OPENER FOR RAMS FEELS LIKE HOME
Fans are happy to see team win in person at a spectacular new venue
Sammy Reyes stood under a pop-up canopy in the parking lot of Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium on Sunday and took stock of the party that surrounded him.
“It’s home,” said the lifelong Rams fan from East L.A.
Reyes joined thousands of other football fans in converging on the new stadium to celebrate the first Rams regular season game of this NFL season.
But it was more than that. In a way, it was a homecoming, and a long-awaited one at that.
Sunday’s game between the Rams and the Chicago Bears marked the start of the second season the team has played in SoFi Stadium, an architectural marvel that didn’t allow fans last season because of the coronavirus pandemic.
But those fans, many of whom stuck with the franchise through relocation after relocation, finally
got a chance to party — or, rather tailgate — as music blared and the aroma of grilled food filled the parking lot.
“They finally came home,” Whittier resident Joe E. Hernandez said about the Rams. “It’s like when you find someone you love, and then they leave but then come back. You know it was meant to be.”
Sunday’s game had a direct lineage to at least to 2013, when St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke met with Inglewood Mayor James Butts. The meeting was supposed to last 15 minutes. Instead, they huddled for hours, plotting “an action plan” to make a stadium happen.
The Rams returned to Los Angeles in 2016, taking up temporary residence in the Coliseum as plans moved forward for a $5 billion project that officials say is transforming a city that nine years ago was on the verge of bankruptcy. SoFi, on the former Hollywood Park race track property not far from LAX, is part of a 298-acre sports and entertainment destination being developed.
The stadium normally seats about 70,000 — the Rams sold 70,455 tickets for Sunday — but can expand to 100,000. A 70,000-squarefoot video board seems to float over the field.
As the 5:20 p.m. kickoff neared, fans left the parking lot and went inside the new cathedral. Even those wearing the wrong colors were impressed.
“It’s awesome,” said Chicago resident John Dyer, who attended the game with his son and brother, Kevin Dyer, whose reaction was similar: “Amazing.”
The cheer and reverence inside and outside SoFi Stadium was starkly different from the surreal 2020 season, when Los Angeles County health orders determined to prevent the spread of the coronavirus kept fans away. The seats were empty, except for fan cutouts on both ends of the field.
The team’s first home game last season also was played amid historic social unrest in the nation, and in L.A., where the outcry against racism was seen on the field, with several players taking a knee during the national anthem.
The coronavirus is still around, causing some health orders — such as masking — to return. But that didn’t seem to dampen spirits.
In the parking lot, fans played catch, ate, imbmibed, laughed, talked and chanted.
“Whether we’re masked or not,” said Palm Springs resident John White, “we’re going to show up.”
There was some grumbling, however.
Long lines of vehicles filled the narrow thoroughfares into the stadium’s lots, with fans complaining about long waits on surrounding streets just
to get into SoFi once they exited the freeways.
But the frustration was countered with the anticipation
of youngsters and adults wanting to see stars like quarterback Matthew Stafford and cornerback
Darious Williams perform.
Finally, inside the packed stadium, the game got underway — and thousands cheered for the Rams, who scored early when Stafford hit Van Jefferson for a 67-yard touchdown — the Rams’ longest pass completion since 2018.
Sandra Marie Ramirez said her dad, Manuel Ignacio Valle, would have been pleased. The El Monte resident and lifelong Rams fan died last year, so she came from Las Vegas to be at Sunday’s game for him.
“My heart is for my dad,” she said of her father, who also would have also been pleased with the final score: Rams 34, Bears 14.
The Rams have seven more regular season games at SoFi Stadium this season. A successful season would then include the playoffs and perhaps the ultimate prize — playing at home in Super Bowl LVI in February.
That’s several more chances for Rams fans to come home.
At last.