urbanSTL

Thanks guys

Have to agree that environment is second to being a fan of the game and the team. Anyone who is able to go to the game but skips because it's inside instead of outside just purely is not a real fan of the team. What do you do instead? If you choose an outdoor activity than you just prefer to do outdoor activities instead of watch football. Same for tailgating: this should have no bearing on your desire to watch the game. If one is a fan of the team, you watch them on TV or in person by any means possible within one's financial contex. Any excuse as to not participating is tacitly saying, "I just really don't care very much." That mentality is fine, but don't blame a lack of interest in the team or the game on the environment. Winning football should solve all the other junk we talk about in this town in regards to our "NFL experience." Why doesn't anyone talk about the problems/shortcomings of Busch III (of which I think there are some)? Because the team is solid, the fans are passionate, and they win.

And it still makes me boil when all these other teams have half empty stadia in the fourth quarter (AKA Washington on Monday night while they were actually mounting a potential comeback). Inexplicably, no one will ever question Washington fans' loyalty, yet a few people walk out of the Dome early and STL fans are "bad" football fans. Complete garbage. I can't defend leaving a game early, yet it happens everywhere. Bad football has a way of making "bad" fans out of anyone.

gary kreie wrote:Opening day attendance NFL

http://espn.go.com/nfl/attendance

Well, that's not a bright spot! But if they keep on winning attendance will go up no doubt. And with the Cardinals just down the street, nearly 100,000 fans experienced professional sports in downtown Saint Louis. Not bad!

dweebe, clearly you are a great fan. And as I said, financial situation is always a consideration and I fault no one for responsibly working within their means. I'm no longer interpreting your decision as having ticket in hand and passing because it's not outside (in that situation I can't be convinced of anything other than one just doesn't care enough to go). I do wonder, though, about the real difference between an outdoor stadium and a dome for 3 hours if you are really focused on the game. If you literally can't be outside any other time than Sunday from 12-3 or 3-6 pm then, by all means, listen to game outside. Not every Sunday in the fall is 75 degrees and sunny, however, so at what point is the decision made? I too work inside all day and I would think that the rarity of NFL home games for such a big fan who obviously does enjoy going would take precedence over 3 hours of outside time.....that's just me. You more than anyone else must be thrilled about the multiple night games this season.

In regards to other teams, I think that the tailgating experience has nothing to do with making a fan good or bad. KC and Green Bay have great traditions and great fans-who also happen to have an envirmonment that lends itself to tailgating. You can be a phenomonal fan and never tailgate. You can be a phenomenal fan and tailgate religiously. No can also be a person eating brats and drinking beer in a parking lot for 4 hours who has no idea what the hell is going on in the stadium.

I'm not sure I understand your hypothetical about switching out the Dome for Lambeau or Arrowhead. I've seen plenty examples of "rabid" GB/KC/PITT fans leaving early if they are getting blown out. Are they bad fans now? No, they are responding in a manner in which most fans do that are upset by losses. If the Rams played in an outdoor stadium but still sucked for a decade, I don't think there would be a difference to playing in a dome. Just like if the greatest show days would have continued for a decade I don't think we'd be complaining about our gameday experience.

All I know is if I have to have a checklist of predicated conditions before I'll agree to participate in anything, than I likely am not that passionate about it, or at that moment, really don't want to do it. eg: I love pizza. I don't require it on a certain type of plate with a certain type of drink and a certain type of beverage. I'll eat it anywhere, anytime. Tomatoes on the other hand? Eh, I'll eat them on a sandwich, maybe a salad if it's cut up small and the flavor is masked by other ingredients. On their own though, no way. I think the same applies for the best fans of any team or actvity. Once you assign tailgating conditions, parking, temperature, stadium requirements, etc to your ability to enjoy the game, then your interest in that team is suspect in my opinion.

Whelp: at least with a dome you don't get games delayed by thunderstorms.

(Games in Tampa and Seattle this weekend were delayed by thunderstorms and concerns about lightning.)

I believe some of the land the Falcons are looking/struggling to buy has a bit of a historical church sitting on it. Not sure how people here would view that. Sometimes you do need to tear things down for new development, and I don't know what other land options they have. But it's also too bad if that's the case.

Curious. Why aren't they playing at Turner field for a season and tearing down the Georgia Dome instead of tearing down 150 year old pre-civil war churches. It can't make sense to have two football ready stadiums next to each other can it?

*note i realize this has nothing to do with St. Louis and very little to do with the Ram's but he brought it up.

STLEnginerd wrote:

I believe some of the land the Falcons are looking/struggling to buy has a bit of a historical church sitting on it. Not sure how people here would view that. Sometimes you do need to tear things down for new development, and I don't know what other land options they have. But it's also too bad if that's the case.

Curious. Why aren't they playing at Turner field for a season and tearing down the Georgia Dome instead of tearing down 150 year old pre-civil war churches. It can't make sense to have two football ready stadiums next to each other can it?

Or Georgia Tech's football stadium that's like 2 miles away?

But I thought the plan was to build the new stadium, tear down the Georgia Dome and expand the convention center onto that space.

Thanks. I dug up some more info through internet searches.

In the preferred plan, the stadium would be constructed where Mount Vernon currently sits, while Friendship would be demolished to allow Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to be moved west into a curve to give the new stadium a bigger footprint.

Across the street, Friendship Baptist Church would also be demolished. A redesigned Martin Luther King Jr. Drive would go through its property. Doing so would allow the stadium to have dramatic downtown views

Basically because they want a pretty view of the Atlanta skyline and if it was oriented North-South the view isn't oriented to the skyline... Oh well back to St. Louis.

Unfortunately, this team looks to be bordering on irrelevancy as far as this season is concerned. Basically all the junk that were issues in preseason continue to be problems. After watching this debacle, something seems terribly wrong with the way this team is preparing. Players look totally lost, routes are missed, throws are missed, the offensive line looks atrocious (they never could run block; still true, and now they can't pass protect), special teams continues to ruin field position, and the defense is running around like they have no direction. I'm failing to see how we could hire a D-coordinator and get this much worse. The Rams did not show up for this game today and the blame looks to be spread across the entire organization. No urgency, no enthusiasm, no energy.

Our "talent" at the skill positions is dwarfed by other teams. Our best players look like they would be back ups on these other teams. I'm not sure what our coordinators on both sides of the ball are doing. Other teams are able to totally erase our "threats" and we are unable to do the same. For 3 weeks in a row, a secondary that was improved last season has gotten totally shredded. I think Stan and Jeff are nuts if Tim Walton is allowed to continue doing what he's doing.

I am astonished that some local media were so optimistic about this team citing a "weak" schedule. 5 wins looks optimistic looking at the remainder of the schedule as most functional teams that started off rocky will likely adjust (see Panthers this week).....the Rams have shown us nothing except regression. I'm suddenly afraid of the Jaguars game. I hope the fans show up for what should have been a fun Thursday night game. I think avoiding national embarrassment is the goal this week. Anything else gained is a bonus.

This team is clearly not ready to realistically compete consistently. I just pray that by the time they are STL is still home.

Should we continue to subsidize this? At least the cowboy bar and InBev trough with massive surface parking lot has a great winning team with incredible history right next to it. (If DeWitt/Cordish build residential, I will retract all snide comments). Go Cards.

jstriebel wrote:We've been treated to such awful football for so long, and now after doing everything to suggest we were going to see something good to great, we're still seeing awful football? How do you blame anyone for not wanting to pay NFL ticket prices when they can stay home and watch in HD with the option to turn it off when it gets ugly?

I'm not that fan. I still want to go to as many games as I can afford, and I'll probably make my way to the game Thursday. But I can't blame the casual fan for being every bit of a causal fan. I don't think it's for a lack of effort, and in this case, I think we finally have a regime that gets it, but whatever the reason, this fan base and this region keeps getting treated to crummy, crummy football.

There's about 5 markets in the nation that might do any better supporting a franchise like this. We deserve accolades, not ridicule, for putting up with this.

Besides Buffalo, Oakland and Cleveland, I can't think of any other markets that have had to suffer through this much bad football as St. Louis. Who else am I missing?

^ True, but on the other hand we're catching the 49ers at the right time and one of the two teams will go home 1-3 on Thursday. If we do get by them we have a good chance of going 3-2 with the hapless Jaguars up after that. But then a pretty rough stretch comes up.... too bad we didn't get the Giants on the schedule this year rather than say the Saints. But jstreibel said it best, we really are either this bad and things are going to get real ugly real fast or things will get turned around.

Guys, it's football, and they sky isn't falling just yet. Dallas is a better team than us, and there's been no doubt about that. I'm frustrated by how porous the o-line was yesterday, allowing Sam to be sacked like he was, as well as let down by our receiver corps not catching the ball like they should. I'm even more pissed at our special teams playing as poor as they did, especially that one back block that took out Tavon's punt return for what would have been a TD. But, this isn't the end of the season and way too early to throw in the towel. Especially as we play San Fran on Thursday, I'm still optomistic that we could go 8-8 or better. Did anyone really think we were ready to take out Seattle this season? We're getting better, but we're not there yet.

A few things particularly bother me. One is the decade long absence of "making it look easy." Even bad teams in the NFL will occasionally luck out and pull off an eye-popping play or a "how'd he do that?" play. Rams? Basically never on offense or defense. No highlight reel material. And if a guy steps outside himself and does come up with a big day/play? The next week it is voided by reasonable coaching. This to me speaks to our horrible talent assessment and coaching. Every single game is a scratch and claw effort. The highlight reels of late have been our kickers. That's sad. I'm also disturbed that we have no players that appear to just make others around them better consistently. Every single person comes with a set of environmental circumstances that it takes for them to thrive. When was the last time a broken play busted open for 30 yards? Or an announcer says, "boy, he just created that one...." If youth is to blame, I see a lot of other rookies and year 2 players out there on other teams doing it.

Another is the complete lack of a running game. This too has been well over a decade long. Even with Jackson, our short yardage running has always been terrible. I've usually been on the edge of my seat, fingers crossed performing some superstition (ala the current Bud Light ads) every time we get a 3rd and 2...because that's a major gamble for the Rams. And like most trends with this team recently, it only looks to be getting worse.

Regarding our fans, I too can understand why some people can justify not going to games sometimes. Money combined with the "home atmosphere" are big players in that regard. However, as the paper has reported, the TV ratings for week 2 were terrible. At the game's commencement, the score was 0-0, the Rams were 1-0 and facing SJ39 in what had the potential to be one of the biggest statement W's for the franchise in awhile (Les Snead returns to ATL, etc). Even the Cardinal game wasn't scheduled to start for an hour. So why aren't people in the region tuning in? Once the score got out of hand and the Cardinals game started, I get it.

No, the sky isn't falling, but the media talked all week about how we had a chance to beat the Cowboys. The players talk about how they "let ATL get away with one in their place" then drop that gem in Dallas. I love hearing about how short and efficient Fisher's practices are....How's that working our for you, Jeff? I'd have there asses out there all damn day until this crap stops. I'm holding a guarded prognosis because the team has given no reason to believe they will be successful. We now have too much film out there on 1) how to thwart our limited threats and 2) how to absolutely destroy us. Since we apparently also can't expect our coaches to do anything about it, there is even more reason to be skeptical about our chances.

For better or worse, I'll tune in to every snap as usual, and look forward to watching how Fisher has them ready to play a SF team that is equally up against the wall. Go Rams (actually, in light of the current issues, perhaps the cheer should be "Stay Rams").