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Bruce to Rams fans: Show up
• By Jim Thomas
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_6b24e31f-5d89-56b3-b6c6-672df3fa9bca.html
Isaac Bruce is no stranger to relocation rumors. Some of the same things he’s hearing now about the possible move of the Rams to Los Angeles, he heard in reverse 20 years ago as a rookie wide receiver.
“I remember the day coach Rich Brooks stood up in front of the team (in Anaheim) and said, “It’s solidified. We’re moving. We’re going to St. Louis.”
Those words didn’t come until the spring of 1995. But there were rumors of the team’s departure throughout the ’94 season.
“The thing that really surprised me were the no-shows at the games on Sundays,” Bruce said, speaking of that ’94 season. “I think the biggest mistake that the Los Angeles area made was just saying c’est la vie, so to speak. ‘Go your way.’ Now they’ve been crying for a team all these years. I think St. Louis can learn a big lesson from them.”
And that’s where Bruce, who loved his time in St. Louis and still does charity work here for his foundation and owns property here, offered words of advice for Rams fans in the Gateway City.
“The biggest way to show a team that you love ’em is to show,” Bruce said. “Show up. Even in the worst of times. Show up. Say, ‘We need a team.’ I mean, you don’t want to be a city that’s been marked with losing two franchises.
“And definitely with a team that you embraced when we first came here in 1995. It’s only been 20 years. Twenty years is a short time. So get behind this team and show the upper brass how much you love this team.”
The point Bruce was making is that empty seats and no-shows can make relocating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fans get upset over the possibility of moving, not to mention the team’s poor showing, and start staying away from the games.
Detractors seize on this as a sign of poor fan support, and use it as a reason the team should be allowed to move. Beginning with the Monday night game at the Edward Jones Dome against San Francisco, several out-of-town football analysts have pointed out the thousands of empty seats in the Dome.
The Rams have averaged 57,000 tickets distributed per game in the 66,000-seat Dome this season. Since the team’s 15-65 freefall from 2007 through 2011 — the worst five-year stretch for any team in league history — the Rams have had trouble getting that last 5,000 to 10,000 fans back in the building.
Still, those attendance numbers hold up well compared to the last few years of the Rams in Southern California. Playing in the nation’s second-largest market, the Los Angeles Rams had 16 crowds of fewer than 50,000 in their last 24 games in Anaheim, from 1992-94. In eight of those 16 games, attendance was less than 40,000 — this for a franchise that had played in the NFC championship game as recently as 1989.
The last thing Bruce wants is to see the Rams leave St. Louis for LA, particularly if empty seats give league owners a reason to vote in favor of the move.
“It would be really sad,” Bruce said. “I believe we can get it done. We can get it back together and grow what we have. Make it stronger than what it was.”
Bruce was among nearly 50 Rams players in town last week for the Super Bowl XXXIV reunion. Several mainstays of that 1999 team were asked by the Post-Dispatch for their thoughts on the possibility of the franchise leaving.
Bruce’s running mate at wide receiver, Torry Holt, called the LA rumors “heartbreaking.”
“Because I know this city loves football,” he said. “We saw it first-hand. There’s a lot of talk about this being a baseball town. And it is, and that’s understandable.”
But not so much from 1999-2004, a six-season period in which the Rams made the playoffs five times, won three NFC West titles, played in two Super Bowls and won one Lombardi Trophy.
“From ’99 to 2004, they loved St. Louis Rams football,” Holt said. “It was a football town. We’ve just gotta get back to winning. Get back to winning.”
The Rams haven’t had a playoff appearance since 2004, when they squeaked into a wild-card berth with an 8-8 record. They haven’t had a winning season since 2003. Only Oakland has a longer current futility streak, having gone since 2002 without a winning record.
“Hopefully they’ll keep the team here,” Holt said. “But I understand business. LA’s a large market.”
Left tackle Orlando Pace, who has settled in St. Louis in retirement, said St. Louis is home in spirit for all of the Greatest Show on Turf Rams.
“This is where we had that success,” Pace said. “This is where everything happened. So if the team left, it would be almost like the (football) Cardinals.
Meaning the players from the St. Louis Cardinals after Bill Bidwill moved the team to the Phoenix area in 1988.
“They don’t feel like they have a home,” Pace said. “We’d feel the same way. So hopefully they stay in St. Louis, where we won a championship.”
Quarterback Kurt Warner says he can see how LA would be “a natural fit” if the Rams moved there because of the team’s history and tradition in Southern California. He remembers seeing several thousand Rams fans in the stands sporting “Los Angeles Rams” gear when the Greatest Show teams played in San Francisco.
“But I also understand what a great sports town St. Louis is,” he said. “And how this town deserves a team. They deserve a winning team. And how special it was to be able to bring that winner here.
“So my hope and my selfishness is that the Rams are always in St. Louis, because that’s the only way I know the Rams. And it would be weird to be a part of a team that was somewhere else.”
