St. Louis Rams Game Changer: Stan Kroenke

Oh sure, the St. Louis Rams have made lots of exciting moves in free agency, if you consider fixing the depth chart to be riveting. It is important, but it's not quite the game changing move made by Stan Kroenke this week.

When Georgia Frontierre died and passed on the Rams franchise to her children Chip Rosenbloom and Lucia Rodriguez, there's been an endless array of speculation about what would happen next with the Rams. It was assumed that they would be sold, and late last spring that was confirmed. 

Though a couple names were in the mix at one point in time or another, including a controversial cameo by Rush Limbuagh, it seemed like things were finally set to move forward when Illinois businessman Shahid Khan agreed to purchase the 60 percent stake owned by the Rosenbloom family. 

There was one last question looming over the process: what would Stan Kroenke do with his 40 percent stake in the team? Given his three options - sell his share, keep it or excercise his right to buy the whole team - it was assumed that he would take one of the first two options. In fact, most people assumed that he'd sell out, complicating the process by forcing Khan to buy 100 percent, and use the money in a bid for the English Premier League team Arsenal. Nobody thought Kroenke would make a move for the team, especially given his ownership of NBA and NHL teams in Denver and the league's cross-ownership rules. 

Never assume anything with Stan Kroenke. He wants the Rams, and he got Shahid Khan to negotiate an attractive price for him. That's why he's a game changer. 

And now fans and the front office wonder what happens next? Does the league approve Kroenke? Can Kroenke help get a stadium solution in place? Will he pack it up and move west to LA? All of that remains to be seen. 

A note on the sponsored post: Sprint and SBN are partnering again, and we'll be running a series of posts discussing game changers. I promise to make it an interesting series and not obtrusive marketing. And thanks to Sprint for letting us keep these posts interesting.