wv wrote:

If they bring Wells back i will
seriously question their intelligence.

w
v

If they bring Wells back, they should cut Jones. Because if Jones can’t perform better than Wells….

The only reason I remain uncertain on Wells (and I’d like him gone) is that the Rams may think he’s likely to be healthier next year, and worth keeping. Clearly if the decision is based on his performance, there’s got to be a better option. Wagoner mentioned Hudson, and he’s 26. That’s the kind of guy I’d like. Someone who can be the C for 8 – 10 years.

bnw wrote:

Has not mattered for 20 years so no it doesn’t matter now.

For the last 20 years, there has been no decision to make.

There is now.

I don’t know what this is worth.

But I think the most glorious outcome right now for the NFL is Kroenke’s stadium. Of all the outcomes I look at right now, Kroenke’s is the sexiest.

Does that matter?

Well…it might.

InvaderRam wrote:

also the tv revenue. is that one year or indefinite?

I am sure that would end up going to court and eventually being negotiated. Nobody knows what the league would do if Stan went rogue, not even the league. Grubman said nobody is thinking about that right now, and I believe him. Why would you spend energy on that when it’s a remote possibility at this point?

I don’t think Kroenke is going to go rogue, either. I’ve said all along I don’t think it’s in his nature, judging by his history; moreover, Grubman confirmed that the league knew in advance of the LA project Kroenke announced.

Really, now that the NFL has spoken, it appears to me that the whole process is being measured carefully, and nothing is certain yet…except that there WILL be a team in Los Angeles soon, probably 2016.

There are now three viable stadium plans for Los Angeles. (I am calling Kroenke’s plan viable a bit prematurely. It has not yet been sanctioned politically/environmentally, but I think it’s pretty safe to assume it will be). The holdup on the other two stadiums is that the investors involved in those projects want to be in ownership of the tenant. If I have my facts straight, one of the projects wants to own the team, and the other would be willing to own a mere 35% of the team. So far no team has made itself available.

That could change.

I have no idea what Davis is thinking in Oakland, but it is clear that Spanos wants LA. With Kroenke making a strong move, Spanos has now got to come up with a plan a little more proactive than simply throwing a hissy fit and rallying a few owners to vote No on the Rams. He may be able to delay things a bit, but I don’t think that he can hold up the Rams indefinitely without a viable alternative plan for re-colonizing Los Angeles. Would he sell 35% of the Chargers? Or negotiate something like that…25% or something? He now has pressure to make a deal; so do the stadium consortiums. They have to get something done soon, or their plans go up in flames. The clock is now ticking on everybody with an interest in Los Angeles.

And should Spanos be willing to sell part of the Chargers, he could jump ahead of Kroenke in the timeline because the other two stadiums in question are already approved and could start building tomorrow, afaik.

I did not know, btw, that 1/4 of the Chargers’ season tickets are from LA. If that is true, Spanos’ case for rights to LA is a bit stronger than I previously thought it was.

wv wrote:

I think i would rather learn the secret
to making good cornbread.

w
v

I can give you my grandmother’s recipe if you want.

Zooey wrote:

That 11-5 record – (11-6 if one counts the playoffs) – was sitting at 8-1 when they first started their backup QB. So from that point on, the Cards went 3-4… (3-5 if you count the loss to the 7-9 Panthers in the playoffs).

Oh, and, btw.

If one counts the post-Carson Palmer record at 3-5… and I do… just take note of the fact that 3-5 x 2 = 6-10. Exactly Fisher’s record without Sam Bradford.

So Bernie had a deadline and couldn’t think of anything fresh to write about.

Agamemnon wrote:

@ 39 seconds in. The Broncos might be for sale in 2015. That could add an interesting twist to the drama.

That will be a complete game changer if it turns out to be true.

nittany ram wrote:

PA Ram wrote:
I’m not so sure that San Diego and Oakland get priority because they’re already in the state of California. I mean legally, I’m not sure what difference it makes.

“The Rams voluntarily left the Los Angeles and Orange County markets, and some owners may question whether they deserve to return — especially if it means that the stadium situations of the two California teams remain unresolved,” an unnamed team official told Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Journal.

San Diego may need a better argument than that.

Well, the Chargers don’t want the Rams in LA because they have aspirations in that market including a possible relocation there. Interesting that they use a ‘Rams left LA voluntarily’ argument against the Rams when that same argument would apply to them. Didn’t they also leave LA voluntarily?

The argument is meaningless anyway.

Yes, they left voluntarily, too. It won’t take more than 5 minutes for someone to point that out to Spanos. And, as everyone has noted, it’s a meaningless argument in any event.

What isn’t meaningless is that the Chargers will try to stop Kroenke.

What is also true:

“A move by the Rams would generate significant political and legal controversy for an NFL Commissioner [Roger Goodell] who is already bedraggled and besieged on various fronts,” the unnamed Chargers official said.

And. There is the possibility of two teams in LA, so even if Spanos wants LA himself, his preference for that is still not a deciding factor. I’m sure Spanos can make this thing messy, but ultimately to what end? Even if he stops Kroenke, he is no closer to moving to LA.

Dak wrote:

I thought it was an obvious catch, but I guess the rules say otherwise. I think it was the right call, but still unfortunate.

Yeah, apparently it’s the right call, so it’s a bad rule.

The ground can’t cause a fumble, but it can cause an incompletion.

I’m fine with Dallas losing (and they may have lost anyway; there was time), but Bryant had control of that ball.

Dak wrote:

If the L.A. proposal was just a negotiating tactic, that would likely be the cruelest joke of all … on St. Louis and Los Angeles.

But, I tend to think that Kroenke likes having options, and while having a site in L.A. doesn’t guarantee a move, it makes it quite possible, and either SK has a more valuable franchise in L.A. or a sweetheart deal in St. Louis. Or, he has a sweetheart deal in St. Louis AND offers the NFL an attractive option to move a franchise to L.A.

You now have interpretations of “good faith efforts” to find a stadium solution to stay in St. Louis. I think the consensus here is that the NFL could decide that SK gave it a good faith effort. Maybe not right now … but after going through more of this negotiating process. I’m not saying it’s a good case that there was a good faith effort, but when did fairness stop the NFL from doing what’s best for “The League”?

Kroenke’s response (or, rather his team’s response, since we won’t see SK or hear directly from him during negotiations) will tell us a lot. If there’s a response asking St. Louis to do a lot more to keep the Rams here, I’d say we’ll know SK’s true intentions. Because the stadium plan put forth is more than fair. It’s not the 80,000-seat stadium and surrounding development in the L.A. plan, but SK could easily do something like that here if he ponied up more money — since the L.A. plan is all privately financed.

It’s a joke, really. We see that it’s possible to privately finance the entire L.A. project. But, in St. Louis, where the franchise admittedly isn’t worth nearly as much, we’re to accept that SK could only afford a $200M portion. Pshaw.

It’s not about what he can afford. It’s about return on investment. The St. Louis deal would cost less of Stan’s money, but the return isn’t as great either. The value of the Rams doesn’t go up anywhere near as much, and he wouldn’t control the revenue streams that come from the use of the facility.

You know what I was just thinking. The peacock proposal was very careful in word choice. They pitched the stadium to the NFL. They clearly are thinking post-Rams. Not that they want the Rams to leave, or believe it is a done deal, but they are preparing for that possibility.

And the Jags make a lot of sense.

A twofer is a good possibility here.

wv wrote:

I dunno. Maybe, but maybe times have changed
since the 80’s and 90’s. Maybe they dont worry
about teams jumping all over the place anymore.

I also wonder whether this isnt a “special situation”
given the fact that the Rams came ‘from’ LA.

I tend to think Kroenke is indeed going to move
the Rams. (Didnt used to think that, but now i do).
I also think the NFL is going have to deal with that.
So they can either “fight him” on it — and incur
all kinds of costs and rancor — Or, they can “find a Way”
to make it seem all “nice and legal”.
So given their “rules” they are going to have to find a
way to “interpret” the rules in a way that makes it all
seem nice and legal. A “part” of that process is to
emphasize that this is a “special case” in that
the Rams have a long history in LA. That way the “rules”
still apply to other teams that might want to jump around
willy nilly.

They may end up changing some of these rules, btw.

w
v

That’s what I think, too.

They will posture about caring about fans, but they don’t. And they want to be in LA, and they aren’t going to get a better deal than this. Seriously. Proposals have come and gone, and the two proposals that have a pulse have no team, and there aren’t any for sale. I thought maybe Buffalo could be a candidate, but they aren’t, now. And what has Spanos done? Nothing. What has Davis done? Nothing. What has Kroenke done? Well…

This is it. This is what they’ve been waiting for. I think the league would prefer at this point that owners own their stadiums. Then you don’t have this problem. It isn’t like Stan is going to move to LA and then in 15 years threaten to move somewhere else because he doesn’t like the stadium. This locks it up. Truth be told, I bet they would like every stadium locked up like this.

I’ve said before I don’t think that personal issues are going to decide this. They will get over the way he went about it, and they will spin some shit to make this work. I didn’t think that at first, but I do now.

Well, I found a Nick Wagoner interview on ESPN in which he talks about NFL.com and the Culver City offices moving up there, and a kind of NFL central hub.

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nfl/story/_/id/12122091/st-louis-rams-owner-planning-stadium-site-los-angeles

Agamemnon wrote:

The hardest part of all, said Neil deMause, editor of the stadium subsidies website Field of Schemes, is figuring out what Kroenke’s really up to. Either he’s planning a billion-dollar bet on Los Angeles with one foot already out the door, or he just got St. Louis to cough up $400 million by issuing a news release about a stadium in L.A.

“And the thing is,” DeMause said, “If [Kroenke] goes for this plan, we’ll never know if it was a bluff or not.”

Times Staff Writer Sam Farmer contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-sp-sn-st-louis-pitches-stadium-plan-20150109-story.html

I don’t think the public money portion of the Peacock plan went up since Monday. There wasn’t enough time. It wasn’t a bluff to get Peacock to up the ante. There wasn’t enough time for Peacock TO up the ante.

But I don’t think the LA plan would affect that, anyway. The Peacock team isn’t stupid. They’ve known from the beginning that they had to appeal to Kroenke as much as possible. They knew from the beginning that they had to create as good a stadium as possible with as appealing of a financial arrangement for Kroenke as possible. Free land, opportunities for revenue, etc.

Opinion: After thinking about this for a week, I am inclined to think that Kroenke is serious about moving to LA.

The value and prestige of the franchise will escalate beyond ANYthing he can manage in St. Louis, regardless of the best efforts of that community. I think he made his decision before he bought the land in Inglewood. The value of that franchise in LA with stadium ownership is so far beyond the value of the franchise in St. Louis in a privately/publicly shared venue…it is not close. And Stan likes to own the whole shebang anyway; we know that from his other holdings. Seriously, the difference between the Rams in Peacock’s pub/priv stadium in STL and the Rams in a private stadium in LA is in at least 9 digits of value, possibly 10 digits. That’s a lot of digits.

The statement from the Rams today established their position on the “reasonable negotiations” portion of the NFL requirement. In court, they would argue, “Too little, too late.” And I think there is no chance that St. Lou can sweeten the pot at this point. I don’t think this is a leverage ploy. I think it was over a year or two ago.

There are still a lot of ways this thing can unfold. There are still the Jaguars, the Broncos, the Chargers, the Raiders, and who knows who else who may enter into this before it is over, but one thing I’m pretty sure of at this point is that the Rams are not going to play in Peacock’s stadium under Kroenke’s ownership.