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NFL Merry-Go-Round: Relocation Roundelay


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But Dean Spanos wants to stay in San Diego.

I wouldn't say that just yet. The Chargers aren't any closer to securing a stadium deal in San Diego.

It's like nobody believes someone might actually enjoy owning a team in St. Louis...

It's like you refuse to believe that someone would enjoy owning a team in Los Angeles.

(despite the fact Kroenke is pretty much the #1 reason the Rams went to St. Louis in the first place.)

Oh come now. We all know that's a lie.

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(despite the fact Kroenke is pretty much the #1 reason the Rams went to St. Louis in the first place.)

Oh come now. We all know that's a lie.

I'm surprised people in St. Louis haven't yet erected a statue of Georgia Frontierre outside the Dome, or at least Busch Stadium. To them, she's their hero. To people in Los Angeles, she's Rachel Phelps if the Yankees had won the one-game playoff over Lou Brown's Indians.

She warrants the same level of detest as Art Modell in Cleveland or the Irsay family in Baltimore. No amount of gasoline thrown into the corpse would be enough to symbolize the hate she gets for dismantling the NFL out of the hands of Los Angeles. She's right up there as one the most hated sports figures of this city, easily.

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(despite the fact Kroenke is pretty much the #1 reason the Rams went to St. Louis in the first place.)

No, Kroenke is the reason the rest of the league agreed to the move. The move itself was at Frontiere's instigation.

EDIT-and no, she's not a hero.

She's an incompetent who deliberately destroyed one market, wrecked another one through inaction, and took one of the most successful organizations in the league straight off the goddamn cliff. The Greatest Show on Turf is a brief aberration in a festival of failure that serves to only emphasize how awful her and John Shaw's stewardship of the team actually was.

On 8/1/2010 at 4:01 PM, winters in buffalo said:
You manage to balance agitation with just enough salient points to keep things interesting. Kind of a low-rent DG_Now.
On 1/2/2011 at 9:07 PM, Sodboy13 said:
Today, we are all otaku.

"The city of Peoria was once the site of the largest distillery in the world and later became the site for mass production of penicillin. So it is safe to assume that present-day Peorians are descended from syphilitic boozehounds."-Stephen Colbert

POTD: February 15, 2010, June 20, 2010

The Glorious Bloom State Penguins (NCFAF) 2014: 2-9, 2015: 7-5 (L Pineapple Bowl), 2016: 1-0 (NCFAB) 2014-15: 10-8, 2015-16: 14-5 (SMC Champs, L 1st Round February Frenzy)

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^^I'd say that's post of the day, as I laughed pretty good, but I don't know if it meets the board's standards...and then to see Jimmy and the Green Day lyric kind of tops it off...

Smart is believing half of what you hear. Genius is knowing which half.

 

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(despite the fact Kroenke is pretty much the #1 reason the Rams went to St. Louis in the first place.)

No, Kroenke is the reason the rest of the league agreed to the move. The move itself was at Frontiere's instigation.

EDIT-and no, she's not a hero.

She's an incompetent who deliberately destroyed one market, wrecked another one through inaction, and took one of the most successful organizations in the league straight off the goddamn cliff. The Greatest Show on Turf is a brief aberration in a festival of failure that serves to only emphasize how awful her and John Shaw's stewardship of the team actually was.

Couldn't agree more on Georgia Frontiere. It seemed like under her, the Rams died a slow and painful death in Los Angeles. I still wonder if the light bulb went on as soon as the Cardinals vacated St. Louis.

It's like you refuse to believe that someone would enjoy owning a team in Los Angeles.

The Rams sure didn't have any fun the last few years they were there. The fans treated the Rams like crap. They were finicky and ill mannered toward their team.

She did everything to alienate the Los Angeles fanbase. It didn't help that Carol Rosenbloom mysteriously drowned in shallow water, and then his son (I think) was quickly ousted from his position by Madame Ram. Eric Dickerson, Kevin Greene, and Jerome Bettis were traded for poorly-selected draft picks if not released outright, and this was because of the lack of "a new [taxpayer-funded] stadium," or so Frontiere would have you believe. At least Clay Bennett was quick to get out of Seattle--and had a plan in place once he did.

And once she got the Rams to St. Louis, she made herself into a hero that finally managed to move a team out of big, bad California* and made herself a happy ending when the Rams won the Super Bowl. But you would hardly even notice it with the way the Rams have been run pretty much since.

I mean, I generally despise Los Angeles fans, but to say the primary reason why the Rams left southern California was the fickle/rude fans with a sense of entitlement is buying into the Frontiere spin machine. It's hard to pin such consistent ineptitude and finger-pointing all on the LA fans, as just about any market this side of Cleveland would abandon their team in that situation.

*Can't say I entirely disagree. :P

Edited by DustDevil61

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It's like you refuse to believe that someone would enjoy owning a team in Los Angeles.

The Rams sure didn't have any fun the last few years they were there. The fans treated the Rams like crap. They were finicky and ill mannered toward their team.

Major League was released in 1989. It's pretty much openly acknowledged that the Indians' owner in that movie was based on Frontiere. The Rams still had 5 years to go before leaving town. Perhaps the fan apathy in those last few years could be thus explained.

On 8/1/2010 at 4:01 PM, winters in buffalo said:
You manage to balance agitation with just enough salient points to keep things interesting. Kind of a low-rent DG_Now.
On 1/2/2011 at 9:07 PM, Sodboy13 said:
Today, we are all otaku.

"The city of Peoria was once the site of the largest distillery in the world and later became the site for mass production of penicillin. So it is safe to assume that present-day Peorians are descended from syphilitic boozehounds."-Stephen Colbert

POTD: February 15, 2010, June 20, 2010

The Glorious Bloom State Penguins (NCFAF) 2014: 2-9, 2015: 7-5 (L Pineapple Bowl), 2016: 1-0 (NCFAB) 2014-15: 10-8, 2015-16: 14-5 (SMC Champs, L 1st Round February Frenzy)

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Throw out the business aspect/logic aspect, do any of you honestly want to see a team move to Los Angeles?

Personally, I would be pissed. Not only has LA screwed several opportunities of having their own NFL team, I still don't think that there is a true thirst for NFL football there. Why should Minnesota or St.Louis lose their team to that? Small-medium market teams is what makes the NFL interesting. 1/7th of the NFL shouldn't be in California.

The only exception I have to this is moving San Diego. Poor fanbase for the most part, and it's not that far of a move. But I feel the only change from the San Diego fanbase and the Los Angeles fanbase is just a larger amount of shi*ty "casual" fans.

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I still don't think that there is a true thirst for NFL football there. Why should Minnesota or St.Louis lose their team to that?

Well, in the case of St. Louis, why not? They've hardly demonstrated your "true thirst for NFL football" either.

I'm very sympathetic to the plight of a fanbase ripped from its team, but if Rams fans did more to fill the park they would be making it harder for the team to move.

Personally, I don't have an emotional investment in LA relocation either way. I lived in LA for a while, but didn't like it all that much. And I have the luxury of rooting for a team that will never be in the conversation.

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Yeah, I'd like to see a team in LA. Even though I grew up in a mostly LA-less NFL it just seems weird to not have at least one team there.

Not only has LA screwed several opportunities of having their own NFL team, I still don't think that there is a true thirst for NFL football there. Why should Minnesota or St.Louis lose their team to that? Small-medium market teams is what makes the NFL interesting. 1/7th of the NFL shouldn't be in California.

There's no real thirst for NFL football in St. Louis if the attendance and tv numbers are to be believed. It's also worth mentioning that LA lost the rams because St. Louis stole them away. So the Rams wouldn't be a case of mean old California stealing away something from the poor downtrodden Midwest. It would be LA getting back what St. Louis stole from it under pretty shady circumstances.

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Isn't today the official start of the Chargers lease of San Diego being on a year-to-year basis? Because from I've heard, from now until May 1, San Diego can opt out of the lease and move on out the I-5 north, so long as the lease is year-to-year.

No but I believe today was the opt out deadline for their lease. They've had the ability to opt out of the current lease and leave for several years if not the whole length of the lease provided they notify the city by I believe Feb 1. They've yet to exercise it, in part because they don't want to leave San Diego. While they may seem an obvious move choice, they've always had the ability, they just never exercise it because they really don't want to go to LA.

Which is why I always say the Rams and Raiders are the frontrunners to go to LA. They both have owners that have expressed interest in doing so and in both cases have been actively working to make it happen to some extent with either Al and now Mark Davis working with Roski, or now Kroenke buying up land to do his own stadium. The Chargers, Jags, Bills, and Vikings have all been focused on their existing markets and have owners who thus far have shown no real interest in LA.

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I mean, I generally despise Los Angeles fans, but to say the primary reason why the Rams left southern California was the fickle/rude fans with a sense of entitlement is buying into the Frontiere spin machine. It's hard to pin such consistent ineptitude and finger-pointing all on the LA fans, as just about any market this side of Cleveland would abandon their team in that situation.

Exactly. I don't get all the harsh prejudice people from other cities have to Los Angeles. By their logic, Cleveland lost the Browns because their fans were fickle and didn't put up a fight against Art Modell, Baltimore lost the Colts because residents didn't care about the negotiations until after the Mayflower trucks left, Seattle lost the Sonics because their fans were apathetic at Clay Bennett dismantling the team from inside, Atlanta lost the Flames and Thrashers because there are no hockey fans in the South (well, maybe...), and San Francisco was about to lose the Giants to Tampa Bay because the Bay Area is a poor baseball market.

I don't get why people offer sympathy to other cities who lost professional teams, but when it comes to Los Angeles, they'd rather see hell frozen over, then reheated, then frozen over again, then nuked with an atomic warhead before even having the simplest thinking mindset of Los Angeles hosting an NFL team. It doesn't matter if your owner destroyed the fanbase years and years in advance (Frontierre) or destroyed it all of a sudden (Modell); losing a team sucks and would be considered a bigger sports heartbreaker than seeing your favorite team lose a big game.

Is everyone aware of the terrible Frank McCourt regime Dodger fans had to put up with, along being the most notable American professional sports franchise to endure a bankruptcy? Well then, by the logic of some people, if they relocated or simply folded, the reasons would be that "Los Angeles doesn't deserve a baseball team because their fans are fickle and act all Hollywood-like," not because the team was bought on failed credit and was siphoned off money for the owner's luxury interests.

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Yeah, I'd like to see a team in LA. Even though I grew up in a mostly LA-less NFL it just seems weird to not have at least one team there.

Not only has LA screwed several opportunities of having their own NFL team, I still don't think that there is a true thirst for NFL football there. Why should Minnesota or St.Louis lose their team to that? Small-medium market teams is what makes the NFL interesting. 1/7th of the NFL shouldn't be in California.

There's no real thirst for NFL football in St. Louis if the attendance and tv numbers are to be believed. It's also worth mentioning that LA lost the rams because St. Louis stole them away. So the Rams wouldn't be a case of mean old California stealing away something from the poor downtrodden Midwest. It would be LA getting back what St. Louis stole from it under pretty shady circumstances.

I can imagine the St. Louis-Los Angeles bickering should the Rams stadium situation get more serious. It ain't gonna be pretty.

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Here's a not-completely-crazy, fan-driven plan for the Bills to get as close to the Packers model as they can. I don't see any reason the NFL wouldn't allow this.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/erie-county/can-fans-help-keep-bills-here-20140201

One huge reason: Toronto.

The Toronto series has been kinda limping along, not a runaway success that turns Toronto into Buffalo's private team relocation threat. It's not a complete failure (I think it was recently renewed either this past season or the season before), but Toronto has not demonstrated a big "thirst for NFL football" thus far. Not to mention the fact that the stadium in Toronto would be the smallest in the league by 6-7,000 seats.

Really, the best thing to do would be to build a new stadium north of Buffalo, maybe south of Lockport near the 990 or between Buffalo and Batavia near the 90. That would make it a wash at worst for commute time for the local population, but reduce the travel time from Toronto, Rochester and Syracuse by about 30 mins each way. Keep the Toronto series if they want... one game a year is not a huge deal.

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