This is what it’s all about

Little known fact about me that I brag about constantly: I wear a Rams pin every day. I’ve been doing so since my junior year in high school. It’s safe to say that I’m a fan. And if you weren’t sure, there’s this:

For the most part, the pin goes unnoticed. Lately however, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy/razzing for it. It turns out that when your team is 0-8 and making a strong bid to become only the second (or third, depending on how Miami finishes up and who looses their last game first) team in NFL history to go 0-16, people feel the need to acknowledge this publicly.

Just to set the record straight, this is completely unnecessary. Contrary to what you may think, I’m quite aware of how badly they are doing. I don’t need to be brought up to speed, thanks. In fact, I’m now in that weird twilight zone where I’m rooting for my team to lose. This does a couple of things for a fan in my position. First, it gives you a chance to be right. If you’re rooting for them to lose and they do, you feel good about it. You got what you wanted. Second, as my team continues to lose and lose, they put themselves in a better and better position to get the number one draft pick next year. That could make a big difference next season. This season was filled with injury after injury to the offensive line, and anyone that knows anything about football will tell you that if you don’t have a good offensive line, you don’t have anything. They might also tell you that the Rams have a terrible defense, and they’d be right, but you really don’t need to rub it in.

This is new ground for me. I’ve never rooted for a team that was playing so poorly that they didn’t have at least some ridiculous outside shot of making the playoffs. The part that really hurts though, is that the Rams are in the NFC West. There are rumors that the NFC West teams have been practicing against Pop Warner squads in order to build their confidence, but they’ve been losing, so it hasn’t quite worked out as planned.

So remember, every time the Rams lose a football game, a paraplegic child is healed. Won’t you join me in rooting against them? Remember, we’re not really rooting against them so much as we’re rooting for a number one overall draft pick. Oh yeah, and to help those paraplegics too.