The history of Los Angeles Rams logos, ranked from worst to first

The Los Angeles Rams found themselves making headlines, but not because they made a big trade or acquisition during free agency. Instead, a lot of people were talking about the Rams’ new logo. A similar version with slightly different colors was leaked earlier, but the Rams’ announcement meant that it is now official. In addition to the primary logo, the Rams introduced three other parts of the team’s branding, including a ram’s head, a horn, and the full team name.

Here’s a look at the logo, which combines the city (Los Angeles) and the horn of the mascot (ram’s head):

Via Los Angeles Rams

Let’s rank all the Rams logos listed in the team’s history, including the ones from the franchise’s time in Cleveland, St. Louis, and Los Angeles:

9. The 1940 logo, featuring the most unintimidating ram you’ll ever see

I mean just look at this monstrosity:

They slapped Princess Leia braids on something that looks kind of like a ram’s head. Awful.

T-8. 1951 logo that looks like a prehistoric drawing of a ram

This is absolutely terrible, and the randomly painted yellow horns just seem very out of place. If you didn’t know what the Rams were, you’d think their colors were yellow, white, and black.

Which brings us to our next logo ...

T-8. In 1970, they literally just took the color out of the horns! The laziness!

It’s the exact same logo as the one above, just without the horns painted yellow. While I agree the color on just the horns didn’t look right, they could have been a bit more creative with the color schemes here, especially in 1970.

You would think the logos would get stylish as the years went on, but that wasn’t the case with this one.

6. The Rams’ 2020 logo looks like it belongs at a gas station

OK, stating the obvious here: yes, the swoop coming off of the “A” looks eerily similar to a certain president’s hair. I’ll let you connect the dots. But this looks far from the logo of a football team and more like one you might see for a Circle-K or Texaco:

Via Los Angeles Rams

As my colleague Christian D’Andrea pointed out, if the Rams wanted to integrate LA so much, there were several other ways to do just that:

Put a food truck behind it. Make it completely unable to drive if it’s sprinkling outside. Give it an opinion on matcha. Anything unique and/or stupid would have been better than what the Rams gave us.

Instead of the Rams, this looks like a logo that belongs to a club beach volleyball team whose mascot is the Waves. What’s really tragic is the Rams decided to not use this dope ram’s head as the primary logo:

This would have been way cooler than giant “LA” letters with a blonde wave surrounding it. Just saying.

5. The 1984 version also tried integrating “LA” into it

No, this one isn’t that bad, but it’s pretty simple. The smaller “A” inside the bigger one looks good, and placing the small “L” in the “R” of Rams looks normal when reading it naturally from left to right:

4. The Rams’ head from 1944 is actually pretty sweet

The design and contrast of the horns stands out, and there is color that flows nicely with the dark blue and white head of the ram.

Pretty damn clean for something that came out in 1944.

3. The 1983 and 1989 logos weren’t very complex, but they got the job done

This isn’t as loud as some of the others, but it accomplishes what it needs to as a logo. You know the team’s primary colors are navy blue and yellow, and the horn on the side of the helmet is fitting for the Ram mascot.

The Rams seemed to like this one, because the team went back to this logo in 1989 and kept it until 2000. It only looks slightly different than the one above because of the updated facemask on the helmet:

Some of the best logos are the simplest, TBH.

2. The Rams’ most recent logo from 2017 didn’t have any yellow in it

This ram looked intimidating, it was a modern design, and the horn matched the ones that were on the side of the helmets, too:

This one matched the color scheme that the Rams were seemingly moving toward — white and navy blue instead of yellow or gold. LA switched to this logo a year after relocating from St. Louis. Which brings us to our No. 1 ...

1. The 2000 blue and gold one remains the Rams’ best one yet

Yes, this is exactly the same as the 2017 logo, but the colors are different. The gold contrasts with the navy blue much more cleanly than the white does, and these colors just go together. Plus, the white accents mixed into the logo make it pop a lot more. The Rams had this logo when they were still located in St. Louis until 2015:

I might be alone with this opinion, but I’ve never been a huge fan of the bright yellow and blue uniforms the Rams have started wearing. The yellow just needs to be slightly darker for me:

Photo by Harry How/Getty Images

Give me the navy and gold all day:

Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images

Sure, it makes sense that the Rams want to embrace the city of Los Angeles with their new logo, but a ram’s head would have been a whole lot better.

Have any thoughts on the logo? Drop them in the comments section below!