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This is all going to be very interesting when it gets to the finish line.
It’s musical chairs and someone is not getting a chair.
The team that “feels” like the odd team out is Oakland. Maybe that’s just because they’ve been the quietest team during all this. There is no doubt that the Chargers and Rams are full speed ahead toward L.A. but because their moves involve two different stadiums, something has to give somewhere. At some point the NFL will have to get Spanos and Kroenke and Davis in a room and lock the door and not come out until it’s all sorted out and even then–if things go badly you have to wonder if teams will say “screw it” and do what they want to do anyway.
I still feel, at the end of the day, that somehow it’s going to be the Rams and Chargers but nothing is carved in stone yet.
We’ll see.
Oakland does feel like the odd team out.
1. In the survey of the LA market, there was a great deal of interest in the Rams, some in the Chargers, and little for the Raiders. In fact, there was some negative response to the Raiders.
2. The Raiders are the poorest team. They can’t do anything without help. They can’t build a stadium. How are they going to pay a relocation fee?
3. The Raiders have the shakiest ownership. I didn’t know this before now, but apparently Davis is going to have to pass through inheritance issues where Chip and Lucia could not. A Raiders sale? Subsidize a team moving to LA when ownership could be uncertain soon?
In contrast, Kroenke is a titan financially, and has an entire complex ready to go, and can afford to pay the NFL a substantial fee, plus provide an entire Super Bowl party venue.
I do not think the Raiders have any control of their destiny. Whatever is going to happen to them in the next decade is going to happen TO them. Davis can say whatever he wants about the Raiders’ destiny. I think their destiny is going to be determined by 31 other owners.
And I’m with WV. I don’t want the Rams to share a stadium.
1. I have lived in Southern California my entire life. I would like to see them come back, but I am certainly not getting my hopes up that it will happen.
2. I think it is clear that St. Louis has made the best case for the team not leaving its market. If the League goes by that criteria, the Rams will not be given permission to move to LA.
3. If the League is looking for the best opportunity for the team in LA to succeed, I think that the only choice is for the Rams to move, alone, to LA. Dumping two teams (especially the Raiders and the Chargers) into this market simultaneously is a recipe for one and maybe both of the teams to fail miserably. In my opinion it will doom both teams to try and take over this market as competitors while working together to make the stadium profitable.
4. If I am the Raiders, if I move to LA it will necessarily be as a package with either the Chargers or the Rams. The Raiders, who still have a following in LA, nevertheless will have a lot of trouble attracting corporate sponsorships in my opinion. This is especially true if the Rams or Chargers are also vying for the same business. I am not sure how the Raiders come out ok in any scenario.
5. It is rumored that the relocation fee will be up to $500M. If a team such as the Chargers have to pay that to move to LA, why wouldn’t they just use the $300M that the City of San Diego is asking for to build them their own home in SD? And how can the Raiders, with little or no means, pay the relocation fee to move to LA?
6. If the League said “go ahead, all three teams can move,” would they? Would Oakland move and be the third team in the mix, diluting the fans/sponsors/money even further? Would this game of chicken scare off the Chargers and Raiders while not appearing to play favorites?
7. It is often questioned whether Kroenke can muster the 21 votes to move, but a separate question is whether he can stir up 7 votes to keep the Chargers from moving? The longer this plays out, the more likely the Chargers or the Raiders will be able to work out something with their home market.
8. I don’t think anyone is selling their team. And nobody is buying the Broncos. And I don’t think the Riverfront stadium ever gets built.
9. If the Chargers and Raiders move, I do not understand why one team has to change conferences. That makes no sense to me. I have never heard an explanation as to why this is the case, unless it is a rule I haven’t heard of.
10. I wonder what the crowds are going to be like in the Dome this year. I remember what it was like in ’94, and it wasn’t pretty. Hopefully the Rams will be in the middle of that turnaround season we have all been waiting for and it bring lots of fans to the Dome.
Isiah 58
11. One the one hand, you can say that St. Louis is offering roughly $450M in public money to buy a stadium – how can the Rams turn that down? But in Kroenke’s mind, this smallish outdoor stadium with no personal ownership and diminished revenue streams with no hope for a Super Bowl and in which he had little to no input (his choice) is in lieu of a state of the art, $1.8B LA stadium that he will have ownership rights in, uncounted revenue streams, trebles his franchise value, and which he personally oversaw the design and creation of. Can the owners say that he has to take the St. Louis proposal for the good of the league?
12. I have never thought that SK would sell the Rams, even if he lost this fight. NFL franchises are just too hard to come by, and they are profit machines like no other. But the thought occurred to me that if Stan cannot muster 7 other owners to block the Chargers from moving, then he truly may feel like the owners shunned him. How cannot he not have at least 7 other owners in his pocket to make this play in the first place? In that case, would he resort to fight or flight?
13. The NFL has long held the belief that the LA market is a crowned jewel, a holy grail waiting for the bravest knight to pull the sword from the stone. They have held onto this treasure for 20 years, and it has served the NFL very well, getting new stadiums built in various cites around the league. It strikes me as odd that the NFL will now give this prized treasure to two owners, Spanos and Davis, who have so little means that they both need league support just to get their stadium built, and have flailed in their own markets without any hint of a move to LA until Kroenke made his play. Why reward these two owners for their apparent incompetence, sitting on their hands for years but accomplishing nothing? What did they do to deserve the LA market? Fortune favors the bold.
“Marge, don't discourage the boy! Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel.” - Homer Simpson
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