With Coach Dick Vermeil riding a wagon...

With Coach Dick Vermeil riding a wagon pulled by the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales, tens of thousands of fans lined the streets of downtown St. Louis for a parade honoring the Super Bowl champion Rams.

Players rode in trucks behind the wagon pulling Vermeil and his wife, Carol.

“Thank you very much world champions,� Vermeil told the crowd. “As a representative of these guys, the management and the coaching staff, I’d like to thank you for your support. I’d like to you to know that the Rams aren’t world champions. St. Louis is world champions.�

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Vermeil, after holding in his emotions after the Rams’ victory Sunday, was moved to tears Monday morning while addressing the media in Atlanta.

When asked if he had cried at all the night before, Vermeil’s eyes welled up and the tears began to flow.

“The only time I shed tears was for my mother,� he said. His mother died five years ago, and Vermeil’s brother reminded him she had said he would go back and coach a Super Bowl winning team.

“God, was she right,� he said sniffling. “I didn’t think she was, but she was.�

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Exiled San Francisco 49er co-owner Eddie DeBartolo won’t be returning to the team any time in the future despite the end of his yearlong NFL suspension today.

“It’s just not in the cards,� said Sam Singer, a spokesman for controlling club owner Denise DeBartolo York, who with her husband, John York, assumed management of the team two years ago when her brother ran into legal problems.

“No one has discussed Eddie coming back, neither Eddie’s side nor Denise and John York’s. There’s no change at all.�

DeBartolo ran the team for 20 years, during which the 49ers won five Super Bowls. He quit as the club’s chairman and left a managing role with the family business in December 1997 after he became entangled in a Louisiana gambling fraud and extortion case.

Last March, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue suspended DeBartolo for the 1999 season and fined him $1 million. The sanctions followed DeBartolo’s guilty plea to failing to report a felony arising from the criminal case, which also involves former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards.