Los Angeles NFL Brands Discussion

[Bathysphere]

7 hours ago, hawk36 said:

Here's my idea to expose the NFL's horrible mismanagement of the Ram situation. Since I don't believe there are any uni rules regarding pants, I say they wear the throwback yellow pants so that the whole thing looks like a train wreck. Embarrass the NFL. 

 

 

This would rich if it was the league's fault at all. It would be even richer if it could lead to people tweeting "Wow I cannot believe that the NFL would have one its franchises dress itself this abhorrently on the field" instead of "wtf the rams look like s*** haha."

[C-Squared]

11 hours ago, hawk36 said:

 

 

The white-horned helmet is a tribute to our rich heritage; our pants, a subtle nod to our passionate LA fanbase.

 

The jersey remains unchanged.

[hawk36]

17 hours ago, hawk36 said:

Here's my idea to expose the NFL's horrible mismanagement of the Ram situation. Since I don't believe there are any uni rules regarding pants, I say they wear the throwback yellow pants so that the whole thing looks like a train wreck. Embarrass the NFL. 

 

 

10 hours ago, Gupti said:

This would rich if it was the league's fault at all. It would be even richer if it could lead to people tweeting "Wow I cannot believe that the NFL would have one its franchises dress itself this abhorrently on the field" instead of "wtf the rams look like s*** haha."

Well it is the league's fault that they didn't let them simply use the throwbacks as the regular uniforms when they moved (or even for this year). Right now, to attentive eyes, they look disgraceful but I want them to look obviously disgraceful to all eyes. Then maybe the NFL would see how ridiculous their stance is and simply let them use the throwbacks until the move. And who knows, they might be so bad that they become trendy/cool. 

 

[Bluefalcon]

The Rams should take a page from Tucker McElroy's playbook: "Well, suppose we leave our blue and gold St Louis jerseys in the locker room and go out there wearin' our 1973-99 uniforms anyway? Whatcha gonna do about that? You gonna stop us? Goodell? You're gonna look pretty funny tryin' to eat corn on the cob with no (censored) teeth."

 

[Bathysphere]

7 hours ago, hawk36 said:

Well it is the league's fault that they didn't let them simply use the throwbacks as the regular uniforms when they moved (or even for this year). Right now, to attentive eyes, they look disgraceful but I want them to look obviously disgraceful to all eyes. Then maybe the NFL would see how ridiculous their stance is and simply let them use the throwbacks until the move. And who knows, they might be so bad that they become trendy/cool. 

 

The thing is that it just isn’t the leagues fault that the Rams decided to make up their own rules as they went along to coincide with their move. These rules include:

 

1) They cannot rebrand fully until they open their new stadium.

2) They have to wear as little Vegas Gold as possible in the mean time because it is too reminiscent of St. Louis, the bad old city. This means wearing an interim uniform with as little gold as possible, but they can’t touch the jersey because of the big bad NFL will fine them if they do.

 

The Rams are the ones that foisted all of these ridiculous parameters onto themselves while the league’s uniform rules have been known for years. It’s not the leagues fault that the Rams have to look ugly because the Rams should have known that they were going to have to look ugly.

 

The Rams could have avoided this mess by either rebranding ASAP or waiting to rebrand while not touching the uniforms, but they just had to have both. I don’t know what the league is supposed to do when a team is acting this stupidly defiant. Heck, the Rams are lucky that there isn’t a legal manner to define ‘unsightliness’ because the league could’ve just fined them for that by now in lieu of letting them do whatever they want.

[oldschoolvikings]

47 minutes ago, Gupti said:

It just isn’t the leagues fault that the Rams decided to make up their own rules as they went along to coincide with their move.

 

The Rams could have avoided this mess by either rebranding ASAP or waiting to rebrand while not touching the uniforms, but they just had to have both. I don’t know what the league is supposed to do when a team is acting this stupidly defiant.

 

Yes.

 

Yes, yes.

 

I've done a little math to try to assign percentages to how much blame the Rams deserve for their current uniform mess and how much falls on the NFL.  I won't go into all the hard core calculations I did... it's pretty complicated, and I don't want to bore everybody. Anyway, the results are pretty interesting.  Based on my pretty much flawless algorithm the Rams end up with (give or take a 1000th of a percentage point) 100% of the blame, while the NFL end up with 0%. Crazy, I know, but you can't argue with science.

[Lee Noire]

On 5/16/2018 at 4:31 PM, hawk36 said:

Here's my idea to expose the NFL's horrible mismanagement of the Ram situation. Since I don't believe there are any uni rules regarding pants, I say they wear the throwback yellow pants so that the whole thing looks like a train wreck. Embarrass the NFL. 

 

 

Hashtag flame emoji

[TheOldRoman]

Here are my thoughts in no particular order, numbered because why not?

1. The 5 year rule isn't a problem. The problem is teams making terrible decisions. The Bills wore their awful mismatched navy crap for a decade. The Bengals have been wearing these awful uniforms for 15 years. Just recently, the Bucs, Browns and Titans made unfathomably awful uniforms. Teams need to stop being dumb.
2. It was dumb for the Rams to pass up the opportunity to switch to the throwbacks with the move. No excusing that. Also, I suspect that was probably the only chance the league would have given them to actually switch back to the throwbacks.
3. I am willing to give the Rams the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know how much LA fans loved the royal and yellow set. But it's REALLY damn troubling to read about them "working with Nike" on the uniforms. The Rams know the fans love the throwbacks. They petitioned to wear the throwbacks more. Yet they're working with Nike on uniforms, instead of just deciding to wear the throwbacks, That's awful. Not sure if that's the Rams' fault or the leagues. I believe the league wouldn't allow them to go back to the throwbacks fulltime if they wanted to. Because fans are still going to love the throwbacks. They'll buy the new jerseys, but also throwbacks for current players. In theory they get to sell twice as many jerseys. 
4. I love the Super Bowl set, but I concede that shoulder horns don't make sense (they just look great). So the Rams could go with a "classy update" of the SB set, subtly changing the horns to slashes like the current crappy set. But they won't. They'll wear blue and yellow. But the uniforms will be "Nike Presents the LA Rams." They'll get a horrific custom font, randomly truncated stripes just because, little elements highlighting Nike's newest template, and also probably realistic horns on the helmet. But they'll still wear the throwbacks, so the fans will still clamor for them to wear the throwbacks fulltime. It will be another situation like the 2010 Minnesota Twins. 

[hawk36]

I get that rules are rules, but an intelligent entity would recognize that moving across the country is a legit reason to allow an exception. The fact that the NFL is so hard headed regarding the issue is perplexing. Rams should have been allowed to be the old LA Rams upon the move, and then allowed to change, if desired, upon the move to the new stadium. My blame lies 100% on the NFL.

[jn8]

49 minutes ago, hawk36 said:

I get that rules are rules, but an intelligent entity would recognize that moving across the country is a legit reason to allow an exception. The fact that the NFL is so hard headed regarding the issue is perplexing. Rams should have been allowed to be the old LA Rams upon the move, and then allowed to change, if desired, upon the move to the new stadium. My blame lies 100% on the NFL.

Okay, let’s look at it from the perspective of a relocation. A relocation nullifies the 5-year rule immediately, even after just one year, but the Rams have used the same design since the early 2000s, so the rule wouldn’t apply anyway. The stadium opens, what, 3 years after the relocation? And they wanted to wear throwbacks full time. Okay, so they do that, but guess what? The clock resets because they changed uniforms and they can’t change for 5 years, 2 years after the stadium opens. There are rules in place for allowing exceptions during relocations, but the rule they’re asking to be exempt from doesn’t have anything to do with their relocation, it has to do with a new stadium. If, hypothetically, Tennessee opened a new stadium in 2 years, should they be exempted from the rule to get new uniforms coinciding with the new stadium? No, and the Rams shouldn’t be allowed to do that either. 0% of the blame goes on the league for this

[Bathysphere]

2 hours ago, hawk36 said:

I get that rules are rules, but an intelligent entity would recognize that moving across the country is a legit reason to allow an exception. The fact that the NFL is so hard headed regarding the issue is perplexing. Rams should have been allowed to be the old LA Rams upon the move, and then allowed to change, if desired, upon the move to the new stadium. My blame lies 100% on the NFL.

No, you’re assuming that the Rams even wanted to change to their throwbacks upon moving, but they didn’t. They are the ones who had every chance from the time that they relocated until now to make a real uniform change. Yet, they are dead set on waiting until the opening of their new stadium to unveil their official LA brand because they see that kind of splash as some kind of marketing genius. It’s stubborn on the Rams part, especially because they decided in knee jerk fashion a year in that they had to dismantle the St. Louis brand as much as they could in the meantime yet still be allowed to have their cake and eat it too with their big special double-unveiling bonanza in 2020.

 

The only reason that the Rams even spoke to the league about their throwbacks is because they became a laughingstock after they first trotted out their blue jersey look against the Cowboys. It wasn’t until the following week against the Jags that they even tried to petition for the throwbacks. They’ve loopholed themselves into their own bigger hole for basically no reason.

 

I repeat: The league didn’t tell the Rams that they shouldn’t make significant changes until the stadium is opened; the Rams did. The league didn’t force the Rams to strip the gold out of their helmets and pants knowing full well that it would lead to some gaudily mismatched combos depending on the week; the Rams did exactly that. How is the league supposed to handle the Rams uniforms when all the Rams have done is perversely kick and scream and loophole so they can preserve their big unveiling while kicking Vegas Gold to the curb for some reason? All they had to do was either do nothing until 2020 or unveil the brand sooner, but they had to do it their own dumb way. Screw the Rams for digging themselves deeper and deeper into this hole and having the nerve to complain about the shield being the stubborn ones.

[Cosmic]

6 hours ago, hawk36 said:

I get that rules are rules, but an intelligent entity would recognize that moving across the country is a legit reason to allow an exception.

I won't go so far as to call the NFL an intelligent entity, but THE RAMS COULD HAVE CHANGED UNIFORMS WHEN THEY MOVED. THEY DIDN'T WANT TO. THEY COULD HAVE BROUGHT BACK THE THROWBACKS ANY YEAR SINCE THEN, OR ANY YEAR GOING FORWARD. THEY DON'T WANT TO (deal with the consequences of that decision).

[hawk36]

Right, I get all of this. But I think the smart thing would have been for the NFL to allow the Rams to change 1) Upon the move to LA, and 2) Upon the move into their new stadium. 

[oldschoolvikings]

18 minutes ago, hawk36 said:

Right, I get all of this. But I think the smart thing would have been for the NFL to allow the Rams to change 1) Upon the move to LA, and 2) Upon the move into their new stadium. 

 

Well, it doesn't seem like the Rams even requested this.  As has been stated about 100 times in this thread, the NFL would've allowed them to change when they moved, and would've allowed them to switch their throwback to primary at any point.  The Rams never wanted to do it. Until, I guess, now, when it's obvious to even them that they screwed the pooch so bad.

 

Their plan from the start was to wait for the new stadium.  I wasn't until later, when it became obvious that the LA fans hated the St. Louis uniform that they panicked and started doing dumb stuff. Who knows? Maybe the NFL would've allowed them to wear the throwback immediately after the move and still bring out a new uniform 3 years later, if they'd asked.  But instead, they decided to wait, and then decided to mess with the helmet, the pants... what, they should now be allowed to change again, and then again in two years?  Hell, just pretend they're Oregon and wear something different very couple of games? Screw that... they crapped the bed... now sleep in it.

[ltjets21]

So how many times can they wear the color rush unis now? They can definitley avoid ever having to wear navy again if they are allowed to wear the Yellow and the throwbacks 2-3 times each.

[Carolingian Steamroller]

The entire situation with the Rams is dumb because of their self-imposed need to wait for the new stadium to change their uniforms. They were going to have to wait 4 seasons before moving in anyway.

 

There's nothing particularly special about opening a new stadium that necessitates new uniforms nor would it be out of the question to ditch any rebooted version. 

 

The solution here was fairly simple. Go with the throwbacks full time. Then at the bare minimum, the LA Rams move into their new boondoggle with recognizable uniforms that have already proven themselves. Rather than have the grand unveiling look awkward five years later. 

 

I don't know if the NFL would allow the Rams to swap helmet decals for home and road but I do like the idea of the royal/yellow look with the dark jersey and an all white set paired together. At the minimum it would be guaranteed to work. 

 

If the team is so set on "working with Nike" to do something stupid, there's no reason to just hold off on that for a couple of seasons in the new stadium. 

[hawk36]

5 hours ago, oldschoolvikings said:

 

Well, it doesn't seem like the Rams even requested this.  As has been stated about 100 times in this thread, the NFL would've allowed them to change when they moved, and would've allowed them to switch their throwback to primary at any point.  The Rams never wanted to do it. Until, I guess, now, when it's obvious to even them that they screwed the pooch so bad.

 

Their plan from the start was to wait for the new stadium.  I wasn't until later, when it became obvious that the LA fans hated the St. Louis uniform that they panicked and started doing dumb stuff. Who knows? Maybe the NFL would've allowed them to wear the throwback immediately after the move and still bring out a new uniform 3 years later, if they'd asked.  But instead, they decided to wait, and then decided to mess with the helmet, the pants... what, they should now be allowed to change again, and then again in two years?  Hell, just pretend they're Oregon and wear something different very couple of games? Screw that... they crapped the bed... now sleep in it.

I thought the Rams didn't push for the change upon moving since the NFL made it clear that they wouldn't make an exception for a second change (before the 5 year period) upon moving into their new stadium. Does anyone else remember it that way?

[The_Admiral]

I hate the Rams' current stuff and love their old colors, but they deserve this for the hubris of their "no, actually, we do get two first impressions!" marketing scheme.

[Bathysphere]

2 hours ago, hawk36 said:

I thought the Rams didn't push for the change upon moving since the NFL made it clear that they wouldn't make an exception for a second change (before the 5 year period) upon moving into their new stadium. Does anyone else remember it that way?

Perhaps that was their thought process back in 2016, but the problem still falls on their own stubborn insistence on the stadium-uniform double unveiling. Why should they be allowed to get two changes in three years (based on the original plan before the stadium got postponed)? No one would have stopped then from changing along with the initial relocation. But when it comes to begging for a second change just a couple of years later only for your own selfish marketing purposes? Rules are rules, and they’ve known them all along.

 

Heck, if they’d thought this out well at all, then they would have commenced The Whitening back in 2016 and not a year later based on an impulsive itch to kill off all traces of St. Louis that wasn’t previously present.

[hawk36]

I think it makes perfect sense to change a uniform with a move across the country and then with a move into a new, state of the art, stadium. I'd doubt there would be too many other instances when that would come into play. NFL lacked common sense on the issue.