Woah Jerry slow down cowboy they getting the permits.
http://m.utsandiego.com/news/2015/mar/27/chargers-los-angeles-stadium-nfl-meetings/
NFL owners jump aboard L.A. fast track
Jerry Jones freely acknowledges that he was the one who guaranteed after the Rams and Raiders departed Los Angeles in 1995 that there would be a team back in L.A. within five years.
“I’m glad I didn’t bet the Cowboys on that,” Jones, the Dallas Cowboys’ loquacious and bombastic owner, said with a laugh as he sipped a cup of coffee Wednesday morning in the lobby of the swanky Arizona Biltmore.
Such a history of failed prognostication when it comes to the NFL’s lost market didn’t stop Jones from confidently making another bold assertion.
“This is different,” he said. “What has changed is you have three teams that can move ... One is ready to push dirt in Los Angeles. Heck, they might even be pushing dirt.”
Jones paused, made direct eye contact and then said, “That stadium is going to get built. I know that. I don’t know about any others, but that stadium will be built.”
He was speaking of the Inglewood project being advanced by St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke.
If true, what that means for the Chargers and their stadium proposal in Carson may not be as consequential as it is to San Diego and its efforts to keep the Chargers.
Even as the NFL seems inclined to have just one stadium and no more than two teams in Southern California, there remain any number of combinations of outcomes, including a burgeoning sentiment that two teams will end up playing in Inglewood.
Jones’ certainty about that project was as strong as any opinion offered this past week as NFL owners gathered in Phoenix for their annual spring meeting. But there is an undeniable momentum in the direction of L.A. that has not been present before.
“It’s more realistic,” Giants president John Mara said on Wednesday before departing the meetings.
For three days, the dominant topic was the possible/probable/imminent relocation of one or more of the three franchises dissatisfied with their current stadium situations. It began Monday with an update to owners from league staff on progress in Inglewood and Carson. The owners also were briefed on the state of stadium efforts in San Diego, St. Louis and Oakland.
“I heard a lot today that moved the needle for L.A.,” Giants chairman Steve Tisch said Monday.
It was also revealed the league is preparing for the possibility of making a decision about Los Angeles before the end of the year, considering a possible vote on relocation as early as the fall. The present window for a team to declare its intentions to relocate is Jan. 1 through Feb. 15.
“We also have a sense that is a little late,” said Eric Grubman, the NFL’s point man on both relocation and retention of franchises. “... We have told the home markets they ought not depend on that January 1 date. They ought to go faster than that … If we have really solid proposals, we may feel the right thing to do is make that decision earlier, so we know where we stand.”
While the requisite line is that the Chargers, Rams and Raiders continue to try to work out something in their current markets, the underlying reality seems to be that the league and its owners will ultimately be inclined to back the teams in whatever direction they decide to go.
That support seems particularly strong for Chargers owner Dean Spanos, long considered a league loyalist who goes along with the greater good.
“I think Dean is one of the top handful of owners in the NFL,” Jones said. “No one has worked harder or more passionately (toward) the best interests of the NFL. Like all of us, his first responsibility should be the Chargers.”
Several owners indicated their compassion for the plight Spanos has presented them regarding his 14-year effort to get a new stadium in San Diego.
As soon as he was finished registering the obligatory pronouncement that Spanos is working hard in San Diego, Mara said, “But he has to protect himself. We’d all be supportive if nothing is able to get worked out (in San Diego).”
That’s the thing to remember. It doesn’t matter if all of San Diego believes the city and county proposed an acceptable stadium financing plan in Mission Valley come the end of May. If the Chargers don’t think so, there is a good chance the NFL and Spanos’ fellow owners won’t think so either – unless the Citizens Stadium Advisory Group, and city and county leaders can somehow convince them otherwise.
A first step toward that end could come next month in a pair of meetings between CSAG and Grubman. He has been to St. Louis four or five times in the past year, to Oakland three to four times in the past year-plus. He will make his first visit to San Diego on April 14. Until then, he is reserving final judgment but appears predisposed to believe the team knows best.
“I don’t go there until I’ve gone there,” Grubman, who will speak with the task force via phone on April 7 and be in San Diego a week later, said in response to a question about his opinion on the team’s preference for a downtown stadium versus CSAG’s Mission Valley proposal. “I don’t think it’s right for me to take people’s comments out of context or take someone else’s point of view. I like to go meet with people and tell them what I think can be done and ask them what they think can get done and then come up with my own sense of what’s happening.
"The only advice I would give to the people in San Diego is that it’s important for a team to be enthusiastic about a project. If they’re not, maybe you still have something to work on … I think you’ve got to listen to a team that knows its market and knows it preferences.”
Grubman expects there to be a completed L.A. market analysis in the next couple weeks and an analysis of the three home markets in question be done before the owners next gather at the end of May. Those meetings are the week after CSAG is expected to have presented its financing proposal.
Grubman said the current “sense of the owners (is) to finance one stadium and have it be two-team capable” in Los Angeles. There was also the contention by some this week that, at least for the foreseeable future, the league will not stuff three teams into Southern California, which would indicate the Chargers will either be in L..A. or that just one other team will move there.
What we do seem safe in being confident of is that there is a relocation coming.
“Since we left L.A., we never had a meeting like this,” Jones said. “The league needs to be in Los Angeles … This is a major event.”
