The current stadiums in Oakland, St. Louis and San Diego are “unsatisfactory and inadequate”, and the proposed solutions are not viable to keep the Raiders, Rams and Chargers in their home markets, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a report distributed Saturday to all 32 teams.
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However, Goodell did say that each home market had “ample opportunity but did not develop their proposals sufficiently to ensure the retention of its National Football League team”.
That is potentially good news for Oakland – and bad news for St. Louis, whose $1.1 billion riverfront stadium plan, replete with $400 million in public subsidies, was seen as the only one with any chance of passing muster with the league. LaCanfora says Jerry Jones, owner of Cowboys is floating a proposal that would combine the 2 franchises at Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s construction project in Inglewood, California.
Spanos’ partner in the proposal, Raiders owner Mark Davis, adds what one source referred to as “negative leverage”: His team brings in the second-lowest revenues in the league, according to Forbes, which means the league’s more successful owners – who end up having to compensate for the Raiders’ expenses – are eager to find a solution. Elected officials in San Diego had wanted to put a $1.1 billion new stadium plan on the ballot this year.
Instead, NFL owners will likely push for a compromise. Attempts to land a team in L.A. have never gotten this far.
It’ll be interesting to hear what comes of this situation at the owners’ meeting later this week. “We’ve had nine different proposals that we’ve made, and all of them were basically rejected by the city”.
However, now the question is whether it will be one or two and which of the three franchises will get the green light. I remember how excited I was as an 11-year old when the Rams were on their way out of Los Angeles and heading to St. Louis in 1995; I even attended their very first game at the now-renamed Trans World Dome. “No matter the justification for relocation – and the falsehoods in the Statement of Reasons strongly suggest the Rams have no justification to vacate St. Louis – the style in which their point was made was unprecedented, personal, groundless and unbecoming of a steward representing what we feel is the greatest professional sports league in the world”.
With neither stadium plan expected to receive the necessary 24 votes, a Chargers and Rams pairing, either in Carson or Inglewood, has been gaining traction. The league also could decide to delay its decision on relocation for a year. And they would be leaving a stadium that is widely considered one of the league’s worst.
Regardless of location, a Rams-Chargers combo platter would leave the Raiders out in the cold.
Relocating two teams seems feasible based on the city’s size.
Geoff Magliocchetti is too young to remember football in Los Angeles.
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That group, along with the stadium and finance committees, emerged without revealing a clear favorite in advance of next week’s two-day special meeting in Houston of all 32 team owners.
