reporters on the Rams move (1/14 & 1/15)

zn wrote:

and have a less reliable recollection that the stadium committee received updates sometime after that.

I am sorry to be in a (minor) controversy where I can’t hold up my end. I can’t bring myself, right now, to dissect the details. But, at least what I was trying to say was, I read somewhere that the material the committee received was not shared in the owners meeting—only Goodell’s reaction to that material was…

What I do stand by is the idea that making this all about product growth is not inevitable, that’s a choice. The league chose to live with a paradox in which the 2 teams that need updated venues got left out (though that’s murkier with the Chargers) and the 1 team whose community was actively doing something got to move. They chose “produce growth” over community. And I don’t think that choice is defensible as “inevitable.” I mean yeah sure this current group of owners think that way, but, that’s not a law of physics. It IS possible to view the whole thing differently, and see community as mattering more.

Well, what I know is that there was a smaller meeting the week before the owners’ meeting when we saw that document of the Rams’ argument for moving. I don’t remember who all was there. I think Davis, Spanos, Kroenke, Goodell, and one of the committees, but I don’t remember which one. LA relocation committee, I suppose.

The interesting thing about that was that a couple of days after that meeting – and SK was taking some heat for torching St. Louis – Goodell came out and said the St. Louis plan was not sufficient. At the time, and certainly in retrospect, that appeared to be that. And furthermore, I think it was the Rams’ proposal that made it clear that SK never had been going rogue. Remember in the early days, we were wondering just how much of this SK was doing on his own i.e. without league’s knowledge or approval, but it is evident the league was aware of his intentions all along, and kept abreast of the purchase of the property, and all the political negotiations with Inglewood.

I remember first seeing the stadium proposal – which was followed hastily by the Carson proposal – and saying back then that there was no way the league was going to try to stop SK. His project was just Too Fucking Sexy. And he had all the financing to do it, so no hassles with bonds etc., and he soon got the political/environmental clearance. I just couldn’t see how SK would have done that without communicating to Goodell and other owners, and I couldn’t believe they would turn down an NFL campus. I mean…Carson was just a stadium. A nice stadium, but that’s all it was. That’s all St. Louis was.

So the only question that ever made me back off my certainty that the Rams would move to LA was, “Is there enough ‘soul’ among the owners to turn this project down?” The issue was twofold. One of personality preference and relationships with Spanos, and the other was the stadium effort that Peacock put together. But I never thought Peacock’s proposal was going to be strong enough because it was just a stadium, and it required money from Kroenke and the NFL. Kroenke is rich enough to pay cash for his own Lamborghini, and St. Louis is offering him a BMW that he is going to have to partially pay for. I just always thought that was a non-starter. Kroenke can afford the Lamborghini, and has already done the shopping. He isn’t going to be attracted to the BMW that he has to pay a big down-payment on, and then pay a lease on for the next 20 years. (It’s interesting that a third issue, that of the greater NEED for a stadium solution, never really got much traction).

So we heard that SK wasn’t liked, and that Spanos IS liked, and that was always just stated as a fact, and I think everybody went along with that because SK doesn’t talk to the media, and the public drank that up willingly, but I never saw a single thing that actually substantiated that claim. The reporters don’t like him because he doesn’t talk to them. The fans don’t like him because he doesn’t talk to the reporters, or to Peacock, and so on. But there really was only rumor that his co-owners didn’t like him. That was fed a bit by LaConfora (whose reporting I grew to be skeptical of over time) who reported several times that the Carson project was favored by the owners. That made no sense. He didn’t report that the NFL thought the Raiders and Chargers had a bigger need, and that there was talk of respect for the St. Louis community. That was never there. Instead, the reports were that the owners preferred the Carson site and stadium proposal. Which really made no sense whatsoever, unless one interpreted that as “we like Spanos a lot better than Stan, but we can’t say that out loud.”

In any event, I never thought – even if all that was true about the popularity contest – that it would matter. Neither proposal had a clear 75%, so it seemed inevitably that it was going to come down to something else. And the only thing that it COULD come down to was “Community Loyalty and Owners’ Needs” on the one hand versus “Shovel-ready Versailles.”

So. Yeah. They chose product growth over community. It didn’t have to be that way. But in retrospect, I don’t know why I doubted momentarily a few weeks ago that they would choose community. I think the only thing that nourished the possibility that they would choose community was this erroneous assumption that Kroenke was doing this as a maverick, and telling the NFL about it the same time it we found out through the media. But they knew all along what Kroenke was doing, told him to go ahead and explore that option, and the way it played out was more-or-less inevitable given that Kroenke’s development plan held MUCH greater appeal than the other plans. Had Spanos/Davis been able to put together a rival project to Inglewood, it might have turned out differently. But it wasn’t going to turn out differently without someone else coming up with a Megaplex Football Vatican.

this is the crown jewel that the league had been wanting. they weren’t going to let it get away. and like has been mentioned here before by others it’s the leverage they’re going to use when negotiating the new TV deal.

i just wonder if this will somehow come back to bite them in the ass. one can hope.

Zooey wrote:

zn wrote:

Agamemnon wrote:

I heard this on the radio. kroenke was the reason St. Louis didn’t get an expansion team. He wouldn’t pay the guy who had the stadium lease what he wanted. StL stalls and the Jags are born. I am not sure who was right. But that was bad on somebody. All I remembered was StL blew it.

That’s interesting.

That could be true only if Kroenke had exclusive rights to own the expansion team, or exclusive rights to negotiate the stadium lease. And I can’t see either one of those things being factual.

So I am going to say No Sale on that one. I don’t believe it.

You are not obliged to believe anything. 😉

St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) » Article details, “Are Stallions in Barn? Kroenke Confident on Bid…”

Newspaper article St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
Are Stallions in Barn? Kroenke Confident on Bid for NFL Team
By Jim Thomas Of the Post-Dispatch
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Article excerpt

Here we go again. For the second time in five weeks, St. Louis’ expansion team hopes are up for a vote by the National Football League.

At least one observer likes the chances of the St. Louis Stallions taking shape, but he’s hardly neutral.

“I feel more confident than I did last time,” said E. Stanley Kroenke, head of the Gateway Football Partnership. “I’ve got to be honest with you, I feel really good about it. I think if the different cities are judged strictly on their merits, St. Louis will win going away.”

The 28 NFL owners will meet today in Chicago to decide among St. Louis, Baltimore, Jacksonville, Fla., and Memphis, Tenn. It takes 21 votes to get a franchise.

“It’s wide open, the whole thing’s wide open,” said Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman. “I don’t know how this thing is going to work out. I would not make a wager.”

In what has become almost standard operating procedure for St. Louis, officials worked on the city’s bid right down to the wire Monday night. Negotiations on the domed stadium lease broke down when Gateway rejected the latest offer from Jerry Clinton, a local beer distributor who controls 30 percent of the lease.

Late last week, Clinton was asking for $3 million and 15 percent of the would-be team in return for his share of the lease. Gateway offered $3 million and 5 percent.

Monday afternoon, Clinton made a revised offer to Kroenke.

“I can’t give you the details of the letter, but I can tell you. . . . I have made some major concessions in order to unify this lease,” Clinton said.

Sources said Clinton had lowered part of his asking price to $3 million and about 10 percent of the team. Gateway turned down the offer.

“Our people have looked at that proposal, and it’s just not workable,” Kroenke said. “We do have several suggestions that we’re going to make to the league (today) on the lease. We still feel very upbeat about it.”

Will the lease issue pose a problem for St. Louis?

“I don’t think so,” Kroenke said. “I think the NFL is really familiar with what’s going on in St. Louis, and I think they’re impressed with the way things have been handled. I don’t see it hurting us.”

Nonetheless, one league insider, who asked to remain unidentified cautioned, “Anything you can do to remove the guesswork and remove any doubt about a particular application is to that city’s benefit. …

Article details

Publication: St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)

Publication date: November 3, 1993
Contributors:

Jim Thomas Of the Post-Dispatch
https://www.questia.com/newspaper/1P2-32842046/are-stallions-in-barn-kroenke-confident-on-bid-for

Not much on the internet from that time.

Agamemnon wrote:

Not much on the internet from that time.

Well, that’s a lot more than I was able to find. The only thing I found was a sentence in an unverifiable website that said that the NFL was worried that the first St. Louis ownership group would possibly sue this second group. I’d say this article substantiates the claim you heard. Looks like they didn’t get the deal done in time for the NFL, and they went with more secure bids elsewhere.