With the news that the Rams are leaving St. Louis and returning back to Los Angeles, with the Chargers apparently in tow, it got me thinking about what it means as a fan when relocation happens.

I’ve had the fortune of being on both sides of the fence. I am a native Clevelander (technically 30 miles west of downtown), and when the Browns left after the 1995 season I was a fresh college graduate living in Eastlake and driving by the antiquated old stadium almost every day on my way to work. While the Browns were not my team, they were absolutely an inseparable part of the identity of being from the 216 area code.

I saw what it did to the city. At the time, Cleveland was rising up as a metropolis. The downtown area was revitalized, ironically spearheaded by the Gateway project which saved both the Cavaliers and Indians but spelled the death knell for Art Modell and the Browns. The Flats were emerging as one of the go-to entertainment destinations in the Midwest, the Nautica complex and the West Side market developing into destinations. Public Square and the Terminal Tower were flooded with people after years of relative decline.

And then the curtain fell on the buzz. Modell, who tried in good faith for years to work something out, really had just two choices: sell the team for nickels on the dollar, or move the team. Either way, keeping the Browns in Cleveland was a near impossibility. So Modell donned the villain hat and moved the team to Baltimore.

Flash back to 1984. My family uprooted from Greater Cleveland and moved to the Indianapolis area. The Colts followed about six weeks later, and the arrival of the franchise was everything to the folks in our new city.

Indianapolis had no other game in town besides the Pacers. They don’t even have a major college in the city, with both Indiana and Purdue about 90 minutes away. When we first arrived, the rooting allegiance in football was the Ditka Bears some three hours northwest in Chicago. If anyone sported any jerseys or gear, it was Walter Payton stuff. The Bengals, about 2.5 hours to the southeast, had a small pocket of fans, notably my impending 7th grade football coach.

The NFL was a distant fourth on the sports pecking order in Indianapolis. Bobby Knight and IU hoops was king, and nothing else was close. The Pacers, who weren’t good but had new owners and some emerging young talent with Clark Kellogg, Vern Fleming and Steve Stipanovich, were a ripening second banana. Purdue hoops was third, fresh off an impressive Big Ten title and strong recruiting class. Neither Purdue nor Indiana football were successful, so they lagged far behind.

When the Colts arrived, everything changed. Colts merchandise flew off the shelves. Tickets were in very high demand. But the overriding sentiment was that the city itself finally had an identity as a big league metropolis.

It’s difficult to quantify the civic significance of the Colts coming to town, but it was quite tangible being there. As a newcomer, it boosted my pride knowing I left one NFL city for another. I had shifted my allegiance to the Detroit Lions from the Browns after the Kardiac Kids fizzled with Red Right 88, combined with my infatuation of both Billy Sims and Bubba Baker, but I still strongly identified with my hometown.

The Colts became a rallying point. Even though the team was abysmal, fans were frenzied. Training camp and preseason crowds were massive. They were the lead on the news most nights, bigger than the Los Angeles Olympics that summer. Newspaper subscriptions spiked as people clamored for more information on their new love.  

There was token sympathy expressed by the denizens towards the folks back in Baltimore, but it was always qualified.

“They still have the Orioles, and they’re very good”

“The USFL is moving a team there”

“They had their chances to keep the Colts and didn’t do it”

While all those were technically true, it didn’t take away the hurt for Baltimore residents watching their beloved Colts fleeing in 16 Mayflower trucks under the cover of darkness, each truck taking a different route to help avoid disruption. I couldn’t see that side of the coin. The folks in Indianapolis couldn’t really either, not with the bliss of finally getting affirmation they were a “real” city that an NFL franchise signified.

Years later, the coin flipped on me. The family moved back to Ohio, first to Columbus and then a return to my hometown. All of my immediate and most of my extended family were woofing members of the Dawg Pound. By the mid-90s and the Belichick era in Cleveland, I knew folks who worked at the team HQ and in the stadium. A good friend of mine from working in the hotel industry landed a job in the ticket sales and customer retention department.

When Modell announced the move from Cleveland, of course the focus was on the city losing the beloved, iconic franchise. I got to witness the more pragmatic element. My friend in the ticket department was given a chance to keep her job, but it required relocating to Baltimore. The same was true for folks I knew in the equipment room and even the team dentist. By my recollection, few outside of the actual on-field talent or coaching and scouting staff moved with the team.

Those are real casualties in relocations. Nobody ever thinks about them, the unsung employees whose job it is to stage the product for consumption. There will be people in St. Louis and San Diego who will not move with their employer.

Of course, the fans in Cleveland got a team back thanks to a massive guilt trip placed on the NFL. Some of those folks who were left behind before actually got their jobs back with the new Browns. The team has not had much success on the field, but the city ultimately landed a new team with a new stadium. The old Browns, who filled the void in Baltimore, have been a model franchise in their new stadium.

I don’t expect the fans in San Diego to ever get that payback satisfaction. The NFL is not moving another team to that market. Los Angeles isn’t that far away geographically, too close to consider in any expansion or relocation efforts but far enough of a drive that many San Diegans will drop their fandom.

St. Louis knows both sides already. They had the Cardinals and lost them to Phoenix, if only for a few years of void before the Rams fled Los Angeles to the Gateway City. There is a chance another franchise will reemerge there at some point. Heck, the Raiders are pondering playing as homeless vagabonds. They still have the baseball Cardinals and the NHL’s Blues, and form my limited experience in the city both were far more entrenched and beloved than the transient football team.

Los Angeles knows the deal too. The Rams have come and gone and now come again. The Raiders came and left, and almost came again.

LA landed the Clippers from San Diego back in 1984, the same year the Colts moved to Indianapolis. With the Padres making their first World Series that year and the Clippers only in town for a handful of years, there wasn’t too much pain in San Diego that time.

This one will leave a deep mark, one that doesn’t ease much with time. Even though the NFL returned, most in the 216 (and 440 and 330) still have an odd detachment with the resurrected Browns. Perhaps it’s the perennial losing and inept ownership and management, but I’ve never felt the passion that once was. Sure, there are diehards. But it’s been hard for many to buy into the life-or-death status they used to have.

I suspect that will be true in Los Angeles, where the lifestyle and mindset isn’t nearly as conducive for fan fervency as Cleveland or Indianapolis or Baltimore. The key is to get the kids to embrace it. That didn’t go down all that well in Cleveland. Using my younger brother as an example, the new Browns just didn’t capture his generation the way they captivated my grandparents, parents, older cousins or classmates.

Many of those Millennials are once bitten, twice shy. The sharks in the NFL would be wise not to expect the younger generations to buy in right away. The legacy Rams fans will rush back but be cautious about it, especially if the team continues to play losing football. And the fans left behind in St. Louis are unlikely to ever feel the passion or loyalty ever again.