Walk up to Shamrock Pub in LaSalle Park on a Sunday and you might think you’ve wandered into Buffalo. The red-brick building glows with neon beer signs, royal blue jerseys spill out the door, and flags cover the storefront windows. This is Bills Mafia territory, and nobody here is shy about it.
NFL fan clubs exist in every city, but in St. Louis they carry extra weight. It’s been a decade since Stan Kroenke moved the Rams back to Los Angeles, taking the city’s pro team, a chunk of revenue, and, most painfully, a shared rallying point. Ever since, local football fans have been searching for somewhere to belong.
For plenty of them, sticking with the Rams isn’t an option anymore. And cheering for the nearby Kansas City Chiefs feels almost like betrayal, since Chiefs owner Clark Hunt voted against moving both the Rams and the Chargers to Los Angeles’s SoFi Stadium, preferring to move only the Rams.
“When the Rams left, it was very frustrating,” says Bills Mafia member James Thompson, sipping a beer in his Buffalo jersey on a warm October evening. “I didn’t want to be a fan of Kansas City, because I felt like they had played a part in it.”
Matt Hamilton, another regular at the pub, says he grew up a Rams fan and felt adrift after the move, hunting for a new team to call his own.
The answer, for Hamilton and many others, looks like this pub. On the night the Bills faced the Rams, the room erupted as Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen threw for a touchdown, the Bills fight song blasting over the speakers while jerseys surged into high-fives and hugs. It was a special night for former Rams fans who had found a new flag to fly.
Across town the following Sunday, the scene is calmer but no less devoted. The Cleveland Browns Backers gather at the Backstreet Jazz & Blues Club in Maryland Heights, tucked inside Westport Mall, where every corner has a TV, a beer, and a cluster of watchers. The Browns are playing Baltimore, and the crowd skews a little older and a little quieter than the Bills crowd, but the loyalty runs just as deep.
Browns Backers Worldwide is one of the biggest fan clubs in pro sports, with chapters on at least five continents. The St. Louis chapter dates back to 1985, started by Scott Lichvar, and longtime members Roman Kordal, Charlie Brinza, and Lichvar himself, all Cleveland natives, have anchored it for decades.
The Browns are famously one of the NFL’s least successful franchises, but that hasn’t loosened anyone’s grip. And these fans know something about losing a team. In 1995, owner Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore for a newer stadium deal and a sweeter arrangement, a gut punch Cleveland never forgot. The city sued, and in 1999 a new expansion team took back the Browns name, colors, and history, while Modell’s relocated club became the Ravens.
St. Louis knows that script too. When the Rams left, the city and county sued over broken league relocation rules, and the settlement came to $790 million. Current Browns Backers chapter president Gary Kubach calls the original Browns move torture, and the parallels are hard to miss.
Back in Maryland Heights, the afternoon comes down to the wire, and Browns kicker Andre Szmyt drills a 37-yard field goal as time expires for a 13-10 win. Meanwhile at Shamrock, the night’s drama is just getting started. Buffalo native EvaLynn Yurcisin, who grew up across the street from Bills great Ed Rutkowski, has brought carrots and homemade Buffalo french onion dip, and she’s passing out blue-and-red plastic chains with Bills Mafia medallions to newcomers.
Yurcisin says the St. Louis Bills crowd has grown sharply since the Rams departure, with many regulars former season ticket holders at the Dome. The anger at the Rams move hasn’t faded, she admits, but the community that formed around it has become something real. “They found us, and it’s so much fun,” she says. “And it’s family. That’s what the word ‘mafia’ means.”
That word, family, comes up again and again. Shamrock owners Pat and Steph McGlynn have turned the pub into a second home, says club president Jake Haggmark, a New York native. People throw birthday parties there. The bar even plans to stay open on Thanksgiving for the Bills-Chiefs game. “We’re building a community outside of just watching sports,” he says.
For St. Louis football fans, these clubs have become the place to land after years of wandering. Staying home to watch alone just isn’t the same, as one Browns Backer puts it. And in overtime, the Bills kick a 45-yard field goal to beat the Rams 37-34, sending Shamrock into a frenzy. Buffalo improves its record, sure, but the real winners are the St. Louisans in that room, who found each other again.
As one fan put it on the way out, “Come back anytime.”
