Correction: Stan Kroenke Did Not Pull Out Of Dodgers Bidding

Nevermind. Since publishing this post citing a Forbes report claiming that Stan Kroenke pulled out of the bidding for the Dodgers at the last minute, I have been corrected by a very reliable source. Kroenke did not pull out of the bidding for the Dodgers at the last minute. The Forbes report is inaccurate on that matter.

Think about it. Why go that far into the process of bidding $1.5 billion, including a vetting process by the bankers handling the sale and Major League Baseball that would rival a CIA background check, only to pull out at the very last minute?

Consider also the fact that Kroenke would have known from the beginning that there would be ownership issues with the NFL that would have required a workaround. Kroenke knows the rules from experience, and could have had Roger Goodell on the phone in a matter of minutes to clarify them had he somehow forgotten his experience with the the Nuggets and Avalanche when buying the Rams.

NFL owners would have had to approved whatever workaround Kroenke came up with had he come out on top in the bidding for the Dodgers. Goodell himself said that the league would make those considerations when/if Kroenke came out with the winning bid for the former Brooklyn baseball team.

There's a lesson here, maybe two. Never assume reporting is accurate no matter which media company's banner is flying above the article. That rule is particularly true when it comes to anonymous whispers from behind the scenes of billion dollar dealings. Another thing worth remembering in light of this is that nothing is what it seems when it comes to the NFL and its long, strange relationship with Los Angeles.

The Rams have said publicly many times before, throughout the Dodgers bidding saga, that Kroenke's attempt to buy the team had nothing directly to do with the Rams' situation in St. Louis.

The ability to buy that baseball team and use that to somehow get a piece of the television rights pie (not to mention other possible revenue streams from the parking lots and facilities) had to be enticing enough to risk a headache and wrangling with the NFL's ownership rules.

Owning or not owning the Dodgers does not make the Rams more or less likely to move back to Southern California.

Negotiations over the Dome are going to be a long, laborious process. The NFL is also one of those rare entities where valuation relies less on location than other factors. An NFL team in St. Louis can be just as profitable as an NFL team almost anywhere else in the country because of the league's revenue sharing system. A winning team is that much more profitable.

Remember that as moments of hysteria consume cloud better judgement.