Here at the end of May, it’s a little early to be thinking about the football season. One thing we’re looking forward to before the season gets underway is the return of Hard Knocks on HBO. We still don’t know which team will be featured yet, but we can say with a certain degree of certainty that the featured team won’t be the St. Louis Rams.

The Rams are trying to avoid a circus-like atmosphere in training camp, which was driven home when a potential Michael Sam reality show on OWN was killed by the team and later, the network. Coach Jeff Fisher says that it’s “highly unlikely” that St. Louis will be involved with Hard Knocks this year, preferring a sense of “normalcy” in training camp – and that’s completely justified given all of the hysteria surrounding the team’s drafting of Sam. How would Sam be able to focus on making an impact on the Rams with cameras following his every move, and how would the other Rams players and coaches be able to concentrate on what they need to do to succeed with HBO cameras hovering?

Would the Rams even have been a compelling featured team this year when you take Sam out of the equation? There isn’t much going on there, with a largely anonymous roster lacking major stars. Excluding St. Louis, the seven teams left that the NFL can compel to appear this year are the Cardinals, Bills, Bears, Jaguars, Giants, Raiders, and Steelers, and the Raiders look like they’d be the most interesting team this year – but the Bills and Jaguars could also bring in lots of entertainment value. We’ll see what ends up happening, but with the Rams out of the picture, I’d think that one of those three teams will be chosen, but we won’t know for awhile.

[STL Today]

About Joe Lucia

I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.