Los Angeles NFL Brands Discussion

[Gothamite]

7 hours ago, chakfu said:

Leagues should be more aggressive in blocking moves. It hurts the brands.  If a team gets replaced by an expansion team it shouldn't have moved in the first place.  Oilers with a Cleveland deal would be more popular than the Texans.  And Art Modell being forces to sell and getting a 1999 expansion team would have been more appropriate than what happen.  People argue free enterprise, but these are franchisees and the league has a right to preserve itself properly.

Agreed.  That’s what MLS did - rather than let a new owner move a charter club, they brokered a sale and gave him an expansion club in his target market.  And most of the expansion/relocation we’ve seen in recent years has been to fill markets that were vacated before.
 

The league should never have allowed both teams to leave LA in the first place.
 

I wish the NFL had worked as hard to save the San Diego Chargers as Goodell did to save the St. Louis Rams.  I think he chose to put his weight behind the wrong market. 

[LordBigMad]

Could the reason the Rams are taking so long to do their reveal be that they heard their fans' (and everyone else's) complaints about everything they've done/will do and decided to go back and fix a few things?

[Gothamite]

4 minutes ago, GrimlockAutobot said:

Could the reason the Rams are taking so long to do their reveal be that they heard their fans' (and everyone else's) complaints about everything they've done/will do and decided to go back and fix a few things?

Nope. 
 

Even if they wanted to, the jerseys are well into production.  The first batch may even already be in the stock rooms of Dicks’ and Fanatics and Lids and other retailers.

 

It’s far too late to make any substantive changes to the jerseys, at least. 

[ramsjetsthunder]

10 hours ago, QCS said:

I totally understand. I've got no problem with Thunder fans and I'm sure pretty much all of them would welcome a brand new Sonics team. I just hope that when the Sonics do return the Thunder org gives up all pre-OKC history like the Pelicans did. 

 

I agree. As an Oklahoman and Thunder fan, nobody here considers Sonics history Thunder history. The way I see it, unless a team maintains the same name or location, their history should be gone. The Thunder are very much a new team and honestly, that's how we like it here.

[BBTV]

7 hours ago, chakfu said:

Leagues should be more aggressive in blocking moves. It hurts the brands.  If a team gets replaced by an expansion team it shouldn't have moved in the first place.  Oilers with a Cleveland deal would be more popular than the Texans.  And Art Modell being forces to sell and getting a 1999 expansion team would have been more appropriate than what happen.  People argue free enterprise, but these are franchisees and the league has a right to preserve itself properly.

 

To sell, someone has to buy, and with the stadium situation as it was, it may not have been possible to get fair value for the team.  Also, while the Cleveland deal guaranteed them a stadium and team, in most cities there's no guarantee that a team will ever return.  Can't just grant expansion every time a team moves, because then you'll be left with undesirable markets.  Say the Jags were to move to LA a few years ago.  Should the league have expanded to 33 and then we still have a team in Jacksonville?  I think that's clearly not a desirable situation.

 

6 hours ago, Ben in LA said:

This is EXACTLY what I was referring to. We here in LA didn’t forget the trolling St. Louis did (and the trolling Oakland and San Diego did as well)...and best believe we returned the favor.

 

The trolling who did?  That media guy with that stupid story?  Or were fans holding rallies where they were yelling "nanny nanny boo boo" towards LA?

 

50 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

Agreed.  That’s what MLS did - rather than let a new owner move a charter club, they brokered a sale and gave him an expansion club in his target market.  And most of the expansion/relocation we’ve seen in recent years has been to fill markets that were vacated before.
 

The league should never have allowed both teams to leave LA in the first place.
 

I wish the NFL had worked as hard to save the San Diego Chargers as Goodell did to save the St. Louis Rams.  I think he chose to put his weight behind the wrong market. 

 

1. I stated above why expanding isn't always the best solution to a move.

 

2.  The moving owner would then have to pay a huge expansion fee, which would likely dwarf a relo fee.  Helps the league to get that money, but now you have 60 additional players to pay.

 

3.  Wasn't part of it that he didn't want Kroenke to set a precedence by financing his own stadium?  That alone would warring his attention in St. Louis, since there was no chance of working any stadium out in SD and Spanos wasn't threatening the future of the league by financing his own.   If anything, he was playing ball with the league by being unwilling (or unable... same thing) to use his own money.

[oldschoolvikings]

10 hours ago, colortv said:

I wonder how the board would react if this is what the Rams came out with:

 

 

 

Gray facemask for the win.

[jws008]

On 5/3/2020 at 4:52 PM, IceCap said:

St. Louis seems entitled to me. 

And being a good baseball town doesn't mean it's a good football town. 

As a non-native resident of the area, I think your choice of "entitled" is a poor description of how St. Louis fans actually feel.

 

I think it's much more "spurred" or "discarded". I'd say the general feeling, (from their point of view) is that both the league and Kroenke were set on LA and if that meant sacrificing a team and fanbase in St. Louis, it was fine. (I'm going to ignore the whole discussion on whether that's true or not; I'm merely expressing what I believe is the general fans' belief). My point is that I think there's more "hate" and emotion involved in how they feel.

 

I also think we tend to read too much into if a place is a good [insert sport here] town or not. I think that description almost always dates back to a winning tradition (by which I don't mean a number of championships; I mean being competitive for an extended period of time). 

[WSU151]

10 hours ago, colortv said:

I wonder how the board would react if this is what the Rams came out with:

 

 

 

[jws008]

5 minutes ago, jws008 said:

I also think we tend to read too much into if a place is a good [insert sport here] town or not. I think that description almost always dates back to a winning tradition (by which I don't mean a number of championships; I mean being competitive for an extended period of time). 

To tie this back to LA for a minute: The Rams definitely have an edge over the Chargers in this market, because they have had a past winning tradition in the LA market. But, I also guarantee that if the Rams play poorly over the next 6-8 seasons, while the Chargers go to the playoffs in 6 of those same 8 seasons; the market will turn in the Chargers' favor.

It may never happen.

Since this is also the NFL we're discussing, I'm sure both teams will be profitable over those seasons (Maybe not to the same extent, but that's TBD). It's why I don't think the Chargers are headed anywhere (even back to San Diego) in the next decade or so.

[jws008]

9 minutes ago, WSU151 said:

 

"We had a lot of input from the players on the design, and we think it turned out great"

OK, you gave us the Rams and Nike's talking points if those were the uniforms. This board's reaction would mostly be 100% the opposite.

[WSU151]

3 minutes ago, jws008 said:

OK, you gave us the Rams and Nike's talking points if those were the uniforms. This board's reaction would mostly be 100% the opposite.

 

I edited my post, and now it shows a good chunk of likely Twitter reactions. 

[CaliforniaGlowin]

Someone "in the know" on the Rams reddit said the new jerseys are dropping this Friday.  We'll see.

[Tracy MidGrady]

After the racist displays Cardinals fans shown us over the years they don't deserve "a good baseball town" title.

 

St. Louis's population has continued to decline, now that population can get what they really want Baseball & Hockey!

[auguststaley]

31 minutes ago, CaliforniaGlowin said:

Someone "in the know" on the Rams reddit said the new jerseys are dropping this Friday.  We'll see.

 

It was a hoax. OP deleted it, then admitted it.

 

Unless you were talking about some other post.

[Wackyriderfan14]

I heard that they were planning on releasing them two weeks after the logo but COVID had other plans. They wanted to do something at the stadium but they obviously can't do that now. 

[gosioux76]

2 hours ago, jws008 said:

As a non-native resident of the area, I think your choice of "entitled" is a poor description of how St. Louis fans actually feel.

 

I think it's much more "spurred" or "discarded". I'd say the general feeling, (from their point of view) is that both the league and Kroenke were set on LA and if that meant sacrificing a team and fanbase in St. Louis, it was fine. (I'm going to ignore the whole discussion on whether that's true or not; I'm merely expressing what I believe is the general fans' belief). My point is that I think there's more "hate" and emotion involved in how they feel.

 

I also think we tend to read too much into if a place is a good [insert sport here] town or not. I think that description almost always dates back to a winning tradition (by which I don't mean a number of championships; I mean being competitive for an extended period of time). 

I've lived in the St. Louis-area for about a year-and-a-half now, so I'm far from an expert. And though I'm new here, it's pretty clear this region has some significant challenges. There's a lot of words you could use to describe the people here, but "entitled" isn't one of them. 

 

I wasn't here for the Rams' departure, and can't say I've fully read up on all the particulars, but Kroenke's scorched-earth exit strategy, in which he effectively described St. Louis as a dying wasteland, was understandably taken personally by the citizenry here. They express loyalty through devotion to their sports teams, which is apparently annoying to a lot of people. They show blind faith in the Cardinals and Blues, have expressed more enthusiasm for MLS than I expected, and their embrace of the short-lived XFL BattleHawks will almost certainly be a 30 fo 30 documentary some day. 

 

Like I said, the region's got a lot of problems -- and big ones. But they didn't deserved to be impugned at the expense of a billionaire seeking greener pastures. And you certainly can't argue that it isn't a good sports town. 

 

[SFGiants58]

I believe St. Louis should still have the Gridbirds, while Arizona got an expansion team. 

[CaliforniaGlowin]

1 hour ago, auguststaley said:

 

It was a hoax. OP deleted it, then admitted it.

 

Unless you were talking about some other post.

Nope that was it.  I didn't see the follow up.

[Ridleylash]

23 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

I believe St. Louis should still have the Gridbirds, while Arizona got an expansion team. 

This or STL getting an expansion over JAX would've been the smarter moves the NFL could've made. Either way, we don't get stuck with the toxic leftovers of Kroenke's rather ugly divorce causing nothing but headaches.

[DDR]

Just now, Ridleylash said:

This or STL getting an expansion over JAX would've been the smarter moves the NFL could've made. Either way, we don't get stuck with the toxic leftovers of Kroenke's rather ugly divorce causing nothing but headaches.

 

Wasn't it that St. Louis couldn't get their crap together, forcing the NFL to go with Jacksonville? I'm not sure if that's 100% true or not, but I'd always heard that the NFL really wanted St. Louis to put together a viable bid so they could award them a team, but St. Louis badly botched the process.