I’ve been blogging about critical thinking, disasters, personal responsibility, and other topics the last couple of days so I thought I’d take on something important this time … my beloved St. Louis Rams!

You can stop laughing now … no … I’m serious … this isn’t a joke … that is to say the blog isn’t a joke … the Rams … we’ll I’ve heard them called worse than a joke.

We fired yet another coach and now in St. Louis the debate begins. Is the new coach any good? Are the coordinators any good? Who will they draft with the second pick? Should they trade it for more picks?

I love sports and I truly enjoy the endless speculation that it engenders. Did the manager make the right move? Who is to blame for the loss? The only thing I don’t like this the mean spirited attacks against a particular coach or player but I’ll save that for a blog about why some people enjoy being filled with hate. For this blog I’ll stick to the topic at hand.

We’ve had a bad run of it here with the Rams the last five years with only the memories of the Greatest Show on Turf years to sustain us through the dark days. Coach Vermeil retired after the Super Bowl year and things were okay for a while under Coach Martz but soon everything fell apart in an ugly way.

So, what do I think about the new hire and our prospects for the future. I’m optimistic. I think the team was better than they played last year but a brutal schedule (most difficult in the NFL, six games more difficult than the next most) and a good number of injuries really piled up on them. No excuses, we weren’t a good team.

I think that’s what I love most about sports. We can spin why were good or how we got unlucky but the bottom line is the result. No one gives us a win because our father runs the company, no one puts a few more points on the board because of a little misfortune. You win and you lose and that’s determined in a quantitative fashion. If you have more points you win. If you don’t, you lose. So, we got more yards than our opponents, held the ball longer, outplayed them, none of it matters and that is one of brutal beauties of sport.

I hope for the best with my Rams, yes, “my Rams”, that’s the way I feel about it. They are my team, rain or shine, and I’ll root for them unless they move to Los Angeles or London. As I said, I’m optimistic and I think we’re going to win some games next year, maybe even 9 – 7 or 10 – 6. Call me a fool, a hopeless dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

Go Rams!

Tom Liberman
Sword and sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Twist