NFL Merry-Go-Round: Relocation Roundelay

[Mac the Knife]

But the levels of confidence in the two cities is a bit odd to me.

True. To be honest there's nothing in San Diego that makes me think anything is different than it was 72 hours ago, other than a light bulb went on over someone's head and they finally realized, "Wow... Spanos is calling our bluff." Had Fart Modell done this in Cleveland 21 years ago instead of dealing with Baltimore officials on the sly, odds are the Browns never would have moved.

Sometimes it's better to do things in the dark.

Sometimes it's better to do them in broad daylight.

[HedleyLamarr]

The lack of confidence in St. Louis probably stems from their team's owner actually owning land in Los Angeles and the near-fact that St. Louis doesn't have much money to spend, especially for an outdoor stadium that currently would host maybe a handful of events other than 10 Rams games in a calendar year. (Not quite assuming the MLS will grant St. Louis a team within 10 years.)

What are the financial realities for San Diego? Never hear of them being broke or poor, but then again. the Chargers have been year-to-year for well over a decade and little talk of them or the city wanting to build a new stadium in town (at least, before this joint threat to go to LA with the Raiders).

[STL FANATIC]

What do you hear about St. Louis? It's not broke or poor either.

(We still shouldn't spend hundreds of millions on a damn football stadium, but we have the money. St. Louis may not be a boom town or a tourist destination, but I think a lot of people project financial difficulties on the market that aren't there.)

I agree about the ownership part. I can understand why people doubt St. Louis will "save the Rams." I'm just not sure why people doubt St. Louis' stadium plan's viability while at the same time suddenly counting on San Diego's (which isn't even a plan yet).

[CubsFanBudMan]

Still a long way to go on many fronts.

[TheOldRoman]

Yeah, I'm not seeing how San Diego is a slam dunk. Their LA stadium proposal got the city moving, but the mayor could just as easily get the proposal in two months and say " To hell with this. Have a nice time in LA." There's so, so many hurdles to clear in San Diego still.

[bosrs1]

Yeah, the Carson plan served its purpose. It scared San Diego into action whereas before they were totally stalled.

If the Rams do move back to LA, I hope the rumors are true and the team has already applied for a return to its classic royal and gold. There's a nice visual treat in that, returning to the old colors in time for a move back to the old home. It would put a capstone on their time in St. Louis.

Don't know that it has spurred San Diego into actual action. Yes SD is talking about it. But no funding mechanism is in place nor any announced way to get one in place. The city still have far more pressing financial obligations and the taxpayers will still not fund a stadium directly. And so far the only site news that has come out is that the team and government preferred site downtown wouldn't be ready to build on for 5-7 years according to the Metropolitan Transit System which owns the bulk of the site (in addition to the existing hotel and convention center opposition and existing logistical problems), meaning they'd be forced to build on the taxpayer preferred site at the existing Qualcomm Stadium.

San Diego is no further along today than it has been for 15 years. Only real movement is that they're actually talking about a stadium. But the Inglewood stadium could have broken ground in January before anything even gets on the ballot in San Diego.

[Gothamite]

Oh, I don't think its a done deal by any stretch. But they've certainly kickstarted the conversation.

[Gothamite]

What do you hear about St. Louis? It's not broke or poor either.

(We still shouldn't spend hundreds of millions on a damn football stadium, but we have the money. St. Louis may not be a boom town or a tourist destination, but I think a lot of people project financial difficulties on the market that aren't there.)

St. Louis has a recent history of cutting the budgets of their police, fire department and public parks. They just had to cut public pension plans in order to make up a $10M deficit in its 2015 Annual Operating Plan. On the state level, Governor Nixon vetoed $144M in spending last year in order to comply with the balanced budget requirements in the face of falling revenues.

St. Louis might not be in dire straits, and there are cities far worse off, to be sure, but I think it's fair to say that the perception of St. Louis not having tons of money lying around has some basis in reality.

[STL FANATIC]

St. Louis has a recent history of cutting the budgets of their police, fire department and public parks. They just had to cut public pension plans in order to make up a $10M deficit in its 2015 Annual Operating Plan.

Can you cite some of this. A lot of the budget cuts were noise that didn't happen, but some may have. Just curious what you read. As much for my own reading as anything. We don't need to have a whole discussion again on St. Louis' finances.

I think we've both summed it up pretty fairly. St. Louis is in solid financial shape because it's been pretty fiscally responsible. It's neither broke nor rolling around in money.

[2001mark]

Let's slow down....this is a very complicated matter and there are still a lot of moving pieces.

lols spoken like a true commissioner.

[colortv]

Rams need to follow NFL process to move to L.A.: stadium panel chief

Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II, chairman of the NFL's stadium committee, had a simple message this week for St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke, who has announced plans to build an 80,000-seat football venue in Inglewood: Not so fast.

"There are still cards to be played," Rooney told The Times in his first public comments since Kroenke unveiled his vision for a state-of-the-art stadium on the Hollywood Park site. "There's still a process that has to work its way out, and we don't know what the outcome's going to be yet. That's why we have league committees and approval processes."

Rooney's words were measured but his message was clear that the NFL is going to make the decisions on stadiums and relocation.

"I think we're comfortable that we could stop a team legally from moving if it didn't go through the process," Rooney said.

Tax breaks do figure into NFL stadium plan in Inglewood

The NFL does not have a strong track record in blocking teams from relocating. The only instance in the modern era of a team moving to a new city, then reversing its decision after pressure from the league, came in 1996, when the Seattle Seahawks set up operations for one week in Anaheim. But Ken Behring, who owned the team at the time, immediately moved back to Seattle when then-Commissioner Paul Tagliabue threatened to fine the franchise.

In all other cases, teams that have moved have either been successful in litigation or have reached settlements with the league enabling them to stay. However, since the Raiders and Rams left Southern California after the 1994 season, the NFL has strengthened its relocation guidelines, and won a legal battle with late Raiders owner Al Davis regarding his claim he owned the rights to the L.A. market.

Rooney said he wanted to clarify the league's position after reading the comments of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones that Kroenke would be able to unilaterally move the Rams without league approval. Under NFL bylaws, such a relocation would require a three-quarters-majority vote of the 32 team owners.

"I don't agree with Jerry on that point," Rooney said. "The majority view is that there's a process the teams are going to have to go through, and I think everybody understands that in terms of the teams that may be interested, I expect that the process will be observed, and hopefully it will be an orderly process."

The Rams have not indicated they intend to circumvent the league's relocation process. Team officials declined to comment.

In a New York Times story on Monday, Jones said Kroenke had the ability to move his team even if the league attempted to block him.

"As it would turn out now, apart from the league saying no, you can move there," Jones said. "Keep in mind that teams have moved without the permission of the league. They just have."

In a separate interview with The Times, Jones said any relocation would be a league decision, but added: "It always was and always will be the decision of the individual to take the risk, pull the trigger, and give his energy and talent through the franchise. That's the real decision maker. And we've got a guy that's made the decision to be involved in some way in Los Angeles, and that's Stan Kroenke."

The Rams, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders are all unhappy with their current stadium situations and have the yearly option to get out of their leases. L.A. is held up as a relocation option. Chargers owner Dean Spanos contends his club would be significantly damaged if another franchise moved to L.A., where he said at least one-quarter of his season-ticket holders live. He has said he would attempt to block any team from moving there, something that would require nine no votes from fellow owners.

The counterargument is that Spanos, who has worked 13 years to find a stadium solution in San Diego, has had his chance to make an aggressive move for L.A. yet hasn't taken it. What's more, the NFL has controlled the process for two decades and there is still no team in the market. In December, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell informed teams the league would not be accepting relocation applications in 2015, meaning the earliest a team could be in the L.A. market is 2016.

If three teams apply for relocation, but there are only two vacancies in L.A., one of those franchises would have to go back to the city it tried to leave, with severely diminished leverage for getting a new stadium.

A 20-year NFL-to-L.A. timeline

"That's why we have a process and why it's incumbent on the league's committees and league staff to manage the process so that, to the greatest extent possible, we exhaust the possibility of a team remaining in its home market," Rooney said. "We don't want to have a team that gets itself in a situation where it has to file an application and go through a process where at the end of the day it could wind up being a lame duck, or even worse, having to go back to a city it attempted to move from."

Rooney also said a team that moves to L.A. must have a solid stadium plan in place, one that has cleared all the required political, environmental impact and financial hurdles.

"I don't think any of us are interested in having a team moving to a temporary facility without any of us understanding what the ultimate permanent location is going to be," he said. "That's one of the reasons why we put the relocation process on hold and closed the window this year."

Officials in St. Louis have met repeatedly with the NFL in recent months in New York and St. Louis, and the stadium proposal they unveiled last week was designed in part to persuade the league that a good option exists for the Rams to stay put. If St. Louis can execute its plan, said Dave Peacock, a local business leader who's heading the project, the league rules stipulate the city should keep its team.

"The NFL bylaws are very clear," Peacock said. "I believe in those bylaws, and I have confidence that we're an NFL city. We hope the Rams are playing here for a long time."

The league has also been in negotiations with AEG about a potential deal at Farmers Field, a proposed downtown stadium next to L.A. Live. In the 20 years since the Raiders and Rams left, the NFL has fostered the idea of competing sites to get the best deal. Rooney said that continues to be the case.

"I think next year is a time frame that I would hope that we at least go through a site-selection process and at that point are in a position where we have a site where we'd all feel comfortable putting a stadium," he said. "Then we'd be ready to go through a relocation process where we all understand that there's a first-class NFL stadium for a team to move to."

http://www.latimes.com/sports/nfl/la-sp-nfl-stadium-20150117-story.html#page=1

Chargers, Raiders stadium ballot initiative in Carson complete

The drafting of a ballot initiative to approve the plan by the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders to build a stadium in Carson is complete and will be made public shortly, according to a person with knowledge of the negotiations.

A second person, Fred MacFarlane of Carson2gether, the community group formed to support the stadium, said that attorneys are reviewing the initiative’s language.

“I expect the review to be concluded in the near term,” he said.

The initiative is the next step in the proposed $1.7-billion project on the site of a former landfill announced last week.

In the coming weeks, Carson2gether will try to gather the 8,041 signatures of registered voters in the city needed to qualify the initiative for the ballot.

When sufficient signatures are in hand, the stadium initiative can be approved by a vote of the Carson City Council or put to a public election. The involved parties hope to complete the process by June.

Backers of the proposed stadium at the old Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood collected enough signatures in support of their 187-page initiative last month. The Inglewood City Council could approve the measure as soon as tonight.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-chargers-raiders-stadium-carson-ballot-initiative-20150224-story.html

[colortv]

Also, I think the downtown San Diego joint convention/stadium plan is a no-brainer. The city is also in danger of losing Comic-Con, which brings it untold revenue and publicity.

Supposedly, they could sell the land qualcomm sits on for a huge sum, takes care of some of the funding right there.

With it's weather San Diego is a vacation/destination city. With a new stadium and revamped convention center they keep the team and Comic-Con, and open themselves to events like the Super Bowl, March Madness etc.

[colortv]

Rams need to follow NFL process to move to L.A.: stadium panel chief

Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II, chairman of the NFL's stadium committee, had a simple message this week for St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke, who has announced plans to build an 80,000-seat football venue in Inglewood: Not so fast.

"There are still cards to be played," Rooney told The Times in his first public comments since Kroenke unveiled his vision for a state-of-the-art stadium on the Hollywood Park site. "There's still a process that has to work its way out, and we don't know what the outcome's going to be yet. That's why we have league committees and approval processes."

Rooney's words were measured but his message was clear that the NFL is going to make the decisions on stadiums and relocation.

"I think we're comfortable that we could stop a team legally from moving if it didn't go through the process," Rooney said.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/nfl/la-sp-nfl-stadium-20150117-story.html#page=1

Chargers, Raiders stadium ballot initiative in Carson complete

When sufficient signatures are in hand, the stadium initiative can be approved by a vote of the Carson City Council or put to a public election. The involved parties hope to complete the process by June.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-chargers-raiders-stadium-carson-ballot-initiative-20150224-story.html

In case anyone misses this stuff on the previous page.

[dfwabel]

Stop posting full stories, as it is copyrighted material.

[colortv]

Ah, done.

[rams80]

Speaking of the NFL and its willingness to enforce rules, Art, shall we again discuss the legality of the Steelers' ownership situation after your father's death?

[Gothamite]

As former Raiders exec Amy Trask has said, the "rules" are guidelines. The league can decide how to enforce them, if at all.

We'll see what the NFL says when it actually comes time to decide.

And colortv, you don't need to bump your posts from one page ago. People will find the material just fine without you repeating it.

[STL FANATIC]

That Rooney article is from the middle of January. Just FYI.

[Mac the Knife]

Speaking of the NFL and its willingness to enforce rules, Art, shall we again discuss the legality of the Steelers' ownership situation after your father's death?

You mean the situation which ultimately was corrected to keep in compliance?

[rams80]

Speaking of the NFL and its willingness to enforce rules, Art, shall we again discuss the legality of the Steelers' ownership situation after your father's death?

You mean the situation which ultimately was corrected to keep in compliance?

Yes, but the greater point was that the NFL bent the rules to benefit the league and avoid a lawsuit.