The annual December NFL meeting began yesterday and continued into today in Dallas, Texas (great city, BTW), and of course the major topic of discussion was the possible re-entry of the NFL into the Los Angeles market.
Here's everything on that and the Rams-St. Louis-Los Angeles love triangle in general recently.
Kroenke Expected To Have To Find Partner (read: Chargers) For Inglewood
This was the big news from day one, as it finally sheds some light on the power struggle between the individualists and the collectivists among NFL owners. We explained the difference between the two sides back in October, and that schism is at the heart of the relocation decision.
The core issue of course is that the NFL wants two teams to satisfy the Los Angeles market. Plunging the Rams into LA alone would serve Kroenke well. The NFL less so. So you've got a group that's willing to support Kroenke as an individual owner seeking his own profit motives and a group that supports him. You've got a Chargers-Raiders joint solution that benefits the NFL as a whole more and a group that supports that plan. As the report from the Orange County Register notes, both groups have the nine votes necessary to block each other from coming to fruition.
With the next meeting set for a bit more than a month from now, there is a bit of a race between the two projects to shave support from the other side.
For the collectivists, that means convincing the individualists that Kroenke's plan to go it alone just isn't viable. For Kroenke and the individualists, it means convincing the collectivists that he isn't going it alone entirely beyond an infinite time horizon...and that's where the Chargers partnership comes in.
The obvious complication here is that any partnership comes at immediate cost to Kroenke. He owns the land outright, he'd own the stadium outright and he'd be the sole tenant from his initial proposal. Any changes to that come directly out of his own profit margin. So it's no surprise that tthe early reporting on the proposed partnership leaves the Chargers well short of a 50-50 marriage (and require some re-working to get their support). Throw in Kroenke's history with Chargers Owner Dean Spanos over the Inglewood site...
Meeting with Gov Nixon
...and you can understand why Kroenke was actually in Rams Park yesterday getting a full update from Missouri Governor Jay Nixon instead of being in Dallas during the league meetings. Kroenke, though, has yet to meet with Nixon's St. Louis Stadium Task Force including co-chairs Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz, so it wasn't likely made with any intent toward progress on that front. If anything, it was likely an update on the politics behind the levers..
Financing
...which would include the financing front and public vote updates (DOUBLE ELLIPSES SEGUE ALERT!).
As the P-D's David Hunn just laid out:
The task force plan is now stuck in the St. Louis Board of Aldermen's Ways & Means committee. The committee has held three public hearings, but has yet to schedule a vote on the city financing package. If the committee doesn't vote this week, the full board won't get the bill until Jan. 8
Put bluntly, the St. Louis stadium proposal has no chance of attracting support among ownership if the financing isn't locked down completely. The good news for St. Louis fans? There isn't going to be a public vote holding things up:
Bill to have public vote on new NFL stadium fails to pass aldermanic committee. Bill dies.
— Nicholas J.C. Pistor (@nickpistor) December 2, 2015
Nixon and the political wheels behind the St. Louis stadium were never going to let that get in the way, but now it's official.That just leaves the actual funding bill, and it sounds like there's reason for optimism on that front for St. Louis fans.
(UPDATED at 4:41pm ET)
Zero is a very, very low number:
Word from owners meeting: NFL appears headed toward LA vote Jan. 12-13 in Houston. At this point zero chance of Spanos-Kroenke partnership.
— Jim Trotter (@JimTrotter_NFL) December 2, 2015