InvaderRam wrote:

he’s the only one of the three owners who just went forward with his plans and is making something happen.

This is the key to me.

For thirty years, there has been nothing but talk in LA about stadiums.

For 20 years, LA has been there for the taking.

Kroenke is the only guy who is making it happen. He owns the land. He has political clearance. He has the money. He needs No Help from anybody. The shovels are on site.

The other stuff matters. It matters a lot.

But the window of opportunity for alternatives is closing, and the competing groups have approximately a year to match, or there will be no showdown. Spanos can whine all day and night, but if he hasn’t got shovels on site, he’s toasted. Same with St. Louis.

I think there is enough time for those alternatives to match Kroenke and force a showdown, so it isn’t locked up, but those groups are going to have to show the committee a rock-solid plan, or they are going to be denied a seat at the table. Kroenke is already at the table.

By the way, I think the flaw in the St. Louis plan is that it asks Kroenke to pony up money. And I don’t think the NFL can tell a guy he HAS to spend his money on someone else’s business plan, regardless of how much they love that plan. They just cannot make him do it. The contract was to upgrade the dome, and they aren’t doing that, so no matter what, they are not meeting the terms of the agreement, and Kroenke is essentially a free agent. They can’t make him stay in the dome, and they can’t make him invest in the St. Louis stadium. So I don’t know where that leaves everything legally. The courts, I guess.

InvaderRam wrote:

i still don’t understand why the league would favor a raiders/chargers move over a rams move. in fact, i’d see every reason to favor the rams move. kroenke would seem to be the more qualified owner. and the other team can always move at a later date and play in kroenke’s stadium.

plus, the chargers/raiders move depends on BOTH teams actually moving which is far from certain while kroenke seems intent on pushing through with the stadium project. and this is the league’s best opportunity yet to finally have an nfl team back in la. what happens if one of oakland or san diego come up with a stadium plan? the carson site is nixed and los angeles is again without a team. and i’m fairly confident the league does not want that to happen.

i agree with you. kroenke is a guy who is used to getting what he wants. the league also wants a strong owner in los angeles. spanos and davis don’t strike me as strong owners. at least in the business sense. kroenke might be a sociopath. but he’s a sociopath who gets things done. and that’d be just fine with the league.

They would favor the Raiders/Chargers over the Rams simply because St. Louis has offered a new stadium and SD and Oak have not. It’s the public appearance of the thing. The Rams’ move looks like the groom ditching the bride at the altar. Now they can spin that, and WILL spin that if the Carson project does not become viable in time, but with both projects viable, the jilting of St. Louis looks bad. And IS bad. They want LA, and they will jilt St. Louis if that is necessary, but they won’t jilt St. Louis if they can move other teams to LA with worse situations, and SD and Oak currently have no solutions on the horizon.

I don’t know what you even mean by “qualified” owner.

I think that if Carson falls apart, the NFL will back Kroenke’s move and try to lure either SD or Oak to St. Louis. Second choice would probably be to broker a deal where Kroenke and Davis trade teams and Davis keeps the Rams in St. L while Kroenke moves the Raiders to LA, or some variation of that.

If Carson AND St. Louis fall apart, the Rams move cleanly into LA, end of story. Maybe the remaining team joins them there later.

Kroenke will file to move at the end of next season, and the league will have to give him an answer. They won’t tell him No unless there is another LA plan nailed into place. There is no way the NFL does not have a team in LA in 2016. It will be the Rams, or the Chargers.

I tend to agree with all of that, too, with the exception of Assumption #5, and I am not sold on #3 or #4. I am not so sure that neither Oakland nor San Diego will come up with a stadium plan. St. Louis pulled one out when nobody expected them to.

I think it is less likely that Oakland will come up with anything because Oakland is working on a new stadium for the A’s right now. I think I read that, anyway. But I would not be surprised by a San Diego solution that is the equivalent to the St. Louis solution.

While I think the NFL would prefer the Rams to stay put, I think the likelihood of the Carson project unraveling at some point is greater than the Inglewood project unraveling. There are more variables, more ways the Carson project can go wrong. Kroenke’s stadium construction plan stops ONLY if he gets some other opportunity he likes as well i.e. the Broncos. While I have a hard time picturing Kroenke pulling an Al Davis and moving regardless, I also have an equally hard time seeing him settle for less than the vision of the Los Angeles Rams that he has created, drawn up, and planned for. Neither action seems in character for him. He has no history of going rogue, and he has no history of being denied. So either way, we are going to see something new from Kroenke. Remember how he got the Rams? There was Khan coming strong, and talk about cross-ownership impediments, and Kroenke can’t do it, and…BOOM.

I just think the St. Louis stadium is “settling for less,” and I’m not sure he’s going to be happy with the runner-up proposal when there isn’t anything to stop him from taking first place in the beauty pageant except his own conscience. That biography of Kroenke I posted a few weeks ago portrays a man whose business approach is to make a business goal, and treat it like a fence post. You just keep banging on it, again and again, until you get what you want. He is steady, he is patient, and he is relentless. In the mean time, his stadium project is in the lead in the timeline. We’re at the quarter post, and Kroenke is in the lead by two lengths. Stopping Kroenke, I think, will require a firm and united NFL (if LA is what he truly wants, and all indications are that it is). I am not making a prediction on how this will end, but I will say that if Kroenke gets more than half of the owners – including some rich and powerful ones (and it appears he has Jerry Jones) – I’d be surprised if he takes No for an answer.

I don’t think they are going to persuade Kroenke. They are going to have to compel Kroenke.

He is not going to accept the Spanos/Davis LA “solution” as being more appropriate. What? They’re entitled to it cuz their daddies were pioneers, and they have family legacies, and they live closer anyway, and besides, they couldn’t get anything done in their hometowns, so they should get LA.

Yeah, I don’t think so. The man is a sociopath, and he isn’t going to feel sorry for Dean and Mark, especially now that they are gunking up his business plan. The NFL is either going to have to forcefully stop him by making it too painful for him to move, or bribe him somehow, maybe by some ownership transfers that leave the Rams in St. Louis and Kroenke in LA with a different team.

Any opponents of the Inglewood plan, dubbed the City of Champions Revitalization Project, now have 30 days to file a referendum to force a public vote.

Per LA Times

The problem for me is that the GMOs will be designed for profitability: shelf life, appearance, resistance to fungus/pests/temperatures etc.

Nutrition and taste will be subordinated to profitability concerns. And safety concerns.

Plus. You get food patented by corporations. That’s a terrible idea.

PA Ram wrote:

Zooey, you done good…real good.

Now how about giving me the Power ball numbers so I can finally become “Hawaii Ram”?

The especially cool part is that I made up ballots for those six awards, and passed them out to my drama class. Everybody got to predict the winners with a prize promised to the person who got the most right. Nobody got more than 3 correct. Of course, kids marked the ones that they liked personally, but the academy voters are not 16 years old, so…

I got them all right, and everybody was very impressed.

And the best part is…I didn’t see any of the films in question. Not one of them.

I just went to a British online betting site and chose all the favorites according to the betting line.

So, I can’t really help you with Power Ball.

Kroenke’s obstacle to moving is a medley of competing projects which, in the right constellation, can stop him.

Peacock’s stadium alone can’t stop him. But Peacock’s stadium combined with a fix for both San Diego and Oakland might be enough to stop him. From the NFL perspective, that could be the best overall solution to 3 stadium issues.

And prospects for the Rams staying in St. Louis have improved significantly, I would say.

But that constellation is made of two stadium sites, and two municipalities, and two teams. Those projects are behind Kroenke’s, and have more things that can go wrong with them than Kroenke’s plan does.

InvaderRam wrote:

what i don’t understand is spanos complaining about not wanting the rams to take away potential revenue from the chargers. and then he goes and agrees to go half on a stadium with his own division rival.

what’s that about?

anyway. for a long time i didn’t think it’d be possible for the rams to st. louis until i read this. st louis does seem to have a viable stadium plan when compared to oakland and san diego.

I was thinking the same thing. It weakens his argument considerably. He came out and said, “Both the Rams and Raiders left LA, so it’s mine, and the Rams can’t have it, but the Raiders can.”

It will be interesting to see if either Oakland or San Diego can come up with something now. They haven’t got much time. One thing is certain, Kroenke just pushed the boulder off the top of the hill, and things are moving.

Agamemnon wrote:

<span class=”d4pbbc-font-color” style=”color: blue”>Nobody has to change conferences. They just can’t schedule both teams to play a home game on the same date.</span>

I will repeat what I said elsewhere. If there are two teams in LA, TV is going to want one in each conference.

The Raiders/Chargers plan would seem to be more fragile because there are more variables in it. If either one of those teams gets into serious talks with their home cities, it blows the other team up. And, as I said earlier, I think some realignment will be in order if both those teams move to LA. That’s just another layer of junk to work out. I don’t know anything about the Carson site – other than that the NFL has looked at it before – but I read somewhere that the cleanup on the site was costly. It’s a former dump, I think. In any event, fwiw, it seems like these are strange bedfellows, and it smacks of desperation a bit. (But desperation – even if present – isn’t a disqualifier in itself). This plan, apparently, started back in November, and I’m guessing the NFL has known about IT all along, as well.

Sitting on that committee will be interesting.

Again…I don’t think Stan will go rogue.

Browsing around this morning, I found a slide show of the most disappointing Heismann winners in history. The Top 20.

Bradford was at 19. I was rather stunned.

But, then, you consider that all anybody knows about Bradford is that he got the biggest rookie contract in history, and he hasn’t made the playoffs, and sat on the bench the last 22 games, or whatever.

That someone with no real knowledge of the Rams and Bradford would think a 2nd would get him isn’t all that surprising to me. I think we saw that Eagles fans thought they could get him for an end-of-the-day, yardsale discount price, too.

But the fact that a lot of people probably think that’s about right doesn’t make it any less preposterous.

rfl wrote:

I don’t see the division rivalry issue as a problem.

The Clips and Lakers share a building (I think) but remain competitors in the NBA West (I think).

But what will the television executives think?

If I’m FOX, I think I want one of those LA teams to be in the NFC.

Chargers, Raiders will jointly pursue an NFL
stadium in Carson
By SAM FARMER
FEBRUARY 20, 2015, 3:00 AM

On the field, the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders have had as bitter a rivalry
as any in the NFL but in a sense, they’re now partners.

The teams will officially announce Friday that, while they work on stadium deals in their current
cities, they will jointly pursue a shared, $1.7 ­billion NFL stadium in Carson as an alternative.

While theirs might seem to be an unlikely pairing ­­ the Silver & Black and the Powder Blue ­­ the
Raiders and Chargers have actually been closer over the years than many people might think.
“Al is also a big reason for the strong rivalry between the Raiders and the Chargers and its
popularity among both teams’ fans,” Chargers President Dean Spanos said, referring to the late Al
Davis, legendary owner of the Raiders. “He personified the image and mystique of the Raiders,
and that image has helped build the strength of our rivalries and the popularity of our game.
There has been no one in the NFL like Al Davis.”

But the cantankerous Davis might never have believed this.

The Chargers and Raiders will continue to seek public subsidies for new stadiums in their home
markets, but they are developing a detailed proposal for a privately financed Los Angeles venue in
the event they can’t get deals done in San Diego and Oakland by the end of this year, according to
the teams.

In a statement given to The Times on Thursday, the Chargers and Raiders said: “We are pursuing
this stadium option in Carson for one straightforward reason: If we cannot find a permanent
solution in our home markets, we have no alternative but to preserve other options to guarantee
the future economic viability of our franchises.”

The teams are working with “Carson2gether,” a group of business and labor leaders. The coalition
will announce the project Friday at a news conference near the 168 ­acre site, a parcel at the
southwest quadrant of the intersection of the 405 Freeway and Del Amo Boulevard.

They plan to immediately launch a petition drive for a ballot initiative to get voter approval to
build the stadium.

This latest high ­stakes move was precipitated by St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke, who
announced in January his plan to build an 80,000­ seat stadium on the land that used to be
Hollywood Park.

That put pressure on the Chargers, who say 25% of their fan base is in Los Angeles and Orange
counties. The Raiders, among the most financially strapped NFL teams, joined forces with the
Chargers because they don’t have the money build a stadium on their own.

The Jets and the Giants, who both play in East Rutherford, N.J., are the only NFL teams playing
in the same stadium.

L.A., which has been without the NFL for two decades, now finds itself with three teams that could
relocate here and four stadium proposals, including the Farmers Field concept downtown and
developer Ed Roski’s plan in the City of Industry.

Even skeptics have to concede the city has never been in a better position to have the country’s No.
1 sport return, though none of the three teams has yet to commit to moving here.

Like the Rams, the Chargers and Raiders are on year ­to ­year leases in older stadiums. Prospects
for new venues in San Diego and Oakland are bleak and, as is in L.A., there is no appetite to
commit public money to build a stadium. The Carson proposal calls for the teams to be equal, as
opposed to one’s acting as landlord to the other.

The long ­vacant Carson Marketplace site is part of an old municipal landfill and has been the
subject of significant cleanup efforts in recent years. The NFL has looked into buying the site at
least three times.

In the late 1990s, entertainment executive Michael Ovitz wanted to build on that site and bring in
an expansion franchise. In 1999, Houston oilman Bob McNair outbid two competing L.A. groups,
paying $750 million for the team that would become the Texans.

The Chargers and Raiders bought the land from Starwood Capital Group. Barry Sternlicht, its
chairman, said of the project: “This is a great opportunity to return professional football to Los
Angeles, and we are going to do everything we can to make it happen.”

Whereas Kroenke and his partners have expansive plans for retail space, housing and a 6,000­
seat theater — along with the 80,000 ­seat stadium — on the 298 ­acre Hollywood Park site, the
Carson concept calls only for a football stadium, with room for more than 18,000 parking spaces
as well as tailgating.

“We’re thinking about the project as a 21st century, next­ generation stadium,” said architect David
Manica, noting that the venue and renderings are still in the early conceptual stages. “We want it
to be the ultimate outdoor event experience, which includes both sports and entertainment. And
we want it to be uniquely L.A.”

The projected capacity for the stadium is about 68,000, expandable to more than 72,000.
Manica, president of Manica Architecture, was formerly at HOK Sport, where he led the design of
the Texans’ stadium, the renovation of the Miami Dolphins’ stadium, and the seating bowl of
Wembley Stadium in London.

One early concept for Carson is clear seats that reflect the color of the lights shining on them — the
seats could be silver and black for Raiders games, and powder blue for Chargers games.

More pressing are the steps developers would need to take, including working with the coalition to
support a ballot measure that would allow the venue to be built. If the clubs can gather the
required signatures to place the stadium initiative on the ballot, approval can be attained either
through a public election or by a vote of the Carson City Council.

Kroenke is further along in that regard, having already collected the signatures for a ballot
initiative. Inglewood’s mayor has said that rather than holding a public election, the council would
vote on the initiative, perhaps as early as Tuesday.

The NFL long has contended that it will control the process of any return to L.A., including which
team or teams will be allowed to relocate, and which stadium proposal will get the green light.
How much control the league actually has is up for debate, as it does not have a strong track
record of stopping teams that are determined to move. League rules stipulate that any such
decision requires a three ­quarters majority vote of the 32 teams.

The Chargers and Raiders said they have kept the league’s new Committee on Los Angeles
Opportunities, and the commissioner, fully informed about their joint effort, and that they intend
to strictly adhere to the relocation procedures.

The Chargers have been seeking a stadium solution in the San Diego area for nearly 14 years, a
period spanning seven mayors and nine proposals. The relationship between the club and the city
has grown especially strained in recent days, as the Chargers have pushed the city to contribute to
a new stadium.

The Raiders have been working on a stadium solution with Oakland and Alameda County for about six years but have not made much progress. The club, which has said that remaining in the
Oakland market is a priority, has venue concepts but no taxpayer money has been committed. The
Inglewood and Carson proposals do not involve any public money.

The reason the franchises would be able to privately finance a stadium in Carson, as opposed to
their own cities, is that the L.A. market could better support the sale of hundreds of millions of
dollars of preferred seat licenses, one ­time payments for the right to buy a season ticket. The teams
would also get revenues from naming rights; sponsorship and advertising would be far more
lucrative than in smaller markets.

It’s widely speculated in NFL circles that a franchise that moves from a smaller market to L.A.
could end up being worth 150% of its current value. Franchises would probably have to pay a hefty
relocation fee, although the league has never specified an amount.

The three teams all previously played in L.A., with the Raiders and Rams leaving Southern
California after the 1994 season, and the Chargers, then in the old American Football League,
calling the Coliseum home in 1960, their inaugural season.

All signs point to the Chargers and Raiders — like the Rams — targeting the 2016 season for
relocation, should those teams not get acceptable deals to remain in their current cities. The NFL
has long held that L.A. is a two ­team market, and it’s almost inconceivable that the league would
allow three teams in such close proximity.

The NFL has ruled out any teams’ relocating this season, and is strongly opposed to a franchise’s
enduring more than one lame ­duck season in a market about to be vacated. A team or teams
moving to L.A. would play for at least two seasons in a temporary home — most likely the
Coliseum, Rose Bowl or possibly Dodger Stadium — while a new stadium was under construction.

Twitter: @LATimesfarmer

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-nfl-stadium-20150220-story.html#page=1