Ye Olde Rams (1974) Response to Blown Call: "Tom Mack Still Hasn't Moved."

No one is saying there is a secret society of brokenhearted Rams fans dedicated to rehashing playoff miseries and ruthless injustices from the 1960s and 70s.

But if there was such a club, and it met bi-monthly at a secluded cabin in Big Bear, the password to enter would be “Tom Mack still hasn’t moved.”

This would be a club of not Cleveland, Anaheim or St. Louis Rams—this enclave would exclusively be dedicated to the Los Angeles Rams.

These Rams played at the Memorial Coliseum with head offices on Pico Boulevard. Their pastor was Deacon Jones and Caesar was Roman Gabriel.

These dedicated followers of fashion worshiped the best helmets and home uniforms in professional sports.

They licked their fingers because George Allen did and ran pass patterns like Jack Snow and Harold Jackson. They nicknamed their kids “Scooter” and wanted their sons to grow up to be Les Josephson.

These old fans of the new Los Angeles Rams, lost sheep who returned to the Coliseum after a 20-year graze on a distant farm, had not one iota or pang of empathy as they watched an official rip a Super Bowl away from the Saints of New Orleans in Sunday’s NFC championship game.

To a man, woman and offspring of the man and woman, saw it simply for what it was: rogue retribution for an “illegal motion” call 45 years ago that cost the L.A. Rams a trip to the Super Bowl.

The officials really screwed over the Saints—there is no other polite way to say it.

The pass interference penalty NOT called on L.A. Ram defensive back Rickell Robey-Coleman denied New Orleans a chance to set up for the chip shot that would have sent the Saints to New Orleans.

Yeah, so. “Tom Mack still hasn’t moved.”

A few fans from this aging fan base, some of them surly fighting off carpel tunnel, somehow pulled out their smart phones and thumbed out the cryptic Twitter response to the horrible call near the Mississippi River.

M-A-C-K.

A vicious circle of Ram history had come complete. Sorry for your loss, New Orleans, but not really.

Some Ye Olde Ram fans had lived long enough to see the day. The horrendous call, made on Tom Mack by referee Tommy Bell, had at long last been reversed or at least neutralized.

The call on Mack came to encapsulate a series of torturous calls and events that denied the Rams several trips to the Super Bowl before finally pushing home in 1979.

Almost all of these unfortunate circumstances involved Dallas Cowboys or Minnesota Vikings.

But nothing compares to Dec. 29, 1974, in the bone-cold crunch of Minneapolis in the NFC championship game.

The Rams, down 7-3 in the third quarter, were sniffing the end zone and appeared to take the lead on a James Harris touchdown pass.

The play was nullified, though, by an illegal motion call on Mack, led anchor left guard for a stalwart offensive line. Mack was rock solid, a Michigan man, No. 65 and a man who deserved better.

The penalty was huge, as it was followed by Harris interception.

The Vikings won, 14-10.

One of the L.A. Rams fans who cursed Bell and heaven that day grew up to be a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times. By some massive stroke of luck and divine intervention that boy of 1974 became the Rams’ beat writer in 1986.

To be clear, these were “L.A.” Rams in name only. The franchise had moved to Anaheim in 1980 and played in a baseball stadium. The team was owned by a former singer who was bequeathed the team after her owner-husband’s drowning. She immediately fired her stepson and set the franchise on a calamitous course that would eventually lead it to St. Louis.

It was easy, or easier at least, for the L.A. Ram fan of 1974 to divorce himself from this rapscallion band of Disneyland interlopers.

If not for the relics, legends and artifacts from history that still roamed the property.

Jack Youngblood, in fact, was just moving off the active roster in 1985. He would cozy into a front-office role and effectively become the hood ornament and role model for the franchise.

Larry Brooks, another All-Pro defensive lineman and legend from “the day Tom Mack never moved,” was a coach on staff.

One day the fanboy-turned writer walked into the press room at Rams Park in Anaheim and found Jack Snow in HIS chair, feet up on the desk as he smoked down a cigarette and spoke vulgarities into a phone the Los Angeles Times was paying for.

Flash forward to 1988 as the Anaheim Rams prepared for a wild card game at Minnesota.

Youngblood sat in his office at Rams Park as the fanboy reporter clicked on his tape recorder and asked about previous, miserable, frozen-tundra playoff trips to Minneapolis.

Youngblood laughed at thought of this game being played in a temperature-controlled, domed stadium.

The visit reopened a lot of frozen-tundra wounds of bitter cold-games at Minnesota, coach Bud Grant and shirt-sleeved linebacker Wally Hilgenberg.

What Youngblood mostly recalled, though, was Tom Mack never moving.

“When the officials make a flagrant error like that, which prevents a team from crossing that line, the play itself creates its own momentum. If we’d have won that year, we might have gone again. Yes, it’s still aggravating.”

Fanboy reporter then sought out Larry Brooks for a comment. The first thing he mentioned was Tom Mack.

“It was one of his big heartbreaks,” Brooks said of Mack. “They took his Super Bowl chance away right there. Then Harris threw the interception and that let the air out of the balloon.”

The Rams lost two more playoff heart-breakers to Minnesota in the decade (1976, 1977) before making the Super Bowl in 1979.

Youngblood played that game with a broken leg. The Rams held the lead against the Pittsburgh Steelers—the New England Patriots of the 1970s. The Rams lost—of course they did.

The Rams moved to Anaheim the next year. They had some good teams but were never the L.A. Rams. They lost the 1985 title game at Chicago and then, on Halloween night in 1987, foolishly traded Eric Dickerson for what turned out to be a bag of sand.

The franchise rose briefly in 1989 to challenge San Francisco for the NFC championship at Candlestick Park. But then Jim Everett fell down without being touched.

Phantom sack, phantom franchise. The team hit the skids and that gave the former singer-turned owner an excuse to use the empty seats she caused as a reason to move the team to the Big Arch.

The L.A. Rams left in 1979 and the Anaheim Rams left after 1994.

So, yes, we all saw Sunday’s play and there is no use arguing it.

The Rams should have been called for a pass interference and the Saints should be marching to the Super Bowl.

But, to be honest, L.A. Ram fans of a certain age, those who cheered for the team that played at the Coliseum, saw it as more than a bad call.

It was a make-up call.

In case you haven’t heard: Tom Mack still hasn’t moved.