NFL Merry-Go-Round: Relocation Roundelay

[STL FANATIC]

Alright. Well, I suppose I understand what you're saying. Don't agree, but understand.

[colortv]

With the NFL nearing a point where it must get behind one of the competing Los Angeles stadium projects and October’s fall meeting shaping up as one of the more compelling in years, there is a popularity contest of sorts going on between the owners hoping to be Los Angeles-bound.

The NFL will have to get behind one of these proposals by December, and there remains much to iron out between now and then. No one knows exactly what the final outcome will be, and as we get closer to 2016, it looks more and more like anything is negotiable.

This race has already made for some strange bedfellows as it is. By the October meeting there should be at least more of a sense as to which way the league is leaning, and the teams interested in moving will need ample time to assess the NFL’s potential relocation fee and other stipulations that could be placed on any club seeking to leave its current market.

http://mweb.cbssports.com/nfl/writer/jason-la-canfora/25299933/jerry-jones-continues-to-support-rams-owners-bid-for-los-angeles

[STL FANATIC]

Jason Cole of Bleacher Report did an interview on The Bernie Miklasz Show on 101 ESPN Radio in St. Louis.

https://soundcloud.com/101sports/bleacher-reports-jason-cole-discusses-the-future-of-the-rams-in-st-louis

Some notable points:

• The St. Louis stadium plan needs to figure out who will be paying for the cost overruns. It's unclear if Cole knows directly that this is an issue or if he's speculating based on previous stadium negotiations and the fact that we haven't seen this mentioned in any of the basic financial plans we've seen. It's a good point as there will certainly be overruns. Miklasz intends to reach out to Dave Peacock for clarity.

• Cole agrees that the LA committee is probably 5-1 or 6-0 on wanting to keep the Rams in St. Louis. But that's just those 6 owners, not the full league.

• Cole thinks there are probably 9-14 owners who support Kroenke strictly because they think he's the right owner for LA regardless of what it might mean for St. Louis.

• Some NFL and/or team executives are not keen on the idea of musical chairs. They would prefer to keep the St. Louis market but find it a tough sell to ask St. Louis to magically fall in love with yet another team. The implications of that perspective weren't clear, probably because nobody knows what factors will outweigh others at this point.

• Cole thinks the Chargers are a lock for LA at this point. The question is whether it's in Inglewood with the Rams or in Carson with the Raiders.

• Cole does not believe this will ever get to a vote. He thinks it will be decided before it reaches that point with one of the teams politely bowing out.

[colortv]

Because Dave Kaplan was on San Diego radio this afternoon talking about how there's a growing swell right now "among members of the committee" to only bring 1 team, rather than two - with a number of motives expressed (not wanting to have two clubs simultaneously competing to rouse PSL monies, corporate partnerships, etc. from the same pool; television scheduling and not being able to air the "national broadcast" late game in one of the largest markets because with two LA teams you're guaranteed for one to have a home game weekly and that will likely be a 1:30PST/4:30EST kickoff; not wanting to have two G4 loans out at simultaneously). And if it's only one team moving then Carson ain't happening as they need two teams to even make that remotely work financially.

Also, J Pep, if you're interest in the Kaplan interview here it is. Quick listen - only about a 10-12 minute segment.

http://www.mighty1090.com/episode/daniel-kaplan-on-growing-nfl-debate-of-only-1-team-to-los-angeles/

http://www.footballsfuture.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=566627&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=585

[colortv]

Stadium considerations aside, if you're the NFL which market do you find more attractive. San Diego or St. Louis?

Also, wouldn't a lot of the funding gaps be closed by directing some of the relocation fees towards whichever home market keeps its team?

[2001mark]

Stadium considerations aside, if you're the NFL which market do you find more attractive. San Diego or St. Louis?

I'd have to say San Diego. Not least, the NFL now has St. Louis' lesser performance on the books as a comparable.

San Diego has a larger metropolitan population, SoCal regional footprint, & with all due respect is much less of a baseball town with an MLB than St. Louis (which is probably top of that list).

I'd also have to believe San Diego's population growth is noticeably greater, for futures.

[Gothamite]

Also, wouldn't a lot of the funding gaps be closed by directing some of the relocation fees towards whichever home market keeps its team?

Why? If you're the owner of the Patriots or Dolphins or Seahawks or Texans, would you agree to let the league take money out of your pocket to pay for somebody else's stadium? You did the heavy lifting to get a building built in your town, why should you pay for their free ride?

[STL FANATIC]

Also, wouldn't a lot of the funding gaps be closed by directing some of the relocation fees towards whichever home market keeps its team?

Why? If you're the owner of the Patriots or Dolphins or Seahawks or Texans, would you agree to let the league take money out of your pocket to pay for somebody else's stadium? You did the heavy lifting to get a building built in your town, why should you pay for their free ride?

Well, that's only somewhat accurate.

The NFL never pays for stadiums, they offer loans. The owners would still get their money, just not as quickly.

This may have been mentioned earlier, not sure, but representatives from St. Louis and San Diego will NOT be presenting at the league meeting in October, and will instead be presenting to smaller groups.

This is a change of course. Makes you wonder if something more is up.

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nfl/story/_/id/13664637/san-diego-chargers-st-louis-rams-make-stadium-pitches-owners

[The_Admiral]

Because Dave Kaplan was on San Diego radio this afternoon talking about how there's a growing swell right now "among members of the committee" to only bring 1 team, rather than two - with a number of motives expressed (not wanting to have two clubs simultaneously competing to rouse PSL monies, corporate partnerships, etc. from the same pool; television scheduling and not being able to air the "national broadcast" late game in one of the largest markets because with two LA teams you're guaranteed for one to have a home game weekly and that will likely be a 1:30PST/4:30EST kickoff; not wanting to have two G4 loans out at simultaneously). And if it's only one team moving then Carson ain't happening as they need two teams to even make that remotely work financially.

yeah, duh, NFL owners, DUH

Make sure one team works before you drop a second one in. Do you even business, bro?

If all this is true, then we've solved the riddle, but we've had people report every possible scenario, so who even knows anymore. Watch it be the Jaguars moving outta nowhere.

[Mac the Knife]

You guys know why Cleveland got a replacement team? Because the market was seen as too good to abandon even when the owner wanted to.

I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, directly between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and I can tell you without equivocation that Cleveland didn't get a replacement team because Cleveland was too good a market to abandon. They got it because when Fart Modell moved to Baltimore, he violated umpteen gazillion contracts and people started suing him, the Browns as an entity, and the NFL - and in some cases, the case was so open-and-shut that the team would've had to go into bankruptcy upon losing (and the NFL's other then-29 owners would've been coughing up some considerable money as well).

Also, members of Ohio's congressional delegation and the U.S. Department of Justice were hinting to Paul Tagliabue (some subtly, some not so much so) that something had better be done to mollify the situation, or else they were going to drop down an anti-trust hammer on the NFL, including one law that would've forced them to go back to one TV network for airing its games.

So while no sane person questions Cleveland as a professional football market, or Los Angeles for that matter, let's not get delusional about either one. Cleveland doesn't get a new team without being threatened by people who could've done the NFL some real harm, thanks to an incompetent team owner. And Los Angeles hasn't received a new team not because it's a bad market, but because there's not been a stadium deal seen as sufficient to cause a team to move. Until now, that is.

[Gothamite]

Yes, but why was Ohio's Congressional delegation so up in arms? Because their constituents were. That's the point that I've been trying to make all along; that fans have power to move elected officials. But if those officials don't see any backlash to letting the Rams leave, then they won't work to stop it. That's undoubtedly the calculus that the Republican members who are now speaking out have made.

[The_Admiral]

PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER! Except when the Jets moved in 1996 because Gary Bettman kept changing the requirements to keep the team until the requirements couldn't possibly be met. But I don't think Patti Smith wrote any songs about Gary Bettman for me to link to, unless you count a very liberal interpretation of "Pissing in a River."

[Gothamite]

Ah, that's Canada. Bettman hates them.

But seriously, don't you think that if St. Louis could get 50,000 people to stage a "Save Our Rams" rally, it would make a significant difference?

[The_Admiral]

I dunno, probably depends what kind of dirt Missouri's elected officials have on the NFL.

[Gothamite]

If nothing else, 50,000 St. Louis Rams fans all gathered beneath the Arch would create a whole new national conversation. ESPN wouldn't have a single report that doesn't mention how the team was being cruelly ripped away from the city that loves it. Every news article, every talking head, every editorial. The national consensus around the Browns' move was "What the is the NFL doing?" That spurs not only local legislators into action, but representatives all across the nation who have consituents who fear their team is next.

Right now, there's a sense of inevitably. Maybe some small hope that there'd be a replacement eventually. But a "Save the Rams" rally to match Winnipeg's would turn that on its head. Or would have, at least.

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, but the Cleveland Browns were a team that had been around forever (in football years) and sort of encapsulated the whole blue-collar Rust Belt mystique: grim colors, no logo, loud working-class fans in the Dawg Pound, all that jazz. I don't think the St. Louis Rams have ever been or could be romanticized. They just are. Cleveland has also had the whole scrappy underdog thing going for it for years, whereas St. Louis these days just gets some sidelong glances about the whole Ferguson thing if it gets anything at all. Most people abhor relocations (unless they're the ones getting a team), but in the case of the St. Louis Rams, they were an abhorrent relocation to begin with, so the national consensus would probably just be something about swords and how one lives and dies by them.

[Gothamite]

Sheer numbers would have romanticized the hell out of them. 50,000 fans all gathered in one perfect photo op to protest their club moving? Best Fans in Football.

[STL FANATIC]

Yes, 50,000 fans gathered beneath the Arch would have generated some positive PR. No, I don't think it would save the team. No, I don't think it would have a major impact on the legislature. (MOST from the St. Louis area are supporting the stadium.)

And, bottomline, 50,000 fans under the Arch just isn't realistic because you don't build a fan base by being in a city for 20 years, sucking for 15 of them, including the last 10, and then say show up or move. That's not real life. In any city.

None of the fan base comparisons you can make have a history similar to that of the St. Louis Rams when it comes to building a fan base. There's really no apples to apples comparison.

I do wonder why the one comparison that has some relation—because it's the same franchise—never gets much play here though. And that's LA. A city umpteen times larger than St. Louis with worse attendance.

I'm not arguing that LA shouldn't have a team because they should. I'm just pointing out that the reaction of St. Louis to these conditions isn't weird and it's not a straight-forward reflection on whether it is or can be a good football market with more legitimate conditions.

[Gothamite]

You can't compare attendance in a sport from twenty years ago. The context is too different.

Of course, I just did that with the fan rallies. So let's take Winnipeg out of that. And let's drop the number by an order of magnitude. If anyone could have gotten 5,000 Rams fans together in a public place, it would have completely changed the narrative. We wouldn't be having the conversation we're having now; that support would have resonated from the CVC all the way to Washington.

As it is, there's really no downside to letting Kroenke move. The narrative will be "fair weather fans in a baseball town." No governmental entity will apply any pressure on the NFL. And the stadium deal, if they even get it together, will likely die for lack of a tenant.

5,000 people. Any NFL city should be able to muster that. And I'm looking at Oakland and San Diego as well.

[STL FANATIC]

I actually think St. Louis could do 5,000. But I don't really see the value, myself. A 5,000 person rally isn't changing anything and it's not motivating government to start suing the NFL. In my opinion.

The downside to letting Kroenke move is you're abandoning a middle tier market and leaving a lot of public dollars on the table.

The NFL will survive it quite easily, of course.