New: Latest on Kroenke, Rams and NFL in STL
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I appreciate the thread being open and as to Shane I have always enjoyed his insights and appreciate everything he brings to the table. Shane is a straight shooter and on this subject matter it's quite refreshing. That being posted I'm very concerned for the Gateway City and just have a feeling that Kroenke truly wants the team to be in Los Angeles because he loves chasing the deal and this would be something amazing.
This is so difficult because it hampers the franchise in so many ways and regardless of what is reported or tweeted the fans of St. Louis have been amazing and it has not been easy. Hell, it's been difficult to root for this team for die hard fans like us winning cures everything and it does not matter if your're in Cleveland, Los Angeles or St. Louis you need to win more than you lose and the Rams have not done a very good job of this.
In the end I just want what is best for the team, but this cloud hanging over their head never goes away and IMO won't be solved with another move. I grew up rooting for the Los Angeles Rams and loved California when I was there rooting with the melon heads and all history associated with Los Angeles, but I have also grown so fond of the Gateway City and loved every time I had the honor to visit the great city.
I just want this to be over I want there to be a final solution and to be able to just root for my team come hell or high water and right now I'm drowning.
This is so difficult because it hampers the franchise in so many ways and regardless of what is reported or tweeted the fans of St. Louis have been amazing and it has not been easy. Hell, it's been difficult to root for this team for die hard fans like us winning cures everything and it does not matter if your're in Cleveland, Los Angeles or St. Louis you need to win more than you lose and the Rams have not done a very good job of this.
In the end I just want what is best for the team, but this cloud hanging over their head never goes away and IMO won't be solved with another move. I grew up rooting for the Los Angeles Rams and loved California when I was there rooting with the melon heads and all history associated with Los Angeles, but I have also grown so fond of the Gateway City and loved every time I had the honor to visit the great city.
I just want this to be over I want there to be a final solution and to be able to just root for my team come hell or high water and right now I'm drowning.
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Why don't you post it in this thread?
Where did you get this from? :eek:
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LosAngelesRams
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Here's the Amy Trask article:
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_460da03e-0329-58b5-977b-bc5167ce952c.html
Kroenke faces rough road out of town
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_460da03e-0329-58b5-977b-bc5167ce952c.html
January 07, 2015 9:00 am • By Jim Thomas
Whether the Rams abide by league guidelines, or simply go rogue and move on their own, relocation isn’t a slam-dunk process.
Amy Trask, who worked in the Oakland Raiders’ front office for nearly three decades, knows better than most. For years she was the organization’s highest-ranking executive, second only to late owner Al Davis.
She was with the Raiders in the mid-’90s when the club defied the league by moving from Los Angeles back to Oakland without NFL approval. She also knows the Inglewood, Calif., site where Rams owner Stan Kroenke plans to build a stadium.
“That’s the site Al and the Raiders, that we looked at in 1995,” she said. “I’m very, very familiar with that.”
The Raiders ended up moving back to Oakland in 1995 as part of a wave of relocations in the ’80s and ’90s that also saw the Baltimore Colts move to Indianapolis, the St. Louis Cardinals move to Phoenix, the Los Angeles Rams move to St. Louis, the Houston Oilers move to Tennessee and the Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore.
But as Trask said, with a chuckle, “It’s not like the olden days in that regard. The league really battened down the hatches to prevent teams from acting as rogue agents.”
Since that “relocation era,” the league has tweaked and added to its relocation policies. The league has also implemented financial penalties for teams that move without league approval.
Kroenke’s bold move has him partnering with the Stockbridge Capital Group on a 300-acre development in Inglewood that includes retail, office and residential development.
Some league observers and team executives were surprised by the move, league sources told the Post-Dispatch. In essence, Kroenke is seen as jumping ahead of Oakland and San Diego, teams that have had long-standing stadium issues and like the Rams can easily get out of their leases to relocate.
“Relocation is an arduous process,” warns Trask, who after resigning from the Raiders in 2013 now lives in Los Angeles and works for the CBS Sports Network. “There are relocation guidelines which have been articulated and set forth by the league. Certainly the league can change those guidelines at any time ...
“But as currently drafted, those guidelines include a requirement that the team has really exhausted all possibilities in its current market.”
It would be difficult to say that the Rams currently meet those guidelines, because Kroenke has yet to even meet directly with former Anheuser-Busch executive Dave Peacock and local attorney Bob Blitz. Peacock and Blitz form the task force appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon to put together a new stadium plan for St. Louis.
If Kroenke goes through with the normal league relocation protocol, it’s a three-step process. Step one is presenting a detailed relocation proposal to be examined by league staff.
“And I can’t emphasize enough the word ‘detailed,’” Trask said. “It’s got to include financial data. Forward-looking projections. And forward-looking by decades, not by a year or two. The league office staff will then scrub and scrub and scrub that relocation proposal.
“There’s some really terrific men in the league office who are going to look at that, and then only when the league office is satisfied that it has all of the answers will that proposal be presented to the league committees. The stadium committee, the finance committee.”
Committee approval is the next step.
“The finance committee is the most powerful committee in the league,” Trask said. “Those committees then have to take a look at it, and agree that they wish to present it to the membership as a whole.”
The final step is getting league approval by three-fourths of the league owners — or 24 of 32 “yes” votes.
(According to Jason Cole of BleacherReport.com, San Diego Chargers chairman and president Dean Spanos believes he has at least the nine “no” votes necessary to block any move by the Rams to Los Angeles.)
Getting the committee votes is the key in the process. Houston Texans owner Bob McNair, once unsuccessfully courted as a potential owner in the failed St. Louis expansion effort in the early ’90s, is chairman of the finance committee.
That eight-member committee also includes Jacksonville owner Shahid Khan, the central Illinois businessman who was trumped by Kroenke in his effort to buy controlling interest in the Rams in 2010.
The stadium committee is chaired by Steelers president Art Rooney II, and includes Arizona Cardinals president Michael Bidwill, son of Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill.
“In my almost three decades in the league, I cannot recall any time a league committee endorsed something — voted for it unanimously — that it didn’t also garner the vote of the full membership,” said Trask, who appears on two CBS Sports Network shows — “That Other Pregame Show” and “We Need to Talk.”
So the key, not only for Kroenke in terms of relocation, but also for Peacock and Blitz, is to get to know and lobby the committee members as well as league staff.
“I have observed over the years that the municipalities which meet directly with the league office and engage in a dialogue and a process with league staff and league committees have often met with success,” Trask said. “In other words, if they work directly with the league office, that may be something that’s beneficial.”
That’s a tactic Peacock and Blitz are using, in part because they’ve been unable to bring Kroenke to the negotiating table.
The NFL recently decreed that there will be no relocation to Los Angeles by any team in 2015. And it appears the Rams will comply with that request. Team officials have told the Post-Dispatch that they will not file for relocation this year.
But if Kroenke changes his mind and moves without league approval, there are penalties involved that weren’t there in the ’80s and ’90s.
“The league has put in place a number of safeguards, if you will, which make it very, very, very hard for a team to ... act as a rogue agent,” Trask said.
“These safeguards are really draconian. They involve financial penalties and other penalties that really should deter teams from doing things like that without (league approval).”
Among them are forfeitures of part of a team’s annual share of leaguewide television revenue. Another is forfeiture of a team’s share of leaguewide income from NFL Properties — the league’s merchandising arm.
“Now some owners may assess the costs and benefits and say I’m willing to do that, I can bear the financial burden,” Trask said. “And if I have to have a fight with the league, I’ll have a fight with the league. I’m going to do it anyway.
“But I think an owner will have to think long and hard about so doing.”
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_460da03e-0329-58b5-977b-bc5167ce952c.html
Kroenke faces rough road out of town
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_460da03e-0329-58b5-977b-bc5167ce952c.html
January 07, 2015 9:00 am • By Jim Thomas
Whether the Rams abide by league guidelines, or simply go rogue and move on their own, relocation isn’t a slam-dunk process.
Amy Trask, who worked in the Oakland Raiders’ front office for nearly three decades, knows better than most. For years she was the organization’s highest-ranking executive, second only to late owner Al Davis.
She was with the Raiders in the mid-’90s when the club defied the league by moving from Los Angeles back to Oakland without NFL approval. She also knows the Inglewood, Calif., site where Rams owner Stan Kroenke plans to build a stadium.
“That’s the site Al and the Raiders, that we looked at in 1995,” she said. “I’m very, very familiar with that.”
The Raiders ended up moving back to Oakland in 1995 as part of a wave of relocations in the ’80s and ’90s that also saw the Baltimore Colts move to Indianapolis, the St. Louis Cardinals move to Phoenix, the Los Angeles Rams move to St. Louis, the Houston Oilers move to Tennessee and the Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore.
But as Trask said, with a chuckle, “It’s not like the olden days in that regard. The league really battened down the hatches to prevent teams from acting as rogue agents.”
Since that “relocation era,” the league has tweaked and added to its relocation policies. The league has also implemented financial penalties for teams that move without league approval.
Kroenke’s bold move has him partnering with the Stockbridge Capital Group on a 300-acre development in Inglewood that includes retail, office and residential development.
Some league observers and team executives were surprised by the move, league sources told the Post-Dispatch. In essence, Kroenke is seen as jumping ahead of Oakland and San Diego, teams that have had long-standing stadium issues and like the Rams can easily get out of their leases to relocate.
“Relocation is an arduous process,” warns Trask, who after resigning from the Raiders in 2013 now lives in Los Angeles and works for the CBS Sports Network. “There are relocation guidelines which have been articulated and set forth by the league. Certainly the league can change those guidelines at any time ...
“But as currently drafted, those guidelines include a requirement that the team has really exhausted all possibilities in its current market.”
It would be difficult to say that the Rams currently meet those guidelines, because Kroenke has yet to even meet directly with former Anheuser-Busch executive Dave Peacock and local attorney Bob Blitz. Peacock and Blitz form the task force appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon to put together a new stadium plan for St. Louis.
If Kroenke goes through with the normal league relocation protocol, it’s a three-step process. Step one is presenting a detailed relocation proposal to be examined by league staff.
“And I can’t emphasize enough the word ‘detailed,’” Trask said. “It’s got to include financial data. Forward-looking projections. And forward-looking by decades, not by a year or two. The league office staff will then scrub and scrub and scrub that relocation proposal.
“There’s some really terrific men in the league office who are going to look at that, and then only when the league office is satisfied that it has all of the answers will that proposal be presented to the league committees. The stadium committee, the finance committee.”
Committee approval is the next step.
“The finance committee is the most powerful committee in the league,” Trask said. “Those committees then have to take a look at it, and agree that they wish to present it to the membership as a whole.”
The final step is getting league approval by three-fourths of the league owners — or 24 of 32 “yes” votes.
(According to Jason Cole of BleacherReport.com, San Diego Chargers chairman and president Dean Spanos believes he has at least the nine “no” votes necessary to block any move by the Rams to Los Angeles.)
Getting the committee votes is the key in the process. Houston Texans owner Bob McNair, once unsuccessfully courted as a potential owner in the failed St. Louis expansion effort in the early ’90s, is chairman of the finance committee.
That eight-member committee also includes Jacksonville owner Shahid Khan, the central Illinois businessman who was trumped by Kroenke in his effort to buy controlling interest in the Rams in 2010.
The stadium committee is chaired by Steelers president Art Rooney II, and includes Arizona Cardinals president Michael Bidwill, son of Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill.
“In my almost three decades in the league, I cannot recall any time a league committee endorsed something — voted for it unanimously — that it didn’t also garner the vote of the full membership,” said Trask, who appears on two CBS Sports Network shows — “That Other Pregame Show” and “We Need to Talk.”
So the key, not only for Kroenke in terms of relocation, but also for Peacock and Blitz, is to get to know and lobby the committee members as well as league staff.
“I have observed over the years that the municipalities which meet directly with the league office and engage in a dialogue and a process with league staff and league committees have often met with success,” Trask said. “In other words, if they work directly with the league office, that may be something that’s beneficial.”
That’s a tactic Peacock and Blitz are using, in part because they’ve been unable to bring Kroenke to the negotiating table.
The NFL recently decreed that there will be no relocation to Los Angeles by any team in 2015. And it appears the Rams will comply with that request. Team officials have told the Post-Dispatch that they will not file for relocation this year.
But if Kroenke changes his mind and moves without league approval, there are penalties involved that weren’t there in the ’80s and ’90s.
“The league has put in place a number of safeguards, if you will, which make it very, very, very hard for a team to ... act as a rogue agent,” Trask said.
“These safeguards are really draconian. They involve financial penalties and other penalties that really should deter teams from doing things like that without (league approval).”
Among them are forfeitures of part of a team’s annual share of leaguewide television revenue. Another is forfeiture of a team’s share of leaguewide income from NFL Properties — the league’s merchandising arm.
“Now some owners may assess the costs and benefits and say I’m willing to do that, I can bear the financial burden,” Trask said. “And if I have to have a fight with the league, I’ll have a fight with the league. I’m going to do it anyway.
“But I think an owner will have to think long and hard about so doing.”
LosAngelesRams
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LesBaker
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Here's Jason Cole talking about it if you're interested.
[av]http://www.insidestlaudio.com/Pressbox/010615-5PB.mp3[/av]
ramsince62
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"Tempest in a tea pot". Kroenke knows what he's doing and how to get through the "system". Reality is that a move to LA is financially beneficial for both the Rams and the NFL. As for the (after the 2015 season) business...from what I've read, any Inglewood stadium wouldn't be ready before 2017.
Tomorrow .
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You Les? C'mon man.... who you talking to?
LesBaker
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We gotta keep you outta the Sportsbook.
That's Shane right there sporting the Blue and White throwback........
LesBaker
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X's ass pic HAHAHAHAHAHA
And my pic didn't link either wtf........It was a good jab at Shane
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