RISE OF RAMS IS JUST PLAIN ROTTEN.

Byline: STEVE DILBECK

I am ticked. A very cranky scribe. One irate, highly annoyed, ink- stained wretch.

The Rams are on the verge of winning their second Super Bowl in three years and I think I'm gonna be nauseated.

It was hard enough the first time, but this is too much. This sniffs of a true power. Two championships these days and people start throwing around the ``D'' word.

We're talking the St. Louis Rams, which go together like Pittsburgh and ballet.

Two Super Bowl titles for the same cartoonish owner, Georgia Frontiere, and bean-counter team president, John Shaw, who ran the team into the ground and out of the Los Angeles area in '95.

Now they're the best and most entertaining team in the NFL? This is not justice, this is torture. It's indecent and if not unlawful, then Congress just isn't doing its job.

Where is the payback? The first four years the carpetbagger Rams fled Southern California for St. Louis, they got their due. Four losing seasons, 22-42 overall. Those were the days. Made me happy all over.

But this reeks, this has to be Georgia's deal with the devil. It boggles the mind that Georgia and Shaw, with the combined football knowledge of the family dog, could be leading the NFL's most successful franchise.

You're not supposed to be rewarded for stealing, you're supposed to suffer. Supposed to be castigated into the NFL's lower region for all eternity, not have Georgia hold the Super Bowl trophy at midfield and dedicate it to the people of St. Louis. We want Georgia and St. Louis to suffer. Tears would be good.

For almost 50 years the Rams made the Coliseum, and then Anaheim Stadium, their home. But when those larcenists from St. Louis dangled their millions, Georgia bailed like Ponce de Leon had just offered a ride.

Leigh Steinberg, the super agent and model for ``Jerry McGuire,'' was leading the Save the Rams group trying to keep the team in Anaheim with a partially public-funded stadium when Orange County had the rotten timing to go bankrupt.

``Which tended to put a hitch in our plans,'' he said.

So Georgia took her sideline hugs and kisses to St. Louis and the Trans World Dome, or whatever they're calling it this week.

``Given that my first professional football was with my father taking me to see Ram games in the Coliseum, there's still something that seems illegitimate and wrong about them being the St. Louis Rams,'' Steinberg said. ``And it never will change.''

Got that right. The Rams are Norm Van Brocklin, Elroy Hirsch, Deacon Jones, Roman Gabriel, Merlin Olsen and Isiah Robinson at the Coliseum. It's Eric Dickerson, Jackie Slater, Henry Ellard, Kevin Greene and Jerome Bettis in Anaheim.

The Raiders left and half the city didn't notice. The half that's never appeared in a mug file. The Rams left and it was betrayal. It was being left for another man/woman.

They say time heals, but I ain't buying it. At least Steinberg no longer has any players on the Rams.

``It's probably a reasonable thing,'' he said. ``I don't think there is any antipathy at this point. I have had Ram players. But look, there's still twinges. It's difficult. I mean, I try to disconnect these Rams from the Rams of my youth because that was the football team I grew up with, and fell in love with, and the fact that they're not here is still a bitter pill to swallow.

``It's always seemed wrong to me that they ever contemplated moving. For my emotional health, I've sort of disconnected these Rams from our Rams.''

Nice trick if you can pull it off. Me, I prefer a healthy dose of bitterness. Makes for fuel. I mean, we're talking about Georgia Frontiere, the luckiest woman in the history of professional sports.

The woman who inherited the team when her husband, Carroll Rosenbloom, died in a swimming accident. That year, the Rams went to the Super Bowl. Soon after, she fired Rosenbloom's son, Steve, the team president.

Things looked hopeful for Georgia-bashers those first few years in St. Louis, as she continued to fill her media-guide bio with two paragraphs of her football accomplishments and 15 paragraphs of her ``international philanthropy'' and cultural activities.

With the '99 season, you just figured it was a freak. Some strange stroke of luck. It's not like the Rams had a clue as to what they had in quarterback Kurt Warner. He had been third-string the year before when the Rams signed Trent Green to be their starting quarterback and drafted Ohio State's Joe Germaine.

Warner's hard-luck rise made the Rams both exciting and lovable, which really ticked me off. You hoped Georgia was done and would go back to chairing galas to honor Gregory Peck, hanging out at the opera or living in her London condo, not back to designing cutesy Super Bowl rings.

Only now they're back as heavy favorites at the Super Bowl, and with a different head coach and several new starters. It hurts that they're so good.

It's bad enough to be dumped, but it stings all the worse when you have to watch your ex go off to a life of fame and fortune, all happy and everything. Makes for a miserable settlement.

And turns you into one monster Patriots fan.

SUPER BOWL XXXVI 

SUNDAY, 3:15 p.m., Ch. 11