No position has held the luster as brightly as the Ram's running back.

The Rams have been blessed with hot running backs year after year throughout history.

Consider names from the past such as Eric Dickerson (NFL's all-time single season record-holder), Willie Ellison, Lawrence McCutcheon, Dick Bass, Greg Bell, Jerome Bettis, Charles White, Wendell Tyler, Tank Younger and Dan Towler. The Rams have almost always been loaded in the backfield with a guy who can push the ball up the field play after play.

Ever since Grantland Rice immortalized the Notre Dame backfield by comparing it to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, sportswriters have striven to come up with similar eponyms that would preserve certain players or teams for posterity.

Only occasionally have they succeeded, however.

In pro football, one of the few such appellations to stick belongs to the Los Angeles Rams' storied Bull Elephant Backfield of Dick Hoerner, Paul (Tank) Younger and Dan (Deacon) Towler.

Together with quarterbacks Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin, the Elephants amassed 5,506 total yards, a team single season record which has stood for many years.

Towler registered the most impressive statistics of the Bulls. In six seasons (1950-55), he picked up 3,493 yards and posted an average gain of 5.2 yards per carry.

"The idea tor the bull elephants," Dan recalled, "came during the 1950 season. We were playing a game in a sea of mud, and the coaches alternated backfields hoping to rest us. The coach then realized he had three fullbacks of equal running ability and saw what a powerful weapon he would have with two 200 pounders leading a third.

"The next season, all of us were used together in rushing situations, as the year progressed, we were used as a unit more and more. We won the title that year, and I feel the `51 Rams was one of the greatest teams ever."

TANK YOUNGER

DEACON DAN TOWLER

JON ARNETT

OLLIE MATSON

DICK BASS

Bass spent nine years with the Los Angeles Rams, rushing for 1,033 yards in 1962 and 1,090 yards in 1966, when the NFL season was 14 games long.

LES JOSEPHSON AND WILLIE ELLISON