Rams fans give Super Bowl-bound team a boisterous bon voyage in Inglewood
Thousands of Los Angeles Rams fans stood in long lines winding around a high-profile construction site Sunday, waiting to give their their team a boisterous bon voyage in the shadow of their glitzy home-to-be in Inglewood.
The Rams take on the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta a week from today. Team officials staged today’s event to give fans a chance to wish them well before they lifted off to get immersed in the annual pregame superhoopla, which promptly starts tomorrow.
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Rams players and Coach Sean McVay thanked the fans, enjoyed wild applause, revved up the crowd up with vows of victory and then climbed on nearby buses waiting on Prairie Avenue to make the short trek to LAX — where they’d later board jets for ATL.
Not long before the rally kicked off, lines of fans snaked down the city’s streets between the Forum, once the home of Lakers championships, and the new $4.963 billion ballpark which is scheduled to open in 2020.
“This is great,” said Ken Hurbert, a lifelong Rams fan who owns a business in Inglewood. “All these fans, new and old, are fantastic,” said Hurbert, who dressed his whippet, Panda, in bright-yellow Rams garb for the occasion. “This is so great for Southern California.”
Most of the fans eventually made it from those long lines into the impromptu amphitheater set up with the arena-to-be as its pricey backdrop.
After the area was filled to capacity, hundreds more fans lined up to watch the pep rally from behind a chain-link fence in another corner of the construction site, which one day is projected to house not just the stadium, but an entertainment complex dreamed up by Rams owner Stan Kroenke including restaurants, bars, a hotel, office space, a theater and more.
Inglewood Mayor James Butts welcomed the crowd and promised a Super Bowl victory for the hometown lads.
The highlight of the rally: The team, clad in matching blue warmups suits, lined the stage to bask in the team’s trademark “Whose House? Rams House!” chant from the fans.
McVay and his players kept the chatter polite, appropriate to the tone of this laid-back LaLaLand squad. But they agreed on one point in this preaching-to-the-choir atmosphere: They aim to bring home the Vince Lombardi trophy as NFL champs in the team’s third season since returning to L.A. from St. Louis.
“Make no mistake about it,” said McVay. “Got a lot of respect for the Patriots, but we’re going there to get this last check!”
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Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, 35,000 fans cheered the Rams’ opponents in Atlanta, the five-time Super Bowl champion Patriots during a rally at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass.
The team led the crowd in a chant of “We’re still here!” before tossing the microphone aside to cheers. Then, like their West Coast foes, the Patriots strode off for buses that would start them on their way to Georgia.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.