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STL FANATIC

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Everything posted by STL FANATIC

  1. The answer is they're all garbage human beings, pretty much. But on a sliding scale. Jerry isn't a garbage human being just for his role in this situation however. I don't think I need to document his history here. For that matter, Kroenke isn't just a garbage human being for this situation either. He's a garbage human being for pretty much all the same reasons he's a successful businessman. Basically his entire fortune has been made by screwing people over in the name of money and ego.
  2. It's infuriating. And pretty clear this was decided long ago. It was just a matter of figuring out how to get enough owners to vote against their guidelines. And with money involved, that was of course no trouble at all. Jerry Jones and Stan Kroenke are amazing businessmen, but they're absolute garbage human beings.
  3. Pretty frustrating to hear Roger Goodell continuing to discuss the Rams move as them "returning home" and various such things. I get that talk from fans. Even from the Rams trying to drum up excitement. But it's pretty infuriating from league officials still trying to maintain that they treated St. Louis fairly in the process. I don't know if embracing teams to returning to a previous long-term home market (I won't even get into the silly game of where they started) is a road the NFL wants to really go down. But as with everything else, such hypocrisy will go largely unnoticed and certainly unpunished with these guys.
  4. I'm curious how you would back that up. About the only way to do so is putting a huge amount of stock in a 3-5 year stretch from over a decade ago.
  5. I think everyone vastly overrates the Rams getting to LA first as being meaningful. LA is going to support a winner. If the Rams predictably flop, and the Chargers happen to get their stuff together, there will be an opening in that market. It's as simple as that.
  6. Equity in the context of ownership of something doesn't require equivalency. In other words, If Spanos (or Davis) can only afford to pony up say $500 million towards the roughly $2 billion stadium, I imagine you could see a scenario in which they're 25% owners of it. The NFL would probably require some equal treatment in terms of decision making, regardless, but the financial picture could very well be skewed where Kroenke gets 75% of the revenues (in my simple example). The league probably is requiring Kroenke to offer an equal partnership, but that doesn't mean it's the only partnership on the table. In fact, I'm sure Kroenke would prefer a partnership in which he takes on Spanos or Davis as a minority partner if that's all they can muster.
  7. Thanks, I couldn't remember. And yes, it was always expected to be to the team, not the market, I believe. That's largely semantics, I'd think, but nonetheless, you're right.
  8. Can anyone find the wording of what Goodell said the deal was for the extra $100 million? Basically, what I can't recall is whether he said they'd give $100 million to BOTH San Diego and Oakland, or whether he said it in a manner that assumed one of them would move. Meaning did he say they'd give $100 million to the market that didn't lose their team to LA? Still unclear to me how the Raiders stay in Oakland if the city of Oakland stays strong and doesn't offer to subsidize them much. Gotta think that if Spanos is in San Diego on January 16, 2017, Mark Davis will jump at any deal Kroenke has on the table in LA. And the Raiders—perhaps unlike the Chargers—probably wouldn't suffer from the Rams being their first. The Raiders will have LA fans regardless. (Also, by then the Rams franchise will have been exposed for the disappointment that it is. But the honeymoon will get another kick start when the new stadium opens. True disappointment won't set in for LA Rams fans until about 2020.)
  9. We can speculate as much as we like on that. I don't have a clue what the arrangement would be. But at one point Kroenke was offering a partnership in the stadium, and presumably he agreed to a certain level of something when the NFL struck this bargain.
  10. Perhaps. But let's wait and see. It may yet be a scenario where Spanos—should he leave San Diego after 2016—becomes a partner in the stadium. Kroenke will win this deal. Because he always wins his deals. But that doesn't mean any deal struck will screw Spanos over. Although, on second thought, it probably will. Because Kroenke screws over everyone he makes a deal with.
  11. Do we have specifics of the deal? Also, according to Forbes, the Jets are the 6th most valuable team in the NFL at $2.6 billion. The Giants are just two spots and $0.2 billion ahead of them on the list. I think Spanos would be satisfied with such an arrangement.
  12. It sure will be something if the NFL ends up seeing all three teams move. When's the last time any league showed this much instability over the span of a year or two? The NHL in the mid-90s?
  13. As someone mentioned in the thread earlier, we should throw out any thing we know about PSL's as a standard thing these days because the St. Louis PSLs were one of the first set of PSLs ever sold. There wasn't a standard way of doing it back then, and it's very possible it was done differently and in a way that may have been less legally shored up than the way new PSLs are handled. Also, I think the Dome probably will make more money without the Rams than with them. That probably won't happen in 2016, but I think it could begin happening in the years beyond that. Reed is just (poorly) skewing one line of reasoning to fit his motives in that letter. Again, if Reed was going to do this, he should have requested reimbursement to the RSA on the stadium planning funding, not help paying off the remaining Dome debt. Both are unlikely, but one makes some reasonable sense to ask for. He asked for the other. We'll find out how frivolous the lawsuits are in the coming weeks and months. (Reed's, of course, was just a letter, not a lawsuit.)
  14. So, I actually think the idea isn't bad. Reach out to the NFL and request they have a heart. Cheap political points if nothing else. No risk in doing so. But Lewis Reed pushes it too much here. First off, while the "best sports city in America" isn't an unreasonable opinion, it's simply an opinion that doesn't belong in this request. (Side note: Reed doesn't specifically do this, a lot of people in STL keep citing this article as the reason St. Louis is the best sports city, completely oblivious to the fact that it is strictly based on team performance and has nothing to do with the fans.) Additionally, Reed asks for help with the remaining debt on the stadium rather than help with the $16+ million they spent trying to woo the NFL into staying. I think that's misguided. The debt on the stadium was a bad deal the public made all their own and has to live with. I think the money spent on trying to keep the Rams was also a bad decision and is certainly legally all our own to deal with, but I think there's moral justification for requesting help from the entity that goaded the public into pursuing it and can afford to pay it back without even noticing. But Reed doesn't even request that. So yeah, I thought his request was more embarrassing than helpful.
  15. I THINK this is correct, but I guess I'd have to see the court filings to be sure. The other thing is, we don't know if the Rams have actually canceled those PSLs. It feels like they're canceled, but I would think canceling would require a specific and formal action of notification. If they do that, and don't issue a refund, then I think there'd be basis for a separate or modified lawsuit. But we'll see. It really does seem to me that the Rams might be required to do more than just ignore this and pretend those PSLs have evaporated. But I doubt all that much comes of this.
  16. I don't blame LA one iota. Some of their fans have been jerks throughout the process, but I mean whatever. That's gonna happen. They deserve a football team and they didn't deserve to lose the Rams. No ill-will towards them. I think Kroenke acted quite petulantly and entitled. I'd suggest—to your disagreement, of course—that he did not meet the organizational requirements. But we'll agree to disagree. Regardless of that, though, his actions were almost undeniably petulant. He never spoke publicly. Until his application for relocation, he never told St. Louisans he was seeking to move the Rams. He ignored calls from the Governor (a man he says he's on a "first name basis" with) and Mayor. And he trashed the city and region and fans and made a point to release it publicly. He may have been every bit within his rights, but he acted petulantly in the manner in which he exercised them. The sooner the people on this board stop defending Kroenke, the better. You can keep your criticisms of St. Louis and their efforts to build a stadium. But stop turning Kroenke into some well intentioned guy who acted reasonably and with class. Look at the man's history. Every business relationship he's ever had has ended with lawsuits. The man seeks nothing more than money and will behave in any way necessary to acquire more of it. As for the Dome and the Cardinals and whatnot. That's before my time. I can't comment with a great deal of intelligence on that. The truth is, though, the Dome likely just never should have been built. St. Louis was likely reasonable in choosing not to build it for Bidwell and the Cardinals. They then caved into a worse deal when they planned it for no one and ultimately finished building it for the Rams. If the Rams had signed a lease with twice as much rent and no first tier clause, the Dome still would have been a bad deal for St. Louis. The whole thing was a mistake.
  17. Petulant and entitled sounds like a great description of one of the sides in this whole debacle, but St. Louis isn't the one I'd stick that label on.
  18. I'll just reiterate that we're all silly to play lawyer, especially before any of us have seen the contract. The Rams certainly wronged these fans in an intangible manner, and IF there is a real legal case, it's not "sore loser whiner" to pursue it. It's protecting your rights. But since none of us know what is in the contract, we have no idea if this case has any merit.
  19. I think we really need to see the contract before any of us can even pretend to play lawyer here. One line quoted in the article seems to make it pretty clear that the Rams—as you allude to Matt—do have the right to cancel the contract. But it pretty clearly implies if not outright states that they must do in combination with the issuance of some form of refund. To this point, it appears the Rams have not suggested to any St. Louis PSL holders that such a thing is taking place. I don't expect this to be any massive hit to the Rams, but this actually does seem like an issue they may have to address.
  20. Really, really interesting point, Cosmic. Not sure how that would have played out.
  21. I'm not privy to inside information. It would be my speculation that the ownership group will consist of local investors. The group will probably include some of these names: the Taylor family, Jim Kavanaugh, Bill DeWitt III, Tom Stillman, and Dave Peacock.
  22. Whether or not St. Louis lands an MLS team will tell us nothing about St. Louis. Just as having or not having an NFL team tells us nothing. Don't judge capabilities off of sports franchises and stadiums. With that said, St. Louis will get the MLS and it'll be in short order.
  23. It needs refurbished to some degree regardless of football, but it will be a part of the America's Center convention center, just as it currently is. But now it and the rest of the facility will be free to host conventions year round and not just February-August or whatever it is. St. Louis may well end up doing better financially in this arrangement than it did having a football team playing there. Originally, I thought the big gain was just freeing up the rest of the convention center during that time period, but I've been told there's actually a decent amount of interest in the Dome part of the facility itself for conventions. So that will be its primary use from now on.
  24. There's a lot of other possible locations in the city besides the North Riverfront. Not putting the stadium on the North Riverfront doesn't mean putting it in the suburbs. In fact, the MLS almost certainly wants the stadium in the city. They've made a point to support urban stadiums. I think the North Riverfront would be a fine location for a soccer stadium. It takes up significantly less acreage than a football stadium, and you don't need all the surface parking. So you could build a beautiful stadium and still be able to develop that area as a nice 365-days a year urban environment (not that it will happen over night). Whether the stadium is built there or not, there IS a 365 days a year plan in place (and was before the NFL stadium project existed). Those can be seen here: http://nextstl.com/2015/07/north-riverfront-vision-offers-ideas-with-or-without-nfl-stadium/. It will need support and funding to move forward, but I think parts of it will begin happening. Hopefully that will encourage organic private investment in that area over time as well. On the other hand, there are a handful of other potential sites for the soccer stadium that people have been speculating on. One is near Union Station. Recently a local architecture firm released an idea intended to spur conversation (http://spacestl.com/an-mls-stadium-as-better-urban-infill-and-the-greatest-sports-street-in-america/). The truth is, this idea was concepted a couple of years back (I believe), and the exact placement of the stadium is almost certainly no longer an option as Union Station is moving forward with other redevelopment plans (http://nextstl.com/2016/01/100m-remake-of-union-station-moves-ahead-ferris-wheel-included/). However, the area just west of Union Station IS a reasonable option, and so the principles mentioned in this concept all would still apply. Beyond that, there are areas near SLU and in neighborhoods that could fit a stadium with minimal building demolition. I'm not sure site is the favorite. It could be something I haven't heard of yet. But I'm certain they'll pick a city site and move forward with it. And unlike the NFL stadium plans, I'm sure this site will be designed as part of an urban environment rather than a wasteland of parking surrounding a stadium all bizarrely in the middle of an urban environment.
  25. I think that's a lot of extrapolating. I don't think there's much real concern to that. St. Louis is the MLS's 1st or 2nd priority as far as new expansion markets goes. They're not going to back off on St. Louis because there's a lawsuit against one of their competitors.
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