The owners Wednesday set a special meeting to deal with a possible relocation of teams to Los Angeles for January 12-13 in Houston. “We still have a lot of unknowns to be able to make that prediction”.
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Goodell didn’t signal an ownership leaning on relocation since the three home markets – Oakland, San Diego and St. Louis – have until December 28 to submit their final proposals to the NFL.
League owners believe the latest Kroenke move is to ease concerns Chargers owner Dean Spanos has about joining the Rams in Inglewood.
New York Giants owner Steve Tisch has a “strong hope” that the meeting will include a “definitive” vote. He also strongly defended the three-quarters majority for approval. “It’s a strong foundation of our league”, Irsay said. It remains to be seen whether Chargers and Raiders fans would respond to this sort of thing positively since the two teams are bitter AFC West rivals. “I want to make sure, first and foremost, I look at what happens in the home markets, and then we’ll get to if there’s an LA opportunity”.
While there have been rumors that the relocation process could be moved to 2017, many owners have conveyed that they want a decision to come this year.
“It’s hard to see one of the proposals as getting 24 votes”, Colts owner Jim Irsay said on Wednesday, via NFL.com.
Even if a city does submit a viable proposal, that does not guarantee a team would be required to stay.
Goodell consistently has advised against establishing a timeline on the issue. I think ownership is looking for direction on this, and whatever the commissioner can say to update 29 of us will be very helpful.
Last week Kroenke wrote a letter to the L.A. committee about sharing the cost to build the $1.86 billion stadium as well as an equal split in revenue.
Owners acknowledged St. Louis was far ahead of Oakland and San Diego but also said the deal wasn’t done. He has a unique perspective as the only National Football League owner whose primary residence is in Los Angeles. “Yeah, that’s not going to help them”, he said.
“It is musical chairs, right now, but the music hasn’t stopped yet. That seat hasn’t been removed”.
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Q. Will you be looking to Roger Goodell for the direction on this, or the L.A. Committee? He’d like them to clarify and simplify the rules, and consider how the league trains officials. The switch was necessary because Josh McCown, who spent most of the season absorbing body blows, broke his right collarbone Monday night against Baltimore and will miss the final five games. But they have to have a place to play where they can be competitive. In the past, those picks – awarded to teams for losing a certain number of free agents – have not been tradeable. That goes from three days before the expiration of a player’s contract to two days.
