bnw wrote:

Bitch about the rich that do help. Bitch about the rich that don’t help. Got it. Thanks.

Well, I dont believe in a ‘system’ that
normalizes and allows ‘rich’ and ‘poor’.
So, in a sense, yes, I will always bitch
about that situation. No big thing, bnw,
just a political difference.

w
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lyser wrote:

So being a nomad and still owning some LA Rams stuff, I’m still in.

Matter of fact got me a personalized blue and white that says ~ lyser on the back, had it for years, so I guess LA is ok with me.

People of the Lou got screwed…is there an owner in this league that is not a complete niggardly douche nozzle? Fuck Georgia, fuck her boy,and fuck Stan. Dick moves all around by all of them since CR “drown” (yup and Ray Lewis didn’t kill anyone).

The barter system is such a better plan. I got kilo loads of plastic to trade for pumpkin seeds.

Matter of fact got me a personalized blue and white that says ~ lyser on the back, had it for years, so I guess LA is ok with me.

If you dont have a ram-Bong
I will be disappointed.

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zn wrote:

Kroenke, the ‘victim’? That’s the story he’s telling in LA

Sam Farmer and Nathan Fenno Los Angeles Times

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/kroenke-the-victim-that-s-the-story-he-s-telling/article_dac6eab5-b41d-57f2-9497-a21cd94fa4b5.html

LOS ANGELES • Stan Kroenke emerged from a white jet at Van Nuys Airport a few minutes before noon Wednesday as he returned to California for the first time as owner of the Los Angeles Rams.

Less than 24 hours earlier in Houston, NFL owners voted to allow Kroenke to move the Rams from St. Louis to L.A. for the 2016 season.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Los Angeles Times — Kroenke’s first since his plan for a multibillion-dollar stadium in Inglewood became public more than a year ago — the owner discussed his final pitch to league owners, the emotional relocation process and his ambitious vision for the site of the former Hollywood Park racetrack.

He also he could not “sit there (in St. Louis) and be a victim.” (Scroll down for the full Q-&-A transcript.)

“If we didn’t have the perspective of 40 years of doing this, I don’t think any reasonable, rational person would ever do this,” said Kroenke, a billionaire real estate developer and sports mogul, owning NBA and NHL teams in Denver along with English soccer team Arsenal plus other sports-related businesses. “But because we look at it a certain way, we’ve been through so many of these projects, and we’re long-term investors. That’s why we did what we did and stuck our neck out that far.”

He added: “You don’t get too many shots like this in life.”

•’Silent Stan’ speaks – a profile from 2010

• Jaguars owner not interested in move to St. Louis

• Hochman: Time for St. Louis to rise and shine

• BenFred: After Rams ripoff, STL should rethink importance of NFL

• Consensus among regional leaders: St. Louis is done with professional football

Kroenke, 68, told jokes, slapped his knees in excitement and teared up at one point in the interview. He appeared relieved to put the drawn-out relocation process behind him and focus on the return of the Rams to the city they left after the 1994 season.

He seemed relaxed and confident and looked as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Kroenke believed that detailed renderings of the sleek, low-slung stadium project and surrounding mixed-use development helped sway owners to overwhelmingly support his vision over a rival stadium project in Carson.

“One of the most important things that nailed it (Tuesday) is that we just kept showing them pictures,” Kroenke said. “People love pictures. And what those pictures showed was the thought and the development and the plan, and the depth of the thought.”

Kevin Demoff, the Rams’ top executive who helped make the presentation at the meeting, kept his event credential and room key as mementos of the historic occasion.

Kroenke said he had no badge and he left his room key in the hotel.

“But we got something much more important,” Kroenke said. “We got L.A.”

Question: What has this experience been like so far?

Kroenke: This thing, it is a process, and it’s arduous — the NFL makes it arduous, and they should. Relocating a team should be hard. And now we get to focus on things we like to focus on.

Q: After so many false starts and pretty pictures over the last 21 years, can you blame people who might doubt this will actually get built?

Kroenke: Oh, it’s going to get built. At one point (Tuesday), I was going to tell the ownership about 4,500 pages of plans. Kevin got up there and said, ‘ 6,700 pages of plans.’ So I told the ownership, ‘Wow. We were at 4,500 and now it’s 6,700.’ In other words, this costs real money.

Q: After you won the vote, you went out with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and his son Stephen, the team’s general manager. What did you talk about?

Kroenke: They just kept repeating it: ‘The Los Angeles Rams. The Los Angeles Rams.’ You could tell they loved that, they loved that history. If you look around the league, those guys are connected in a we’re-going-forward way. But they love that history of the Rams.

Q: What role did Seahawks owner Paul Allen play in Houston?

Kroenke: He goes to the big meetings. Paul told me he was coming. He called three times. He got interested in it. Paul knows L.A. He knows how important it is. Paul gets all the metrics, the Internet stuff, how you promote with the millennials. L.A. is hugely important for the league.

When I started working on this two years ago, I took Paul through the whole thing. I said, ‘This is what I think we can do here. I’m not sure we can do it all, but here’s what we’re working on.’ He was always interested. Then once we got to a certain point, he definitely got it. He got how good it was.

Q: Owners have heard these stadium pitches before. What was your theme in Houston?

Demoff: We started our presentation by saying this is the project you’ve waited 21 years for. This was the NFL’s greatest asset that they could give someone and they gave it to our group. That’s an awesome responsibility.

Q: How did owners react?

Kroenke: At the end of the day they gave it to us for the right reasons. That’s the right project. It’s that simple. I heard a lot of owners say, ‘That’s the right project. That’s what we need.’

Q: Did you get many texts or emails after the final vote?

Demoff: I’m obsessive about cleaning out my inbox. If I have five or six in there I feel overwhelmed. I had 122 emails and over 300 text messages. We beat Seattle in overtime in the opener and I got 40 texts. You hear from people who are so excited and you never knew they were Rams fans.

Q: Who reached out to you, Stan?

Kroenke: One of the first guys that texted me last night was Terry Fancher (Stockbridge Capital’s executive managing director and a development partner with the Inglewood stadium site). He was just so excited. He said, ‘ Stan, I just landed in L.A. You should see this town.’

He said, ‘You have changed this city.’ It was cool. … You know what I’m glad about? Certain people relied on us. This guy right here (motioning to Demoff with his voice cracking) … It’s emotional because a lot of good people relied on us. We came through for them. Didn’t know if we could. It’s never a sure thing.

Q: How do you feel about leaving St. Louis?

Kroenke: It truly is bittersweet. I grew up in Missouri, and there’s a lot of wonderful people in St. Louis and Missouri. I’ll always feel that way about Missouri. I never dreamed I’d be put in this position. But at the same time, you’re not going to sit there and be a victim.

Q: How did you first become interested in the Hollywood Park site?

Kroenke: In the summer of 2013, I really started looking hard. I knew the general lay of the land in Inglewood. To me, there was one obvious place, and it had been approved previously by the NFL: Hollywood Park.

I didn’t know if it would be put together or not. But I started looking. I was driving around at 5:30 a.m. That’s what real estate developers do.

Q: Why were you up so early?

Kroenke: That’s the best time because the traffic isn’t out, so you can get around quickly. I started looking at different sites to make sure I had them in my head. What do they look like? What could be done? How does the long term look for the areas? And when you drive up to Hollywood Park, it’s a great site.

Q: Kevin, do you remember getting that early-morning call from Stan?

Demoff: There are moments in your life you never forget. I was standing by the window in my office (in St. Louis) and Stan called. … I remember he said, ‘ This is an unbelievable site.’

Q: You’ve developed real estate for something like 40 years; what made the site so attractive?

Kroenke: I’ve done this countless times, literally hundreds of deals. You just look for certain things. For example, (at) Hollywood Park, there’s a Target store and development right next door. Starbucks is there. These are people we’re very familiar with. We do developments with them. For me it’s starting to click.

Q: Other owners described the stadium as “transformative.” What will be unique about it?

Demoff: This is the stadium of the future for the NFL and hopefully for other sporting venues. When you look — especially in L.A. — it’s a melting pot of NFL fans. You look at the Steelers bars and Redskins bars and Bears bars. You want to take that and put it into your campus and find ways that at every turn people can watch the other games.

L.A.’s become a fantasy-oriented, Red Zone-oriented, DirecTV-oriented culture. And I think our job is to blend that with now having a hometown team. To start to build that allegiance where you walk into the stadium and you never feel that you’re giving up everything else that’s going on Sunday but you still have the Rams right in front of you.

Q: Will the venue feature seats that show off L.A.’s celebrities like Jack Nicholson’s seats at Lakers games?

Demoff: You need Lakers seats. You need Dodgers seats behind home plate so you can see Larry King sitting right there. So we have sideline suites. Field suites. … They’re pulled out right up to the field. We’ve designed concepts throughout the stadium that allow entertainers to basically sit outside but in a way that allows them to be differentiated.

Q: So you want to include the entertainment industry in the stadium experience?

Kroenke: That’s part of L.A. You’d better be doing that. That’s how you engage the community, frankly. If we’re not doing that right, we’re not servicing the fans of L.A. You go to L.A., you better do it right or you shouldn’t be there. It’s complex, it’s complicated, it’s a big market, there’s a lot of competitive forces there.

Q: Can a team succeed in L.A. without putting a winning product on the field?

Demoff: You can’t just walk in and say, ‘The NFL is back’ and roll out the football and expect success. You’ve got to go earn it.

Q: Will you bring back the old L.A. Rams uniforms?

Demoff: I think the philosophy on the uniforms is a microcosm of the philosophy of the project. Yes, we have a rich tradition and history in Los Angeles. We have colors that people identify with. We have historic players. You want to carry some of that forward.

But, we’re also about to enter a world-class stadium that should be one of the best. … Yes, the Rams are coming back. It’s not the Rams from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s. This is Stan’s vision and Stan’s stadium. We want to make sure we represent best in class in every aspect while we borrow from the Rams’ legacy. When I look at the Rams’ return to L.A., that’s what people are excited about — it’s modern NFL mixed with the team they grew up with.

Q: Have you noticed the large cardboard cutout of Stan’s head displayed by some L.A. Rams fans over the past year?

Kroenke: You want to talk about surreal? It’s kind of part of the territory, I guess. You never get comfortable with that. But they’re having fun.

Q: Does any of this feel real yet?

Demoff: My job was to make sure that we had a project that when you put it in front of the owners, all they had to do was raise their right hand and they have the project they’ve always wanted. I was looking at (Tuesday) and that’s what it was. They realized all they had to do was check a box and they got the project they wanted.

gag me.

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InvaderRam wrote:

… they’re going to exploit all that to give them the best chance to be profitable there. yeah they want to estabish a bond with their fanbase. with the purpose of lining their pockets with all their money.

Yes. And Demoff will get the team all involved in charities
and civic pride activities and softball games, and the Organization
will preach the mantra of “caring” about the fans of Los Angeles.

And so it goes 🙂

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Dak wrote:

I do think they care about the fans, or at least portray that they care about the fans, yes. I can see that they do because of the way that they engage with the community, and how they try to improve their product even though they might not have to in order to make money.

Do you think there are no owners who care about their fans? What about the Rooney family? I think it’s somewhat proportionate to how much the owners themselves care about the success of the team they’re running. If they ARE fans, they act in a way that is good for fans. They’re connected with the fans in a way. Ideally, they are fans and they are knowledgeable about their product. I think Bill Bidwill was probably a football fan, but he was clueless, too, and pretty kooky. I don’t think he had much of a connection with true fans, because I think he was just kind of dumb about football.

I’d say that there are degrees and nuances in all of this. …

Well i knew as soon as i posted that someone was gonna
bring up Rooney 🙂 Art Rooney senior, did seem
to have a strong attachment to Pittsburgh. And his son
seems to share that feeling. So maybe some owners do
actually ‘care’ about the community.

But that corporate-structure is always there…underneath
things…like a sleeping dragon 🙂 The corporate-pressure
to make money is always, always, always there. Pushing.
And what happens when the Rooney the III takes over — will
he care as much about Pittsburgh as his elders did?
… The corporate-pressure is always growing…

I dunno. What do i know 🙂

For me, I guess i just refuse to ever ‘care’ about a
corporation or a corporate-organization like the NFL.
I will never ever trust a guy like Demoff or Zygmunt or Shaw
or Kronky or Georgia…etc, etc, etc….

But then I’m a nomad so i dont have to.

You are connected to a ‘city’ so you have to feel
like the organization ‘cares’. As a nomad, i dont
care if they care. I ‘care’ — about the game, and the
horns, and the internet-friends, and conversation.

Anyway life will unfold and I hope you pop
in often Dak. You have been a GREAT poster.
And its been a pleasure and an honor all these
years.

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Agamemnon wrote:

We have different view points and opinions on this

Is that allowed? I dont think thats allowed.

w
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Zooey wrote:

I dunno about the law, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it just got tossed out as “frivolous,” and never saw a courtroom.

Most likely, yes.

I mean, have you
ever heard of anyone suing over a team-move
and winning anything?

The Lawyers for the plaintiffs
will milk it and make some money
and get a lot of pub in St.Louis though.

Who knows though. It would be fun
to see a transcript of a deposition
of Stan Kronky. That would be very
inter esting. Doubt if it gets
that far though.

w
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zn wrote:

Relocating sports teams should pay back public funds, McCaskill says

David Hunn

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/relocating-sports-teams-should-pay-back-public-funds-mccaskill-says/article_3e3d185b-708e-58ea-82a9-cbb98183784c.html

ST. LOUIS • Sen. Claire McCaskill, exasperated by the imminent relocation of the St. Louis Rams, has begun drafting a bill to claw back public dollars from professional sports teams that prematurely leave their hometowns.

McCaskill, a Democrat, said Sen. Roy Blunt has expressed interest in cosponsoring the bill.

Blunt, the state’s Republican senator, could not immediately be reached for comment. He told reporters earlier in the day that “not every problem is a federal problem.” Still, he said he was “certainly open” to talking about other ideas.

McCaskill has been pressuring the National Football League over the past year to keep the Rams in St. Louis. She spoke with Commissioner Roger Goodell the night before Tuesday’s NFL owners vote.

“St. Louis stepped up, in good faith,” she told the Post-Dispatch on Wednesday. She called plans to spend $400 million in local and state tax dollars on a $1.1 billion St. Louis riverfront stadium a “massive” public investment, and the region’s second, following construction of the Edward Jones Dome itself.

But the NFL instead approved Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s request to move the Rams back to Los Angeles.

“I’m confident at this point that the NFL used excuses to turn down our stadium project,” she said.

“There’s no question in my mind that, years ago, Stan Kroenke made up his mind he was going to L.A.”

He worked methodically, and, at some points “maniacally,” to get there, she said. Kroenke’s relocation proposal to the league, which called St. Louis a “struggling” city, incapable of supporting three professional sports teams, “purposely burned the bridge with St. Louis,” she continued. He knew it would infuriate St. Louis fans.

“The notion that we can’t support an NFL team is laughable,” McCaskill said, “just laughable.”

She called the NFL’s process a “very smelly onion,” and the years spent planning the new St. Louis stadium a waste.

“It appears to me this was a useless exercise,” she said.

Senators have a history in demanding accountability from the NFL. When the Bidwill family was threatening to move the St. Louis Cardinals football team to Phoenix, for instance, Missouri Senators Jack Danforth and Thomas Eagleton pushed a bill to mandate league relocation procedures. The bill made it out of committee, but before it could get a vote on the floor, the NFL adopted its own set of relocation guidelines, using very similar language, McCaskill noted.

Her office is in the early stages of drafting legislation. Staffers said the goal is to make sure communities are treated fairly if a sports team that benefits from public funds — such as playing in a publicly financed stadium — decides to move to another community.

McCaskill said she’s not being vindictive. “I have a chance to make sure no other community will get treated like St. Louis,” she said. “The heart of the NFL isn’t just in the mega media markets.”

Others are already examining more exactly how Kroenke won NFL approval to leave Missouri, she said. “There’s a lot of things we have to take a look at,” she said.

McCaskill hinted that regional leaders may be considering a suit against the NFL. If the NFL didn’t comply with its own relocation guidelines, her staff later clarified, it is possible anti-trust laws were violated.

If so, McCaskill said, “I think that’s a real problem for the NFL, legally.”

A new team in St. Louis, of course, would ease the sting, McCaskill said.

There is some hope, she suggested, that the Oakland Raiders might move to St. Louis. Owner Mark Davis has said several times he’s looking elsewhere.

The quirky owner stopped briefly to talk to the Post-Dispatch on Wednesday morning in Houston, site of Tuesday’s owners meeting. He confirmed he was interested in other cities.

But St. Louis? “Absolutely not,” he said.

—————————————

“…A new team in St. Louis, of course, would ease the sting, McCaskill said.
There is some hope, she suggested, that the Oakland Raiders might move to St. Louis. Owner Mark Davis has said several times he’s looking elsewhere….”

So, the politician is all concerned about the Fans, blah blah blah —
but if the Oakland fans get screwed who cares. I see.

w
v

http://www.rams-news.com/jack-youngblood-talks-rams-moving-los-angles-more-video/

sdram wrote:

wv wrote:

Well, I agree totally: fuck the Corporate-nfl.
Fuck the Billionaire-club.

But i hope Michael rejoins the
conversation again. He would
be missed.

w
v

I agree. The fans like Mike Franke and all of the Ram and football fans I read/met/conversed with from St Louis made the Rams leaving LA in 1994/1995 palatable for me. but, they all need to deal with this tragic event in their own way. Mike invested a lot of himself each season in the Rams. Interacting with the Rams fans from St Louis was the best thing about the Rams moving to St Louis. I was heart broken and disgusted when the LA to St Louis move happened as I’m sure many of the St Louis fans are today. The fans have little or no control over the level of greed that truly defines the NFL and all pro sports. There is little or no loyalty by any of them – owners, coaches, and players to anything other than profit.

Yup. That’s basically what Carey Davis said in a podcast
on espn.

w
v

I’ll be seeing it next week,
probably.

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Dak wrote:

That was worth a listen. Money over Loyalty.

Yes.

Or Loyalty TO money.

As fans, maybe its good to
be disillusioned sometimes. Ya know.
To get a good look behind the curtain.
It helps us figure out what exactly
we are loyal TO. The horns?, The Players?,
The League? The Owner? The Coach? Organization? The ‘city’?
(what does it mean to be loyal to a ‘city’ ?)

I dunno.

Does St.Louis build a stadium now anyway?
w
v

The Andrew Brandt audio is good.
http://espn.go.com/espnradio/play?id=14560893&s=espn

Pay attention to the part that starts about 1 minute 20 seconds into it.
Brandt says Jerry Jones and the “money guys” Ie, Snyder, Jeff Lurie, Woody Johnson, etc — “took over the room”.

The committee that had vote 5 to 1, otoh,
had guys like Rooney on it.

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• This reply was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by wv.