Bonsignore: LA Rams arrive in Southern California to complete emotional 22-year journey

OXNARD >> A steady arrival of moving trucks finishing the long trip from St. Louis to Southe Califoia was underway Monday moing at the sprawling Residence I by Marriott Hotel in Oxnard.

As each truck was unloaded, the Rams moved one step closer to completing one of the most unlikely circles in sports history.

• PHOTOS: The Rams arrive at Oxnard practice facility

More than 20 years after ripping the heart out of Los Angeles by moving to St. Louis, and just over a week after packing up their Missouri belongings and setting the GPS west to Califoia, the Rams officially landed back home Monday.

Oxnard and Agoura Hills to be exact, where the football operations and administrative departments have hit the ground ruing on preparing for the Rams’ new life in Southe Califoia.

The football side will spend the next two months in Oxnard, where a temporary practice field, weight room, locker room and offices have been set up to cover the team’s nine-week offseason training program.

After that, it’s off to Irvine for training camp from the end of July to late August. During the season, the Rams will set up temporary headquarters and practice facilities at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, where they will spend the next two years. The goal is to eventually build permanent headquarters in Thousand Oaks.

They will begin play this season at the Coliseum before moving to their new home in Inglewood in 2019.

“It’s hectic, that’s for sure,” said Rams public relations director Artis Twyman, who flew in from St. Louis on Sunday and by Monday moing was sifting through boxes as he set up his make-shift office. “We’re getting there. It’s a process, but we’re getting there.”

The Rams arrived home much like they left — to the unmistakable roar of moving vans. Like a black puff of exhaust fumes from the back of an 18-wheeler, it was one final reminder the past 20 years really did happen.

Georgia Frontiere really did move the Rams from their 49-year home in Southe Califoia to St. Louis. And they really did kick us in the gut by wiing the only Super Bowl in franchise history under the shadow of an arch.

And Los Angeles really did spend two decades without a National Football League team, as the NFL often used us as a poker chip to leverage other cities to build their teams sprawling new stadiums.

It wasn’t a bad dream.

It really did happen.

But unlike the pain in 1994 when the moving vans rolled past us and we cursed them under our breaths and vowed to never think longingly of them again, it’s all open arms and open hearts upon their retu.

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The outpouring of love isn’t lost on the Rams.

“It’s been great. Wherever we’ve gone, it’s been great,” Rams head coach Jeff Fisher said. “Wherever we’ve stayed — we’ve had to look at all the different potential sites, Coliseum visits — and everyone we’ve crossed paths with has been really excited.”

The sco for Frontiere, who died in 2008, is replaced by gratitude for current owner Stan Kroenke. The sports mogul seized on a breach in the original lease Frontiere signed upon moving to St. Louis in 1994 as his ticket back to L.A. He crafted a plan to build an NFL Disneyland in Inglewood and anchor it with a 75,000-seat stadium to inspire fellow owners to grant him his wish to move.

John Shaw, the Rams executive who carried out Frontiere’s St. Louis objectives, has given way to team President Kevin Demoff, a Harvard-Westlake of Studio City grad who artfully navigated the choppy political waters of the NFL to help cull the necessary support for their move.

The role reversal is uncay.

From villains to heroes in a 22-year blink of an eye.

Their jouey back has been a steady mixture of awe, nostalgia, excitement, tears and logistics, begiing in January when NFL owners voted 30-2 to grant the Rams their wish to relocate back to Los Angeles. That set the clock on a whirlwind process in which an entire franchise had to be uprooted from one city and situated in another more than 1,800 miles away.

The Oxnard phase of the move was essentially complete by Monday as about 70 staffers were in place. Work was still underway to complete the locker room, weight and recovery rooms and field.

Players won’t officially arrive until April 17 for the first phase of their offseason conditioning program. The Oxnard facility will be open for players rehabbing from injury and the 30 or so college prospects who will visit in preparation for next month’s NFL draft.

The good news is, most of the plaing and heavy lifting is done, eliciting a huge sigh of relief from the coaching and persoel staffs.

“It’s been nice, the people in charge of our logistics, they’ve done such a good job that I don’t wake up stressed about the move,” Rams General Manager Les Snead said. “I’m more conceed about the free agency, the draft, the football side.”

As for the emotional side of the move, the sadness of the closing of one chapter is countered by the excitement of begiing another.

“There is so much possibility in a move to a market like Los Angeles,” offensive lineman Rodger Saffold said Monday moing. “At the same time, there is some bittersweet to it for sure.”

A week ago, Saffold was saying goodbye to longtime staff members who won’t be making the move west. As he drove away, it hit him what he was leaving behind.

“When you go through the relocation process, it doesn’t mean everyone can go,” Saffold said. “People have family situations and all sorts of situations to sort through before they can move out here, and not everyone is making the trip. So it was definitely hard saying goodbye to the people who won’t be joining us.”

Upon arriving in Oxnard over the weekend, Saffold was encouraged by some familiar faces. The scene was strikingly different than a week ago in St. Louis.

“Coming here, and being able to say hi to everybody that is making the move, it was definitely being more upbeat than sad,” Saffold said. “It’s been more enjoyable.”

Here in Los Angeles, we know the feeling.

The hum of all those moving trucks sounds a whole lot better now than in 1994.

Welcome home, Rams.