Pro Football Today : A World Away From True Rivalry : Rams-Raiders: Lack of confrontations and ‘cross-town’ proximity have stunted the intensity of series.

Sonny vs. Cher is a rivalry. The Raiders vs. the Rams, no matter how you slice it, is not.

You say the teams share the same town? Well, kind of, except that the Rams and Raiders don’t even share the same area code.

You suggest that today’s game at the Coliseum is a turf war, a back-yard battle for rights and respect? Sure, except that most Raiders would need a bloodhound and two days to locate Rams Park in Anaheim.

The Rams vs. the Raiders should be a rivalry. The NFL might even make it happen someday with a realignment of divisions to take advantage of their proximity.

Or, the teams might schedule an exhibition each season to keep the cross-town fires burning. As things are now, though, in this sprawling metropolis, the Rams and Raiders are ships that pass in the night, sometimes in heavy traffic.

“I drive through Orange County when I drive home,” said Raider quarterback Jay Schroeder, who lives in Poway. “I kind of see it off the freeway there, on the side. That’s about it. It’s like I go from L.A. to San Diego, and Orange County is in between. We might as well be in different states, there are so many people between here and there.”

Every three or four seasons, however, the teams are destined to cross paths, at which time a certain enthusiasm is demanded.

If today’s game was so eagerly anticipated, however, it should have not fallen 17,000 tickets short a sellout by 1 p.m. Thursday, the deadline for lifting the local television blackout.

This will be only the fourth meeting of the teams since the Raiders moved to Los Angeles in 1982, the Raiders having won two.

There is no Little Brown Jug at stake here. The respective mayors are not making friendly wagers involving pork rinds or barbed wire.

Ram linebacker Kevin Greene played his college football at Auburn. He knows a rivalry when he sees one.

“It isn’t like an Auburn-Alabama game,” Greene said, “or a Rams-49ers game. It’s an important game for both of us, (but) I don’t see this as being for bragging rights. After we win this game, we’re not going to go around downtown saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, we just won. We own L.A. Give us free drinks.’ We’re not going to do that.”

About the best the Rams and Raiders can do is boast of sharing a mutual rival: the San Francisco 49ers.

A game between the Raiders and 49ers Sept. 29 at the Coliseum was a sellout and was televised locally. The 49ers usually provide the Rams with their only home sellout, too.

Nothing replaces tradition. The Rams and 49ers have been playing since 1950. The Raiders and 49ers have played at least exhibition games since 1967.

“I think the 49er-Raider game this year was far and away more of a rivalry than this game,” Schroeder said. “I mean, everybody still considers this team to be from the Bay Area. You still have people today calling us the Oakland Raiders.”

The Raider-Ram relationship has been distant, at best. Rarely have their paths crossed. The Rams left the Coliseum for Anaheim after the 1979 season. The Raiders replaced the Rams as Coliseum tenants in 1982.

There have been tense moments, must notably in 1981 when Ram owner Georgia Frontiere testified against the Raiders during the NFL’s suit to block Al Davis’ move from Oakland.

But without regular matchups on the field to build on, such memories tend to fade.

“It’s difficult to create a rivalry when you only play every three years,” Raider Coach Art Shell said. “Up in the Bay Area, we played the 49ers every year, at least in the exhibition season. It was different. They were right across the bay from us.”

The Rams are 3-3, clinging to playoff life in the NFC West. The Raiders (4-3) rallied to victory last week.

If Ram quarterback Jim Everett had not ended his slump last week, this would have been a matchup of the team that hadn’t thrown for a touchdown, the Rams, against the team that hasn’t rushed for one.

The Raiders still have not scored a rushing touchdown--an astonishing statistic for a run-oriented team--but all was forgiven after last week’s 23-20 overtime victory over the Seattle Seahawks.

The Raider hero was safety Ronnie Lott, who set up the winning field goal when he intercepted Jeff Kemp’s pass deep in Seattle territory.

Although Lott played for Ram Coach John Robinson at USC and terrorized the Rams for 10 years as a 49er, the Rams did not make a serious offer for Lott when he was left unprotected as a Plan B free agent.

The Raiders did, and Lott seems to be hitting his stride.

And Everett thought it was safe to throw deep.

Notes

Raider Coach Art Shell wasn’t surprised that Jim Everett finally threw a touchdown pass. He only wished Everett would have waited another week. “It’s very difficult to hold a good quarterback down,” Shell said. “Eventually down the line he’s going to start making plays.” . . . This marks the second game back at left outside linebacker for Kevin Greene, who had been moved to defensive end in the Rams’ new 4-3 defense. The Rams scrapped the plan because Greene has only one sack in six games. Greene began the season with 46 sacks in the last three seasons, most in the NFL.