Eric Dickerson, Marcus Allen hope to see Rams, Raiders back in L.A.

Sports/ NFL

Eric Dickerson, Marcus Allen hope to see Rams, Raiders back in L.A.

Sam Farmer

Los Angeles Times

sam.farmer​@latimes.com

Marcus Allen believes Los Angeles would embrace the Raiders if they came back to town

Twenty years after the Rams and Raiders left Southern California, two of the iconic players from those NFL teams sat on a plane this week, flying from Burbank to Phoenix for a few rounds of golf..

Hall of Fame running backs Eric Dickerson and Marcus Allen, now best buddies, talked football to The Times during the commercial flight and shared their feelings about the possibility one or both of those franchises could return to the nation’s second-largest market.

The Rams, Raiders and San Diego Chargers are all on year-to-year stadium leases and are unhappy with their current venues. Each is eyeing the L.A. market.

Although the Chargers also have local ties — they began life as the Los Angeles Chargers in 1960 and played their debut season in the Coliseum before moving to San Diego — Allen said that among teams that potentially could play in the Southland, “I can’t see anybody else, anybody with the history and the following, that would be as natural as the Raiders and Rams.”

Allen was a Heisman Trophy winner at USC who played for the L.A. Raiders from 1982-92 before phase two of his career with Kansas City. He was the most valuable player of Super Bowl XVIII, the only time an L.A. team hoisted the Lombardi Trophy.

A friend of Raiders owner Mark Davis, Allen envisions the Raiders and Rams sharing a stadium, but concedes that probably wouldn’t be easy.

“You just don’t see these two organizations sharing anything because they’re so independent,” he said. “But I think today it can happen, and I think the league has made a decision that in order for a team to return it’s going to have to be one stadium shared by two teams. And I think it can happen.”

Dickerson, who spent 41/2 seasons with the Rams from 1983-87 and still holds the NFL single-season rushing record with 2,105 yards in 1984, said the Rams should move back to Southern California. They played in Anaheim throughout his Rams career — after playing in the Coliseum from 1946, when they moved from Cleveland to L.A., until 1980, when they moved to Orange County.

“St. Louis is a baseball town,” Dickerson said. “It’s all about baseball. Even when [the Rams] won the Super Bowl, [then team president] John Shaw said it was hard for us to even sell seats then. They were the hottest team in the league then.”

Do the Rams belong in L.A.?

“Oh, hell yeah,” he said. “Come on. It’s the L.A. Rams — the Los Angeles Rams. Even when they were in Anaheim, I didn’t know the difference. I just think they should be in L.A.”

Dickerson, who spent the 1992 season with the L.A. Raiders, thinks that team should stay in Oakland.

“Yeah, we could share a stadium,” he said. “But I just feel like the Raiders should always be in Oakland. They’re the Oakland Raiders. It’s like the Dallas Cowboys leaving Dallas. Even when they were in L.A., I thought of them as the Oakland Raiders.”

Then, Dickerson added: “I think the Chargers are going to get there before the Raiders will. Maybe before the Rams.”

• This topic was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by Crazylegs.