the Cincinnati Bengals, my father’s second-favorite team (poor guy can’t get over cheering for the Cleveland Browns). Unfortunately, we could never watch the Rams, because we’d never time it when they’d play those Ohio teams.

In 1994, we moved from Redlands, located roughly an hour or two in rush-hour traffic from Anaheim Stadium, to Yorba Linda, about 15 miles northeast of Anaheim. I was a sophomore at Esperanza High School in northeast Anaheim, and the NFL season was my first semester there. So let’s just say I had other priorities than watching the Rams’ last season. But the notion of trying to go to a game with a friend whose folks were Rams fans escaped my fragile little mind. So that was an opportunity that was lost, but sometimes karma has a way of rewarding people.

KNOWING FOR a fact there are quite a few of you Rams fans out there, albeit sprinkled among fans of NFC West rivals like the San Francisco 49ers and That Team West of Here, I know I’m not alone in celebrating this fact. While still a pretty darn expensive trip at a bit more than $600 or more for airfare alone from Spokane to L.A., it’s still a bit closer than St. Louis. Plus I have family around the L.A. area, so potentially I could attend games there together.

So thanks to owner Stan Kroenke, a man from Missouri who also owns the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, L.A. has a team and it could even have two. The San Diego Chargers have the first opportunity to move north to become the ‘second’ NFL team and they recently announced plans to move their headquarters to nearby Orange County. If for some reason they’d rather stay in the city where I went to college, then the Oakland Raiders can move on down to L.A. — yes, yet again. By all accounts and reports, it looks like the Chargers will be the ones sharing the huge stadium with my Rams.

So now we have a team coached by “Mr. Mustache”, also known as Jeff Fisher, that is built to compete in the NFC West and at times, they’ll defeat pretty solid teams that’re perennial playoff teams. But they can also be the most maddeingly inconsistent team in the league. Case in point was on Oct. 4, where we beat the Arizona Cardinals, 24-22, followed by a 24-10 loss at Green Bay in which it seemed like we turned the ball over every other possession in the second half, as quarterback Nick Foles had four interceptions, including a ‘pick-six’, plus we missed a field goal. Hopefully Los Angeles will figure out whether Foles is truly their franchise quarterback going forward, or if the midseason benching may lead to a new QB next season. Foles was able to pass for 2,052 yards, but unfortunately he was picked off 10 times in 11 starts. Tough to be a serious contender without a starting quarterback, plus we had two injury-filled seasons of Sam Bradford, who we traded to Philadelphia for Foles. Not what anyone would really call stability.

At least we are not horrible — yet — just merely mediocre with a 27-36 record since Fisher’s been our coach, after three straight seasons of having mainly backups playing QB.

Plus we got beat by teams who didn’t reach the postseason like the Baltimore Ravens and the Chicago Bears. Plus quite a few hundred or thousand empty seats have dotted the Trans World Dome in St. Louis, along with plenty of fans from the OTHER team. Of course, in Anaheim, when the Rams were among the worst teams in the NFL for quite some time, there were also a lot of empty seats.

SO HOPEFULLY, the energy of the return of the Rams will translate into wins on the field. We have been the youngest team in the NFL for four straight seasons, but they are quality players. Rookie running back Todd Gurley made it to Sunday’s Pro Bowl (1,106 yards, 10 touchdowns) — which by the way should return to the old deal of allowing Super Bowl participants to play — along with second-year man defensive tackle Aaron Donald (11 sacks), who was named as a Pro Bowl captain and punter Johnny Hekker, who led the NFL in punting average. Plus we have former Pro Bowlers such as defensive end and sackmeister Robert Quinn. We have a pretty strong front seven on defense — four first-round draft picks can do that for you. Our secondary is wildly inconsistent. Dumb penalties of the truly physical nature are a staple of Fisher’s defenses. It gets so bad that whenever we have a great play, on TV I’m always looking for the yellow graphic underneath the score signaling a penalty flag. But Fisher was the coach I wanted all along and never thought we’d get, so you take the good with the bad.

At least I can watch them beat those Arizona Cardinals, Seahawks, Niners, or go down trying.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, via e-mail at bbourquin@cdapress.com or via Twitter @bourq25