For Santa Clarita Valley resident Andrew Jay Kulick, the Los Angeles Rams aren’t just a local professional sports team.
The Rams are life.
It started with his father, who used to tell him he couldn’t attend Rams games if he wasn’t performing well in school.
Kulick started to flourish in his academics, not for his love of school, but for the opportunity to go to the Rams game that weekend.
“The way that I was told to keep in line in school was if you’re not good in school, you’re not going to the game this weekend. It kept me in line,” Kulick said. “They would tell me that if I didn’t clean up my act, I wasn’t going to the games.”
The 60-year-old lawyer hasn’t missed a Rams home game since he was a child, and has since passed the legacy of being a Rams fan to his entire family.
When the Rams returned to Los Angeles in 2016, he was at training camp with his family and at every home preseason and regular season game.
“I look at it as passing on a legacy. Rams football is a way of life for us. My wife, kids, my in-laws, my mom, my sister, everybody,” he said. “My friends, they all know its a way of life for us.”
Kulick’s law office is decked out in Rams gear, from numerous banners and jerseys lining the walls, to a desk riddled with cups, helmets, footballs and sculptures of rams.
He’s got a custom rams horn his wife Alicia bought him sitting behind his computer, his most expensive piece of memorabilia at $2,500.
He’s also got a letter signed by former Rams head coach John Robinson hanging on his wall, thanking Kulick for a letter he sent expressing his interest in a coaching position.
Though there weren’t any open coaching positions, Kulick said he would have settled to be the Rams waterboy and was thrilled to even get correspondence back.
As for the upcoming Super Bowl, Kulick will be attending a VIP party in Las Vegas, where he will watch the game with friends and family.
While he would love to attend the Super Bowl, he is a little superstitious.
“One of the reasons I could not go to Atlanta is I consider myself a jinx in big games. The Rams had contacted me and asked me if I would like to go to the game and they’d keep two tickets at will call for me but I had to say thanks, but no thanks.”
Though he’s been to hundreds of games and been a part of countless big moments, his most memorable game came this season, when the Rams defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 54-51.
He also thinks running back Todd Gurley will have a big game in the Super Bowl and considers defensive tackle Aaron Donald his favorite current player.
“My current favorite player is Aaron Donald, and the reason I say that is I’ve seen enough football in my lifetime to know all the greats, having read all the books, having seen all the films,” he said. “There is nobody playing defensive tackle or has ever played defensive tackle that holds a candle to Aaron Donald. He’s the greatest defensive tackle I have ever seen, bar none.”
Through the good times and the bad, Kulick’s love for the Rams has never wavered.
He’s been waiting for this moment for a lifetime and is glad that the Rams will face off against the New England Patriots, the team that beat his beloved Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI that sparked the Patriots dynasty.
And he’s proud that his team is back home.
“This isn’t St. Louis, it isn’t Cleveland where they started. This is the Los Angeles Rams. I spent all of my life sitting there from 1958 to 1993 watching that team play football,” he said.
But more so than anything, his passion for the Rams circles back to the time he spent watching his favorite team with his father.
“When people see me and know that I’m the craziest Rams fan, the Rams No. 1 fan or whatever they want to call me, all this is an expression of my love for this team.” he said. “It’s what I hold onto with my father, it’s my last connection to him. Every time I see those horns, every time I see that helmet I’m thinking about my dad.
“He never got to experience a Rams Super Bowl so whenever we win one, this isn’t for me, this is for him up there.”
