(Redirected from Cleveland Rams)
The 'St. Louis Rams' are a professional
American football team based in
St. Louis, Missouri. They are currently members of the
Western Division of the
National Football Conference (NFC) in the
National Football League (NFL). The team has won three
NFL Championships including one
Super Bowl.
The Rams began playing in
1937 in
Cleveland, Ohio as a second incarnation of the previous 'Cleveland Rams' team that was a charter member of the
1936-37 American Football League. Although the NFL granted membership to the same owner, this new NFL franchise technically became a separate entity since only four of the players (William "Bud" Cooper, Harry "The Horse" Mattos, Stan Pincura, Mike Sebastian) and none of the team's personnel joined the new NFL team.
[1]
The team then became known as the 'Los Angeles Rams' after the club moved to
Los Angeles, California in
1946. Following the
1979 season, the Rams moved south to the suburbs in nearby
Orange County, playing their home games at
Anaheim Stadium in
Anaheim for fifteen seasons (1980-94), keeping the
Los Angeles name. The club moved east to
St. Louis prior to the
1995 season.
[2]
Franchise history
Cleveland Rams (1936-1945)
The 'Cleveland Rams' were founded by attorney
Homer Marshman in 1936. Their name, the Rams, comes from the nickname of
Fordham University. Rams was selected to honor the hard work of the players that came out of that university. They were part of the newly formed
American Football League. The following year they joined the
National Football League and were assigned the Western division to replace the
St. Louis Gunners, who disbanded after the 1934 season. From the beginning, they were a team marked by frequent moves playing in three stadiums over several losing seasons. The franchise suspended operations and sat out the 1943 season because of a shortage of players during
World War II and resumed playing in 1944.
[3] The team finally achieved success in 1945, which proved to be their last season in Ohio, achieving a 9-1 record and winning their first NFL Championship, a 15-14 home field victory over the Washington Redskins on December 16.
[4]
Los Angeles Rams (1946-1994)
In
1946, Rams' owner
Dan Reeves, fed up with poor attendance at Cleveland Stadium and competing against the
Cleveland Browns (then members of the
All-America Football Conference), the Rams became the first NFL team based on the West Coast. (There had been a team called the
Los Angeles Buccaneers in 1926, but they played their schedule on the road only.) Reeves inked a deal with the city to lease the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and the team played there from 1946 to 1979.
Reeves died in 1971, and through a complicated arrangement with the Baltimore Colts that brought Bob Irsay in as Colts' owner, Carroll Rosenbloom, who had been the Colts' owner, took over the Rams.
Rosenbloom had long been bothered by the Coliseum Commission's apparent foot dragging on building
luxury boxes at the Coliseum, which he saw as essential to future success. He broke off negotiations with the Commission and started to negotiate to play at
Dodger Stadium, but
Los Angeles Dodgers owner
Walter O'Malley did not want a football team playing at Chavez Ravine. Rosenbloom was petitioned by Orange County Supervisor Ralph Clark, the founder of the Los Angeles Rams Booster Club, to move the team to
Anaheim Stadium, the home of the
California Angels. Clark convinced Angels owner
Gene Autry to okay the remodeling of Anaheim Stadium to accommodate the Rams, expanding capacity to 68,000 and putting in seating appropriate to football. In 1980, the Rams moved to
Anaheim from Los Angeles.
St. Louis Rams (1995-present)
Under the terms of the Rams' deal with Anaheim, they were to receive the rights to develop plots of land near the Stadium. When nothing came of these plans, and with attendance falling, Rams' owner
Georgia Frontiere (Rosenbloom's widow, as he died before the move to Anaheim was completed) got permission to relocate the team. After an aborted move to
Baltimore, the Rams moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis in 1995, initially playing at
Busch Stadium until the TransWorld Dome (now the
Edward Jones Dome) was completed. Interestingly, the NFL owners originally rejected the move -- until Frontiere agreed to share some of the
permanent seat license revenue she was to receive from St. Louis. This same year the then-
Los Angeles Raiders were threatening to relocate as well -- and did, back to
Oakland.
The 1995 and 1996 seasons the Rams were under the direction of head coach Rich Brooks. Then in 1997
Dick Vermeil was hired as the head coach. He remained head coach until retiring after the Rams won
Super Bowl XXXIV against the Tennessee Titans in early 2000. After that
Mike Martz took over until his firing in 2005.
Scott Linehan is the current head coach after replacing Martz in January of 2006. During this time some of the most important players have been
Marshall Faulk,
Torry Holt, and
Issac Bruce. They were part of an offense dubbed "one of the fastest ever" and "
The Greatest Show on Turf". This offense has been under the direction of
Kurt Warner (1999-2001) and
Marc Bulger (2002-present).
Seasons-by-season records
Main articles: St. Louis Rams seasons
Logo and uniforms
The Rams became the first professional American football team to have a logo on their helmets. Ever since
halfback Fred Gehrke painted
ram horns on the team's helmets in 1948, the logo has been the club's trademark.
When the team debuted in
1937, the Rams' colors were red and black, featuring red helmets and black uniforms with red shoulders and sleeves. One year later they would switch their team colors to yellow and blue, with yellow helmets, white pants and blue uniforms. The Rams switched to yellow uniforms in the mid
1940s. When Gehrke introduced the horns, they were painted yellow gold on blue helmets. During the late
1950s, the team wore blue jerseys again.
In 1964, the colors were changed to blue and white. The helmets became blue with white rams' horns, the uniform design was changed to white pants and either blue or white jerseys. The Rams wore their white jerseys at home from the 1964 season up through the 1971 season; a tradition that continued under
Tommy Prothro. Prothro switched the Rams to the blue jerseys at home in 1972, the final season of the blue and white combination.
The colors returned to yellow gold and blue in
1973. The new uniform design consisted of yellow gold pants and curling rams horns on the sleeves – yellow gold horns on the blue jerseys and blue horns on the white jerseys. The white jerseys had yellow gold sleeves.
The team's colors were changed from yellow gold and blue to New Century Gold (metallic gold) and Millennium (navy) blue in 2000 following the
Super Bowl win. A new logo of a ram's head was added to the sleeves and gold stripes were added to the sides of the jerseys. The new gold pants no longer featured any stripes. The helmet design essentially remains the same as it was in
1948, except for updates to the coloring, navy blue field with gold horns. Both home and away jerseys had a gold stripe that ran down each side, but that only lasted for the 2000 and 2001 seasons.
In
2003, the Rams wore blue pants with their white jerseys for a pair of early-season games, but after losses to the
New York Giants and
Seattle Seahawks, the Rams reverted to gold pants with their white jerseys. In 2005, the Rams wore an all-blue combination for games against the
Arizona Cardinals and
Dallas Cowboys. In November 2006, the Rams introduced white pants with a gold stripe in a game at the
Carolina Panthers to feature an all-white combination. It is rumored that the Rams will wear more of this all white combination during the
2007 season.
Players of note
Current roster
Pro Football Hall of Famers
These Rams, and
St. Louis Cardinals Hall-of-Famers
Dan Dierdorf,
Jackie Smith and
Larry Wilson, are honored in the Ring of Honor at the Edward Jones Dome. Only Slater, however, played for the Rams in St. Louis, and then only for the inaugural 1995 season. The team plans to honor recent Cardinals Hall-of-Fame inductee
Roger Wehrli at a game in 2007.
Ollie Matson (33),
Andy Robustelli (81),
Dick "Night Train" Lane (also 81), coach
Earl "Dutch" Clark, general manager
Tex Schramm, GM and later NFL
Commissioner Pete Rozelle, and coach
Sid Gillman are also members of the Hall of Fame, but were elected on the basis of their performances with other teams or (in the case of Rozelle) NFL administration.
Dick Vermeil has become the first and still only St. Louis Rams figure inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. Cardinals inducted into it include Dierdorf, Smith, Wilson,
Conrad Dobler,
Jim Hart and coach
Jim Hanifan.
Retired numbers
★ '7'
Bob Waterfield
★ '29'
Eric Dickerson
★ '74'
Merlin Olsen
★ '78'
Jackie Slater
★ '85'
Jack Youngblood
Coaches of note
Head coaches
Current staff
Radio and television
As of 2006, the Rams' flagship radio station is
KLOU 103.3FM. Steve Savard is the
play-by-play announcer. Until
October 2005,
Jack Snow had been the
color analyst for nearly 20 years, dating back to the team's days in the Los Angeles area. Snow left the booth after suffering an illness and died in
January 2006. Preseason games not shown on a national broadcast network are seen on
KTVI, Channel 2, and are also seen in L.A. on
KCOP, "MyNetworkTV channel 13."
Notes and references
1. ALL THOSE A.F.L.'S: N.F.L. COMPETITORS, 1935-41
2. St. Louis Rams History: Chronology. ''Official Website of the St. Louis Rams''. Retrieved 13 September 2006
3. St. Louis Rams History: Chronology
4. NFL History, 1945. ''Official Site of the NFL''. Retrieved 13 September 2006
5. NFL Championships and Super Bowl Championships collected during a coaching tenure
6. Released after three games in 1938.
7. Resigned after one game in 1952
8. Resigned after eight games in 1962.
9. Took medical leaver after five games in 2005.
See also
★
The Greatest Show on Turf
★
NFL in Los Angeles
External links
★
St. Louis Rams official web site
★
Los Angeles Rams
★
Pro Football Reference Rams index
★
Sports E-Cyclopedia.com
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