Rams in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium? More than most dreamed

O.J. Simpson tossed the pregame coin and Michael Jackson performed the halftime show the most recent time the Super Bowl visited the Los Angeles area in 1993.

The region had two NFL teams at the time, though both left within two years for St. Louis and Oakland and the league was something locals only watched on TV for a generation.

The long, winding trek from then to Super Bowl LVI on Sunday, when the once-and-current Los Angeles Rams will face the Cincinnati Bengals in a $5.5 billion palace – Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium – required leaps of faith, incredible timing and, yes, some dumb luck that left even insiders shaking their heads.

“It’s sort of surreal that we’re here in many ways after all these years,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said.

After all, that journey needed a billionaire to recognize that business would be better in expensive Los Angeles than in the Midwest and, a year later, that a millennial from Washington was the man he needed to lead the way.

It also depended on a three-month stretch of rain – 17.1 inches’ worth – that was wonderful for drought conditions but horrible for construction and forced what eventually proved to be a fortuitous delay.

And a meet-cute of sorts in Cabo San Lucas certainly helped.

“If it was a Hollywood script, it would get tossed out because no one would believe it,” Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff said on a recent conference call.

The preferred script for Rams fans, of course, would include a victory Sunday for the franchise’s second Super Bowl title but its first representing the Los Angeles area.

The organization won Super Bowl XXXIV as the St. Louis Rams, but that was bittersweet at best for local fans who felt jilted when then-owner Georgia Frontiere moved the team from Anaheim following the 1994 season.

The L.A. version of the Rams reached Super Bowl XIV at the Rose Bowl against the Pittsburgh Steelers and Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta against the New England Patriots, but they lost both times.

“If the Rams could win the Super Bowl, it would be like the fulfillment of my childhood dream,” said longtime NFL agent Leigh Steinberg, the co-chairman of the Save the Rams campaign that tried to stop Frontiere from taking the team to St. Louis.

Long time coming

When Kathryn Schloessman took the job as the president of the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission, the return of the NFL to the region and, with it, more events such as the Super Bowl seemed like a sure thing, the inevitable conclusion.

“I had thought that we would have a team back in three to four years and a Super Bowl sometime soon after,” she said. “That was 25 years ago.”

Schloessman turned into a regular visitor at other cities’ Super Bowls, where she discussed the seemingly obvious benefits of an NFL presence in the nation’s entertainment capital and second-largest TV market.

And such a return moved well past the idea stage and into strong efforts led by everyone from real estate developers to Hollywood moguls. They flirted with possible franchise moves and even reached a final vote on an expansion team in 2000.

That team is called the Houston Texans, by the way.

“Losing two teams from the NFL (here) in the ’90s was a difficult period for us and our fans and something we worked really hard to resolve,” Goodell said. “But we wanted to find the right solution.”

The NFL controlled the rights to Los Angeles and refused to let just any team stake its claim. It took the combination of a team in a situation it could leave – without creating new problems for the league – and an owner who could afford to build a world-class stadium without tax support, something that was a non-starter in California.

Rams billionaire owner Stan Kroenke had a deal in St. Louis with an escape clause, the wealth needed to pay for the venue that became SoFi Stadium and the opportunity to right what many considered Frontiere’s wrong.

Kroenke also understood that a move to Southern California would be a boon for business, even with substantial costs such as a relocation fee and venue construction to make it happen.

“When the Rams were in St. Louis, their value was about $875 million,” Steinberg said. “The minute they returned, all of a sudden it was $2 billion. Now it’s $3 billion.”

On Jan. 12, 2016, the NFL’s owners approved the Rams’ move back to Los Angeles, their former home of 49 seasons.

Exactly one year later, they hired 30-year-old Sean McVay, then the offensive coordinator in Washington, and made him the youngest coach hired in the NFL since 1938.

McVay is 55-26 in the regular season, 6-3 in the playoffs and set to coach in his second Super Bowl in five seasons He turned 36 on Jan. 24.

“Those two risks set us up for where we are today,” said Demoff, the Rams’ COO.

Through the rain

McVay was hired in the middle of one of the rainiest stretches in recent Southern California history, a key period in the construction timeline that had to be met to open the Rams’ stadium for the 2019 season.

Tied to that deadline was the Super Bowl following the 2020 season, which the NFL planned as the first of many in the new home of the Rams and Chargers.

“I remember losing sleep every night when it seemed like construction was falling behind, that we were not going to be able to host the 2020 (season’s) Super Bowl, waking up with a twitch in my eye each day,” Demoff said. “You felt so badly for the league.

“We had stepped up to deliver this amazing stadium to host the Super Bowl and we were going to have to push it back.”

When the Rams realized they could not open the building for the 2019 season, the NFL’s owners pushed the L.A. Super Bowl back a year.

“We won it for 2021 and then the weather gods decided to rain,” the L.A. Sports and Entertainment Commission’s Schloessman said. “We got moved from 2021 to 2022.

“We were blessed.”

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won Super Bowl LV on Feb. 7, 2021, at their home stadium in front of 24,835, a crowd significantly limited by the coronavirus pandemic.

Even that small of a crowd would have been impossible in California at that point; the Rose Bowl had just been relocated to Texas the previous month.

A year later, the largest crowd in SoFi Stadium’s brief history is expected for Super Bowl LVI at the end of a game week with pristine conditions, another reason besides business that some find a move from the Midwest to California alluring.

“The weather gods clearly love us,” Schloessman said.

Talk about a dream, try to make it real

Super Bowl LVI might break the record for the hottest incarnation of the Roman-numeraled spectacle – Sunday’s high temperature is forecast for 83 degrees – but McVay found warmth in Cabo San Lucas last year after the Rams were eliminated from the playoffs.

He also found his quarterback.

McVay and his fiancee were on vacation at the same resort where then-Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford and his wife were staying in January 2021. Rams left tackle Andrew Whitworth, a good friend of Stafford’s, also was there and encouraged the coach to spend time with Stafford, someone he knew a little but not well.

Clearly, they hit it off over drinks and football talk at the pool.

The Rams traded their former No. 1 overall draft pick, quarterback Jared Goff, two first-round draft choices and a third-rounder to the Lions for Stafford, the quarterback they hoped could do all he has done. Well, they hope for one more victory this season.

During the season, they also traded for former Super Bowl MVP linebacker Von Miller and signed three-time Pro Bowl receiver Odell Beckham Jr.

The Rams are knocked regularly for their lack of high picks come draft day, but they value proven talents over prospects who are as likely to be busts as stars.

“Maybe that’s not for everybody,” Demoff said. “And maybe that’s not sustainable. Maybe it doesn’t work long-term; we seem to figure that out every year.

“But it’s working right now.”

Perhaps the Rams and their fans imagined this kind of success on the field, though two Super Bowl appearances in the past four seasons is extraordinary for a team that played in only three of the first 52 Super Bowls.

Still, the opportunity to win a championship both in and for the Los Angeles area – in the first season fans were allowed in SoFi Stadium, much less – is beyond what most dared to dream.

Southern California’s first Super Bowl since 1993 would have been huge regardless of the participating teams, but the LASEC’s Schloessman said the Rams’ involvement “takes it to a different level.”

And she’s fairly certain the “fairytale” that’s playing out could capture the hearts of even jaded locals who don’t need SoFi Stadium’s massive video screen to spot a cheesy-yet-irresistible sports movie plot.

“Everyone is more excited because it’s the Rams,” she said. “A team that was here for so long. A returning team.

“It’s such a fun story but could be a complete Hollywood ending if they win.”

Source: Orange County Register