LA Rams fans woke up at 6:30 a.m. to watch their team play in London

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — The sun was still a half hour away from rising over Los Angeles when the Rams kicked off against the New York Giants at London’s Twickenham Stadium in Week 7.

Before Sunday, no NFL fan base has ever had its local team start a game before 8:30 a.m, but at 6 a.m. Pacific Time, a group of about 10 to 15 Rams fans were standing in the dark in front of Big Wangs — a sports bar in North Hollywood — waiting for the doors to open.

By kickoff at 6:30 a.m., the number was closer to 100 fans and those who waited until the second quarter or second half to trickle in were left standing for the end of the game.

Some started the day with coffee and donuts, while others dove right into wings and beer.

Convincing a bar to open Sunday before the coffee shop around the corner may sound like a tall task, but these particular Rams fans in LA have been coming to this particular bar for years — long before the Rams made a return to LA after a 21-season stint in St. Louis.

“I know everybody here and I knew them before the [relocation],” Rams fan Chris Cevallos said. “I think it’s safe to say they’re diehards.”

Cevallos is the event coordinator for World Tour Rams, an LA-based group that travels to different bars around the city for away games each week. But now that the Rams are playing at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, that means finding eight sites instead of 16.

The event was a stark contrast from the typical notion that LA sports fans are fair-weather, and partially to blame for the Rams’ and Raiders’ departures from Southern California in the first place.

“That’s the perception, but these fans that watch the games with us aren’t like that,” Cevallos said. “They’re here no matter what.”

Still just seven weeks into the return to LA, the Rams have been welcomed by fans wholeheartedly. The city set a record for preseason attendance by packing 89,140 in for a game against the Dallas Cowboys and then topped it with 91,046 fans at the regular-season opener against the Seattle Seahawks.

“I see all these St. Louis fans talking about ‘Oh, where will those fans be when they start losing?’ but we’ve been here all along,” Rams fan George Martinez said Sunday. “We never left.”

The Rams haven’t made the playoffs since 2004, a drought that trails only the Buffalo Bills, Oakland Raiders, and Cleveland Browns. Fans were left disappointed again Sunday when Case Keenum threw four interceptions, including a game-sealing one in the end zone with less than a minute remaining to drop the Rams to 3-4.

Why stick around? And why support a team that left over two decades ago?

“It’s commitment to a team,” Cevallos said. “LA fans, some of them are faithful, and I’ve been blessed to stay in contact with all these people. They’re good fans throughout the year.”

The true test of Rams fans is still on the horizon. One of the main reasons why the NFL left LA was because the Memorial Coliseum and other stadiums in the area weren’t viable homes. The Coliseum’s 90,000-plus capacity consists mostly of general bowl seating, which made it extremely difficult for the Rams and Raiders to avoid having their games blacked out on television in LA.

The solution this time around is the multi-billion dollar stadium being built in Inglewood, Calif. that will open its doors for the Rams in 2019 and the Super Bowl in 2021.

While the gloss of a new stadium will draw in fans, the novelty factor of NFL football in LA will have lost its shine. But if Rams fans are like the ones that showed up to a bar to watch football before sunrise, the city will be just fine.