The Rams Are in the Super Bowl. Does Anyone in LA Care?

There’s been so much California news this week — Kamala Harris, the Los Angeles teachers’ strike — that the Los Angeles Rams’ making the Super Bowl seems as if it slipped under the radar.

Part of the reason may be that while the Rams do have a history in Los Angeles, the team’s presence is still new and novel to anyone college age or younger.

“We are the shiny new toy, but we need to be the favorite toy,” Kevin Demoff, the Rams’ chief operating officer, told my colleague Ken Belson when the Rams returned to Los Angeles in 2016. “No matter how successful we are, there are going to be challenges.”

They weren’t very good at first, but the Rams sure are successful now. So I asked Belson, our NFL expert, to outline the challenges that remain.

Matt Stevens:For those who aren’t close followers of the team, how did the Rams go from 4-12 in 2016 to 13-3 this season?

Ken Belson:The turnaround started when the Rams hired Sean McVay. In his four-plus seasons as Rams coach, Jeff Fisher never had a winning record. McVay, by contrast, is considered an offensive genius, and an unconventional coach. It didn’t hurt that the team chose Jared Goff with the first pick in the draft and has Aaron Donald, the best pass rusher in the game.

MS: Best you can tell, though, when the Rams take the field on Super Bowl Sunday, will Angelenos care?

KB: Winning cures all, and the Rams’ timing couldn’t be better. Some fans who never dropped the team remain; younger fans who are just now getting turned on to football in LA are likely to join the Rams bandwagon too. And LA, the theory goes, is filled with front-runners, which means many others are starting to root for the team.

But the city has not had a team for more than 20 years, and the Raiders, who left Southern California with the Rams after the 1994 season, remain more popular than the Rams or the Chargers, who moved north from San Diego.

It’s worth remembering, too, that the Rams moved out of Los Angeles in 1980 and played in Anaheim until 1994. Orange County, of course, is very different from Los Angeles.

MS: OK, so this is all part of a process. But both the Rams and Chargers will have to fill a giant new stadium by 2020...

KB: Yes. Right now, both teams are selling seat licenses, which enable fans to buy season tickets. So far, the Rams say they’ve sold all their most expensive seat licenses, while the Chargers say their cheapest seat licenses are selling well. That should tell you something.

There’s so much television and merchandise revenue shared among all 32 teams, that it’s very hard to lose money in the NFL. The issue is really how quickly the Rams owner, Stan Kroenke, can recoup the costs of building the stadium. He needs his team to do well so he can get top dollar for tickets, sponsorships and naming rights — plus he gets a healthy contribution from the Chargers.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.