Why the Rams' LA brand digs in

By J.P. Pelosi

It wasn’t until 1948 that the Los Angeles Rams football team took on the brand personality it embodies today, albeit in St. Louis, at the time of writing.

We may take dazzling color combinations in sports for granted today, but the Rams' new brand was certainly different for the times: a bright and bold style that exuded a sense of optimism, perhaps in an era short on it.

The original ram horn design was so good, in fact, it endures to this day as one of the more iconic logos in the National Football League. The trademark yellow horns, which seem to sprout from the front of the helmet before curling to the ear, were created by L.A. Rams’ halfback Fred Gherke who studied art at college, according to the Rams official website.

Gherke’s logo design was pioneering because it was the first of its kind in football, which to that point had mostly been played with plain coloured helmets. Pro football's helmet went from leather to plastic in 1951 and the Rams design came into its own--the smooth finish to the synthetic material meaning the yellow and blue coloring could truly pop, as they say.

Gherke was eventually inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, not for his footballing prowess but his helmet design, as The Los Angeles Times wrote in 2002 at the time of his death:

Fred Gehrke, a former Ram halfback who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame--not for how he carried the ball but for painting horns on his team's leather helmets, touching off a colorful and enduring quest for logos in pro sports--has died. He was 83.

Well played Fred.

A pitch for the L.A Rams

The Los Angeles Rams have never felt as distant as other defunct NFL outfits, mainly because they still exist - well, sort of. Since the team's migration to St. Louis in 1995 we've seen the Ram logo streamlined, club colors intensified and oh yeh, a Super Bowl Championship. It's tough to argue change when it brings that type of success, right? Forgotten Batman Michael Keaton knows how that goes.

But L.A. Rams fans lost interest a long time ago. They don't care about Great Turf Football Shows (or whatever it was), future Hall of Fame Quarterbacks like Kurt Warner (no offense, he seems like a swell guy), or championships of any kind outside of Orange County.

The truth is, real Rams fans passionately supported their squad for almost 50 years, during which time the superbly bright yellow and blue hard men of Anaheim - Youngblood, Slater, Dickerson, Faulk etc - put on a show of their own, some of the most entertaining football ever played in fact. The Rams were so thrilling that they were the first pro football team to have all of their games televised in 1950. Consider how big a deal that was so early in the TV era. Don Draper would have wooed 'til dawn for a piece of that action.

So as rumors swell about the possibility of an NFL team coming back L.A., you can't help but feel a little giddy that maybe, just maybe, the Rams have a chance of being that team (and of course, that your crusty Rams tee from '81 might also get another run in public). What's made the possibility seem more of a reality of late is that the L.A. City Council passed a memorandum of understanding this month that outlines a plan between the Anschutz Entertainment Group and the city to build Farmers Field.

Thickening the plot like an L.A. fog is the news that current Rams owner, Stan Kroenke, is good buddies with Phillip Anshutz. Maybe they craft this thing together, maybe they don't. What we do know is that it was a crying shame when the Rams were transplanted from their home by former owner, Georgia Frontiere, who apparently tanked the L.A. product to justify packing and shipping it to her home town. Rachel Phelps in Major League, anyone?

Look, everyone recognizes how great St. Louis fans are and they don't deserve to lose another team after already giving up the, er, Gunners (briefly in 1934), and obviously the Cardinals to Phoenix in 1988. But the NFL is a business - as the talking heads say ad nauseam - and bringing back the Rams is not only right for the NFL historically, culturally and Karmically, it's $700 million worth of good business. 

And come on, who doesn't want to see those vintage Rams uniforms storming the pitch again?