If we have (almost) learned anything in sports over the past three or four decades, it is this:

Don’t get too cozy with your professional sports heroes or your sports teams.

And that pertains particularly to the National Football League — which today committed to sending the Rams to Greater Los Angeles in time for the 2016 season.

It should not be missed by anyone that the Rams are the same franchise who did this move in reverse 21 years ago — going from SoCal to St. Louis.

Here is a guide to dealing with professional sports teams/players:

–They owe you nothing. Remember that. Clubs exists to make money. Players play for pay. The latter may have a bit of an emotional connection to the team and the city, but they get over it. You should, too.

–The NFL is particularly mercenary; you would be hard-pressed to find a major sports league that is more so. The Rams are moving to Inglewood, to be specific, and the San Diego Chargers or Oakland Raiders still may join them. And if one of them moves that would make nine NFL franchise shifts since 1982. (Five of them involving the Los Angeles market, by the way.)

–If you want to make an emotional connection to a team that is neither childish nor silly, try your local high school or college. It is generally safe to support USC and UCLA or the prep team from down the street.

–Spend money on the local professional sports team like you would any other form of entertainment. You go to a movie theater, and you enjoy the experience, but if the theater closes or moves away from your neighborhood you do not weep or express bitterness and betrayal. (A young man who writes for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch suffered a bad case of bitter after the NFL/Rams move. And the rich part of this is that St. Louis took the Rams from L.A. in the first place. But that apparently was OK.)

–Do not get a tattoo celebrating a local pro sports team. You may be mocked, if that team leaves.

We should concede the Rams moving back makes the most sense, from the three teams looking to move, as noted in the previous entry on this site. They were here for 49 years the first time, and sports fans over 30 will remember when they were in SoCal. At times they were the biggest sports story in the region.

The Raiders were relegated to third in line, which is about right, considering they would have little value in Los Angeles. The Chargers? They can come, or they cannot. However it works out.

(The Chargers and their fans and San Diego were the big losers; they are not at all sure what happens next. The Chargers have a one-year period to declare if they want to join the Rams in Inglewood, and however long the wait is for a decision, it will be difficult for everyone down there. If the Chargers turn down the chance to jump to Inglewood, the Raiders get to make that choice. Ugh.)

What will be interesting is to see if fans in Southern California suddenly are all charged up about the Rams and the NFL and overwhelm the Coliseum — where they will play for at least the next three seasons — with their numbers and enthusiasm.

Numbers? Maybe. Enthusiasm? Probably muted, until/unless they are good, and they haven’t made the playoffs in nearly a decade.

Remember, the Inglewood stadium (costing $1.9 billion, at least) will be built using private money. (The public might be on the hook for some infrastructure.)

For a generation, the L.A. area declined to spend public money to build a new stadium, which the NFL required. (Now we see if San Diego has the temerity to do the same.)

The major difference is … second-tier cities like St. Louis and San Diego … their brands actually do take a hit when they cannot point to an NFL as an example of what makes them “big league”.

How much is that worth? St. Louis, in 1995, thought it was worth hundreds of millions to build the stadium that the Rams went to play in — only for the team to be able to claim, after 21 years, it was no longer “top tier” among NFL stadiums and escape the lease.

Now that I think of it, Los Angeles may have the most transactional of relationships with pro sports teams of any city in the country. The Rams originally came from Cleveland, now from St. Louis. The Dodgers from Brooklyn. The Lakers from Minneapolis, the Clippers from San Diego.

Teams go to Los Angeles because they think they can make money. Generally, they are correct, and we all are allowed to be interested in watching the games.

Just don’t think it is forever. It isn’t some sort of contract, and “aloof” is the healthiest way to approach it.