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OKCRT 01-14-2016, 05:42 PM From 1982 to 1994 the Rams and the Raiders were both in L.A. Sharing a facility is odd but I suppose they can make it work.
On a side note. We go to St Louis quite a bit and I'll be surprised if they really miss the Rams that much. For years when you go into a sports store there's 50 racks of Cards gear, 4 or 5 racks of Blues gear and 1 or 2 racks of Rams gear. I'm sure the loyal fans are ticked but in general I don't think most of The St Louis sports fans will care.
SK the man that married Walmart money and became a billionaire over night. He is the guy that makes the deals on where Walmarts are to be built. He gets millions and millions of TIF money around the country from the tax payers.The man that was named after Cardinal greats Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial. The man that brought the Rams to Stl because La wasn't willing to help the late owner build a stadium. The man that is in the Mo. Sports Hall Of Fame. The man that is worth (combined with his wife Ann) somewhere in the range of 15 BILLION dollars. He trashed the City of STL and their Fans on the way out. Even said he was a victim. What a guy!
He had a total of less that 500 mil. invested in the franchise but Forbes says as of last year the Rams are worth 1.5 bil. or so. So the value has sky rocketed since his purchase. Stl was willing to invest 400 mil. of public money for a new downtown stadium last week. SK would have ended up only investing less than 100 mil. in to the proposed 1.1 bil. dollar stadium after tax rebates ect. ect. But he had the gall to say if he did sign on to that deal that he would be on the road to financial ruin. I kid you not. I mean every NFL team makes money. There are no losers. It's a cartel. BTW, WSJ had an article last week declaring Stl. as the number 1 sports city in the US.
OKCRT 01-14-2016, 05:49 PM Stl has a pop. of 3 mil. and ranks number 15 of all NFL markets. Number 13 in corporations. It's a mid-market and bigger than Denver-Pitts-Cincy-Clev.-Indy-KC- and quite a few others. But lets not let facts get in the way.
They moved for one reason and one reason only. MONEY. The NFLs by-laws hold no water. They are a Cartel and they are run as a non profit. Kinda smells a little funny to me.
OKCRT 01-14-2016, 05:54 PM Deadspin nails it.
Stan Kroenke Will Never Care About You (http://deadspin.com/stan-kroenke-will-never-care-about-you-1752963781)
Quote:
The thing that always strikes me about people’s reactions to the general (firetruck) carried out by pro sports owners is the genuine disbelief. You look at some galactically rich piece of puddy asking taxpayers to build him a new stadium and you can’t help but ask, “Is this guy (firetruck) serious?” You see a bunch of NFL owners celebrate a year spent shamelessly torturing three separate fanbases with a Roman feast, and you wonder what planet these guys are from. Allow Rams owner Stan Kroenke to clear a few things up for you.
Fresh off kicking the city of St. Louis in the face and moving his bad football team to Los Angeles, Kroenke sat down for a Q&A with the Los Angeles Times. I’d like to direct your attention to on particular moment from that Q&A:
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.
It’s fitting that these two answers come in succession. In the first, we have Kroenke showing some real human emotion—getting choked up, even!—over his responsibility to Rams VP of football operations Kevin Demoff, another obscenely wealthy person who would be just fine if the Rams still played in St. Louis. And then you have him sleepwalking through an answer to a question about the thousands of Rams fans he extorted and abandoned.
Stan Kroenke, along with all of the other owners living in America’s upper crust, don’t think about us at all. The people who Kroenke feels the need to do right by are not the fans who pay for his stadium, buy his tickets, and maintain the value of the NFL’s TV contracts, but the guys he eats steak with. This is the joke. You can ask people like Kroenke all the angry questions you want, but the answers don’t exist, because he never heard you in the first place.
SoonerDave 01-15-2016, 01:37 PM While I'm no NFL business expert, something occurred to me after the dust settled on this announcement.
The big "spin" on this was that the new facility was not just a stadium, but a huge "entertainment complex," where combines would be hosted, other events would occur - a "destination" of sorts.
Sound familiar?
Go back to how Jones pitched Jerry World to Dallas - a year-round "entertainment complex" that would, at that time, revitalize the entire nasty area around Fair Park. I don't think the "real" Jerry World has quite that depth of entertainment resources "built in" for non-game/non-season activities, but the idea of it being an event destination has obviously already taken hold.
I think the NFL is trying to counterprogram Jerry Jones, at least in part. Jones, arguably, has the premier facility in the league, hosting multiple other sports and events, and even in spite of the fact his Cowboys suck under his leadership, he's made the franchise worth billions and himself (already worth billions) and much of the NFL's corporate identity these days is, directly or indirectly, tied to Jones. And I think the NFL *doesn't* like that.
They want to come up with a west coast destination that is spoken of in terms of "Jerry World." That's why the NFL doesn't care with whom they find themselves jumping in bed, or dropping $100M in the bucket to get it done. Mind you, it isn't the sole reason, not by a long shot, but I'm betting dollars to donuts its a *part* of the reason.
Urbanized 01-19-2016, 06:48 PM I've never trusted the Rams ever since they left Cleveland and broke my heart.
Jersey Boss 01-19-2016, 09:37 PM The Rams never called Cleveland home.
zookeeper 01-19-2016, 11:13 PM The Rams never called Cleveland home.
Actually, the Rams started out in Cleveland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Cleveland_Rams
The odd thing is - how old is Urbanized? If they broke his heart at say, 10, that would make him 81.
Jersey Boss 01-19-2016, 11:19 PM Actually, the Rams started out in Cleveland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Cleveland_Rams
The odd thing is - how old is Urbanized? If they broke his heart at say, 10, that would make him 81.
Being how I am only 61 I remember them from their LA days. I stand corrected and must defer to the wisdom and knowledge of an elder.
zookeeper 01-19-2016, 11:20 PM Being how I am only 61 I remember them from their LA days. I stand corrected and must defer to the wisdom and knowledge of an elder.
The only thing is - the Urbanized I know is only in his late 40's? Color me confuzzzed.
Thomas Vu 01-20-2016, 12:21 AM Hipster level : Uber
Just the facts 01-20-2016, 10:04 AM The big winner in all of this - the taxpayers of St. Louis.
Laramie 01-20-2016, 12:59 PM St. Louis, a city of 2,806,207 can adequately support its present teams:
MLB (NL) - St. Louis Cardinals
NHL - St. Louis Blues
This could open the door for the NBA and/or MLS to enter the St. Louis market or future NFL expansion or relocation.
St. Louis NFL Stadium Task Force (http://stlstadium.com/) (An end or an opportunity for a new beginning.)
jerrywall 01-20-2016, 03:12 PM The big winner in all of this - the taxpayers of St. Louis.
More than St. Louis IMO. Next time a professional sports team owner claims they need the taxpayers to support the bill of their monument to ego they want for their for-profit team, I hope folks point to this.
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