Sure there has been a few non-sellouts the last two years, and attendance is down, but right when this team started to build a strong fanbase, everything fell apart.

First and foremost, St. Louis is blue collar and baseball. The Rams are definitely the second child in the city, and will always be, but they can be successful. I’ve written before that winning the SuperBowl was possibly about the worst thing that could have happened to the organization that was building a fan base. They sucked early, had a spike of success, started to slide and then became about the worst team in the history of the NFL for 2 years. Management was a disaster with infighting and chaos and drafts were bungled for about 5 or 6 straight years.

Simply put, the team hasn’t had the history in St. Louis to withstand such a horrible team. The rapid success of the SuperBowl spoiled a lot of fans and many of them didn’t believe the team could ever suck. But there’s still a solid fanbase, the rest just needs confidence from the management and the organization that the right people are in positions of authority and everyone is striving toward a common goal.

Honestly, it pisses me off when people point to the fans in St. Louis like there’s something wrong with us. Who in their right mind would support this disaster of an organization? I think those of us here at TST, for the most part, are holding out hope that things are going to get better. If the organization would have stayed the course with the same management in place, we would have lost even more people. But, instead, the new owner has made changes that we as fans see as more than a step in the right direction.

All we’re asking is for the team to meet us half way and it looks like it might finally be happening.

But I don’t know if the fans have enough money to support it.

St. Louis is essentially a dying city Really, the city itself was dead long ago (see the movie Escape from New York for a fairly accurate depiction, it was shot here), but the metro area is also now on the decline. Pretty much all the major industries we had are gone, bought out by other companies who eventually relocated out. AB was pretty much the last major one, and it’s now InBev. (Well, we do still have Monsanto)

There are still some blue collar jobs and such, but much of the wealthier jobs have been moved to other cities (generally the headquarters of the companies that bought our companies out). It’s hard for the biggest fans to afford the tickets, and there aren’t enough of the casual, yuppie sort left to fill up the rest of the stadium.

I think it’s also hurt losing the two members of the Rams organization that really embraced St. Louis, Georgia and Jack Snow. Basically the whole thing is still run out of L.A., so it’s hard to really feel like they are the “St. Louis” Rams, when no one from the team ever is here or visits publicly. Faulk has started to fill this role a little, but he also is working on his broadcasting career.

Wait a minute, this isn’t Pismo Beach? I knew I shoulda made a left in Albuquerque…

I think his “lore” is much greater than his achievements.

i really like Spags or Frazier. I think that’s the kind of presence the Rams need on the sideline to go with the changes in the front office.

He’s 45-51 with the Buccaneers.

With Tampa he’s had 2 good seasons. His first (2002), he went 12-4 and then followed that up with two seasons where he went 7-9 and 5-11. Then he rebounded in 2005 by going 11-5 only to follow up that success by going 4-12 the next year. Since then, he’s been 9-7 the last two years.

He’s mediocre.

He’s an offensive coach who has been coaching a team for 6 years that has a rather pedestrian offense and (when it’s had success) has been carried by it’s defense. He’s gone through about a dozen quarterbacks and can’t keep any running backs healthy for even half a season (except for Warrick Dunn who is a freak of nature).