St. Louis Rams Stand Their Ground, Ban Signs from Training Camp Practices
The revolution will not be televised.
That phrase was quite true on Thursday evening at Rams Park in St. Louis, where the Rams held their fourth of nine practice sessions that are open to the public in their home city. The NFL Network crew was in the house, which may have presented a great opportunity for the “Keep the Rams in St. Louis” activists to display their cause in front of a national audience, as they previously had this year at other Rams events and when the Cardinals played the Los Angeles Dodgers on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball”.
However, the Rams’ powers that be obviously thought ahead about this scenario and nipped it in the bud. As fans walked up to the entrance of Rams Park on Thursday, security directed them to throw away the signs in trash cans that were set up in front of the walkway to the field. (Just for reference, the only other items that are banned from Rams training camp practices are weapons, alcohol, and video cameras). There was no mention of posters on the signs outside Rams Park that list the prohibited items.
As evidenced by the following tweets, along with the fact that yours truly witnessed security cracking down on signs first-hand, none of the ultra-harmful posterboard was allowed into Rams Park on Thursday:
@kdemoff why couldn't fans bring Keep the Rams in STL signs to practice today. You are that determined to destroy the local fanbase?
— Kevin (@Stairway2Kevin8) August 7, 2015
@kdemoff @nflnetwork @AndrewSiciliano why aren't you letting people in with their signs Kevin? Think Andrew should report on that
— mike (@rallygoat) August 6, 2015
It’s extremely odd to see that in an atmosphere that is otherwise so laid back in terms of allowing fans their freedom, paper signs are the only objects that rival weapons as security threats. It’s almost understandable that Stan Kroenke and his associates, who clearly are willing to do everything in their power to move the franchise to Los Angeles, would aim to control the message and prevent any visible signs of local support from being broadcast on national television. After all, claiming a lack of fan support will be instrumental in the Rams’ efforts to prove themselves as a more worthy candidate to move to L.A. than the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers.
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With that said, it’s unfortunate that the Rams would make any further efforts to deliberately suck the energy out of Rams Park when the fan base has already been deflated so much by the relocation talks. At the initial practices this weekend, fans could be seen with signs carrying football-driven messages such as “In Coach Fish We Trust” and a few welcoming new quarterback Nick Foles to St. Louis, so not all the fan-created signage had a political agenda to it. Despite what they may say, there are surely some players who feed at least a little bit off the enthusiasm of their fans. Maybe the signs welcoming a player such as Foles are going to give him just a tiny bit of extra motivation to get better on a given day. Thus, it’s frustrating to see that little avenue for fans to express their support stifled by the team. Really, it seems that it will be difficult for the Rams’ strategy to be a net positive for them. Considering the ability that social media gives fans to spread tales of their stressful experiences to the masses, it will surely create more bad PR than it will help the Rams’ agenda.
Ultimately, the greatest signal of the organization’s feelings will be if the same rules apply to the fans when the Rams’ training camp temporarily shifts to Oxnard, California in mid-August. While two of those practices will be joint sessions with the Dallas Cowboys, the third and final will be a Rams-only practice, so if management wants to keep fans from taking “Bring the Rams Back to L.A. Signs” into the facility, they’ll by all means have the authority to do so. If those signs are allowed, however, it may be a subtle sign that the Rams want to portray their remaining Los Angeles fan base as stronger than their St. Louis one. To the credit of the Los Angelean segment of the team’s backers, maybe that’s true, but it’s wrong for the organization to try to spin things a particular way, and in the process decrease fan support even a tiny bit more than it already has been by off-the-field developments.
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