NFL Merry-Go-Round: Relocation Roundelay

[Gothamite]

Well, Burwell said it was in the Post-Dispatch. For starters.

http://stltoday.com/sports/columns/bryan-burwell/burwell-st-louis-needs-to-look-at-the-big-picture/article_0c1e5ee6-b046-5b5c-b7ff-3f5da750c569.html

We don't actually know what the public cost would have been. The CVC never bothered to ask about the financing. Nor do we know that the team wasn't willing to extend the lease; there's no indication that they ever asked.

Instead, they came back with a laughable lowball offer. And when that was resoundingly rejected as inadequate by the independent arbitrator, nothing. No counter, no further negotiations.

And then two years later, the city's two-man task force comes out with a half-baked plan with no financing and including land they don't own.

I'm not inclined to favor Kroenke (especially after what he's doing to my Arsenal), and I hate relocation on principle, but it's really clear to this impartial advisor that the various city agencies haven't dealt with the Rams in good faith.

[STL FANATIC]

So the only assumptions we can make are that the CVC didn't make any efforts and didn't ask any of these questions. And that they didn't try to work with the Rams over the past two years (even though we have reports that they did). But assumptions about what Kroenke did or didn't do are off-limits.

Seems fair.

I think Burwell's assessment was overly optimistic. It's increasingly clear that Kroenke's plan has been to move all along.

I believe you that you don't want to cut Kroenke slack. I believe you that you don't support relocation on principle. I don't believe you're impartial. You've long held an assumption about this (and the assumption it it's core is accurate, that the Rams are moving to LA), and have selectively woven things to support that case. You're entitled to do so.

But I think your being significantly harder on the city/region of St. Louis' actions over the past 5 years than the facts dictate.

[Gothamite]

No, you're reading something into it that isn't there.

I'm from the Midwest. I lived in LA for several years and hated it. I took a huge hit in my career moving away, but I couldn't stand even one more week there. Add to that my Milwaukee/Brooklyn connections and I really ought to be on the side of St. Louis.

That's how little I think of the city's response over the past decade, that my objective reading of the facts overwhelms all of my inclinations and leads me to the opposite conclusion I would have started with.

[STL FANATIC]

I don't think you have anything against St. Louis as a place (well you might—I don't know—but that's not what I'm suggesting), so I don't think you need to defend your perspective in that sense. I just think you had your mind (correctly as it turns out) made up early on about what would happen, and now your viewing everything that happens through that lens. Perhaps that's only natural.

[Gothamite]

Project much?

Actually, I seem to recall I had pegged Jacksonville as the team most likely to move way back when this thread was starting. In that case, I was wrong. And not afraid to admit it.

Still, I do have to congratulate you. That was the nicest way I've ever seen anyone be so dismissive of another person's opinion.

[STL FANATIC]

I've been working for three years trying to figure out how to dismiss your opinion artfully! I did it!

I went back to the early days of this thread. I don't know if you actually pegged Jacksonville to move, but they were the first team you suggested SHOULD move.

Interestingly, though, early on you cited the lease as THE reason the Rams would be in LA soon and you stated that St. Louis couldn't afford to make the necessary renovations or build a new stadium. Somewhere along the line, you seem to have decided that they could overcome the bad lease, could afford to renovate or build new, and simply failed to act.

Also, while I didn't bother to go find an example of this, I remember all along you suggested Kroenke had no reason to play ball and wouldn't likely be particularly willing to chip in much of his own to help St. Louis. Again, you seem to now think he was willing all along, and St. Louis just didn't work with him.

Of course, I disagreed with you on both points. I thought St. Louis had the money if they wanted to, and i thought Kroenke would be a good partner once he leveraged it to an acceptable deal. I guess I still think St. Louis has the money, I just don't think they should spend it irresponsibly, but now I definitely don't believe Kroenke ever was actually interested in working with them to get a deal done.

So you end up being right about the outcome but flip flop on your reasons. And I'm wrong about the outcome, flip flopping on mine. Go figure.

[Gothamite]

Beer's on me.

[STL FANATIC]

There's been a couple of small things happen in the past week or so that didn't seem important enough to report. Off the top of my head...

The St. Louis efforts have moved forward with hiring consultants, specifically John Lloyd who has overseen the building of stadiums nationwide, but also locally in St. Louis (Busch III) and tends to come in under budget.

There was a report that Obama has a plan (budget or something?) that would make it hard or impossible (illegal?) for stadiums to be build by floating public bonds or something to that extent. The context was that it would put the San Diego and Oakland stadium plans even further up against the wall. St. Louis wasn't part of the context of the article, so it's unclear whether extending bonds as is proposed here would fall under this.

But the reason I'm bothering to post is something still pretty minor, but a bit more interesting, maybe... Stan Kroenke and Dave Peacock have finally spoken again. Informally. But still spoken. They talked at the Friday Super Bowl party in Phoenix. There's not that much substance to that, and it wasn't all about the stadium or in-depth, but considering every report and suggestion has been that Kroenke has straight ignored the St. Louis negotiators, this is an interesting development. Doesn't mean it will lead to something, but it's a minor change.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bernie-miklasz/bernie-kroenke-peacock-chat-it-up-at-party/article_e536baff-e096-5a88-8963-688b7151ebe8.html

I'll look for links to the other things I brought up later, if nobody else has found them.

[rams80]

If that's written into the President's budget it is as dead as, well, everything else in that budget. This doesn't strike me as something that can be handled by executive order either.

[CubsFanBudMan]

I didn't bump the thread for this earlier in the week, but now that it's been bumped:

Faulk critical of St. Louis stadium pitch

http://m.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bernie-miklasz/bernie-faulk-critical-of-stl-stadium-pitch/article_daac5ff2-78aa-581e-a7af-898f7ee37b57.html?mobile_touch=true

I found Bernie Miklasz' rebuttal interesting, or at least different than what he had been saying in previous columns I'd read:

...and it's not letting me copy and paste for some reason, so you'll have to click to read it. But basically he feels Peacock got started early enough and that St. Louis started on its own 1-yard line and has made some first downs to move the chains, but a quick touchdown was never going to happen. Less interesting when I paraphase it. Oh well.

Of course, those drives don't often end in touchdowns...

[BBTV]

I didn't bump the thread for this earlier in the week, but now that it's been bumped:

Faulk critical of St. Louis stadium pitch

http://m.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bernie-miklasz/bernie-faulk-critical-of-stl-stadium-pitch/article_daac5ff2-78aa-581e-a7af-898f7ee37b57.html?mobile_touch=true

I found Bernie Miklasz' rebuttal interesting, or at least different than what he had been saying in previous columns I'd read:

...and it's not letting me copy and paste for some reason, so you'll have to click to read it. But basically he feels Peacock got started early enough and that St. Louis started on its own 1-yard line and has made some first downs to move the chains, but a quick touchdown was never going to happen. Less interesting when I paraphase it. Oh well.

Of course, those drives don't often end in touchdowns...

Who is Bernie? In that link, he sounds like a whiney kid that's just butthurt because his team is leaving.

[The_Admiral]

Bernie Miklasz is the Established Sportswriter Of Record for St. Louis, kind of like Rick Telander or Bill Plaschke. His words do carry some weight (and so does he).

[STL FANATIC]

I agree with Bernie—more or less—on Faulk's complaints. I've basically been arguing the same case here since before Faulk made those complaints and thus before Bernie responded to them.

St. Louis was in an impossible spot. Acting early would have meant working on replacing a 15-year old building, which while perhaps some version of necessary is not a particularly reasonable use of public funds. And they have been working on a plan for the past couple years to replace a building that still isn't 20 years old.

The reality of the situation may be that St. Louis needed to act sooner, but the other reality is that it just wasn't practical on any level. And if that means we wind up not being an NFL city any longer, than I suppose that's just the way it goes. But I don't think St. Louis messed anything up (on this topic) since they signed a horrific lease on a short-sighted building.

[Gothamite]

Bernie Miklasz is the Established Sportswriter Of Record for St. Louis, kind of like Rick Telander or Bill Plaschke. His words do carry some weight (and so does he).

And yes, he writes like a whiny, petulant child.

As for the Obama budget, the President would revoke a certain tax loophole whereby some cities have been able to avoid paying taxes on bonds used for stadium construction. If that doesn't impact the Rams' plans, it's because it wouldn't be retroactive and the Rams aren't planning issue new bonds but extend old ones. If they can actually do that, which isn't clear at this time.

[CubsFanBudMan]

Ah, the written word... you never know how it will be read. That's a good reminder, guys: Do the important stuff in person, not by email.

That column didn't come off as whiny to me, but to each his own. It just seemed like a really long counterargument to a throwaway line from Faulk. I actually clicked wanting to read more from Faulk's perspective.

[Gothamite]

That's actually one of his better articles, believe it or not - Bernie tends to go off on these long tangents about "fairness" and "if the NFL has any integrity". The talk of a someone who has no rational argument to make, and now he's trying to spin the narrative for after the Rams leave, to pretend St. Louis did nothing wrong.

Faulk is pretty much where I've come around to, which is that St. Louis waited far too long to face reality (I originally thought they lacked the money, and maybe that factored into their avoidance). They knew this was coming six years ago, or would have if they listened to their own tourism chief. And now, six years later, they still havent managed to come up with anything more than a half-baked plan to build with money they don't have on land they don't own. He's disappoited that it took them so long to even get to this point, and it's hard to disagree with him.

[rams80]

Bernie Miklasz is the Established Sportswriter Of Record for St. Louis, kind of like Rick Telander or Bill Plaschke. His words do carry some weight (and so does he).

He's also better at baseball than football, as his best source into the Rams was John Shaw and Shaw (thankfully) hasn't had much to do with the team over the last few years.

[Gothamite]

Does Shaw still have his Rams office in LA?

[STL FANATIC]

Does Shaw still have his Rams office in LA?

Shaw hasn't been involved (officially) with the Rams since 2011.

Kroenke probably consults with him on a personal level, but he's not a Rams employee. I suspect that he does indeed live and work in LA, but it's not a Rams office in any way.

[Gothamite]

Ah, thanks. I didn't know that. I read that he had continued in an advisory role after stepping down as president, but didn't remember that he had stopped.