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Rams COO: Move to LA in the works since summer of 2013
By Ron Clements
http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl-new...-school-students-decision-made-september-2014
The Rams decided to move back to Los Angeles before the 2014 season, according to team executive Kevin Demoff.
Demoff, the executive vice president of football operations and chief operating officer, spoke March 1 at Harvard-Westlake High School in the northwest L.A. suburb of Studio City. He said the franchise's official announcement on Jan. 12 "was two-and-half years in the making."
Demoff, who was a senior at Harvard-Westlake when the Rams moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis in 1995, admitted to being "guarded" during his web-streamed presentation, but said he would privately tell those interested the "unadulterated truth."
Demoff gave the same presentation he gave to the NFL in January. He began by explaining the process, which began with an early morning phone call from owner Stan Kroenke in the summer of 2013. Demoff was in St. Louis for training camp when he got a call from Kroenke, who said he was driving around possible sites near Hollywood Park in Inglewood.
"When you get a call from your boss at 7:15 and you know they're on the West Coast, it's either something really great or you're going to be fired," Demoff said. "He said, 'This is an unbelievable site. Do we think this can really happen?'"
Following a two-hour conversation, Demoff said it was the first time he believed a move back to Los Angeles "could really happen." Kroenke purchased a 60-acre portion of land in the area in January of 2014, beating a bid from the NFL. The Rams then "very quietly" began exploring options to acquire the other 240 acres in Hollywood Park.
Demoff blamed the city of St. Louis for not upgrading the Edward Jones Dome into a first-tier stadium by the end of the 2014 season, meaning the Rams "became a free agent in March of 2015."
But the Rams had already begun piecing together the project in April of 2014. Demoff and Kroenke met in Denver that summer with other investors and the HKS architectural firm that was "stealthily" brought in to build the football stadium in the 298 acres of land Kroenke now owned.
By the end of that meeting, the decision to move back to Los Angeles was essentially made. Demoff said the motto over the next two years was, "Do not undersell this opportunity. You only have one chance to move back to Los Angeles and only one chance to do it right."
"We were starting to see this thing come to fruition," Demoff said. "We worked on this for months and months."
Demoff even used the L.A. stadium project as a distraction after quarterback Sam Bradford tore his ACL for the second straight year during a 2014 preseason game in Cleveland. Demoff "jumped on a plane" the next morning for San Francisco for a meeting about stadium development at the Hollywood Park site in Inglewood. Because the Rams' season was "about to be a trainwreck," Demoff welcomed the opportunity to "focus on something else." The Rams went 6-10 in 2014 and finished their St. Louis tenure with a 7-9 campaign last season.
By September of 2014, the NFL had created its Los Angeles committee and in November of 2014, the first official presentation was made to the league in a meeting in Atlanta that also included the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers. The Rams tried to move to L.A. for the 2015 season, but were blocked by the league — but the process was well on its way.
Demoff praised Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for being one of the project's "champions" to get the move done.
"It was a tremendous opportunity for the NFL and I was fortunate enough to work for Stan Kroenke, who had a tremendous vision in how we could bring the NFL back to Los Angeles and solve this riddle of 20 years," Demoff added. "He was the first person to have the team, have the real estate acumen to get it done, pair those two and then we could go to the league and say, 'This is what we can do for you.'"
Demoff admitted relocating an NFL franchise is necessarily difficult, but was happy to be the "storyteller with a terrific vision" to pitch to the league.
By Ron Clements
http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl-new...-school-students-decision-made-september-2014
The Rams decided to move back to Los Angeles before the 2014 season, according to team executive Kevin Demoff.
Demoff, the executive vice president of football operations and chief operating officer, spoke March 1 at Harvard-Westlake High School in the northwest L.A. suburb of Studio City. He said the franchise's official announcement on Jan. 12 "was two-and-half years in the making."
Demoff, who was a senior at Harvard-Westlake when the Rams moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis in 1995, admitted to being "guarded" during his web-streamed presentation, but said he would privately tell those interested the "unadulterated truth."
Demoff gave the same presentation he gave to the NFL in January. He began by explaining the process, which began with an early morning phone call from owner Stan Kroenke in the summer of 2013. Demoff was in St. Louis for training camp when he got a call from Kroenke, who said he was driving around possible sites near Hollywood Park in Inglewood.
"When you get a call from your boss at 7:15 and you know they're on the West Coast, it's either something really great or you're going to be fired," Demoff said. "He said, 'This is an unbelievable site. Do we think this can really happen?'"
Following a two-hour conversation, Demoff said it was the first time he believed a move back to Los Angeles "could really happen." Kroenke purchased a 60-acre portion of land in the area in January of 2014, beating a bid from the NFL. The Rams then "very quietly" began exploring options to acquire the other 240 acres in Hollywood Park.
Demoff blamed the city of St. Louis for not upgrading the Edward Jones Dome into a first-tier stadium by the end of the 2014 season, meaning the Rams "became a free agent in March of 2015."
But the Rams had already begun piecing together the project in April of 2014. Demoff and Kroenke met in Denver that summer with other investors and the HKS architectural firm that was "stealthily" brought in to build the football stadium in the 298 acres of land Kroenke now owned.
By the end of that meeting, the decision to move back to Los Angeles was essentially made. Demoff said the motto over the next two years was, "Do not undersell this opportunity. You only have one chance to move back to Los Angeles and only one chance to do it right."
"We were starting to see this thing come to fruition," Demoff said. "We worked on this for months and months."
Demoff even used the L.A. stadium project as a distraction after quarterback Sam Bradford tore his ACL for the second straight year during a 2014 preseason game in Cleveland. Demoff "jumped on a plane" the next morning for San Francisco for a meeting about stadium development at the Hollywood Park site in Inglewood. Because the Rams' season was "about to be a trainwreck," Demoff welcomed the opportunity to "focus on something else." The Rams went 6-10 in 2014 and finished their St. Louis tenure with a 7-9 campaign last season.
By September of 2014, the NFL had created its Los Angeles committee and in November of 2014, the first official presentation was made to the league in a meeting in Atlanta that also included the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers. The Rams tried to move to L.A. for the 2015 season, but were blocked by the league — but the process was well on its way.
Demoff praised Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for being one of the project's "champions" to get the move done.
"It was a tremendous opportunity for the NFL and I was fortunate enough to work for Stan Kroenke, who had a tremendous vision in how we could bring the NFL back to Los Angeles and solve this riddle of 20 years," Demoff added. "He was the first person to have the team, have the real estate acumen to get it done, pair those two and then we could go to the league and say, 'This is what we can do for you.'"
Demoff admitted relocating an NFL franchise is necessarily difficult, but was happy to be the "storyteller with a terrific vision" to pitch to the league.
