Author: Joe Curley / Source: USA TODAY
Sean McVay has a favor to ask the Rams’ season ticket holders this week: Resist cashing in on the team’s success this season by selling tickets to Saturday night’s divisional playoff game to Cowboys fans.
“Don’t do that,” McVay flatly said on Tuesday.
The Rams’ return to Los Angeles three years ago was certainly celebrated by the long-suffering fan base they abandoned in 1994.
But Southern California-based fans of the league’s other 31 teams have also enjoyed the NFL’s return to the region. Visits by Philadelphia and Green Bay over the past two seasons drew droves of green-clad visitors to the Coliseum, memorably producing a college-like atmosphere at USC’s football cathedral.
The Cowboys, however, could represent an even stiffer test to the Rams’ home-field advantage on Saturday.
“We’ve had great turnouts at home this year,” McVay said. “It’s been great atmospheres and environments, but Dallas is one of those franchises that travels really well.”
More importantly, “America’s Team” has its own history in the greater Los Angeles region.
Despite being located more than 1,200 miles east, Dallas has pitched its training camp in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles, for 39 of the past 55 summers.
“We’ve got thousands of fans that are generational in Los Angeles,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said on Dallas’ 105.3 FM The Fan. “We do feel very comfortable going to Los Angeles playing. That’s not to say the Rams are going to make it comfortable for us.”
The Cowboys trained on the campus of California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, nearby where the Rams built their current football headquarters, for nearly the entirety of Tom Landry’s tenure as head coach.
“I used to carry (former Cowboys tight end) Billy Joe DuPree’s helmet from the dorm to the practice field,” said Bob Froio, a Cowboys fan from nearby Simi Valley.
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