My relocation nightmare

That has already happened with the Rams. The Rams were already the Colts. Rosenbloom and Irsay traded teams. The precedent should see the Rams remaining in St. Louis no matter what happens.

Guys our habit has been to consolidate relocation threads. I figure 2 on a page, maybe 3 depending. SD started one earlier, and unless anyone objects, I will probably merge this one with that one.

rfl wrote:

Well, I personally don’t like merging threads.

I’ve seen the habit on boards for many sports. I think I “get” why it’s done, but I don’t like it.

Generally, threads are combined when they share some general theme. But diverse threads can focus on nuances that are lost through combining.

Also, posts get lost. People see a long thread and feel that they have done that. They miss new concepts and ideas.

Just my vote, but I would prefer leaving threads where they were started.

I dont care one way or another,
but merging is fine with me. There’s
pros and cons, but on a small board
I dont think any posts are gonna
go unseen.

After thinking about it for fifteen more
seconds this thread isnt really a ‘relocation’
thread — its more of a “what if the Horns disappear completely”
thread.

w
v

w
v

• This reply was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by wv.

wv wrote:

— its more of a “what if the Horns disappear completely”
thread.

Point taken.

Now you citizens have a good evening. Post safely.

also. in no way does the nfl want a team in los angeles with davis running things. if that trade happened, rams would be staying in st. louis and kroenke would be moving the raiders to los angeles. i’m not sure why he would want to do that unless the nfl made it a condition for moving a team to los angeles. i guess it’s possible.

I think it is more likely that both the Rams and the Raiders end up in Los Angeles than that they trade teams, though there is a scenario in which trading teams makes sense. I agree with the speculation that Kroenke doesn’t care about the brand, and I think he would trade the Rams for the Raiders, take the Raiders to LA, and let Davis have the Rams in St. Louis.

The problem is that I really don’t think the St. Louis stadium is going to be put together inside of 12 months, and I wouldn’t think Davis is going to like the Ed any better than anyone else. I don’t know, though. Maybe the Ed is an upgrade over Oakland, and maybe St. Louis will be far enough along with the stadium project to promise him that he can have it.

I do not think trading teams is Kroenke’s plan. I personally believe – on the basis of nothing but circumstantial evidence – that Fisher’s experience with relocation was part of his appeal to Kroenke. I would be surprised to learn otherwise. I don’t think Kroenke even entertains the idea unless the NFL forces him to choose between that solution and “going rogue.” And I don’t think the NFL is going to do that because the Rams have tradition there, and it just makes sense. The Raiders make more sense than the Chargers.

Although there a many possibilities here, if I was laying the odds, I’d think the Rams in LA under Kroenke’s ownership is the most likely outcome. The Raiders may follow shortly. Kroenke gets to tell the NFL that – far from undermining other teams in worse stadium situations – he is actually helping to solve one of those problems.

Still. The Horror Lives. Like you, I will remain a Rams fan regardless of the city they call home, but if something terrible happens, I’m just not sure I can face it.

zn wrote:

I once got into a discussion about similar stuff with a St. Louis fan who wanted to change the team name and logo so they would be more St. Louis. I disagreed, and said their longterm identity meant more to me than any St. Louis identification. He said that was superficial, since it meant I was just loyal to laundry. I said that the name, logo, and uniform are more than just merely external things–they’re the signs and symbols of a history and tradition, and that history and tradition is part of what the team means to people. I knew he was a baseball Cards fan, so I said, what if the Cards changed their colors and their name and became (say) The Aces. Would that be an absolutely meaningless change in merely superficial, external things? I think he saw the point when it struck home–no, the Aces wearing black and red would not be the same as the Cards wearing red.

Well, we are headed into something that matters a great deal to a lot of us, and to our posting friends that we have bonded with over the past two decades. Some of us are fans of the _________ Rams. Some of us are fans of the St. Louis _________. I think some of us may be fans of the Los Angeles ________, a currently vacant spot that people have filled with the Rams. I think, though, that if the Chargers had moved to LA five years ago, we would have seen some Los Angeles fans vanish.

We are headed for changes, and we are all going to lose some friends one way or another. It’s too bad.

But at least we have the consolation that Kroenke will be worth more on paper no matter what.

wv wrote:

I just wanna know if you would still follow the ________Rams
if they changed their colors to pink and black,
and wore Big Lebowski bathrobes.

w
v

What do you mean, “still?”

My passion for them would explode off the charts.

Yes, I’ve thought about all of this.

I thought it was certainly a possibility.

The “Oilers” have disappeared completely.

Could the Rams?

Of course.

If that happened I might just throw in the towel on the NFL. I haven’t been thrilled with it the last few years and I get aggravated by it’s constant need to create “EVENTS” (a four day draft, schedule release, Combine special, special awards shows for all year end awards, etc.)and it seems a bit mismanaged from a fan’s perspective. That NFL owners seem capable of moving anywhere, anytime for–oh–the hell of it. It bugs me.

Who knows what happens IF London gets a team in 10 years. Maybe Kroenke likes it over there better and he sells the L.A. stadium to the Chargers, or rents it and moves again–but THIS time London wants its own name. At least L.A. has a “Rams” connection.

London doesn’t.

I’m uncertain about the future of the NFL and am a bit concerned it might reach itself out of existence–at least for die hard fans. Who knows?

I don’t get that the NFL particularly loves or cares about its fans.

If the Rams cease to exist, I won’t care very much about the NFL. I may still watch games but I doubt, after having built myself into this particular brand of fan for over forty years I’d do it again. I’m not sure I have that kind of time left.

I’d watch it in a different way.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 10 months ago by PA Ram.

Yeah if the Rams screwed around with “the colors” and the name and the tradition, I would just dump em. Like, I suppose, original Browns fans dumped the Browns/Ravens. Just switch loyalties. Not to the Patz though, even though they are nearby. That would be like rooting for the Borg.

rfl wrote:

I guess I can understand the counterargument, that discussions of the same theme can become fragmented. But I don’t find that argument convincing. It doesn’t happen often, and it has a charm in itself.

Always good to discuss things.

In terms of LA threads, this has a history. Basically we had declared that we were keeping LA/relocation threads to a couple per page, and at the time there was good reason for that. It was possible, early on, before the Inglewood revelations, that some people were just going to start several relocation threads per day…whether anyone responded or not. In that atmosphere it was actually volatile. After Inglewood, a lot of that seems moot. So always be careful what you wish for. You personally would restrain what you did to a board front page, but do you honestly think everyone would? Often when there are board policies in effect, you have to look beyond your own perspective and ask, what would this look like if it were abused. (And it came close to that at one point much earlier on.)

But that’s just the history on LA stuff.

Also. Basically, I merge threads because people keep starting new threads on existing topics, and it wasn’t because they were making choices or being libertarian or any of that. Again YOU don’t do that but that DOES occur. And basically, it was because they didn’t read the board. As a result they reproduced things that were already there. In terms of mergings, the very few times people have complained (and I took the complaints seriously) struck me as minimal in comparison to the number of times conversation was stimulated.

But then it’s also possible that several weeks ago I overdid it a mite. If that happened it was over a long time ago. In general, all that was and was very minimal. And even then, when people said something, I listened. Plus more frequently now, in some key cases I ask. If it’s no, more often than not that’s cool.

But behind this is other things. It also depends on whether one wants to be a conversationalist in a community or a series of pronouncers. Being a mod is just a different perspective. You start looking at larger dynamics, and people don’t quite get, I think, how much work this board is. Anyway, to me it’s not really being a board if 6 different posters start “well that sucked” threads after a loss. That drives good threads off of page 1 and to me looks way too “PD board.”

All existing Rams boards merge threads, and for good reason. Well not all. The PD board doesn’t. The result is chaos. We do it lightly here. Light touch. Asking (in some cases) is part of that. To me, the boundaries on how and when and why to do it are fluid. It won’t go away…not everyone is self-consciously on top of these issues, and as a rule on all boards, if you don’t restrain it a little, you will see multiplied repetition of topics because some people snatch an hour from a busy day, come on the board, and just post. It’s a human habit.

And all of the above is of course open to discussion with all voices welcome. Here, or in email: zackneruda@gmail.com

PA Ram wrote:

Yes, I’ve thought about all of this.

I thought it was certainly a possibility.

The “Oilers” have disappeared completely.

Could the Rams?

Of course.

If that happened I might just throw in the towel on the NFL. I haven’t been thrilled with it the last few years and I get aggravated by it’s constant need to create “EVENTS” (a four day draft, schedule release, Combine special, special awards shows for all year end awards, etc.)and it seems a bit mismanaged from a fan’s perspective. That NFL owners seem capable of moving anywhere, anytime for–oh–the hell of it. It bugs me.

Who knows what happens IF London gets a team in 10 years. Maybe Kroenke likes it over there better and he sells the L.A. stadium to the Chargers, or rents it and moves again–but THIS time London wants its own name. At least L.A. has a “Rams” connection.

London doesn’t.

I’m uncertain about the future of the NFL and am a bit concerned it might reach itself out of existence–at least for die hard fans. Who knows?

I don’t get that the NFL particularly loves or cares about its fans.

If the Rams cease to exist, I won’t care very much about the NFL. I may still watch games but I doubt, after having built myself into this particular brand of fan for over forty years I’d do it again. I’m not sure I have that kind of time left.

I’d watch it in a different way.

Yeah, I’d still watch football as a casual observer but I would never become a fan of another team.

wv wrote:

Well, we could always start following:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Mobile

University of Mobile
Motto The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom
Established 1961

Colorado State.

The NFL would be foolish to allow the Rams to cease to exist. I bet they wouldn’t allow SK to waste so much brand equity. I know it happened when Cleveland’s Browns moved to Baltimore and changed to the Ravens. But, even then, the NFL made sure the Browns were resurrected.

Right now, I could see the Rams ending back in L.A. Now, there’s still the possibility that there could be a team swap. I think it’s much more likely that the Rams just move to L.A., and St. Louis (if we get another team at all) gets another franchise with yet another name.

My feelings evolve on all of this. I have so much time and energy wrapped up in this franchise, if they move to L.A., I think I’d want to follow them. But, it would also hurt that they moved from here, and if there was another franchise that came in to STL in place of the Rams, I know that I would follow them. Would I have two teams? Probably not. I’d probably end up following the STL team.

If no team is left in STL, I would probably just watch the NFL, but not as much, and kind of follow what the Rams are doing. Maybe I’d become a lot more productive at home. 🙂

I have a weird, stubborn streak that leads me to resist homerism where I live. It always felt right to choose my teams rather than just cheer the locals. I guess I’m a strange case.

Well, you’re certainly not alone.

As for me, I never cared at all for hockey so that doesn’t matter to me. But in baseball I somehow ended up following the Phillies. I did go to their games when I was young so that is probably part of it. I followed the Sixers during the Dr. J years and may have followed that team no matter where I lived because Dr. J was awesome. So I kind of stuck to those two local teams–although I don’t follow them very close any more.

With football–I never even considered the Eagles. They were never on my radar. Ever. And I do have some friends who grew up with other teams but moved to the Eagles(one guy was a HUGE Chiefs fan) but I NEVER considered switching teams. After all the history I have with this team I can’t imagine ever going local(unless Kroenke swaps franchises with Jeff Lurie and the Rams come here–I can dream).

So while I get the fans of local teams, it just did not happen that way for me–at least in the sport most important to me.