The Los Angeles

The
Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles

metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of
the National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The Rams play their home games at SoFi
Stadium in Inglewood, which they share with the Los Angeles Chargers.
The franchise was founded in 1936 as the Cleveland Rams in Cleveland, Ohio. The franchise won
the 1945 NFL Championship Game, then moved to Los Angeles in 1946, making way for Paul
Brown's Cleveland Browns of the All-America Football Conference and becoming the only NFL
championship team to play the following season in another city. The club played its home games at
the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum until 1980, when it moved into a reconstructed Anaheim
Stadium in Orange County, California. The Rams made their first Super Bowl appearance at the end
of the 1979 NFL season, losing Super Bowl XIV to the Pittsburgh Steelers, 31–19.
After the 1994 NFL season, the Rams left southern California and moved to St. Louis, Missouri,
becoming the St. Louis Rams. Five seasons later, the team defeated the Tennessee Titans to
win Super Bowl XXXIV, 23–16. The club then lost Super Bowl XXXVI, 20–17, to the New England
Patriots. After the 2015 NFL season, the team sought and received approval from the other owners
to move back to Los Angeles in time for the 2016 NFL season. The Rams appeared in Super Bowl
LIII but lost to the Patriots, 13–3.[8][9] Three years later, the Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 23–
20 to win Super Bowl LVI, becoming the second NFL team to win the Super Bowl in its home
stadium.[10]
The club is the only NFL franchise to win championships representing three
cities: Cleveland in 1945, Los Angeles in 1951 and 2021, and St. Louis in 1999.
Franchise history
Cleveland Rams (1936–1945)
Further information: Cleveland Rams
The Cleveland Rams were founded in 1936 by Ohio attorney Homer Marshman and player-
coach Damon Wetzel, a former Ohio State star who played briefly for the Chicago
Bears and Pittsburgh Pirates. Wetzel, who served as general manager, selected the "Rams",
because his favorite college football team was the Fordham Rams from Fordham University;
Marshman, the principal owner, also liked the name choice.[11] The team was part of the newly
formed American Football League and finished the 1936 regular season in second place with a 5–2–
2 record, trailing only the 8–3 record of league champion Boston Shamrocks. The team featured
players such as William "Bud" Cooper, Harry "The Horse" Mattos, Stan Pincura, and Mike
Sebastian.[12]
The Rams joined the National Football League on February 12, 1937, and were assigned to the
Western Division.[13] The Rams would be the fourth in a string of short-lived teams based in
Cleveland, following the Cleveland Tigers, Cleveland Bulldogs, and Cleveland Indians. From the
beginning, they were a team marked by frequent moves, playing in three stadiums over several
losing seasons. However, the team featured the Most Valuable Player of the 1939 season,
rookie halfback Parker Hall.[14]
In June 1941, the Rams were bought by Dan Reeves and Fred Levy Jr. Reeves, an heir to his
family's grocery-chain business that had been purchased by Safeway,[15] used some of his
inheritance to buy his share of the team. Levy's family owned the Levy Brothers department store
chain in Kentucky and he came to own the Riverside International Raceway. Levy owned part of the
Rams with Bob Hope, another of the owners, until Reeves bought out his partners in 1962.[16]
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.[17]
NFL Champions (1945)
The team finally achieved success in 1945, which was their last season in Ohio. Adam Walsh took
over as head coach that season. Quarterback Bob Waterfield, a rookie from UCLA, passed, ran, and
place-kicked his way to the league's Most Valuable Player award and helped the Rams achieve a 9–
1 record and win their first NFL Championship, a 15–14 home field victory over the Washington
Redskins on December 16. The margin of victory was provided by a safety: Redskins great Sammy
Baugh's pass bounced off the goal post, then backward, through his team's own end zone. The next
season, NFL rules were changed to prevent this from ever again resulting in a score; instead, it
would merely result in an incomplete pass.[18]
First Los Angeles Rams era (1946–1994)

Further information: History of the Los Angeles Rams
On January 12, 1946, Reeves was denied a request by the other NFL owners to move the Cleveland
Rams to Los Angeles and the then-103,000-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.[19] He threatened
to end his relationship with the NFL and get out of the professional football business altogether
unless the transfer to Los Angeles was permitted.[19][20][21] A settlement was reached and, as a result,
Reeves was allowed to move his team to Los Angeles.[19][22][23][24] Consequently, the NFL became the
first professional coast-to-coast sports entertainment industry.[19]
From 1933, when Joe Lillard left the Chicago Cardinals, through 1946, there were no black players
in professional American football.[25] After the Rams had received approval to move to Los Angeles,
they entered into negotiations to lease the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Rams were advised
that a precondition to them getting a lease was that they would have to integrate the team with at
least one African-American; the Rams agreed.[26][27][28][29] Subsequently, the Rams signed Kenny
Washington on March 21, 1946.[30][31][32] The signing of Washington caused "all hell to break loose"
among the owners of the NFL franchises.[33] The Rams added a second black player, Woody Strode,
on May 7, 1946, giving them two black players going into the 1946 season.
The Rams were the first team in the NFL to play in Los Angeles (the 1926 Los Angeles
Buccaneers represented L.A. but were strictly a traveling team), but they were not the only
professional football team to play its home games in the Coliseum between 1946 and 1949. The
upstart All-America Football Conference had the Los Angeles Dons compete there as well. Reeves
was taking a gamble that Los Angeles was ready for its own professional football team—and
suddenly there were two in the City of Angels. Reeves was proven to be correct when the Rams
played their first pre-season game against the Washington Redskins in front of a crowd of 95,000
fans. The team finished their first season in L.A. with a 6–4–1 record, second place behind
the Chicago Bears. At the end of the season Walsh was fired as head coach. The Coliseum was
home for the Rams for more than 30 years, but the facility was already over 20 years old on the day
of the first kickoff.
In 1948, halfback Fred Gehrke painted horns on the Rams' helmets, making the first helmet emblem
in pro football.[34] Late in 1949, the Dons were folded into the Rams when the All-America Football
Conference ceased operations.[35]
Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch spent nine seasons with the Los Angeles Rams from 1949 to 1957
NFL champions (1951)

The Rams' first heyday in Southern California was from 1949 to 1955, when they played in the pre-
Super Bowl era NFL Championship Game four times, winning once in 1951. During this period, they
had the best offense in the NFL, even though there was a quarterback change from Bob
Waterfield to Norm Van Brocklin in 1951. The defining Offensive players of this period were wide
receiver Elroy Hirsch, Van Brocklin and Waterfield. Teamed with fellow Hall of Famer Tom Fears,
Hirsch helped create the style of Rams football as one of the first big play receivers. During the 1951
championship season, Hirsch posted a stunning 1,495 receiving yards with 17 touchdowns. The
popularity of this wide-open offense enabled the Los Angeles Rams to become the first pro football
team to have all their games televised in 1950.
Hall of Fame WR Tom Fears, attended Manual Arts High School (in L.A.) and UCLA
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Rams went from being the only major professional sports
franchise in Southern California and Los Angeles to being one of five. The Los Angeles
Dodgers moved from Brooklyn in 1958, the Los Angeles Chargers of the upstart AFL was
established in 1960, the Los Angeles Lakers moved from Minneapolis in 1960, and the Los Angeles
Angels were awarded to Gene Autry in 1961. In spite of this, the Rams continued to thrive in
Southern California. In the first two years after the Dodgers moved to California, the Rams drew an
average of 83,681 in 1958 and 74,069 in 1959. The Rams were so popular in Los Angeles that the
upstart Chargers chose to move to San Diego rather than attempt to compete with the Rams.
The Los Angeles Times put the Chargers plight as such: "Hilton [the Chargers owner at the time]
quickly realized that taking on the Rams in L.A. was like beating his head against the wall."[36]
During this time, the Rams were not as successful on the field as they had been during their first
decade. The team's combined record from 1957 to 1964 was 24–35–1 (.408), but the Rams
continued to fill the cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum regularly. While the National Football
League's average attendance ranged from the low 30,000s to the low 40,000s during this time, the
Rams were drawing anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 fans more than the league average. In 1957,
the Rams set the all-time NFL attendance record that stood until 2006 and broke the 100,000 mark
twice during the 1958 campaign.[37][38]
The 1960s were defined by the great defensive line of Rosey Grier, Merlin Olsen, Deacon Jones,
and Lamar Lundy, dubbed the "Fearsome Foursome." It was this group of players who restored the
on-field luster of the franchise in 1967 when the Rams reached (but lost) the conference
championship under head coach George Allen. That 1967 squad became the first NFL team to
surpass one million spectators in a season, a feat the Rams repeated the following year. In each of
those two years, the L.A. Rams drew roughly double the number of fans that could be
accommodated by their current stadium for a full season.
George Allen led the Rams from 1966 to 1970 and introduced many innovations, including the hiring
of a young Dick Vermeil as one of the first special teams coaches. Though Allen would enjoy five
straight winning seasons and win two divisional titles in his time with the Rams he never won a
playoff game with the team, losing in 1967 to Green Bay 28–7

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Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles

First Los Angeles Rams era (1946–1994)

NFL champions (1951)

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