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.
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The Chargers played at the Coliseum in their inaugural 1960 season when they were a member of the American Football League, then moved to San Diego in 1961.
Just minutes later, commissioner and sometimes-consigliere Roger Goodell arrived at the podium to announce the results of balloting on which of three teams – the St. Louis Rams, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders – won approval to tap the lucrative Los Angeles market.
The decision ends the NFL’s 21-year absence in Los Angeles.
“Having been through this process I’d say there was probably more of this that was contemplated and contrived than I realized”, said Peacock, a former Anheuser-Busch executive. “I understand the emotional side, I have a responsibility also to take care of the organization and a responsibility to my 31 other partners to have a first-class facility, because it’s where they play too”. “We made a decision and worked long and hard at the various alternatives”.
They also need to get busy because the preseason is seven months away, the season about eight months.
The city’s enthusiasm is likely to be tempered at least until the Rams take the field at their temporary home at Los Angeles Coliseum for their exhibition opener in August. The only thing we know for sure about the Raiders is that they won’t be playing in L.A. in 2016.
In 1988, the city lost the Cardinals to Phoenix over dithering about a new facility that team owner Bill Bidwill eventually got built in the desert.
Still, all parties were more concerned with the potential long-range benefits.
Reactions varied from shock to anger and joy over the franchise returning to Los Angeles.
We think it’s a win-win, really.
It’s not quite Ron Burgundy telling San Diego to go f-k itself, but the Chargers have up to a year to decide if they want to join the Rams in Inglewood. Over the summer, the city laid out plans for a .1 billion stadium that would require $121 million in contributions from both county and city taxpayers. Faust said, “It’d be lying if I didn’t say it felt like we got punched in the stomach”.
St. Louis had a plan for an open-air, $1.1 billion stadium along the Mississippi River north of the Gateway Arch to replace the Edward Jones Dome.
“Using that building 365 days a year for metro attractions, meetings, conventions will eventually prove to be more beneficial to the city, people can’t see it now, but business minds know this”.
“It’s a huge market”, Brown said. Oakland failed to present a legitimate stadium proposal but the National Football League, and there is no guarantee the Raiders’ future is in the Bay Area. “We don’t have a lease right now at the Oakland Coliseum”.
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When asked where the team would play, he said “America, the world is a possibility for #RaiderNation”. Essentially, the Trojans view their situation like the University of Minnesota did when hosting the Vikings for the past two seasons during the completion of their new stadium.
