Rams fans on the BILLS game (including some of our own who were at the game)

I flew into LA Friday morning, right over the Inglewood site, at about 8 am. There were about 20 huge earth movers all lined up, and just lurching into motion. Nothing but dirt. It looked all graded from the sky, but they are pushing dirt around still. They are not laying in any underground pipes or anything yet.

I can’t tell you how much Rams junk I saw. There were restaurants where every employee was wearing Rams T-shirts – and I mean Thai restaurants, and pizza places – not sports bars. Buses, metro, billboards, bus shelters. And loads of humans with Rams shirts and jerseys. The Dodgers are in the playoffs, but you wouldn’t know it. I am here to report that the “LA is apathetic about the NFL” theory is pure bunk. Rams old school, old colors, new school, new colors, logos from every era, the place is ablaze. There are even mixtures of the eras. Even in the stadium, you see the “new” logo of the grimacing Rams head in profile with white horns. There were a few Kings billboards, but I saw nothing of the Lakers, Clippers, or Dodgers. And, oh, I guess none of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, either, but no-one ever gave a fuck about them in the first place.

So I leave Hollywood Sunday morning to go pick up my rotten kid, and I can’t believe how many Bills fans I see. All over the metro, and even on his campus (apparently you can park in the university garages for $50 on game day, so it is spillover from the coliseum which is a stone’s throw from the campus). Significant number of them. And I was astonished because I didn’t know there were any Bills fans in Buffalo, let alone in LA. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a lot of Giants fans, or even Jets fans – LA and NY, you know…there’s bound to be a lot of people from each place that move to the other city. But Buffalo? I don’t remember ever meeting a real life Bills fan in my life before Sunday.

So we walk to the stadium and marvel at all the food vendors along the way (thank god there is no wall between America and Mexico, is all I can say). And it’s already getting kind of toasty outside.

The stadium appears empty. But it is pretty clear to me that it is empty because sitting in the direct sun all day is tough. My son and I sit in a small patch of shade until game time, and right around the anthem, the coliseum fills up with 90,000 fans.

I think most of the game observations I would make have already been made by other people, so I won’t repeat them here. One thing we did note that I haven’t seen mentioned by anyone is that Mike Thomas took a pop on a kick return. We were sitting four miles above the field, and we could hear it. Just a brutal shot. So we watch him get up and go to the sideline, and he clearly got clocked…and NOBODY goes over to him. He’s walking around kind of shaking things around to make sure they are still attached, and squatting, and standing back up and clutching his helmet, and spinning to his left, and shaking things…and nobody approaches him. My son and I were just beside ourselves, and threatening to go down to the field, and generally losing our minds. And Thomas tears off his helmet and squats, and wobbles to his feet, and finally somebody goes up to him (not a player) and talks to him for 10 seconds. And leaves. And Thomas wobbles around. And the Rams punt, and out goes Thomas on the field as a gunner. He gets ridden out of bounds easily, and I lost track of him after that. But I was pretty amazed by that. Honestly, it seemed criminally delinquent.

There were some drunken Bills fans immediately behind us, and I thought I was going to lose it during the first half. One of the guys was bragging incessantly about how well liked he is, and how women love him, and cussing this way and that, and yelling out that every penalty flag was for “grabbing the lineman’s penis,” and all this sort of crap. They left at halftime, and I noticed a number on the scoreboard to text in the even of abusive fans, but never used it because they never returned for the second half. The other Bills fans around me were all normal people, and friendly. It was a nice day except for the scoreboard.

Anyway, after the game we went to a restaurant, then back to my son’s dorm to pick up my stuff, and away to the metro. I plan for the metro to take about an hour, and that would get me to the airport about an hour before my flight. The recommendation is 90 minutes, but I know an hour is enough. But about 50 minutes into the metro trip, I realized I was cutting it close. From where I was, I knew I had about another 15 minutes on the metro followed by a wait for a shuttle bus (indeterminate time), and about a 15 minute shuttle to the airport after it arrives. I don’t like that, so I decided to get off and grab a taxi. There was only one taxi. So I grabbed it, and as I’m loading my stuff in, a couple of Bills fans approach, and ask if I’m going to LAX. So we split the ride. As we get close to LAX, their anxiety gets greater, and they ask how far it is, and so on. Just as they are getting anxious, I realize that I was right on my original calculation, and I had plenty of time before my flight. On the metro, I had a brainfart and had been thinking 8:00 when I really didn’t leave until 8:50. Then traffic jams up. And they let it out that their plane leaves in 40 minutes, and our poor Mexican taxi driver is listening to the Backstreet Boys Live pretty loudly, and even when they get him to turn it down, he doesn’t understand what they are saying really.

I am leaving Terminal One, as it happens, and I have an hour and a half before my plane leaves, and I can see my terminal. It’s 150 yards away, so 4 or 5 minutes, probably. They are leaving from Terminal 6, which is…like…a mile away, probably. And they start discussing getting out of the cab and running. And they are not getting any advice from Juan, who merely nods his head and says, “yes, okay” to every question they pose. So I try to tell them they don’t want to do that. He will get them there faster than they can run, and that they should wait. The delay is just a temporary knot of something, and as soon as he drops me off, he will pull away from the curb, and get past the knot and the pace will pick up. And these guys look like football fans from the northeast, btw. A man and a woman with significant love handles. They have no shot on foot. It’s a mile, and they have baggage. But they can’t take the pressure. As soon as we get near Terminal One, they bolt the car before I do. Juan yells at them, but off they go.

There is no WAY they made it on time. No way, whatsoever.

And I go in, check my bag, and head to security where I come to the crossroads monitored by some security woman. She looks at everybody’s boarding passes, and waves them to the left or right. She waves me to the left. It is a long, empty course that leads directly to a checkpoint whereas everyone else was in a queue that had to be 30 minutes long. I pass through security in a minute and a half, emerge on the other side, and learn my flight is delayed. And it gets a second delay. I end up with about an hour and a half of time to kill on the other side of security for all my pains to get there on time. Dunno what happened to the Bills fans, but my guess is their blood pressure was higher than mine by that point.

Anyway. Great weekend for me. I got some good stuff out of the conference, saw a play Saturday night, and got to hang with my kid at a Rams game. Great time. And he’s doing great. He was raving about his experience at university, and it looks like he is really settling in well, and embracing his privileged educational opportunity, so it’s all good.

Oh, I meant to add, fwiw, a rough unscientific jersey accounting.

At first, I formed the opinion that Dickerson jerseys were number one, but by the end of the day, I was convinced there was an equal number of Gurley jerseys.

After those two, the landscape was dominated by LA Rams of old.

There were a smattering of Austin and Quinn. Saw one Donald. A few Goff. One Hekker jersey.

Most popular after the running backs was Jack Youngblood. Bunch of Warners. Quite a few Cromwell. Some Jackson (Steven, not Harold). A surprising number of Reynolds – half a dozen. An autographed Ferragamo, and 1 each in blue and white of Jones, Snow, and Gabriel. Saw a few Bruce, and one Holt.

Think it was:

Dickerson/Gurley
Youngblood
Warner
Cromwell
Jackson
Goff
the rest of them.

Which one would you wear? Or do you wear?

I think Youngblood is probably my all-time favorite Ram. Jones, Olsen, and Gabriel high up there for me.

zn wrote:

Zooey wrote:

Which one would you wear? Or do you wear?

Faulk. I wore it up until my wife claimed it for bedwear. As you know, it is the duty of all married men to surrender any and all kinds of shirts and tops to their wives upon request.

…

Oh, shoot, Faulk, yeah. Probably between Warner and Cromwell in popularity there. I am sure I am missing more, too. Not like I wrote this stuff down.

Shirts and tops aren’t the only thing I have surrendered.

Well, that was an excellent report. I kinda hope the Bills fans who you shared a cab with and bolted without paying missed their flight. I wouldn’t mind if we learned they missed their flight and were mugged so with no money they had to spend the night under a bridge.

Not just because they didn’t pay the poor Mexican cabbie (did you get stuck with the entire fare?) but because they are Bills fans and the Bills beat the Rams. Had the Rams won, I would probably be more gracious.

And these guys look like football fans from the northeast, btw. A man and a woman with significant love handles.

I’ll pretend you didn’t imply that all of us northeasterners are lardos.

I think Youngblood is probably my all-time favorite Ram. Jones, Olsen, and Gabriel high up there for me.

Yeah, Youngblood is my all-time favorite. I’d probably wear his jersey. Or maybe a Coy Bacon jersey. He was the first Rams player I ever took a liking to. A Coy Bacon jersey would be unique I bet.

Zooey, do you see yourself in the photo? I might have been sitting right across from your seats in the stadium….

I dig that place and I very much want to go back for another game this season. the Bills game was really the only game that worked for our sch as well………..I’m hoping to find time for the Falcon’s game….., this will be a yearly event for us. we dug it and soaked it all in…..

The game experience exceeded our expectations… I heard horror stories of traffic, heat exhaustion, etc from the Seattle game, but we got there early and left late, we where prepared for the beautiful 88 degree weather …….. like you, we hung out in the shade until kick off……..

we parked in a USC campus garage and met another group at the tail gate lot… when we left the game, none of the attendants or police could tell us where Parking Structure 2 was, so we walked the campus until we came across our car lot….

I watched the reply of the game last night… the main difference I noted from TV vs being live… The Bills QB looked better live than on TV……

McCoy and the turnovers killed us….

the Rams need to convert some of the drives into TDs… It seems that the Rams don’t have a good feel of calling effective plays in the redzone….. not thrilled of delay of game penalties by Case …..I could see the game clock 97 rows up, and Keenum had a brain freeze of time management during a crucial drive….

Nice group of Rams fans around us, but I’m not sure they followed the team as deeply as we did while they were in STL… they didn’t know much about the player history prior to this season…..

I took my daughter to the game – it was her first Rams game. She is sixteen and got a kick out of the celebrities that they showed on the big screen. When I bought our seats, I bought them on the press box side and fortunately we have been in the shade the entire game for both 1 pm starts and it has made a big difference. It has been very comfortable, but I think if you are not in the shade the coliseum provides no relief from the sun. It is a giant bowl with no shade whatsoever, so it can be uncomfortable if you are not used to three plus hours of direct sunshine.

As to the crowds, I am not sure what people expect, but there were 80K tix sold for the game. In a venue that holds 100K, yeah, there are going to be open seats, but put that same crowd in a 65K seat venue and it would be overflowing from the rafters. The crowds have been great in my opinion, but what do I know. Some people are going to want to be critical no matter what happens. If they draw 80K, why didn’t they draw 90K?

As to the opposing fans, I used to get pissed about that when the Rams played in Anaheim. Like it was an insult that opposing fans were in our stadium – how dare they? But I guess I’ve mellowed. I’ve seen the Rams in many opposing teams’ stadia and I just wanted to watch my team play. Southern California is a melting pot, and the NFL is huge here as it is anywhere. I have just accepted that every team that comes here will have 15 – 20K fans at the game. For one, it is a once in ten year opportunity for them to see their team. Second, with 70,000 tickets available for each game, their is supply no matter how many die hard Rams fans there are. So yes, every single game there will be plenty of opposing fans at the Coliseum and we will have to hear about it. Its the same thing with the Chargers, the Dodgers, the Angels, etc., and its more a reflection of the populous of the region than the fanbase.

We tailgated in the parking lot for an hour or so before heading into the stadium. The coliseum really is a grand old historic stadium, and I was telling my daughter about the Olympics and as much of the architecture as I could remember. They light the torch before the game, which is kinda cheesy, but Nolan Cromwell was the honorary igniter which was very cool.

Anyways, we got to our seats about 45 minutes early, and I got out my binoculars and immediately looked for Quinn and Brockers. I got a sick feeling in my stomach when I didn’t see those guys, and got out my phone and saw they were inactive. I felt right then it that McCoy was going to have a big day against us. That feeling only got worse when they converted that 2nd and 29 on the first drive and converted it to a TD. Man, that sucked! Still, I thought our offense was fairly competent for most of the day except: (1) in the red zone; and (2) when it really counted. That’s when a QB really matters, though, doesn’t it? One thing that I noticed in person that I don’t know if it was apparent on TV or not, but it looked like Buffalo was NOT playing an 8 man box a fair amount of the time. I saw two safties deep quite a bit of the time, which is not what other teams have been doing to the Rams. Maybe that is why the Rams had a little more success running the ball against Buffalo.

Obviously, the loss came down to a couple of plays that went against the Rams. The 3rd and 1 bomb to Quick that Keenum missed that should have been six. The failure to stop Buffalo on the opening drive. The missed interception on the deflected pass. The pick-6. The botched fake punt (which I was ok with). At the end of the day, my daughter had a great day and we finished the day at 3 – 2, and I told myself I can live with that.

joemad wrote:

Zooey, do you see yourself in the photo? I might have been sitting right across from your seats in the stadium….

I think you cut me off by 2 or 3 rows. At the ten yard line, to the right of that top gate/tunnel, I was in those red seats. This photo has gotta be late in the game. I can tell by the shade. I don’t think that hit us until the 4th quarter.

It’s so funny you were there, too, and some other people from the board, and we didn’t know it. Maybe next year we can have a little get together of a few of us before the game just for some handshakes and giggles. That would be fun. I have an excuse, now, with my kid right there. He got the tickets from some other student there.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Zooey.