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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The St. Louis Rams are seeking to move to Inglewood; the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders have teamed up to propose a stadium in Carson. The NFL owners, at their meeting this week, are scheduled to vote on the relocation issue, with a 75 percent majority – or 24 of 32 owners – needed to approve any team’s bid to move to Los Angeles.
Goodell also pointed out that city leaders in St. Louis, San Diego and Oakland agree that the existing stadiums don’t work. And now it has been formally put on the table by Jones – one of the league’s most powerful owners and a backer of the Rams’ Inglewood stadium plan.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke blasted the city of St. Louis in his application for relocation.
Both letters cite what they call inaccuracies in the Rams’ application, especially when it comes to painting a negative picture of the St. Louis economy.
The Rams, Raiders and Chargers all want to move to Los Angeles. It is home to the St. Louis Rams and our team owner is Mr. Kroenke.
“Now that we know the disparaging sentiments Uncle Stan had for STL, one can only wonder what Deano had to say about SD”, Jason Cabel Roe, a political consultant to Faulconer, said in an email to the AP.
“Chargers owner Dean Spanos is popular among fellow owners, and it’s increasingly unlikely that his franchise will be anywhere but L.A.in 2016 – no matter which site wins”, The Times reported.
But they believed they didn’t when Kroenke made his move. “No irreparable harm has been done to our relationship or the potential to forge a true partnership that will serve the National Football League, the Rams and St. Louis for decades to come”.
The two teams now play in the two oldest stadiums in the league and, after years without much progress toward new venues in their current markets, have set their sights on Carson. The task force projected that a move to the new stadium would propel the Rams from 28th in the league in revenue to “near the top half”.
During an August NFL meeting on the Los Angeles situation in suburban Chicago, Kroenke was asked during his presentation on the Inglewood project by Chicago Bears chairman George McCaskey if the stadium could host two franchises.
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And, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, St. Louis’ offer of $400 million in city and state funds appears less certain after the president pro tem of the Missouri Senate, Ron Richard, wrote a December 30 letter warning the league that it would be “speculative at best” for the NFL to count on the state’s portion of the funding. As Jimmy Durkin of the Bay Area News Group explained earlier in the week, filing for relocation “does not necessarily mean the Raiders will be approved to relocate”.
