The color red looms large in the city of St. Louis. It is, after all, Cardinal red, the color of the city's favorite sons, the baseball Cardinals. As for the city's red-headed stepchild, the St. Louis Rams, their blue and gold colors just don't fetch the same kind of attention from area designers. Long a complaint among the last remnants of their fan base, visitors to the Dome have had to suffer the indignity of watching the Rams bungle scoring drives while their asses warmed hard red plastic seats.
The $124 million CVC proposal presented to the Rams on Wednesday, the first step in a lengthy negotiation process over the future of the Dome, included many things. Proposed upgrades included: more club seats, more suites, a video board visible from outer space and even a home away from home for pajama-clad bloggers and fantasy sports addicts cluelessly dubbed the "geek lounge."
But there in the background of the artist's renderings for the CVC proposal was a sea of red. The same red seats that sit vacant on Sundays in the fall were still there in the CVC's $124 million plan.
Marc Bulger photos, red seats ... it's possible that the CVC doesn't really know all that much about their layabout tenant that they're trying to keep.