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.

znhater wrote:

Ravens, broncos, chickens and green bay. With Baltimore and the pack in the bowl.

That’s what I’ve got.

zn wrote:

Jim Thomas @jthom1
Not many details on public financing, but Peacock says he’s been given confidence that there’s a way make it work w/out new taxes.

WTF?

This is an important detail.

And public money is public money. Unless I’m missing something, that’s either taxes or bonds. Which are still paid off by taxes in the long run.

http://www.fieldofschemes.com/2015/01/09/8334/st-louis-stadium-task-force-lets-throw-450m-at-kroenke-to-get-rams-to-stay/

St. Louis stadium task force: Let’s throw $450m at Kroenke to get Rams to stay
Posted on January 9, 2015 by Neil deMause
Live from watching the St. Louis how-we’re-gonna-keep-the-Rams press conference on the interwebs:

That was a question to Gov. Jay Nixon’s stadium negotiator (and Anheuser-Busch exec) Dave Peacock, who presented his proposal for a new stadium to make Rams owner Stan Kroenke re-up his lease in St. Louis. And yes, that’s a $900 million price tag, with $450 million of it coming from the public. More from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The facility would feature 64,000 seats, with 7,500 club seats. Financing the project, he said, would involve public and private money, as well as seat licenses paid by fans.

“There are ways to source public financing and do it with the same or less burden on the taxpayers,” Peacock said.

And:

The current Edward Jones Dome would become “a competitive asset to use” to attract conventions, Peacock said.

I will endeavor to get Heywood Sanders in here to comment on that one, if he ever stops laughing.

Anyway: 450 million smackeroos. That is a hell of a lot of money to keep a team that you just spent $600 million to lure to town 20 years ago, so either Peacock knows something we don’t know about the seriousness of Stan Kroenke’s threat to go to L.A., or he’s ignoring my advice about not bidding against yourself. Or he just figured most new stadiums cost around $900 million and thought, “Enh, let’s offer to go halfsies and see what they say. That sounds fair, right?” Dumber things have been done for dumber reasons.

wv wrote:

Someone needs to write a book
about this whole move-to-StLouis/move-to-LA
thing.
Or at least an article in the Atlantic
or New Yorker or Field and Stream
or somethin.

w
v

Matt Taibbi.

OahuRam wrote:

Grits,

I cannot remember, after Los Angeles was awarded an expansion team in 1997 how did they end up losing it to the now Houston Texans?

There was no stadium deal possible.

And LA wasn’t awarded an expansion team precisely because there was no stadium, iirc.

InvaderRam wrote:

in this instance. they can control the flow of information. the only people who would actually have to be in the know is kroenke, goodell, and some select owners with influence. and no physical evidence to speak of and all just people talking.

i mean the only reason we know kroenke is building a stadium is because he released the information. and all this talk about meetings with the inglewood mayor are just hearsay.

ok. i’m being stupid and suspicious.

First of all, I’m not sure specifically what “in the know” means. If that means “knows that the fix is in for moving,” then that just isn’t true. The NFL has rules for relocation that have been established by the owners. They made those rules so that the interests of the NFL as a whole can be protected, and so that relocation can be fully vetted, and all concerns considered. The proposals are carefully considered by the Finance Committee. They consider the proposal, look deeply at the financing, and look at what it means in terms of competitive balance, potential re-alignment, and, of course, cash flow. In this case, they will do a full analysis of the St. Louis proposal as well. Every single team is a billion dollar corporation with a slew of smart guys in suits who will look very carefully at what a relocation means to THEM, and their bottom line. (And, btw, I agree with something zn said early in the thread; I don’t think a move to LA benefits the league much. Not financially anyway. Mostly it provides a glamour site in a glamour town and a nice place for Super Bowls, but that’s it. It doesn’t increase revenue for the other 31 teams in any significant way).

This isn’t something that can just breezily be passed through without anyone much noticing. Stan needs votes from 24 teams. There’s a VOTE. The owners don’t just wake up in the morning, snap open their papers, and find out that an NFL team has moved. The more I think about, the more amazed I am that I even gave a moment’s consideration to the possibility that “the fix is in.” It can’t be. Stan’s proposal was just released the other day, and we haven’t seen the Peacock proposal. Even if you assume that the NFL people have been kept in the pipeline on developments of each of these proposals, and already have a good idea what they look like, the close examination and hard questions have not been begun – unless you think 32 owners have already studied this, argued about, voted on it, and just decided not to tell anybody publicly because they prefer to play charades to no advantage whatsoever.

Nope. I am starting to think there is no choice but to believe our eyes here. Kroenke really did that. Now, he may have let the other owners know in advance he was going to do that. But that still isn’t a fix even if he did. And maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was a surprise. We don’t know yet.

But I still don’t think this is brash, impulsive behavior. I’m convinced Kroenke is not going Rambo here. He’s going Bobby Fischer. He’s playing chess, imo, even if it looks like wild west cowboy behavior. He released his plan deliberately, and timed it with purpose.

I think he released his plan when he did because now the Peacock proposal will be compared to his proposal. Had Peacock’s proposal come out first, most people would be looking at its virtues. “Nice new stadium, wow, isn’t that pretty? Some commercial development…my, what a concept. Good deal. That could work!”

If Kroenke’s proposal followed that, it would just look like an attempt to One-Up a solid plan. A few more seats, a few more retail spaces, whatever.

Coming out after Kroenke’s proposal, Peacock’s is likely to be examined for its shortcomings in comparison to his. It will be considered a weaker version. Its unveiling is more likely to disappoint. Especially if it involves public money.

That’s my guess.

I’m looking forward to Friday.