The St. Louis Rubble

In 1995, the Rams were looking for a new home after they couldn’t secure the new football facility that they were seeking in Southern California. And after 49 years in the Greater Los Angeles area, the Rams decided to part in favor of St. Louis, Missouri. The City of St. Louis was desperate to get another National Football League franchise after the Cardinals left town in 1988 in favor of the State of Arizona. Ground was broken on July 13, 1992 for what would be first referred to as the Trans World Dome in St. Louis. This facility was constructed to seat 65,000 people for a football game, and more importantly, it would be a state-of-the art facility that would hopefully attract an NFL franchise. At the time the Trans World Dome caught the eye of former Rams owner Georgia Frontiere who herself was a native of St. Louis which added to the romance of her bringing a football franchise there.

The construction of the TWA Dome wasn’t complete in time for the beginning of the 1995 National Football League season which meant that the Rams would begin their time in St. Louis at Busch Stadium. However the Rams would move into their state-of-the art facility before the end of that regular season.

At first the TWA Dome didn’t serve as much of a home-field advantage for the Rams as the losing that marked the end of their tenure in Los Angeles carried over to St. Louis. But that would change in 1999 when the Rams became the feel good story of the National Football League as they went from being in last place in the NFC West the previous year to winning the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history. From 1999-2004, the Rams were a perennial playoff contender, but since then they’ve become an afterthought in the NFL as they haven’t had one winning season since. And because of this, attendance for Rams home games which is now referred to as the Edward Jones Dome has dipped.

When Frontiere passed away in 2008, minority owner Stan Kroenke would become the majority owner of the Rams. Aside from owning the Rams, Kroenke Sports Enterprises also owns the Denver Nuggets of the NBA and the Colorado Avalanche of the National Hockey League. And from Kroenke’s first day in the owner’s seat of the Rams, he has been lobbying for either significant upgrades to the Edward Jones Dome or a new stadium altogether in St. Louis which set the wheels in motion for what happened last week.

After months of jockeying between the City of St. Louis and the Rams over a new stadium, Kroenke decided to take his team back to place that they’ve called home for the majority of their existence which is Southern California. The Rams will return to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum which was their home from 1946 1979. And the irony in this was that Frontiere moved the Rams from the L.A. Coliseum in 1979 in favor of Anaheim Stadium due to the fact that the Coliseum had a seating capacity of nearly 100,000 which made it tough for the Rams to avoid National Football League blackout rules while it also lacked luxury boxes. Now the Coliseum will once again be the Rams home until completion of their new stadium which will be in Inglewood, California.

In a last ditch effort to keep the Rams, the City of St. Louis was willing to help in building them a new stadium on the waterfront there, but at this point, the ship had already left the port as Kroenke and the other National Football League team owners were hell bent on putting a team back in Los Angeles. And with the Rams history in Southern California, not even the mighty Mississippi River that flows through St. Louis could keep the Rams there. Not only has St. Louis lost an NFL franchise in the Rams, but for the second time in less than 30 years, the city has seen a professional football team give up on them and by the looks of things, the Gateway to the West will just be afterthought as far as the gridiron goes for a very long time.

What brought the Rams to St. Louis 21 years ago is exactly what saw them leave as like most professional sports franchises, there is no loyalty between a team, a city, and a fanbase. We’ve seen it before in the National Football League as nobody ever expected the Colts to leave Baltimore until that fateful day in March 1984 when Mayflower moving trucks were spotted leaving the team’s facility heading to Indianapolis. And the same can be said when the Browns decided to leave Cleveland in Baltimore in 1996 to become the Ravens.

At the end of the day, all professional sports boils down to is being about the business of making money. Sports franchises are owned by billionaires who have made their living in the business world. And if these businessmen who are accustomed to getting their way by hook or by crook don’t get what they want, they have no problem moving their franchise to a city that is willing to give them exactly what they want. Just like St. Louis gave the Rams what they wanted 21 years ago, Los Angeles was ready to bend over backwards to welcome them back with open arms. But whereas Baltimore eventually found a team to replace the Colts, and Cleveland received a new version the Browns in 1999, St. Louis who has already struck out twice with the National Football League won’t get another chance as there is too much bad blood between the city, Kroenke, and the NFL. Kroenke referred to St. Louis as being a two-sport city in referencing to the Cardinals of Major League Baseball, and the Blues of the National Hockey League which was his final parting shot on the matter. However the City of St. Louis, like is the case for most cities, supported the Rams when they were winning as people like to associate themselves with a champion, and it is also difficult to get a new football facility when the current one, like the Edward Jones Dome is less than 25-years old.

But now the Edward Jones Dome will be completely desolate on Sunday afternoons, and it didn’t take that long for workers there to remove all of the banners that represented the team’s time there which are now in L.A. The Edward Jones Dome was home to one of the greatest offensive teams in National Football League history as from 1999-2004, the Rams were indeed “The Greatest Show on Turf” as the passing of quarterback Kurt Warner, the elusiveness of running back Marshall Faulk, and the speed of wide receivers Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Ricky Proehl, and Az-Zahir Hakim captivated St. Louis along with the NFL with their record setting offense. The memories of that time in St. Louis will never fade as these players brought the town to life and made the Edward Jones Dome the place to be every Sunday afternoon.

As always the real losers are the fans. The fans that are willing to shell out their hard earned money to go to a sporting event and those die hards that eat, sleep, and breath everything that a team does. There were folks like that in St. Louis that followed the Rams, but as always, they end up losing because like it or not, guys like Kroenke and the National Football League as a whole will always get what they want. Kroenke can do no wrong in Hollywood, but in the Show Me State, he won’t see the red carpet rolled out for him anytime. And for that matter, neither will the NFL as this is the gruesome side of the greatest sport in the United States of America.