Los Angeles NFL Brands Discussion

[MilSox]

28 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

This is a funny line.  But you are selling the Clippers short.  Last season was the first time since 2010-11 that the Lakers outdrew the Clippers.  And the Clippers have been markedly better than the Lakers for most of that period.  (Of course, all of that is going to change now with LeBron James.)

If the Blake Griffin-led Clippers had been able to make a serious run at a title in any one of those years, while the Lakers were mired in very public internal turmoil, there might well have been a fundamental changing of the guard, and the Clippers could be the ones on top today.  It didn't happen, so that is all speculation.  Still, the Clippers had their chance to become the dominant team.  

Whereas, the LA Chargers could win the next ten Super Bowls, and it still wouldn't matter to the fans in Los Angeles.  The Chargers will never, ever surpass the Rams — or even the Raiders! — in that city. (Which is why I am assuming that they will eventually go back in San Diego whenever they get new ownership.)

That's a pretty big hypothetical scenario.  Especially for one that didn't even happen.

Put two teams in the same market long enough and the law of averages will dictate that occasionally little brother gets the upper hand. But the Clippers moving to LA right as "Showtime" was making the Lakers an A-list phenomenon and arguably THE "glamour" franchise in all of pro sports turned the Clippers into a pop culture punchline.  Even after Magic retired and the Lakers fell into their lean years in the 90s, mainstream sitcoms still made Clippers jokes.

By now, the Mets or Jets becoming the dominant team in New York, or the White Sox becoming Chicago's main baseball team are all more tangible scenarios than the Clippers overtaking the Lakers in LA; which feels like a pipe dream by comparison.

[Still MIGHTY]

34 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

This is a funny line.  But you are selling the Clippers short.  Last season was the first time since 2010-11 that the Lakers outdrew the Clippers.  And the Clippers have been markedly better than the Lakers for most of that period.  (Of course, all of that is going to change now with LeBron James.)

If the Blake Griffin-led Clippers had been able to make a serious run at a title in any one of those years, while the Lakers were mired in very public internal turmoil, there might well have been a fundamental changing of the guard, and the Clippers could be the ones on top today.  It didn't happen, so that is all speculation.  Still, the Clippers had their chance to become the dominant team.  

Whereas, the LA Chargers could win the next ten Super Bowls, and it still wouldn't matter to the fans in Los Angeles.  The Chargers will never, ever surpass the Rams — or even the Raiders! — in that city. (Which is why I am assuming that they will eventually go back in San Diego whenever they get new ownership.)

 

Hi, I am a resident of Southern California.

 

Your first bolded statement is incorrect because the second statement applies to the Chargers and Clippers. The Clippers could win 10 titles in a row, and the headline wouldn't be "Clippers win!" It would be "Lakers eye 17th title." Yes, the Clippers were the better basketball team, but the Lakers still drove the conversation. The Chargers aren't bad right now either, but its the Rams that are the talk of the town.

 

I went to last weekend's Chargers/Rams game. There are Charger fans. But the franchise kicked San Diego on the way out, and Los Angeles doesn't want it either. Nothing against Chargers fans or their passion for their team. All angst from all sides is directed at Spanos because the Chargers are now a team without a home.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

31 minutes ago, NicDB said:

the Clippers moving to LA right as "Showtime" was making the Lakers an A-list phenomenon and arguably THE "glamour" franchise in all of pro sports turned the Clippers into a pop culture punchline.  Even after Magic retired and the Lakers fell into their lean years in the 90s, mainstream sitcoms still made Clippers jokes.

 

You're right about that. The Clippers' move from San Diego was spectacularly ill-timed. And the Clippers were less than irrelevant.  (I remember that one time in the late 1980s I did a little comedy bit on a tape that I made for a friend in which a Clippers-Nets game was deemed the least significant event in the entire universe.)

 

31 minutes ago, NicDB said:

By now, the Mets or Jets becoming the dominant team in New York, or the White Sox becoming Chicago's main baseball team are all more tangible scenarios than the Clippers overtaking the Lakers in LA; which feels like a pipe dream by comparison.

 

The Mets and Jets did in fact experience periods in which they were temporarily the dominant teams in New York.  Each of those teams seized on the opportunity and won a championship during a moment when the traditional team was down.  The Clippers had no such luck; and, with the departures of Griffin and Chris Paul, and the arrival to the Lakers of LeBron, the window for the Clippers to ascend to the top spot is well and truly closed.

Still, my main point is that the Clippers are not the afterthoughts that the Chargers are.  The comparison to the White Sox is probably good: they are the second team in a city, but a second team that has considerable support.  The Clippers have their own set of celebrity fans, such as superfan Billy Crystal and also Kevin Hart, Kristin Bell, and Frankie Muniz.  None of these has the star power of Jack Nicholson; but it is an impressive list.


 

17 minutes ago, Still MIGHTY said:

Hi, I am a resident of Southern California.

 

Your first bolded statement [that the Clippers could be the ones on top today if they had made a run at a title during the time when the Lakers were down] is incorrect because the second statement [that the Chargers could win the next ten Super Bowls and would still not matter in Los Angeles] applies to the Chargers and Clippers. The Clippers could win 10 titles in a row, and the headline wouldn't be "Clippers win!" It would be "Lakers eye 17th title." Yes, the Clippers were the better basketball team, but the Lakers still drove the conversation. The Chargers aren't bad right now either, but its the Rams that are the talk of the town.

 

Interesting.  Well, you live there, so you would know.  My impression as an outsider was that the Clippers had gained tremendous legitimacy, and had fully shed the "joke team" label.  Of course they weren't the cultural phenomenon of that the Lakers are.  But, don't you think that, with a championship while the Lakers were winning 20 games a year, they could have had a period as the dominant team, as the Jets and Mets did during down periods for the Giants and Yankees?

 

17 minutes ago, Still MIGHTY said:

I went to last weekend's Chargers/Rams game. There are Charger fans. But the franchise kicked San Diego on the way out, and Los Angeles doesn't want it either. Nothing against Chargers fans or their passion for their team. All angst from all sides is directed at Spanos because the Chargers are now a team without a home.

Exactly: the Chargers are a team without a home.  The Clippers are not; they are a well-supported team with a sizeable fan base (even if it is dwarfed by the Lakers' fan base and by their national footprint).

I will concede that my hypothetical might have been extreme; but I still think it is wrong to compare the Clippers in their current state to the Chargers in their current state.

[hawk36]

I'd say if the Chargers win the Super Bowl they'll suddenly have a ton of trendy fans that will jump off the band wagon as soon as they lose their first game of the next year. Meanwhile, the true team of LA, the Rams, can ebb and flow with their success and still have a decent core of fans in LA.

 

But as to the uni talk, I'm just really interested in knowing if the Rams and Chargers Nike design teams are working together at all, along with the stadium graphics team, to develop brands that compliment each other. 

[Still MIGHTY]

6 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Interesting.  Well, you live there, so you would know.  My impression as an outsider was that the Clippers had gained tremendous legitimacy, and had fully shed the "joke team" label.  Of course they weren't the cultural phenomenon of that the Lakers are.  But, don't you think that, with a championship while the Lakers were winning 20 games a year, they could have had a period as the dominant team, as the Jets and Mets did during down periods for the Giants and Yankees?

 

Dominant on the court, sure. Gained some fans, they have, probably. But in public discourse, it has and will always be about the Lakers. Top story: What are the Lakers doing to get better? How much did Kobe score last night? Where is Phil Jackson? Fourth story: Clippers won tonight.

 

Also, at least as Lakers fans, the Clippers didn't and now probably will never shed their joke team label. Yes, they were good, yes, they played in big playoff games, but somehow always and sometimes miraculous found ways to screw it up in only way the Clippers could. Their high point in 2015, they choked away a 3-1 lead against the Rockets, because of course they did. At their highest high, they faltered and came crashing down because they're the Clippers. It's what they do. That's their legacy. It was never "oh they could win this time" it was always "when will they  this up."

 

8 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Exactly: the Chargers are a team without a home.  The Clippers are not; they are a well-supported team with a sizeable fan base (even if it is dwarfed by the Lakers' fan base and by their national footprint).

I will concede that my hypothetical might have been extreme; but I still think it is wrong to compare the Clippers in their current state to the Chargers in their current state.

 

The Clippers are not... yet.

 

Watching them play in a half-empty potential arena in Inglewood is going to be hilarious.

 

Also, any list that Frankie Muniz makes is not impressive. Stop that.

[IceCap]

22 minutes ago, hawk36 said:

I'd say if the Chargers win the Super Bowl 

Let’s not be ridiculous. 

[colortv]

This is NOT analogous to the Lakers-Clippers.

 

We aren't looking at a decades long period of comparing one of the most storied and probably the flashiest organization in sports to one run by the worst long-term owner in sports history.

 

It's just not remotely like that. The Chargers have been in LA for less than 2 years. They're a couple of hours from their home of 50 years.

 

Southern California is a market of 20 MILLION PEOPLE.

 

You've got baseball, soccer and hockey teams that have large fanbases.

 

Give them a new stadium, some winning teams and one of the best uniforms in sports and they will be more then relevant.

[Cosmic]

If Dean Spanos were smart enough to switch to the powder blues, the team would still be in San Diego; ain't gonna happen.

[colortv]

4 minutes ago, Cosmic said:

If Dean Spanos were smart enough to switch to the powder blues, the team would still be in San Diego; ain't gonna happen.

 

The more I look at the situation, it seems like they were just waiting to see if their long-term future would be in LA or SD to time when to go full powder-blue. Everything they seem to be doing marketing-wise is trending in that direction.

[jgiff17]

Why are the rams using that horrible font in the end zones and around the stadium?! I thought it was just for the blue and white junk but even tonight?! 

[Cosmic]

2 hours ago, colortv said:

Everything they seem to be doing marketing-wise is trending in that direction.

I wish I had a chart and statistics and everything, but it feels like for every one of these "team is using x logo/color a lot" that turns out to be something, there's twelve more that were apparently just the whims of the marketing intern. Like the Jets and this lime green, hopefully.

[4_tattoos]

1. I like the St. Louis era number font and dislike the number font used on the throwbacks. I really hope the STL numbers carry over to their new uniforms in 2020.
2. The shade of yellow on the Rams pants looks noticeably different from the yellow that the Steelers, Packers and Redskins have. 

[WSU151]

The Rams throwbacks are always awesome. Look great tonight.

[guest23]

4 hours ago, colortv said:

This is NOT analogous to the Lakers-Clippers.

 

We aren't looking at a decades long period of comparing one of the most storied and probably the flashiest organization in sports to one run by the worst long-term owner in sports history.

 

It's just not remotely like that. The Chargers have been in LA for less than 2 years. They're a couple of hours from their home of 50 years.

 

Southern California is a market of 20 MILLION PEOPLE.

 

You've got baseball, soccer and hockey teams that have large fanbases.

 

Give them a new stadium, some winning teams and one of the best uniforms in sports and they will be more then relevant.

 

LA will always be a Raiders town 1st and foremost. both franchises are competing for leftovers.

[Bathysphere]

3 hours ago, Cosmic said:

I wish I had a chart and statistics and everything, but it feels like for every one of these "team is using x logo/color a lot" that turns out to be something, there's twelve more that were apparently just the whims of the marketing intern. Like the Jets and this lime green, hopefully.

The Titans eschewing their neat social media font from last year in favor of that chicken scratch type that they ended up with exacerbated my trust issues.

 

And need I bring up that Jaguars mono-white “new helmet logo????” logo from their twitter this past offseason?

[MilSox]

8 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The Mets and Jets did in fact experience periods in which they were temporarily the dominant teams in New York.  Each of those teams seized on the opportunity and won a championship during a moment when the traditional team was down.  The Clippers had no such luck; and, with the departures of Griffin and Chris Paul, and the arrival to the Lakers of LeBron, the window for the Clippers to ascend to the top spot is well and truly closed.

But that's essentially my point.  By your own admission, the Clippers were more relevant with Blake Griffin than at any other point in their LA history and where did it get them?  Not even where the Jets were in the Namath days, or the Mets were in the 80s.  It was still all about the Lakers, even with Kobe in the twilight of his career.

Had the Clippers bit the bullet and moved to Orange County like the Angels, Ducks, and Rams in the 80s, this might be a different conversation.  But as it is, they'll always be a pop culture punchline.  Even with the occasional B-list and past their prime A-list celebrity they may get at courtside.  

[threesox84]

4 hours ago, guest23 said:

 

LA was a Raiders town 1st and foremost. 

FIFY

[Ben in LA]

2 hours ago, threesox84 said:

FIFY

Exactly. They’re gone. Have been for 20+ years.

[Gothamite]

13 hours ago, hawk36 said:

But as to the uni talk, I'm just really interested in knowing if the Rams and Chargers Nike design teams are working together at all, along with the stadium graphics team, to develop brands that compliment each other. 

 

Beyond working with NFL Properties, as required?  I highly doubt it. And I’m not sure that they should.  

 

From the Rams’ perspective, why should they?  The Chargers are an unwelcome roommate, an interloper in their city and their stadium.  They were forced to let the Chargers in, but they don’t have to help them.  And the Chargers haven’t demonstrated any leverage in the city that could force the Rams to include them in any conversation.

 

I don’t see a reason why the Rams should let the Chargers impact their plans in any way.

[Kevin W.]

9 hours ago, NicDB said:

But as it is, they'll always be a pop culture punchline.

Before Lebron signed with the Lakers, there was a thread on Reddit listing the reasons why he would sign with every single team in the offseason. Aside from a comment about how Lebron definitely wouldn't sign in Memphis, the Los Angeles ones stood out to me.

 

"Lebron will sign with the Clippers because he wants to play in Los Angeles but not be in the shadows of the Lakers' greats."

 

"Lebron will sign with the Lakers because he wants to play in Los Angeles but not be in the shadows of the Clippers' goods."