St. Louis Rams Fans and Merchants Are Eager to Get Goods

ST. LOUIS —  The first St. Louis Rams merchandise should hit the stores by this weekend, if not sooner, and fans can hardly wait.

Sportswear retailers are anxiously anticipating their first shipments of St. Louis Rams T-shirts, caps and other gear, now that the NFL has finally agreed to allow the team to relocate from Southern California.

Fans too seem hungry for goods bearing the name of their new team.

“The phone lines are 10 times busier than normal,” said Tom Noblitt, president of Superstars, a national sportswear company with a distribution center in south St. Louis County. “I’ve had calls from people who want to buy authentic helmets. One person wanted to buy 50 authentic jerseys. These are people who don’t even know who the players are on the team yet. People in St. Louis are starving for football.”

A total of 350 companies are licensed to sell official St. Louis Rams memorabilia, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said. But the league must first approve the styles and designs. “The licensees have been inundating our fax machines with designs,” he said.

The NFL began approving some of them shortly after the Rams move was approved by league owners at a meeting in Dallas on Wednesday. McCarthy said all of the designs were expected to be reviewed prior to Friday.

So items that can be produced quickly--T-shirts and bumper stickers, for example--could be on sale as early as Friday, McCarthy said. Caps should be on store shelves within the next week and jackets should be available in three to four months--just in time for the Rams’ first season in St. Louis.

Employees at Sports Print in Creve Coeur, Mo., were cranking up their presses, preparing to print thousands of Rams T-shirts on Thursday afternoon after learning the league had approved their design.

“It’s a good feeling,” spokeswoman Cheri Haines said. “We’ve had hundreds of calls from people asking ‘Are they there yet, are they there yet?’ ”

The St. Louis Rams will retain the navy blue and gold colors, and the ram horn logo will remain the same for at least the 1995 season, McCarthy said.