Los Angeles, including one father and son, welcomes back RamsArash Markazi
ESPN Senior Writer
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LOS ANGELES - I went to a Los Angeles Rams game with my dad.
I never thought I'd get a chance to type the above sentence.
It's not something I lost sleep over or thought much about. You don't really miss what you don't have. It was simply the reality of life as a Los Angeles resident after the Rams left the second largest market, which has been without an NFL team for past 21 years.
I'm 36 years old. I wasn't alive the last time the Los Angeles Rams played a home game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. They moved from L.A. to Anaheim after the 1979 season and stayed in Orange County until moving to St. Louis in 1995.
The Raiders set up shop at the Coliseum from 1982 to 1994 but it wasn't the most family friendly environment during their time here. In fact, the league didn't host a night game at the Coliseum during the Raiders' last 10 seasons in Los Angeles, forcing the Raiders to play 19 straight Monday Night Football games on the road.
So I watched football games every Sunday at home with my dad. I loved it and I never thought much about not having a hometown NFL team. When Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke walked into my fourth-period U.S. History class at Notre Dame High School to ask us what us L.A. kids thought about not having an NFL team for a column he was writing about the league's lost generation of fans here I was almost flippant in my response.
"It's really great being able to watch good games on Sunday, instead of always having to watch the Rams or Raiders," I said.
My classmate Rachel Bilson, who went on to have a successful acting career, talked about going to Rams games every Sunday with her family. "It was fun waiting for each Sunday to come," she said.
As much as I enjoyed watching games with my dad on our couch, there was a part of me that was jealous of what Rachel got to experience with her family and what other cities got to enjoy on Sundays with their NFL teams. Whenever the cameras would pan to the tailgating going on in the parking lot or the fans cheering in the crowd I would tell my dad how fun how much fun that would be and he would usually pat me on the back and say, "We have the best seat in the house right here."
On Saturday, 22 years after the Rams and Raiders left town, I finally went to an NFL game with my dad, trading our spots on the couch for two seats on the 50-yard line.
"OK, maybe these seats are little bit better," my dad said before the game.
It was surreal seeing the NFL logo painted on the center of the Coliseum field and "Los Angeles" painted in the end zone. The Coliseum was where Los Angeles' NFL dreams had come to die for the past 20 years as city politicians continually proposed a refurbished Coliseum to league officials who viewed the 93-year old facility in any fashion as a non-starter. If Los Angeles seemed apathetic about the NFL before Saturday, it's because over the past two decades we've seen enough artist renderings of proposed NFL stadiums to fill up the LACMA and the Getty combined. You could have a wing on all the different incarnations of a refurbished Coliseum alone.
But all of the changed Saturday when an NFL game was played in Los Angeles for the first time since Dec. 24, 1994, when the Washington Redskins beat Los Angeles Rams and the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Los Angeles Raiders. I remember watching the highlights of those games on Christmas Eve while wearing Santa Claus hat and giving my dad my Christmas wish list that consisted of mostly Sega Genesis titles. I never thought it would be close to 22 years until I got to go to an NFL game in Los Angeles with him. I guess having an NFL team was just something I took for granted at the time. Or maybe I was just a 14-year-old kid more interested in video games. Who knows?
All I know is Los Angeles has completely and fully embraced the Rams and the NFL. I had my doubts. We're a town that doesn't do makeups or sequels well. In fact, we usually botch both royally and consistently. But Los Angeles Rams fans packed every inch of the parking lots outside of the Coliseum on Saturday and tailgated, along with Dallas Cowboys fans, for five hours before Saturday's kickoff. Fans young and old wore jerseys that ranged from Vince Ferragamo, Eric Dickerson and Jack Youngblood to Jared Goff, Todd Gurley and Aaron Donald.
The game, as most preseason games are, was almost an afterthought to the fans finally being able to congregate at the Coliseum to celebrate the return of the Rams and the return of the NFL to Los Angeles.
Even after Cowboys receiver Lucky Whitehead returned the first NFL kickoff in Los Angeles in 7,903 days for a 101-yard touchdown, most Rams fans were still smiling at the sight of their team back in their city.
Not even a 24-7 halftime deficit was going to dampen their mood. Many of the nearly 90,000 fans that had packed the Coliseum had left by the time Rams quarterback Sean Mannion hit Aaron Green for a 9-yard touchdown to give the Rams a 28-24 comeback win. The Rams may be back but this is still Los Angeles.
My dad, who usually likes to beat the traffic like most clichéd L.A. sports fans, stayed until the end and smiled when it was over. It had been a long wait to experience out first NFL in game in Los Angeles together but it was well worth it.
"This was fun," he said. "We should do this more often."
