It was a foregone conclusion that somehow managed to take both the city of St. Louis and San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos by surprise. By a vote of 30-2, the two conceivably being the Oakland Raiders and Chargers, the Rams got approval from the other NFL owners to kick the Missouri dust from their cleats, load up the trucks and move back to Los Angeles after a 21-year side trip to St. Louis that brought the team a Super Bowl title and two NFC Championships.
The Rams will play in a new state of the art stadium team owner Stan Kroenke is building with his own money in Inglewood, Calif. And after reading that sentence aloud, ask yourself again how St. Louis thought they had a shot at keeping the team, or that Spanos thought the league would approve the weirdly Disney-co-funded Carson stadium he wanted to build with Raiders owner Mark Davis.
“Today, with the NFL returning home, Los Angeles cements itself as the epicenter of the sports world,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement. “We cannot wait to welcome the Rams, and perhaps others soon, as they join a storied lineup of professional franchises, collegiate powerhouses and sports media companies.”
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With the approval of the Rams’ move, the NFL also gave the Chargers the option of sharing the Inglewood Stadium or offered to contribute $100 million to stadium renovations in San Diego. Spanos isn’t particularly happy with either idea as of yesterday.
“The goal from the start of this process was to create the options necessary to safeguard the future of the Chargers franchise while respecting the will of my fellow NFL owners,” Spanos said in a statement.
The Raiders, who almost seem an afterthought in all this, got a $100 million offer from the NFL too in order to fix up their stadium in Oakland. If the Chargers back out of a stadium share with the Rams, the Raiders will have the opportunit to slide into that spot.
Thank you St. Louis for all the great memories created and thank you fans for all the support! #Stl.2011-2016 #L.A.HereWeCome✈️
— Robert Quinn (@RQuinn94) January 13, 2016
In St. Louis, the sour grapes were freshly squished as both the city mayor and the governor of Missouri weighed in to show their disapproval of the easiest decision the NFL will make in 2016.
“Tonight’s decision is disappointing, and a clear deviation from the NFL’s guidelines,” Governor Jay Nixon said Tuesday night. “It is troubling that the league would allow for the relocation of a team when a home market has worked in good faith and presented a strong and viable proposal. This sets a terrible precedent not only for St. Louis, but for all communities that have loyally supported their NFL franchises. Regardless of tonight’s action, the fact remains that St. Louis is a world-class city deserving of a world-class NFL team. We will review the NFL’s decision thoroughly before determining what next steps to take. In particular, we are interested in their justification for departing so significantly from the NFL’s guidelines after St. Louis had — in record time — presented a proposal for a first-class stadium.”
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That “first-class” stadium was called “non-viable” by Roger Goodell earlier in the week, all but sealing the deal of a Rams move. St. Louis had a $1 billion proposal put together for an open-air stadium on the riverfront that the team would presumably share with a Major League Soccer franchise that, as of this writing, existed only in their imaginations.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has been an advocate of the Rams’ move back to Los Angeles and couldn’t hold back his excitement at helping put the team back on the west coast.
Jones made it clear in his statement that he doesn’t think the door is shut in St. Louis to have an NFL team, which should give the city some hope and some pull with another team looking to relocate soon (We can’t help but look at you, Jaguars) or to benefit from a possible expansion franchise. The NFL has made no real rumblings about expansion since it added the Houston Texans back in 2002, but considering it’s been 14 years since that happened, they may look into it.
“St. Louis is a fabulous city in a fabulous state, and certainly they’re an NFL city,” Jones told the Star-Telegram. “It’s just that Stan Kroenke is in an exceptional situation, and he has great sports interests and great willingness to put serious resources toward his enthusiasm. Those are called angels in the NFL.”
Angels means money and according to Jones, Kroenke’s plan should generate another $15 billion for the entire NFL. That’s what we call in the business a deal closer.
Welcome Home! #LARams2016
— Eric Dickerson (@EricDickerson) January 13, 2016
As for Kroenke, he has to pay the NFL’s relocation fee, $500 million, and the Rams team will play in the old Los Angeles Collosseum for the next three seasons until the Inglewood stadium is finished in 2019. Football is back in Los Angeles and everybody is pretty happy about it. Well, almost everybody.
