L.A. Teams

BUCCANEERS

Affiliation: National Football League.

Years Played: 1926.

L.A. Story: The Buccaneers were the Washington Generals of the early NFL--a road team that would come to your building and provide the opposition on any given Sunday--except they won once in a while. They never played a game in Los Angeles--USC effectively blocked any professional intrusion into the Coliseum--and based their operations in Chicago. Why “Los Angeles?” They were owned by Hollywood actor Lew Cody and Los Angeles real estate broker Fritz Burns, and coached by former University of California star Tut Imlay. The roster was a collection of former California collegians. They were good enough to defeat the New York Giants and the Canton Bulldogs in 1926, but the physical and financial strain of playing every game on the road took its toll. The Buccaneers disbanded after one season.

L.A. Record: 6-3-1, sixth place (among 22 teams).

WILDCATS

Affiliation: American Football League.

Years Played: 1926.

L.A. Story: The Wildcats were charter members of the first American Football League. (There were four American Football Leagues all told; they apparently kept trotting out the name until Joe Namath and Len Dawson finally got it right.) Named after their star running back, former Washington All-American George (Wildcat) Wilson, the Wildcats, like the Buccaneers, played every game on the road--outplaying six opponents and outlasting five others. Of the nine original AFL franchises, only the Chicago Bulls, the New York Yankees, the Philadelphia Quakers and the Wildcats were still playing by season’s end. The league folded after one season, with the Yankees being absorbed by the NFL.

L.A. Record: 6-6-2, fourth place.

BULLDOGS

Affiliation: American Football League.

Years Played: 1937.

L.A. Story: Promoted from the minor league Pacific Coast Football League to the second AFL in 1937, the Bulldogs were so good, they took the league down. In 1936, they had compiled a 3-2-1 record in exhibition games with NFL teams. In 1937, they ran the table against AFL competition--going 9-0 and defeating opponents by an average score of 27-9. Coached by former USC coach Elmer (Gloomy Gus) Henderson, the Bulldogs played a revolutionary, wide-open style that featured split formations, double laterals and a kick-return strategy called “the befuddle huddle,” in which the entire team would cluster tightly around the man fielding the kickoff and then sprint wildly in different directions, leaving the opponent to guess which of 11 Bulldogs had the ball. The Bulldogs were also the first “major league” team to play in Los Angeles--they played their home games at old Gilmore Stadium. No other AFL team finished above .500 in 1937 and the competitive disparity prompted the league to shut down after the season, the Bulldogs returning to the PCFL.

L.A. Record: 9-0, one league championship and out.

DONS

Affiliation: All-America Football Conference.

Years Played: 1946-1949.

L.A. Story: After lobbying in vain for an NFL franchise, actor-owner Don Ameche cast his lot with the new All-America Football Conference, the league that would later give the NFL the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers. Named after their founder, the Dons had the unfortunate timing of breaking in during the Rams’ first season in Los Angeles--they were never able to shake their little-brother status among the media and fans. The Dons were best known for throwing money around. At $25,000 a season, quarterback Glenn Dobbs was the highest-paid professional football player of the time. And in 1949, with several AAFC teams struggling, Dons owner Ben Lindemeyer lent money to keep the Chicago Hornets afloat and paid half of tailback Herman Wedemeyer’s $12,000 salary after trading him to the financially strapped Baltimore Colts. But they were forever No. 2 at the Coliseum--never higher than third in the AAFC--and they faded into memory in 1950 after the NFL absorbed the Browns, 49ers and Colts.

L.A. Record: 25-27-2 in four seasons.

RAMS

Affiliation: National Football League

Years Played: 1946-1994.

L.A. Story: After winning the 1945 NFL championship in Cleveland and losing money, the Rams persuaded the league to sanction a move to the West Coast, arriving 12 years before the Dodgers. In the ‘40s and early ‘50s, the Rams and Los Angeles were a perfect marriage. The team played a dazzling, entertaining style and the star players were either Hollywood celebrities or romantically linked to them. (Quarterback Bob Waterfield was married to Jane Russell; running back Glenn Davis once was engaged to Elizabeth Taylor). Yet after winning Los Angeles’ first pro football title in 1951, the Rams spent more than four decades tormenting their fans in a fruitless attempt to duplicate that feat. In the 1970s, they reached the NFC title game five times and won it only once--producing their lone Super Bowl appearance after the 1979 season, in which they lost to Pittsburgh, 30-19. After moving to Anaheim in 1980, the Rams reached two more NFC finals, in 1985 and 1989, and lost them by a combined score of 54-3. They haven’t been back to the playoffs since, here or in St. Louis, leaving behind a legacy of seemingly endless quarterback controversy, fired coaches who are one day rehired, mammoth trades that almost never panned out, and more near-misses than one fan base should ever be required to endure.

L.A. Record: 364-299-18, one NFL championship (1951) in 49 seasons.

CHARGERS

Affiliation: American Football League.

Years Played: 1960.

L.A. Story: Nicknamed the “Chargers” as a sort of cross-promotion for owner Barron Hilton’s new line of Carte Blanche credit cards, with fans encouraged to shout from their seats, “CHARGE!” Unfortunately for Hilton, too few fans enlisted in the chorus. Despite a high-powered attack blueprinted by a Hall of Fame coaching staff--Sid Gillman, assisted by Al Davis and Chuck Noll--the Chargers averaged only 15,665 at the Coliseum gate, even while playing for the AFL title when the Rams were winning only four of 12 games in 1960. Who says L.A. always loves a winner? The local media, dubious of the new league, largely ignored the Chargers. As Gillman remarked years later, “In 1960, the L.A. media never found out that we were in town. And in 1961, they didn’t know we’d left.”

L.A. Record: 10-4, lost AFL championship game to Houston.

SUN

Affiliation: World Football League.

Years Played: 1974-1975.

L.A. Story: Six years before the Rams moved south, Orange County got its first taste of pro football--such as it was--with the Sun of the World Football League playing its home games at Anaheim Stadium. Pat Haden played 11 games for the Sun in 1975 and remembers the experience: “I got paid in confederate dollars, I threw a three-colored football and our colors were aqua and orange. Or were they fuchsia and orange?” Actually, they were magenta and orange--a professional football first. The league was on such shaky financial ground that Don Klosterman, then the Rams’ general manager, says he persuaded Rhodes Scholar Haden to sign with the Sun instead of the Rams because, “You’ll only get two preseason games with us and then you’ll have to leave for Oxford. You’ll get more games with the Sun--and next year they won’t be here, so you can come back to us.” Klosterman was right; the WFL folded with seven games left in the ’75 season. Sun Coach Tom Fears got the word from a team official during practice, nodded and immediately told his players to take a few laps around the field. Haden: “He did that so the equipment man had time to get all the equipment out of the locker room before the guys came in and took it.”

L.A. Record: 20-12, first in the Western Division in 1974, lost first-round playoff game to Hawaii.

RAIDERS

Affiliation: National Football League.

Years Played: 1982-1994.

L.A. Story: Bolted Oakland in 1982, just as soon as Davis won the retrial of his antitrust lawsuit against the NFL--so quickly that the Raiders could not find a Southland practice site in time for the season, so they practiced in Oakland and flew down to Los Angeles for home games. Coach Tom Flores spent that first season at the LAX Hyatt. The Raiders won Los Angeles’ only Super Bowl championship in the 1983 season--with Marcus Allen the MVP of the game--brought two-sport star Bo Jackson into the league in 1987 and hired the NFL’s first black head coach, Art Shell, in 1989. They also made the Rams seem bastions of stability at the quarterback position, flitting back and forth among Jim Plunkett, Marc Wilson, Rusty Hilger(?), Vince Evans, Jay Schroeder, Steve Beuerlein, Todd Marinovich and Jeff Hostetler. Finally, inevitably, Davis flitted too--back to Oakland, after several loud saber rattles, in 1995.

L.A. Record: 118-82 in 13 seasons. Beat Washington in Super Bowl XVIII in the 1983 season, 38-9.

EXPRESS

Affiliation: United States Football League.

Years Played: 1983-1985.

L.A. Story: Made Los Angeles a three-team pro football town for three years--and in 1985, they had the best quarterback in town. Take your pick: Dieter Brock, Marc Wilson or Steve Young of the Express. Young’s signing with the Express for an outrageous $40 million in 1984 garnered the team national headlines. So did the Express’ revolving door in the owner’s box--from Bill Daniels and Alan Harmon to Bill Oldenburg to a league takeover of the club’s operation. The Express participated in the longest pro football game ever played--a three-overtime playoff victory over Michigan in 1984--and had 17 players who would go on to the NFL, several playing in the Pro Bowl. Klosterman, the Express’ general manager, laments the timing of the USFL’s collapse in 1985. Months earlier, the team had worked out a young wide receiver from Mississippi Valley State named Jerry Rice. Young-to-Rice for the good of Los Angeles? “It could have happened,” Klosterman says. “We would’ve had a good chance of signing him.”

L.A. Record: 21-33, including one final home game at Pierce College (capacity: 6,000 without temporary seats).