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September 5, 2016 at 8:49 pm #52312znModerator
Cracking the code: Kevin Demoff helps Rams find their way back to L.A.
Sam Farmer
http://www.latimes.com/sports/rams/la-sp-rams-kevin-demoff-20160904-snap-story.html
All Kevin Demoff wanted to do was get on with the basketball game. But everyone else on the court was frozen in place, transfixed by the familiar, hulking man in the stands. It was Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino, who had slipped into the gymnasium of the small school in Brentwood to watch Kevin, the fourth-grade son of his agent, try his hand at point guard.
“The other nine kids on the court were just staring at Dan,” Demoff recalled. “And I’m like, ‘Hey, we’ve got a game to win here.’ I didn’t even think about it.”
As the football world would learn decades later, Demoff is unruffled by the big stage. The Rams’ top executive, whose childhood was steeped in pro football, was an integral figure in untangling the most confounding knot in professional sports. Demoff, 39, was key in bringing the NFL back to Los Angeles for the first time in 22 years.
It was Rams owner Stan Kroenke who had resources and vision for a transformational stadium project at Hollywood Park, but Demoff was the point guard when it came to selling that Inglewood concept to the rest of the league.
“I’m fortunate to have the tutelage of Stan, who has really pioneered how you combine resources and sports in a way that has never been done before,” said Demoff, the Rams’ executive vice president of football operations and chief operating officer. “I’m grateful for his mentorship. He pushes our team for greatness and challenges us to envision the impossible.”
In January, what once was impossible became a reality. By a 30-2 vote, NFL owners chose the Inglewood project over a competing plan in Carson jointly backed by the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders.
“In my 45 years in the movie business, I’ve heard some very exciting pitches for movies,” said Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants and an Oscar-winning film producer. “Kevin’s pitch for the Rams’ new stadium at Hollywood Park was just as powerful. He was passionate, informative, prepared and dynamic. … It was like watching a great trailer for a movie.”
The rail-thin Demoff, who seemed to grow grayer by the day, was under intense pressure in recent years as he fought the stadium battles in St. Louis and navigated a new path in Los Angeles, where so many others had tried and failed to get football venues built.
Many Rams fans in St. Louis revile Demoff, accusing him of being an architect of a deception. They argue Kroenke was determined to relocate the team to Los Angeles, and only paid lip service, by way of Demoff, to staying in St. Louis.
Demoff said suspicions surfaced even before arbitrators ruled in favor of the Rams in early 2013, paving the way for the team to get out of its lease two years later.
“When you work at a team, your job is to build an emotional connection with the fan base,” Demoff said. “The [St. Louis] stadium situation always gave reason for fans to not completely commit to you. Because in the back, deep part of their minds, there were stadium issues that were unresolved. And even worse, it was a city that had lost a team before.”
In the summer of 2014, when Kroenke took control of the 300 acres at Hollywood Park, the prospect of a move back to Southern California became more real.
“Now you had a site that the NFL had long coveted, an owner with the expertise and resources to do it the way the NFL had always wanted to do it, and a team that had the right to relocate,” Demoff said.
“Even then, the best project and opportunity in Los Angeles never guaranteed success. No one had figured out this Rubik’s Cube for so long.”
Problem-solving is in Demoff’s DNA. His father, a former public defender, soared to the top of the sports-representation business by finding creative ways to structure contracts when other agents might fall back on boilerplate solutions.
“He’s creative, he’s patient, he’s fair,” Kevin said of his father. “Ultimately, he just listens, reasons, comes up with solutions. He was always trying to look for a win-win.”
Marvin and Patti Demoff still live in the same Benedict Canyon home where they raised their two children, Kevin and Allison. Before the age of cellphones, the family had four land lines and a fax line, as Marvin liked to be home for dinner and would work there into the night.
Sometimes, Kevin would quietly pick up a phone and eavesdrop on his dad’s negotiations. Other times, he’d sit near his dad and try to imagine what was being said on the other end of the line.
“You’re a kid; you’re always thinking about how you can get one over on your parents,” he said. “That’s your job in life. So I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could negotiate against my father. What would I say? That’s what I basically spent a lot of my childhood doing.”
Marvin, 73, had an all-world stable of clients that included Marino, John Elway, Shannon Sharpe, Junior Seau, Jonathan Ogden and Tim Brown, and Rams such as Jack Youngblood and Jim Everett.
Years ago, the NFL draft started on a Thursday at 5 a.m. on the West Coast and lasted into the night. That was like a holiday in the Demoff household.
“What I loved about the draft was I got to skip that morning of school,” Kevin said. “I had to go to school when the first round was over. So I would always hope for the really long first round with lots of trades. We used to bring in bagels and donuts at 4:30 in the morning, sit in the den in our pajamas and watch.”
Kevin was 6 in 1983, when his dad represented both No. 1 pick Elway and No. 27 Marino. That was the best draft ever for quarterbacks. But what Kevin remembers is another of his father’s clients, running back Curt Warner, watching on TV from their house. After being selected third overall by the Seahawks, he and Kevin spent the rest of the morning shooting baskets.
Although Kevin religiously followed lots of sports, he was partial to football. At 10, he’d spend hours reading football magazines and devising mock drafts. He and his dad were in an early fantasy football league, too, with teams printed on big spreadsheets and scored by hand. They played against lawyers at his dad’s firm, and ran circles around them. One season, he was a ball boy for the Chargers, a club he would later go head-to-head against in the acrimonious stadium derby.
“I became fascinated with the elements of managing a team and how it worked,” he said.
When he went to college at Dartmouth, however, he did not envision working for a team or being an agent. He wanted to be a sportswriter. He was sports editor at the school’s paper, and called games on the college radio station.
Upon graduating, he went to work for a start-up Internet company that eventually got into the business of designing websites for teams. One of his pitches was to the Oakland Raiders, where he met team executive Bruce Allen.
Around that time, Casey Wasserman was starting the Arena Football League’s Los Angeles Avengers, and needed someone to run the personnel side. He called Allen for staffing advice, and Allen suggested he reach out to Demoff, who was 23 at the time. Wasserman, then 24, wound up hiring him.
“What Kevin and I realized is that, if you go and work for an NFL team, you don’t really have a massive impact as a young kid,” Wasserman said. “You only learn what they want you to learn. In the Arena League, we were all in, all responsible for all of it. That was our PhD in sports.”
Demoff said that was his opportunity to learn the team side of the business “and make a ton of mistakes without anybody ever seeing them.”
After four years, he was ready to take the next step.
“Ultimately, I decided I didn’t want my life decided on whether a ball bounced off a net or a post, or went into the stands, and that it was time to grow a skill set,” he said.
Demoff decided to return to business school at Dartmouth, but not before Allen offered him a front-office job with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where he had rejoined former Raiders coach Jon Gruden.
Demoff considered going to the NFL, but eventually opted for graduate school. “Why don’t you do both?” Allen said, and brought him on as an unpaid intern. He would send projects to Demoff at Dartmouth, then bring him down for the Senior Bowl, scouting combine and training camp.
“Kevin grew up the same way as I did,” said Allen, son of Hall of Fame coach George Allen. “It was from a slightly different perspective, but he had the same understanding of the game, the league, the players and the coaches, because of not only Marvin’s presence in the league but his domination of the league.”
The day after Demoff graduated, he was with the Buccaneers as a full-time employee, and he and his wife, Jenn, set up shop in Tampa. While living there, they would have their daughter, Claire.
A few years later, they would move to St. Louis, where Kevin took a job with the Rams, and Jenn had their son, Owen. Demoff was in his early 30s and running an NFL franchise.
“I’m not naive,” he said. “I got a lot of opportunities in my life and football because of my last name, and I’m grateful for that. I didn’t deserve the Avengers job when I got it. I didn’t deserve the Rams job when I got it. Both were taking leaps of faith on me based on my father and what he’d done, and somewhat based on my career. You hope from there you can go earn it.”
In January, at a Houston hotel, Demoff delivered his final presentation of Kroenke’s vision to the rest of the NFL owners. After a series of votes, Inglewood beat Carson in a landslide, and the Rams were given the green light to return to Los Angeles. Since, the Rams moved, traded up for the No. 1 pick and helped secure a Super Bowl for Inglewood at the end of the 2020 season.
“It’s surreal,” said Patti Demoff, a college counselor. “They’re here, but it almost feels like an out-of-body experience. I have to keep reminding myself the Rams aren’t just here visiting.”
Both of his parents point to the fact that Demoff was a history major at Dartmouth, with an emphasis in art history. They said his creative side allows him to look at problems from many different angles, and to see solutions others might miss.
“What it allowed him to do is really get Stan’s vision and be able to explain it to others,” Marvin said. “When he showed you a picture of what Inglewood is going to look like, he could see the art form, the vision, and be passionate about that vision the way people would be passionate about a piece of art.”
Of course, with the Demoffs, it all comes down to the art of the deal. Father and son will be on the opposite sides of the table in the coming days as they hammer out details of an expected contract extension for Rams Coach Jeff Fisher, represented by Marvin.
“It’s like playing chess or checkers against yourself,” Kevin said. “Our styles are so similar, you focus on the same things. So you always wind up in a draw or stalemate. I can always tell when we’ve reached the logical conclusion of a negotiation, because I’ll say, ‘Do you have any other solutions?’ and he says, ‘No . . . but I raised you better than this.’”
Marvin has a picture on his desk from Patti’s 40th birthday party in 1987. It’s of the family, grouped together at the Hollywood Park finish line. A great memory. Kevin has already planned an updated shot to go with it: the family, much larger now, standing at midfield of the new stadium when it opens in 2019 — a different kind of finish line.
- This topic was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by zn.
September 5, 2016 at 8:52 pm #52314znModeratorSt. Louis fans mourning the loss of the Rams
By Vincent Bonsignore, Los Angeles Daily News
http://www.dailynews.com/sports/20160904/st-louis-fans-mourning-the-loss-of-the-rams
ST. LOUIS >> For 21 years Lois Linton had a tradition while attending St. Louis Rams games — of which she did at a remarkable rate through the two decades they called this blue-collar Midwest city home.
Win or lose, through the glorious years and the historically bad, she arrived early at the Edward Jones Dome armed with the signs of support she hand crafted, yelled and cheered till her voice nearly gave out, and then stayed until the very last Rams player left the field.
“Right through the postgame prayer at the middle of the field, and not a moment before,” said Linton, who, along with her late husband were ardent Rams fans from the day they arrived in St. Louis from Los Angeles in 1994.
No matter the final score, whether the Rams were victorious or not, the passionate, colorful fan that came to be known as Sign Lady around these parts left the dome with a sense of hope.
There was a winning streak to build on the next week or a chance to get back on the right track following a tough lose. The playoffs awaited, or an offseason offering a chance to improve and get stronger so that next season would be better than the last.
“The Rams were such a big part of my life, after all,” she said.
But search as she might to tap into that faith last Dec. 17 after the Rams closed out their final home game of 2015, she kept coming up empty.
“In the pit of my stomach, I knew it was over,” Linton said, he voice cracking.
There was no next game to turn to or even a next season. And as Linton watched her Rams leave the field after beating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers it might as well have been a plane to Los Angeles that was waiting for them outside their locker room.
The 21-year love affair between the Rams and St. Louis was over. And Linton didn’t need a big fancy meeting in Houston or a 30-2 vote by NFL owners or Commissioner Roger Goodell to officially declare it.
“That’s when the tears came,” said Linton.
Behind her, more than 10,000 Rams fans filled the Edward Jones Dome to gather and cheer and cry and hug and share their Rams memories one last time.
With a tip of the cap to St. Louis legend and former Rams great Isaac Bruce, who pulled together a Legends of the Dome event last July in which Rams greats like Kurt Warner and Dick Vermiel and Marc Bulger and Mike Martz and Torry Holt and Ricky Proehl and Az Hakim and Mike Jones and so many others played a charity flag football game in downtown St. Louis.
“He’s a good man for doing this,” said longtime Rams fan Rob Brockelmeyer.
The event was to raise money for Bruce’s foundation, but it went even deeper than that for a bunch of fans that came decked out in Warner and Marshall Faulk and Holt jerseys.
“This is closure for many of us,” and Brockelmeyer.
He was talking about the St. Louisans with blue and gold blood running though their veins upon falling in love with the Rams and climbing all the way up to the sky with them, only to plunge fast and furiously downward during a 21-year rollercoaster ride that delivered the only Super Bowl championship in franchise history, followed by a historically bad decade-long run in which the Rams went 15-65, and then came to an abrupt end when the Rams were approved to move back to Los Angeles last January.
“It was an unbelievable run — wasn’t always great mind you, but we always had their back,” said longtime fan Charlie Franke.
And as they are left picking up the pieces, they wonder how they’ll spend their Sunday afternoons without the Rams or whether they’ll still care at all when they line up to play as the L.A. Rams.
For every fan who kicked them to the curb upon getting approved for relocation — and social media confirms there are many — another vows to stick with them in spite of the 2,000 miles standing between them.
“Just look around,” Brockelmeyer said. “There’s a lot of fans who will stick it out here today, still wanting to support them. I’m one of them.”
It’s as awkward as it is painful.
For St. Louis, the vote by NFL owners in Houston that sent the Rams back to Los Angeles ended an ugly and contentious year-long relocation process that left St. Louis feeling betrayed and lied to by the NFL.
They point to the league’s relocation guidelines, which St. Louis was led to believe would be ardently followed only — in their eyes — to get tossed aside as if it was a meaningless piece of paper in order to accommodate a billionaires wishes to move to greener pastures.
A quest many in St. Louis now believe Rams owner Stan Kroenke began plotting the moment St. Louis rejected an arbitrators ruling to pay $700 million in renovations to the Edward Jones Dome and triggered a clause in the original lease the Rams signed upon moving to St. Louis that enabled them to go year-to-year with the EJD and look elsewhere for a new home.
In retrospect, that decision left them helpless to stand in the way of a billionaires wishes.
“With an owner intent on only one thing, the right to go year to year on the lease, and a tightly written lease that provided no room for negotiation without a willing owner, there is little that we could have done differently,” said Kitty Ratcliffe, the head of the Saint Louis Convention & Visitors Commission, which operated the EJD.
There is almost as much anger for the NFL as there is Kroenke for how the league and the six-member L.A. owners committee kept urging them on to follow through on plans to help finance a new stadium for the Rams.
And in doing so, created a false sense of hope things would work out.
Only to be told by the NFL in the closing moments that the $1 billion riverfront stadium proposal St. Louis leaders worked nearly a year to deliver fell short of the league’s goal line.
“St. Louis did everything the NFL asked it to do. We spent $17 million doing it,” said Jeff Rainford, a longtime St. Louis political figure and former Chief of Staff to Mayor Francis Slay. “The NFL owners committee with oversight on this matter voted for us to keep our team. Then, 15 minutes after the vote, it was like it never happened.”
But even worse, St. Louis was left wounded when its good name was dragged through the mud in order to justify the Rams move west in a scathing relocation application that painted St. Louis as unable to properly support an NFL team while also backing the baseball Cardinals and hockey Blues.
“That’s the part I’ll never quite understand or accept,” said Brockelmeyer. “It was ridiculous and ludicrous and disrespectful.”
Added Franke: “They didn’t need to kick us on their way out of town like that. That wasn’t right.”
In the Rams 29-page relocation application to fellow owners, Kroenke pointed to a loss of population and a lack of local economic infrastructure as reasons St. Louis can’t adequately support three professional teams and that, despite plunging money into the team, attendance at Rams games had fallen below league average levels.
It was an unfortunate aspect of a process that pitted the Rams against the Oakland Raiders’ and San Diego Chargers’ competing stadium bid in nearby Carson, and with all three teams vying for the lone spot available in Los Angeles, things were said to state their cases.
But for St. Louisans, it was a kick in the stomach from a fellow Missourian who felt compelled to right a wrong and help the league solve the complex Los Angeles issue.
And that was tough to swallow, according to Rainford.
“We St. Louisans can from time to time be hard on ourselves. We know we are not perfect. But, a lot of people are especially angry at the way Stan blasted St. Louis on his way out the door,” said Rainford, who also had some choice words for the NFL.
“How Roger Goodell was so elated at the news conference to announce that we were losing our team,” Rainford said. “It hasn’t helped that no one from the NFL has apologized, or had the courage to come to St. Louis to explain the process, or at least had the courtesy to use the old break up line, “it wasn’t you, it was me.”
In St. Louis, the consensus is the NFL essentially co-piloted Kroenke’s plane back to L.A., knowing his deep pockets and ambitious $2.7 billion stadium and entertainment hub he was proposing in Inglewood were the perfect combination to fill the league’s 21-year-old hole in the second-biggest market in the country.
“In no way was (the process) fair. The ground was laid for the move when Kroenke gained controlling ownership of the team in October 2010, and the plan was put in motion one month after the CVC officially informed the Rams in July, 2013, that they would not pay the $750 million necessary to renovate the Dome,” said longtime St. Louis sportswriter and radio personality Howard Balzer.
NFL sources argued throughout the process and in the months since that the St. Louis task force tasked with putting together a stadium deal was kept in the loop on where the NFL stood with their efforts.
In the league’s eyes, St. Louis fell short by altering the proposal more than once and that, in spite of explicit guidance to get the deal back to the original form to give themselves a legitimate chance to keep the team, St. Louis remained on a path that left the NFL little choice but to side with Kroenke.
“It was a recipe for failure,” a high-ranking NFL source said.
Through a spokesman, St. Louis Stadium Task Force head Dave Peacock declined comment for this story, but the NFL’s account of what unfolded has been verified by multiple sources.
And in fact, NFL vice president Eric Grubman, who was in charge of the league’s Los Angeles relocation process, went on St. Louis radio shortly before the January owners vote and warned St. Louis it was marching down an ill-advised stadium path.
Multiple league officials contacted for this story suggest some in St. Louis didn’t heed the warnings or simply heard what they wanted to hear — some of which might have been forwarded to aid the Raiders and Chargers competing Los Angeles stadium bid in nearby Carson — rather than the harsher feedback about their stadium effort.
“The flaw may have been listening to the wrong (people),” an NFL source said.
That doesn’t help the anger and disappointment for a bunch of fans who supported the Rams through the good years and the bad. Most of whom felt stuck in the middle of the NFL’s quest to get back to Los Angeles and the billionaire owners financial might to make it happen.
“It’s more frustration than anything else,” said Rams fan Leonard Meyer. “From the beginning, everything that was said, you knew they were going to move. They never gave us a chance. And really, there wasn’t anything we could do to stop it.”
September 6, 2016 at 8:39 am #52322DakParticipantImagine an alternative universe where Stan Kroenke worked with St. Louis civic leaders to keep the Rams in St. Louis. Do you think the Rams would have moved to Los Angeles?
One thing I will never accept is that SK decided to move because St. Louis couldn’t support the Rams. If this team wasn’t historically bad, I doubt there would have ever been an issue with attendance or a perceived lack of support.
September 6, 2016 at 8:45 am #52323znModeratorImagine an alternative universe where Stan Kroenke worked with St. Louis civic leaders to keep the Rams in St. Louis. Do you think the Rams would have moved to Los Angeles?
I know…speaking as a nomad, that’s my view too. Nothing obligates owners to act like “growing the brand” is more important than community ties.
September 6, 2016 at 3:36 pm #52347bnwBlockedStanK sucks.
The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.
Sprinkles are for winners.
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