Life and the St. Louis Rams

I just want it to end.

I'm tired of waking up in the middle of the night, thinking about it, and not being able to go back to sleep. I'm tired of it crossing my mind every so often throughout the day and it paralyzing me, rendering me ineffective at work or unable to enjoy my leisure time. I know what's going to happen. Whatever naivete I previously had about the situation is gone. The St. Louis Rams are going to move to Los Angeles. There is not even a shadow of a doubt in my mind anymore.

And I just want it to end.

Ever since the Rams season ended, (of course) on a heartbreaking loss to a bad team which could have easily been a victory, being a Rams fan went from depressing to exhausting. It's not comparable to losing football games. If losing a game is the equivalent of your child getting a bad grade in school and watching your team go 15-65 over a five-year stretch is the equivalent of your child failing a grade, having your team given away to another city is the equivalent of your child being kidnapped.

For me, being a Rams fan is what I have. It isn't a matter of watching a football game sixteen times a year. If it were a matter of filling an extra 50 hours or so of leisure time a year, I could do that easily. Being a Rams fan is a fundamental part of my identity. It's not a thing I do; it's a thing I am.

I'm not going to try to convince anybody reading this about the politics of the stadium situation, about the wisdom or lack thereof regarding spending taxpayer money to finance a football field for a billionaire. Frankly, if your opinion on it is swayed by what I'm saying, it says to me that you didn't have a very well-reasoned opinion in the first place. What this is about is why it matters so much to me, and why it matters to a lot of people like me.

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I would estimate that of all conversations I've had with my father in the last five years, about 80% of them have been about football. The only reason I don't estimate it as closer to 90% is because we occasionally talk about baseball, as well. But football is the driving force. We texted yesterday, and it was about football. We texted on Saturday: again, about football. Same for Friday. Our last correspondence before that was on January 3, during what was likely the final game in the history of the St. Louis Rams. The last time we talked about something other than sports was when he texted me a traffic update on December 28. This includes seeing him in person since then, when we discussed football almost exclusively. Some baseball, but again, mostly football.

Honestly, I don't know what we're going to talk about anymore. Football is the lingua franca which has allowed two very different people with two very different personalities from two very different generations to communicate. Similarly, most of my best friends are also Rams fans. They are Cardinals and Blues fans, too, but this isn't the language we speak. EVERYBODY knows about the Cardinals. Being a Rams fan has long been a unique identifier.

I'd compare it to discussing The Beatles and discussing The Velvet Underground (and I say this as somebody who prefers the former, mind you)--my grandmother can hold a conversation about a dozen or so Beatles songs. Saying you like the Beatles, even saying you like specific songs or albums, says nothing in particular about who you are. If you can hold a conversation about VU, though, it is a statement on who you are. I could walk up to a random St. Louisan in a grocery store and talk to them about Jack Buck and Mike Shannon, but if instead you are able to speak in reverential tones about Jack Snow and Mike Bush, you're my kind of person.

I don't really like to talk too much about my social inadequacies, because I find it uncomfortable (and you probably don't find it all that pleasant either), but it matters an awful lot when it comes to this situation with the Rams.

I grew up very insecure about myself. As a child, I was always bright for my age and I did reasonably well in school, but there was a lot of self-loathing. I didn't have a lot of friends--I still don't, but as an adult, I don't think it's nearly as strange to have a small group of confidants rather than considering your entire list of Facebook friends to really, truly, be your friend. I was unathletic, overweight, and socially awkward. I didn't feel good about myself. I still don't sometimes.

When I entered high school, I knew maybe a dozen people in my class of 512 people. I was in an oddly gerrymandered district with two high schools and three middle schools and, thanks to a little help from lots of public middle school to private high school changes, a very small sliver of the middle school at which I at least had made some friends went to a different high school from everybody else. And I was one of them. I didn't have a single class freshman year with a single person I had ever met before. I ate lunch alone almost every day that year. Everybody is awkward their freshman year but at least the other people were awkward with their friends also being awkward.

But the Rams went 12-4 that year. Of course, they haven't had a winning record since that year, but they were 12-4 that year. So I was happy.

I've improved a little bit socially since, in that I no longer fear talking to somebody I don't know more than death. I went from 217 pounds entering my senior year of high school to peaking around 270 pounds in late 2013 to weighing around 160 pounds today. But two weeks from today, I will turn 27 years old, and I have never had anything that could even liberally referred to as a girlfriend. I doubt a study on the matter has ever been commissioned, but I would assume that the odds that I ever marry or have children are very low.

I've kind of thought this might be what would happen to me for a long time, starting back when it was just a complete lack of self-confidence and leading into days where it's just basic probability. And for a long time, I taught myself to be content with it. I wouldn't grow old alone because I would grow old with my Rams.

This isn't hyperbole--this is what the Rams have meant to me. They've been THAT important. My junior year of college, I was so disconnected from sports as a whole that I didn't even bother to watch any of the three Cardinals playoff games (in my defense, I didn't have cable and I did listen on the radio, though I can assure you this would not happen today) but I did stake out a prime viewing spot in the Student Union Building to watch noon NFL games I didn't care about so that I could watch the Rams lose 35-0 to the San Francisco 49ers at 3:15 alone.

Some people don't care. And I'm not even talking about fans of other teams that feel the need to troll Rams fans about what is literally heartbreaking--an extremely loud minority, but certainly a minority nonetheless. I'm talking about casual Rams fans, people who watched with intensity when the Rams were good but don't watch as intently now. 

And I'm not talking about bandwagoners, per se--I'm talking about people who maintain allegiance to the Rams and only the Rams but opt instead to spend their Sundays doing other things. People who go to the park or take a walk on nice early autumn days or focus on raising their children. People who, I'm sure, are much more happy and balanced people than those of us who devoted countless Sundays to an abysmal Rams team in the late 2000s and, even more appallingly, devoted Sundays to a mediocre Rams team that couldn't care less about us, or our hometown, or how miserable what amounts to a money grab for them would make us.

Some of us don't have these alternatives. This is what we have. Or, in a day or two, this is what we had.

I don't know what I'm going to do. Thinking about it makes me feel dizzy. I can defect to another team--not a small reason I tried (and failed) to develop a secondary allegiance to the Kansas City Chiefs this year was because that's the team my dad rooted for when St. Louis didn't have a team and has stated he will root for again next year. I'd like to think I'll just watch way less football next year, but it's not like I have a whole lot of other options. It's sad but it's true.

Like I said before, I'm not expecting to convert anybody, nor do I really want to do that. I know it's stupid that I care as much as I do. I know that spending $350 million in public funds to buy an asset for a man worth $7.7 billion is an objectively stupid thing to do anyway, and that while the Rams do provide measurable value to St. Louis by their mere existence, the city and the area will be better off without that additional expenditure. But that doesn't mean I, individually, will be. 

Go ahead and call me selfish--I probably am. But if, in order to save your job, the government were forced to spend $10 million, I would be opposed to doing so. Yet I wouldn't blame you for not being a good soldier about it. And that's all I hope, is for people to understand that this isn't just a football team. This is an identity.

My 2016 NFL Playoffs Likability Rankings

GAMBLING TIP: Bet the teams which rank the lowest on this list, as they are the teams which will win the Super Bowl. All sports are bad.

12. Arizona Cardinals: In another year, this might not be my least favorite team for the playoffs. But in light of present circumstances: a conniving billionaire-by-inheritance wiener who is incapable of being loved trying to leverage St. Louis's football team so that a western city will pretend to like him...nope. Not happening. I have no issues with the Arizona Cardinals, their coaches (Bruce Arians seems unpleasant but he's an undeniably terrific coach), nor their fans, but as long as a Bidwill owns them, I will root for them to fail.

11. New England Patriots: That a team could sign one of my five favorite football players ever in Steven Jackson, a player who is extraordinarily worthy of playoff success and overall football happiness, and that they could still not crack my top ten of likable playoff teams says an awful lot about their history of crimes against football. Rob Gronkowski is fine, even if his act has grown a bit tired, but with the exceptions of him and Jackson, there's not a likable player in the bunch. Also, their coaching staff still includes Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels. There is a 100% chance this year's Super Bowl is Arizona vs. New England. I might just re-watch Super Bowl XXXIV on DVD instead. The way football has gone for me lately, the Titans will probably win it, but that's still a whole lot better than either of these teams winning.

10. Green Bay Packers: They have their share of steroid users, but that's not a deal-breaker for me, really. Mike McCarthy is, thanks to Jim Caldwell not winning the Super Bowl he was in, the worst Super Bowl winning coach I can recall, but that doesn't make me hate him. The real problem with the Packers is their sanctimonious, obnoxious fans. In my experiences, no fan base has been less sympathetic to the Rams relocation than Packers fans (including local Packers fans), which was sadly predictable--Packers fans buy relentlessly into their own hype as The Best Fans In Football and seem to believe they are fans of a morally superior way of life rather than "oh hey, here's a football team that's absolutely never bad, let me be a fan of them." Screw these honkies.

9. Seattle Seahawks: Remember last year when the most likable thing about the Seahawks was Marshawn Lynch? He may not even play on Sunday. Without Lynch, we are stuck with their dog-whistle-inducing quarterback, their proven cheater (in college) truther coach, their overrated 21-st century Boz cornerback, and the 12TH FAN, another fan base totally wrapped up in the idea that their fan base has a divine right to football success, blissfully unaware that the team nearly moved to LA (which, to be fair, this applies to half of the NFL) in the 1990s thanks to the mediocre attendance the Seahawks had back when they weren't good every single year.

8. Washington R******s: Seriously, change your nickname. Also, Dan Snyder sucks for reasons which do not include their morally reprehensible nickname, but also for their morally reprehensible nickname.

7. Pittsburgh Steelers: The only team in the playoffs that I saw play in person this year, I had the great honor of sitting in the visitor's section. I tried yelling some trash talk about the Pirates to no avail, which is because they don't air a ton of Pirates home telecasts in their homes in St. Peters. Fun fact: I had a coworker one time who was an avid Pittsburgh Steelers fan who was eventually fired for telling a coworker (not me) that she was going to kick their ass. Also, the Steelers have a quarterback who was once jailed for murdering countless dogs, which makes him their second least likable quarterback. Redeemed largely by virtue of having Antonio Bae, the greatest wide receiver in NFL history.

6. Kansas City Chiefs: They have a few genuinely likable players: Jeremy Maclin, Eric Berry, Justin Houston. They don't really have any unlikable players: Alex Smith is boring but ultimately harmless. Andy Reid's ability to look like a tomato in team colors is charming. But that stupid Tomahawk Chop, man. They should be relieved that Washington's nickname deflects all negative attention that doing a mock-American Indian chant, at Arrowhead Stadium, with the nickname Chiefs, should cause. Also, this. And nobody cares about how loud your stupid crowd is. Also, the propensity for Chiefs fans to troll St. Louis for possibly losing the Rams (they're second only to Green Bay) in spite of tickets being available, in December, to see two playoff teams (they were playing the Bengals), FOR SIX DOLLARS. Yes, it was rainy and cold outside, but if the Rams owner actively trying to move the team isn't an excuse, why is this?

5. Cincinnati Bengals: A compelling reason in and of itself to root against the Bengals this week is A.J. McCarron. Look, I have nothing against A.J. McCarron--he was an overrated college quarterback in the sense that he was a game manager, but he was a GREAT game manager. He was on a team where all he had to do was not make mistakes and he NEVER made mistakes. But if he wins a playoff game before Andy Dalton, it's going to get unbearably stupid. No, McCarron should not be starting over Dalton. Dalton is good. You weirdos. Also, Jeremy Hill is the Mike Tirico of NFL players--in a field where there are a ton of awful people, granted, this guy tends to REALLY slide under the radar for being an awful person. Google Jeremy Hill if you must. And Mike Tirico, for that matter.

4. Houston Texans: The runaway train of J.J. Watt love went off the rails way too quickly. There's nothing to dislike about him, still: he just never was the amazing beacon for all that is good and right that people have tried to make him out to be. He's just a guy who plays football at a very high level. They get bonus points for Sanctimonious Internet Atheist Arian Foster being out for the season (after generations of obnoxious Evangelical Christians in the NFL, it seems like poetic justice that the first openly atheist NFL player would be totally insufferable about it to Ricky Gervais-esque levels). I still don't know anything about Brian Hoyer. You could tell me he was on the Rams for three seasons and I'd probably just nod and smile.

3. Minnesota Vikings: Adrian Peterson is an obvious unlikable player (though his punishment from the NFL was an example of Roger Goodell exacting loud justice to make up for his previously lax justice with regards to Ray Rice), but aside from that, there's a lot to like. Teddy Bridgewater is fun because, as a black quarterback who happens to be a slow runner, some people are irrationally confused by him (never forget). Stefon Diggs is going to be a really fun player for years to come. The team is largely anonymous but this adds to their appeal. Also, they're an oft-tortured fanbase. But man, I hate that horn..

2. Denver Broncos: I'm really sick of this revisionist hatred of Peyton Manning. What's the logic of this, Snarky and Cynical Sports Internet? That he does a lot of commercials (are they preempting commercials you'd prefer to watch instead)? That he probably votes Republican (his main historic rival is a DONALD TRUMP supporter and Peyton probably supports Ted Cruz or something but the point is NOT TRUMP)? That in 2016, I can throw the ball harder than he can? This only adds to his appeal. How hilarious would it be if arguably the greatest quarterback in NFL history, notorious for sucking in the playoffs, won a Super Bowl with a throwing velocity somewhere in the vicinity of 1880s Federal League pitcher?

1. Carolina Panthers: Did you know people still hate Cam Newton? How weird is that? It was one thing to root against him in college, when his possibly accepting money from boosters is against the rules, whether you like the rules or not. But look at what he is now. He's more hated nationally than Ben Roethlisberger, somehow. He's a dual threat quarterback but he's huge, so he's far less susceptible to the injury risks normal about dual threat quarterbacks. And he led his team to a 15-1 season with his best wide receiver being TED GINN. Also, there's "Third Leg" Greg Olsen. There's  owner Jerry Richardson, a fierce advocate for the NFL in St. Louis. There's Luke Kuechly. There's the fact that if this 15-1 team wins the Super Bowl, they will have equaled the '85 Bears, and by definition, you have to put them in the same group. And Michael Wilbon will freeeeeeeeak out about this. Go Panthers.