And I fail to see how it would be used to pay to keep a team in this market when you still have to get an owner who is: a) willing to move, b) can afford it, c)wants to
Its all good...I have said it before in this thread and still believe this, when you are trying to read tea leaves and determine who is going to get what, the safest bet is to assume the guy with the least cash available is the one that will take it on the chin.
Mark Davis is financially non-viable in the current NFL. Hell, Spanos is not too far behind him in that regard, but he is better liked by the other owners. Kroenke is not making himself popular with these moves and silence; but, in the end, he has the "jack" to force a positive resolution to this whole mess.
Start with the very basic proposition that Kroenke does not care - about the Rams team or players or staff, the fans, the other owners, nothing. His actions to date support this proposition unreservedly. To him, owning an NFL team in L.A. - ANY team - is the thing people are convinced that he wants. He certainly wants to develop the land in Inglewood. He also thinks that having more money - than the $6B+ he already has, as he nears 70 years old, and his life expectancy is less than a decade - is the most important thing in life...good for him, I am sure that his pyramid will be epic and they can stuff all his things in there with his rotting corpse soon enough.
From that simple set of propositions, everything else is relatively easy to envision to have the Raiders and Chargers in L.A. and the Rams in St. Louis. Davis is the long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs and he will be the loser in the end. Davis is going to be forced out. Initially, Inglewood will be denied. The Rams will be sold to local ownership, which will pick up the private investment portion of the Riverside stadium. After Kroenke sells the Rams, the NFL's other owners will facilitate the acquistion of the Raiders with a green light for Inglewood, the Carson partnership will crumble and the Chargers will be faced with three possibilities - 1) move ahead with Carson on their own, 2) accept a deal to join Kroenke's Raiders in Ingelwood or 3) stay in San Diego and accept the fact that they will be second fiddle in Southern California no matter what.
The best bet for the Chargers honestly is to stay in San Diego. There is enough animosity between SD and LA to fuel an increased rivalry with the Raiders (over and above the existing one) and the San Diego fans and city proper may be willing to make a long term deal that helps keep them viable regardless of what is going on 100 miles north in LA.
Oakland is the city that has shown the least interest in remaining an NFL city, followed closely by San Diego. Spanos will have options. Davis will not. Put the Raiders franchise in Kroenke's hands and in the city of LA and it will be wildly successful, resurrecting the image of the pillaging pirates of the AFL and Al Davis in the first L.A. stay. Put the Rams in a new stadium with local ownership and Peacock in place as a figurehead and the franchise will be secured for a generation or more in its adopted home. Put the Chargers in a new stadium in San Diego and the NFL gets what it wants - 3 new stadiums, including 2 that will be rotation stadia for the Super Bowl, and secure futures for 3 franchises with no one being forced into a subservient role as a sub-letting tenant of someone else's stadium.
The Rams to L.A. solves nothing. It did when the only team capable of going to L.A. was them. The issue now remains who has the clout and who does not. In this messed up country, money is speech and that means Kroenke has the megaphone, Spanos has a phone, and Davis is sitting around with two cans connected by a string.
