Dear Fellow Angelenos:

This week isn’t just another “preseason” game. There’s a team from the south claiming they want to “fight for LA.” The clear implication of this advertising gimmick implies that the Charger invaders are attempting to become the dominant pro football team in Los Angeles.

There are many reasons why this strategy should fail.

The first and foremost is that the Chargers belong in San Diego. When they first tried and failed in Los Angeles as an AFL franchise they were in competition with the NFL. The Chargers started off by creating a lightning bolt logo which looked eerily similar to the Rams’ horns across our helmet. They dressed in powder blue and yellow uniforms in an attempt to replicate the Rams Royal Blue and Golden Yellow. And for all their efforts after one year, they fled L.A. for the greener pastures of San Diego — L.A. already had a professional football team: the Rams.

So now the Chargers come waltzing back to Los Angeles after 50 years away. They argue that they can win the fight for L.A. by earning it; however, Chargers’ ownership is naïve to think by moving 200 miles up the coast, Angelenos will simply drop their love affair with the Rams for carpetbaggers.

Los Angeles will always be a Rams town.

The Rams were the first team to move west, the first team to win a professional sports championship for Los Angeles, the first team to market a logo on their helmet, and the first team to draft an African-American football player.

What have the Chargers ever done for the city of Los Angeles? Nothing. Instead, they left our city after one season.

The Rams remain the “soul” of Los Angeles, embraced by Los Angeles’ other most beloved symbol of life in the most beautiful city in America: “Hollywood.”

It’s time for Rams fans to let the Chargers know that they’re mere pretenders of the throne and will never succeed in Los Angeles. It’s time to pack the Coliseum this Saturday wearing the Blue and Yellow of the only team Los Angeles wants in this town—the Rams.

Don’t sit on your hands, Angelenos. Pick up the phone, call the Rams Ticket Services. If the phone lines are busy, keep calling. Force the Rams to open the Coliseum to sell more then the allotted tickets due to demand.

Raise your voice loudly. Do what we’re often criticised for not being: passionate. Demonstrate to the Chargers organization that the battle for Los Angeles will never be won against our team that’s actually building a stadium for its fans, rather then renting it.

We owe to it ourselves and the memories created over lifetime when we were little kids. It took 22 years to get our Rams back. This is a call to arms — to all Los Angeles Rams’ fans living within the confines of Southern California to take up the fight for L.A.

See ya this Saturday.