Future fans of the L.A. Rams celebrate at the site of the future stadium in Inglewood this week. Damian Dovarganes/AP

Two NFL teams—the Rams and the Chargers—look to be heading to the city at roughly the same time. How will locals choose which team to root for?

This week, the National Football League answered a question that has lingered over America’s cities since Christmas Eve of 1994. That’s the fateful day that professional football left Los Angeles. Ever since, NFL teams have threatened to move there, mostly to extort better stadium deals from their host cities. Now that the St. Louis Rams are moving (back) to the city—for real this time, and with the San Diego Chargers potentially returning right alongside them—the inglorious history of L.A. football is back. With this news comes several new questions for football. Should the Oakland Raiders, stymied in their own attempts to move (back) to L.A., move to San Antonio instead? Will St. Louis Rams fans embrace the River City Raiders indoor football team? (Pity St. Louis, the city isn’t handling this news well. The /r/StLouisRams thread on Reddit—its official status already transferred to /r/LosAngelesRams—reads like a group therapy session.)

And for football fans in L.A., there’s one big question to answer: Are you going to root for the Rams, or the Chargers? No bandwagoning here This would be the first time in NFL history, and maybe in professional sports history altogether, that two teams playing the same sport in the same league have moved into a city at the same time. Sports fans who have grown up in a football-less L.A. may of course already have a team (with good odds it’s either the Raiders or the Chargers) and understandably—honorably, even—will want to stick with them. But other L.A. sports fans, and especially fans going forward, are going to want to adopt a brand new L.A. team. Relocation works a little like expansion. There’s no bad juju in adopting a team that’s new to town. The case for the Los Angeles Rams They played in Los Angeles longer, and at 7-9 over the last season, they’re the better team. The Rams aren’t a great team, but they’ve got Todd Gurley II, a record-breaking rookie running back (and fantasy football favorite) who will shine brightly in a city that loves its stars. He’s the kind of running back that will make super-fans out of football-curious Angelenos. Or, if not true fans, at least apparel-purchasing ones. Beyond Gurley’s star-power (and the Chargers’ lack thereof), the Rams’ biggest advantage is the fact that it looks like they’re moving to the city first. Tuesday’s vote by NFL owners means the Rams will start the 2016 season at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, while they wait for a new facility to be constructed in Inglewood. Expect the team to take advantage of the opportunity to market themselves as the authentic face of L.A. football.

That won’t be a hard sell: The Rams have only been gone from L.A. for 20 years. More than that, though, Rams owner Stan Kroenke appears to get L.A. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said the new stadium will attract L.A.’s celebrities, much in the way the Lakers do with Jack Nicholson. “We've designed concepts throughout the stadium that allow entertainers to basically sit outside but in a way that allows them to be differentiated,” Kroenke said. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... The case for the Los Angeles Chargers (Beckett Auctions) Historically speaking, there isn’t much of a case here. The Chargers played their first season in L.A. in 1960 before the team moved to San Diego, where they’ve played ever since. Don’t count on that many Chargers die-hards welcoming them back home. In most respects, the Bolts are going to have a tougher go of it. By all indications, a deal between the Chargers and the Rams will be worked out over the next few weeks, but the Chargers may not actually move for at least a season. And if that’s how it plays out, they may well have missed the L.A. welcome wagon by then. Worse still, the Chargers could end up playing the 2016 season in San Diego—potentially after the team has already decided to abandon their existing fans. That’s going to be a brutal year for Dean Spanos, the Chargers’ owner, and for Bolts Nation, wherever exactly it stands by next season. Such a scenario could very well shred one of the Chargers’ advantages in the hunt for L.A. fandom: The team has a huge base of Chargers fans just a short drive from L.A., in San Diego. Of course, if the Chargers do ultimately decide stay in San Diego, then that’s the ballgame. The case for the Oakland Raiders? The Raiders left L.A. for Oakland the same year as the Rams, but they stayed closer to home. While Raiders owner Mark Davis would love nothing more to move the team to a larger California market where it already has a pre-existing constituency, it’s not in the cards—especially not if Davis has already purchased land to build a stadium between Austin and San Antonio in Texas. Related Story The Inglorious History of Los Angeles Football Right now, L.A. is the most important football city on the map. But that's been true for a long time. So this complicates the map: The Raiders had previously signaled an interest in moving to San Diego if the Chargers decamp for L.A. Under that scenario, it’s possible to imagine longtime Bolts fans abandoning the team in disgust and signing on as Raiders fans instead. A development like that could totally neutralize the post-move Chargers’ base. (At 4-12, the Chargers aren’t exactly making a case for themselves.) But a Raiders move is anything but sure. If it is true, as it’s been reported, that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones led the campaign to stymie Davis’s efforts to relocate to L.A., then Jones is damned sure not going to want Davis to move the team a few hours south of the Dallas Cowboys on I-35.