Texans owner: Raiders, Chargers look like favorites to move to Los Angeles
By John Breech | CBSSports.com
December 16, 2015 3:23 pm PT
Don’t be surprised if NFL moving trucks show up in Oakland and San Diego next year.
According to Texans owner Bob McNair, sending those two teams to Los Angeles is slowly starting to turn into the NFL’s most likely relocation scenario.
All 32 NFL owners are set to meet in Houston on Jan. 12-13 with one big goal: Figure out who’s moving to L.A.
To make the move to Los Angeles, a team needs to get approval from 24 of the league’s 32 owners, and thanks to a last ditch effort by the city of St. Louis, McNair doesn’t see the Rams getting approved.
“St. Louis, they have come up with a proposal that is getting pretty close, in my opinion, to being an attractive proposal, and if they do come up with an attractive proposal, then in my view, my personal opinion, I don’t think the Rams will receive the approval to relocate,” McNair told the Houston Chronicle this week.
If the Rams don’t get approved for L.A., that opens the door for the Chargers and Raiders.
“That would mean then you’d have two teams, San Diego and Oakland, that would be going into Carson, [California],” McNair said. “They have a partnership to build a stadium.”
The NFL announced in early December that if San Diego, Oakland or St. Louis wanted to keep their teams, they would need to put a viable proposal together by Dec. 28. Although Oakland and San Diego have yet to really put anything together, St. Louis has.
The St. Louis plan, which calls for a $1.1 billion downtown stadium near the Mississippi River, is so far along that the NFL committed an extra $100 million to it this week, as long as the city agrees to several compromises.
The city of St. Louis will hold a final vote Friday to determine whether to approve the stadium deal.
As for Oakland and San Diego, those two cities haven’t done much to keep their teams, according to McNair.
“Oakland is basically saying, ‘We don’t have any money. We’re going to take care of the baseball team [A’s] and we’re not going to do anything for the football team,'” McNair said. “So that’s where they are. [Qualcomm and O.co] are the two worst stadiums in the league.”
McNair also explained why he doesn’t see the Chargers staying in San Diego.
“In San Diego, they’ve been trying for about 15 years. They’ve had all kinds of political problems there,” McNair said. “They’re saying they’re going to do something now. But in order to do it, they’d have to have a referendum and the referendum isn’t until next June. Well, we can’t have these teams in limbo. You need to have certainty and you don’t know if the referendum would pass or fail. We can’t take what they’re saying very seriously.”
McNair is one of only six owners on the NFL’s Los Angeles committee — along with Clark Hunt, Robert Kraft, John Mara, Jerry Richardson and Art Rooney — so it’s worth listening to what he has to say, which is that the Rams are looking like the odd man out.
“We have three teams that are interested in moving to Los Angeles. Only two are going to be approved if any are approved,” McNair said. “One of the teams would not be able to move if we approve two. So they’d have to stay in their home market.”
If the Rams are forced to stay in their home market, that might not sit well with owner Stan Kroenke. If Kroenke can’t move to L.A., he might start to look at other cities like London, as CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora recently reported.
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Just outta curiosity…if the NFL won’t approve the Rams moving to LA because of the Stl. effort, why would they approve a move to London?
