Friday, November 6, 2009

Thursday's Poll in the L.A. Times

As we all know, the Los Angeles Times is one of the premiere newspapers in the United States of America. That's may not be saying so much, but it is something. On Thursday, November 5th, 2009, the Times conducted an Internet Poll aimed at sports fans of all stripes. The Poll question was simple: If you could bring back any former Los Angeles team, which would it be?

A large assortment of choices were provided
  • Avengers 3% 135 votes
  • Aztecs 2% 89 votes
  • Blades 1% 34 Votes
  • Express 4% 153 votes
  • Ice Dogs 2% 99 votes
  • Lazers 1% 41 votes
  • Raiders 19% 804 votes
  • Rams 55% 2,389 votes
  • Riptide 1% 21 votes
  • Stars 1% 25 votes
  • Strings 1% 25 votes
  • Xtreme 2% 98 votes
  • Hollywood Stars 5% 223 votes
  • Other 5% 204 votes

There you have it folks! The Rams crush all other contenders. Naturally, the Raiders were #2. We busted them by a nearly 3 to 1 vote. That fact closely mirrors the differences in attendence the two teams saw during that epoch when both were playing in SoCal.

Los Angeles was never Raider town. Some poor benighted gang bangers from the wrong side of the tracks and the shallow end of the gene pool latched on to the Raiders because they enjoyed the criminal image. That pathetic minority of our population never came close to the large entrenched faction of Ram fans, who had been here for some 40-50 years.

I personally could not believe Al Davis was stupid enough to move down here. He might as well have tried to move to Dallas, Green Bay or Washington. Can you fathom the Dallas Raiders? Can you imagine the Green Bay Raiders? Can you image the Washington Raiders? No. All of those sound as obviously preposterous to you as the L.A. Raiders sounds to me. Congrats to Al for figuring out that it was a monumental mistake. Thanks for moving back to where you belong.

Now it is time for the Rams to do the very same thing.