Long, long time no see Tom. Welcome back.

They moved out of San Diego and played at the LA Sports Arena which is right next to the Coliseum and just as big of a dump as the old San Diego sports arena was and still is. They should've moved to Anaheim when the Pond opened but Donald Sterling wouldn't think of moving the team out of LA because he wanted to be where he could be seen by all the famous Hollywood types.

They didn't put up much of a fuss about the Clippers moving to LA. That was the most useless move.....to go play in the same arena as the Lakers, essentially glom on to their market. If they were going to move out of SD, then they should have gone to play in the OC....like the Ducks. They had a nice new arena there, what was wrong with that?

Now of course it is the Lakers that are the second rate citizen in that town. That don't break my heart.

That's actually most of SoCal actually. San Diego isn't any different. Everyone is a Chargers fan as long as they're winning as soon as they start losing, no one cares or shows up for the games.

The Clippers are doing fine........LA is what MarkO said. They are behind you, win or tie.

la is a basketball town anyway....even though they have fallen on hard times...

la is a basketball town anyway....even though they have fallen on hard times...

la is a basketball town anyway....even though they have fallen on hard times...

also a town made up of a lot of transients.

WSS

Sad thing is 'Peen it looks like the Rams owner wants to leave it. Why he would want to spend money to build a stadium in LA, (an area that has proven they're lukewarm football fans) and not spend the money in St Louis is puzzling. I have several good friends in the St Louis area, try to get out there at least once a year- that metropolis is plenty big enough, and certainly worthy to have an NFL team. It's flat-out owner extortion. Looks like the state of Missouri thinks enough of keeping the Rams to spend whatever is necessary.

Too bad St. Louis didn't think (as Cleveland did) of putting a specific performance clause in the lease.

PS I will be making 2 trips west to catch the Browns play the Rams and Chiefs.

Even with our QB position that always advertised the head lamp of an oncoming train, this team got to 7-4 (with 2 decisive wins over playoff teams like Cincitucky and Pittsburgh's Steeroids) in 2014. After we lost Mack, I'll admit we needed the easiest part of our schedule to win ugly against teams willing to beat themselves if our offense wasn't up to doing it on their own.

Not always the brightest apple in the orchard, I never knew wtf "the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts" meant. I thought it meant something like some poor squid couldn't make it past the inventory stages of foreplay intercepting all plan to powerglue love. In any event, the biggest improvement to our pass protection and running game seemed to be the addition of Joel Bitonio in between Alex Mack and Joe Thomas upfront. That chain of 3 gave us quite a spark while it was healthy. It was at least a reminder of Steinbach playing between LT and Center in terms of turning a nobody like Hillis into a Madden Coverboy running between the tackles. In 2009, we ranked 8th out of 32 teams at rushing the football against 9 in the box (when there was no such thing as a forward pass).

Bigger point, was we could suddenly count on running between the tackles WAY more than we could in 2013 (when we seemed exclusive to only being able to run off tackle with whatever Rent-a-squid RB we looked to from Houston's practice squad). With 5 blockers upfront starting the 2014 season, 60% are Pro Bowl caliber or fringing it, while Greco looked much umproved early on. Schwartz is average against the run (anytime we don't have a game plan running at JJ Watt 95% of our handoffs).

After Mack went down, here's what I noticed behinning the 1st game he didn't start (Jax). The Brian Hoyer that I thought was looking a lot like the one who pleasantly surprised me in 2013 - suddenly stopped stepping into any of his throws. It was like he suddenly remembered he had a huge knee reconstruction he needed to protect to the tune of watching most passes come off the back foot without a strong enough arm to okay it. Meanwhile, the yards per carry averages of Crow and Tate decreased considerably. In essence, we were right back to counting on 2 good blockers out of 5 (constituing only 40% of our interior blocker rather than 60% workign terrific.

If you're thinking the way Joe Banner was thinking - how much does Mack really matter? Well, it wasn't just replacing a Pro Bowl resume with a guy who's never won a starting job before. According to guys like Joe Thomas the communication of line calls up front went from highly efficient to mini bus fire drill mode. Not only that, but to whip somebody's ass at the line of scimmage: 1) you have to get there first, 2) you have to maintain a better pad height to win/sustain leverage, 3) you have to get to the next tier of defense when a cutback RB is passing the line of scrimmage... And when we talk pass protection, there were a bunch of sissies on Pittsburgh before our rematch expressing concern to the league that Mack doesn't allow them to jump up to deflect passes in the passing lanes. Wait a minute - the Steeroids are complaining about dirty football? Yeah okay! It's about time you had some karma coming back atchya... I just never saw Mack getting ragdolled the way his replacements were. Speaking of pad height in the trenches, I'll never forget how far back Gerald McCoy threw McDonald as quickly as he did.

Anyway, I could have seen us FINISHING teams like Indy or other opponents we had halftime leads on if we had Mack back giving us that 60% of top quality making TDs a realistic goal while time of possession flips back to our favor. We would have easily finished Indy if our secondary didn't feel like they had a half marathon on their legs from all our 3 and outs on offense. Early in the year, it was kind of nice when our best case scenario wasn't always missing Dawson's range out to 60 yards all the time. We didn't have that in 2013 so there was epic progress in the works for a team coming off 4-12. We were even winning in spite of injury for as a long as a team trying to rebound from 4-12 could do such a thing. Teams that have been drafting well since 1999 handle injury volumes better than we did after we got to 7-4.

With Mack back healthy, I could see a veteran QB like Hoyer getting back to being the pleasant surprise he was in 2013 and early on in 2014. I can also see the yard per carry averages for our runningbacks spiking back up. We have great opportunities in the draft to add taller targets (via WR & TE) for our red zone in round 1 while we have more than enough cake to re-sign Miles Austin. All very doable to the extent of making this a much easier team to QB than previous years. If this isn't still Hoyer's best situation - his agent is drinking the same stupid juice that konked Rip Van Winkle out... History already showed us we could win when our volume of injury stays above excessive. The more we improve our last 10 active roster spots - the more we can handle injury. This is doable too...

Absurd or not, it is what it is. Nothing says St.Louis has to build a new factlity. They can tell the Rams that this is where you will play. Take it or leave it.

Because the fans of just 20 years ago didn't want the same things as the fans of today want. Twenty years ago we were the 30-40 somethings. We didn't care about fantasy scores or good cell phone reception. Todays do. The same can be said about premium venues inside the stadium. It isn't simply about seats anymore. It's about spaces to allow for these premium venues.

As for baseball, I think there is more tradition associated with baseball. Football as an example probably changes more rules on a yearly basis than baseball has in the last 40 years. Green Bay might be the only "shrine" in football, and even there it has undergone major upgrades.

Again, my question is how did the most state of the art facility at the time become obsolete in just 20 years.

When was Wrigley Field built?

Absurd or not, it is what it is. Nothing says St.Louis has to build a new factlity. They can tell the Rams that this is where you will play. Take it or leave it.

It seem to be the way things are going Gip. 20 year shelf life for these facilities. EJ Dome is now 20 years old. Plus, their owner is eying moving back to LA- and has a ton of leverage.

My issue is that the dome in St. Louis was supposed to have been built with all the bells/whistles and amenities that the fans wanted. It was built with the intention of luring either an expansion team or another team, which is what it did.

So, now, not many years later, it is now deficient? In what way? Is there some documentation that it is deficient?

So he wanted to stay in muni stadium? I don't buy that. If so, he would have.

He simply wanted to screw Cleveland and move to Baltimore? I don't buy that either. Art was a big player in the Cleveland community for a long time. I don't believe he woke up one morning and decided to chuck all of that and move the team.

Actually....he sorta did exactly that. The incentive that he got to move was the 75 million cash payment he was being offered. Essentially when that was made, yes, just about overnight he decided he wanted to move (because that money, supposedly, was going to resolve his debt issue...it didn't).

He was not going to get that kind of a bonus from Cleveland.

It makes no sense to say he was the one who didn't want a new stadium unless it comes from the standpoint that Baltimore now had a new stadium nearly done and the city of Cleveland finally took their dick out of their hand and said, ok , we will build one, and had him wait another 2-3-4 years while that happened.

You have to remember, the need for a new stadium in Cleveland didn't just happen 6 months before the move. The problem was the city felt the Indians or Cavs moving was a far greater risk. I remember talk about the Indians moving in the 60's when I still lived there. The city never thought the Browns would be the team to move. The Browns were the ancor of the sports teams. The Indians and Cavs were top priority because the Browns would never move. LOL

The Indians and the Cavs were the priority because A. the Indians held 81 games.....10 times the number of people coming downtown ...and spending their money that the Browns had, and B. the Cavs played 41 home games....5 times as many as the Browns....plus the arena could be used like 300 days a year for events. So, from an economic standpoint, it is all very logical that those would have priority. I cannot blame the city for that. The "Gateway" project brought at least 381 pay dates to the city...where the football stadium brought 8-10....maybe a few more with special events.

Lot's of wives or husbands move on because the spouse failed to pay close enough attention.

Or because they thought they found a Sugar Daddy or Sugar Momma elsewhere. But sometimes that doesn't turn out so good. Modell shoulda got a prenup...as in about 3-4 years Modell's Sugar Momma kicked him outta the house.

JMO

I hear you on the two-team thing... It's not like LA has shown they will even support one, let alone two.

As for the StL stadium... bear in mind that Jerry set a new standard with his billion-dollar, pleasure dome and the bar is now very high. I've no doubt that it played a role in Jimmy renovating CBS, a 16-yo structure...

If it was built on the cheap, lot's can be wrong. Face it, the NFL owners need indoor space for club seats and indoor activities. I know you may not like them, but the fact remains lot's of fans want that, and those are typically the type of fans or business' that buy lots of tickets.

I know you are a older fan like I. Don't act like it. The days of heading to the open air stadium to eat a crappy dog and swill some watered down beer are over. NFL teams are adapting to what their customers want, and the first people they listen to are the people spending the most money. Some may not want or like to hear that, but that's the way it is in any business.

Look, these new owners shell out a $billion. They have to make a large return. Simple interest would net them maybe 30 mil a year.

Trust me, it's fan driven. If the voice of the fans didn't want better this and that's, it wouldn't happen.

A NFL team in a city is huge. You have all kinds of cities in this country that could support a NFL team and will/would break the bank to bring one home. If a city with a team doesn't want to keep up with the Jones family, well, sorry Charlie.

Really man, one would think we of all people would understand that. We kept dicking arounf and Modell finally pulled the plug.

I know some may disagree with that, but to deaf ears here. I have no doubt had the city agreed to a nice new stadium, Art would have never moved the team, and that is the bottom line. Like it or not.

wonder how the fans in st. louis feel about the team moving?