Los Angeles Rams

Los Angeles Rams

The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The Rams franchise has won three NFL championships, and is the only franchise to win championships while representing three different cities (Cleveland in 1945, Los Angeles in 1951, and St. Louis in 1999).

The franchise began in 1936 as the Cleveland Rams, located in Cleveland, Ohio. The club was owned by Homer Marshman and featured players such as William "Bud" Cooper, Harry "The Horse" Mattos, Stan Pincura, and Mike Sebastian. Damon "Buzz" Wetzel joined as general manager.

After winning the 1945 NFL Championship Game, the franchise moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1946, making way for Paul Brown's Cleveland Browns of the All-America Football Conference and becoming the only NFL championship team to play the following season in another city. The club played their home games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before moving into a reconstructed Anaheim Stadium in nearby Anaheim in 1979.

After the 1994 NFL season, the Rams left California and moved east to St. Louis, Missouri. Five seasons after relocating, the team won Super Bowl XXXIV in a 23–16 victory over the Tennessee Titans. The Rams continued to play in the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis until the end of the 2015 NFL season, when the team filed notice with the NFL of its intent to pursue a relocation back to Los Angeles. The move was approved by a 30–2 margin at an owners' meeting in January 2016, with the Rams returning to the city for the 2016 NFL season.

LA Memorial Coliseum

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is an American sports stadium located in the Exposition Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The stadium serves as the home to the University of Southern California (USC) Trojans football team, and as the temporary home for the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League (NFL). The Coliseum was home to the Rams from 1946 to 1979, when they moved to Anaheim Stadium in Anaheim, California, and is serving as their home stadium again until the completion of Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, California. The facility has a permanent seating capacity of 93,607 for USC football games, making it the largest football stadium in the Pac-12 Conference. For Rams games, capacity is at 80,000, giving it the fourth-largest capacity in the NFL.

The stadium is located in Exposition Park and across the street from USC. The Coliseum is jointly owned by the state of California, Los Angeles County, and the city of Los Angeles and managed and operated by the Auxiliary Services Department of the University of Southern California. From 1959 to 2016, the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena was located adjacent to the Coliseum; the Sports Arena was closed in March 2016 and demolished between August and October 2016. Banc of California Stadium, a soccer-specific stadium and future home of Major League Soccer expansion club Los Angeles FC, is currently under construction on the former Sports Arena site and is scheduled to open in March 2018.

The Coliseum is the first stadium to have hosted the Summer Olympic Games twice, in 1932 and 1984 and has been proposed to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The stadium was the temporary home of the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball from 1958 to 1961 and was the host venue for games 3, 4, and 5 of the 1959 World Series. It was the site of the First AFL-NFL World Championship Game, later called Super Bowl I, and Super Bowl VII. Additionally, it has served as a home field for a number of other teams, including the Los Angeles Raiders of the NFL, and UCLA Bruins football. It was declared a National Historic Landmark on July 27, 1984, the day before the opening ceremony of the 1984 Summer Olympics.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, which consists of three voting members appointed by the three ownership interests and meets on a quarterly basis, provides public oversight of the master lease agreement with USC. Under the lease the University has day-to-day management and operation responsibility for both the Coliseum and Sports Arena. The 98-year lease took effect on July 29, 2013, and was signed by the parties on September 5, 2013. The agreement requires the University to make approximately $100 million in physical improvements to the Coliseum, pay $1 million each year rent to the State of California, maintain the Coliseum's physical condition at the same standard used on the USC Campus, and assume all financial obligations for the operations and maintenance of the Coliseum and Sports Arena Complex.