New: Latest on Kroenke, Rams and NFL in STL
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He just leap frogged some other owners and is the 3rd or 4th richest at $4.6 Billion. The real estate experience is probably a big key but I still don't think he would play any less hard ball than Stan. It may just be the level of competence in the arena that would be different. Not sure you can fault Stan for that.
bluecoconuts
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I dunno if there are that many issues, the NFL seems semi interested in going there, mostly because they see an open market. I don't think financial or legal issues would get in the way though, the time difference would be the biggest obstacle to me. Plus given that London is probably the "capital" city of the world, and it see's the most international travelers, which gives chances to expand the brand even further. I don't know how well they can expand there, but I think they would like to.
Why not? I think a franchise or two in Canada would be good.
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The same people 20+ years later? Sure. A fan base? Doubt it. With how things seem to have gotten, I would guess that that particular fan base combined with being in LA would only be worse.
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I don't see how it's possible.
Davis has partners.
I see him selling his share, but that's about it.
I could also see where the same situation that happened to the Rams comes into play, where the partner matches a potential owners price for the team.
Davis owns his portion of the Raiders or no team at all.
I think we're all safe.
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I've only been to two Raiduhs games and this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's like buying a ticket to a gang fight. Can't stand it.
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Really man? The main rule of this thread is to not make it about LA fans vs St Louis fans.
RedAlice
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This is why I really don't believe the LA plan is the Raiders. I love love my Raider fan friends, but they are normal, and the rest of that fan base is crazy. It's like a cult.
RedAlice
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Could Kroenke sell Rams, buy and move Raiders?
Posted by Mike Florio on February 15, 2015, 1:07 PM EST
AP
From time to time in this business, members of the media are told something but asked to present that something not as a “report,” but as their own idea. It gives the member of the media a chance to appear prescient and ahead of the curve, and it gives the source a way to float a trial balloon, or to at least ensure that if/when that something occurs, it won’t be appearing completely out of nowhere.
A theory advanced by Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch regarding the future of the NFL in St. Louis and Los Angeles feels like one of those “here’s what could happen, but present this as your own idea” moments.
Miklasz speculates that Rams owner Stan Kroenke could sell the team to someone who would keep it in a new St. Louis stadium, buy the Raiders from Mark Davis, and move the Raiders to Los Angeles. Alternatively, Miklasz suggests that the NFL will allow Kroenke to move the Rams to Los Angeles, and that the NFL would then nudge the Raiders to St. Louis.
The latter option seems to be more likely, since Davis has shown no inclination to sell the Raiders. But Oakland doesn’t seem like a viable long-term home for the team. If Los Angeles isn’t an option, why not move to the new stadium that Missouri currently is scrambling to propose to the Rams?
“Normally I’d laugh at this kind of stuff — but not this time,” Miklasz writes of the two possible scenarios. “If [Dave] Peacock and [Bob] Blitz complete their stadium mission, then multiple options will likely be in play. And some of those options may seem crazy to you. But it’s not as much of a fantasy as you’d think.”
In other words, someone has told Miklasz what may happen, but that someone has told Miklasz to present it as his own idea. And Miklasz has dropped enough of a hint to suggest that this is something more informed that spitballing.
That is the rumor.
Rams are now Telenova and Bernie is helping with the scripts.
The thing I find the most annoying is that there are serious NFL fans who love this team even if we are split on where it is home based. And: no one in "power' seems to care.
I think it looks really bad on the NFL, Kroenke, Goodell, whoever is involved in STL, and all else if they let 2015 go to a season where none of us "just fans" know where our team will be next year.
Boffo97
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Summary: Butts is confident.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...-kroenke-hollywood-park-james-butts/23463967/
Inglewood 'all in' on bringing NFL to Los Angeles area
Josh Peter, USA TODAY Sports 6:49 p.m. EST February 15, 2015
INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- Almost six weeks after St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke announced plans to build an NFL stadium here, buoying hopes that professional football will return to the Los Angeles area after a 20-year absence, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts says he is more confident than ever.
"Let me put it to you this way, buddy: It's going down," Butts tells USA TODAY Sports. "This is a happening thing."
He dismisses speculation that Kroenke is using the proposed stadium in Inglewood as a way to leverage a new stadium in St.Louis, but Butts declines to reveal what reassurances he has about Kroenke's intentions.
"As far as everybody being all in, everybody's all in," Butts says.
That includes the mayor, and he might be the most overlooked player in the deal — one in which a city plagued by high crime, high unemployment and high poverty could beat out groups associated with downtown Los Angeles and nearby Carson and Irwindale for the right to host an NFL team.
Butts, 61, presides over the so-called City of Champions that became the City of Has-Beens in 1999, when the Los Angeles Lakers packed up their 11 championship banners and, along with the Los Angeles Kings, left The Forum in Inglewood for newly built Staples Center in Los Angeles. Inglewood's pride took another hit in 2013, when Hollywood Park racetrack closed after 75 years.
That same year, Butts helped broker a partnership between Stockbridge Capital Group, which owns the 238 acres where Hollywood Park still sits and on which the NFL stadium would be built, and Kroenke, who owns 60 adjacent acres to be used for parking.
Chris Meany, an executive with the joint venture, says the Stockbridge group that purchased its 238 acres in 2005 had grown fatigued by talks of joint ventures and NFL stadiums.
"Somebody calls you up and says they want to be an NFL stadium, the first time you get excited," Meany tells USA TODAY Sports, adding that at least half a dozen groups approached Stockbridge about building an NFL stadium. "But every one of those meetings we took ended up being a disappointment. They could never pull it off.
"The mayor knew our view. ... He was the one who said, 'You know, I think this Stan Kroenke guy is a little more real and a little more capable of doing things than some of the people that have been calling.'
"And that mattered."
Chris Meany discusses a rendering of the proposed stadium. (Photo: Nick Ut, AP)
BATTLE-TESTED MAYOR
Flattered by supporters, Butts also gets irritated by skeptics. He says outsiders question whether Inglewood has the gravitas to pull off a multibillion-dollar deal. The city has a population of about 110,000 over 9 square miles; Los Angeles, the biggest city in Los Angeles County, boasts 3.7 million people on 503 square miles.
But the mayor points out he has an MBA — from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona — and talks with ease about economic development, the business of running a city and how an NFL stadium could invigorate Inglewood. In fact, Butts says dealing with billionaire investors and the mighty NFL is nothing compared to what he has been through.
"When you're riding around at 11 o'clock at night and your headlight's shot out and you hear the next bullet hit the undercarriage of your car, there's not much daunting after that," he says.
Butts is not a career politician, and he has gotten to know Inglewood from a unique view: behind the wheel of a squad car.
After an injury cost him a basketball scholarship to Cal State-Los Angeles, Butts says, he took a part-time job with the Inglewood Police Department as the city's second African-American cadet. It turned into a full-time gig.
He worked homicide. Led a SWAT team. Went undercover.
"I was shot at four times during the course of my career," he says. "All of that prepared me."
Some of the biggest threats to his career came not on the streets but internally — such as in 1991, when he was selected as chief of police in nearby Santa Monica. Butts had a locomotive painted on a gun safe at his new department. Northbound Train, it read.
"In my organizations, we go one direction, and that's northbound," he says.
What remains of Hollywood Park, which was once home to premier horse racing. (Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY Sports)
The Santa Monica Police Officers Association had other ideas.
"It was a strong police union," says Mike Beautz, who worked for the department. "The people that were on the board took an almost immediate dislike of Chief Butts, and they tried to make it as hard as possible on him. They tried to stop everything he tried to do, and they failed miserably."
Butts' supporters — and there are plenty for a mayor who was re-elected with 83% of the vote in 2014 — see it as conviction. But critics take a different view of a man who turned in his gun and badge and became mayor of Inglewood in 2011.
"His role is basically to shut down anyone who dare disagree with anything that he thinks," says Diane Sambrano, a 59-year resident of Inglewood. "And at this point that happens to be that all things point to the stadium as the salvation of our community."
Randall Fleming, a journalist based in Inglewood, said of Butts, "He controls city council."
After USA TODAY Sports left messages for Inglewood's four city councilmen, Butts said he would be the only one addressing news media questions about the stadium.
The Forum, former home of the Lakers and Kings, has a new life since being bought by Madison Square Garden. (Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY Sports)
'TREMENDOUS FOR THE CITY'
One of Butts' biggest accomplishments as mayor was revitalizing The Forum, located across the street from Hollywood Park.
Faithful Central Bible Church bought the arena in 2000, held Sunday service there and rented it out for concerts and sporting events. In 2012, Madison Square Garden Co. purchased The Forum, and Butts helped clear the way for a $100 million renovation that has brought the famed facility new life.
"He has been a transformative element," Meany says of the mayor.
Bob Steiner, a 30-year resident of Inglewood who oversaw public relations for the Lakers and Kings from 1979 to 1999, says the NFL stadium could help restore pride lost after the departure of those teams and the closing of Hollywood Park.
"Football is a power unto itself," Steiner says. "The NFL would be a huge impetus for the city. If that whole development comes through, the retail and the residential, that would be tremendous for the city."
Butts has not won over critics such as Sambrano or Fleming. Nor does he seem concerned. With the mayor throwing his support behind the project — in part because it will be financed privately, before developers can recoup up to $100 million in taxes the first five years — organizers needed less than two weeks to collect signatures from 22,000 Inglewood residents, more than twice as many as needed to put the project on a ballot initiative.
The measure could be on the ballot by midyear, and voter approval would advance Inglewood's chances of being home to the NFL — to going from the City of Has-Beens to the City of Once-Agains.
"Whatever city ends up with the prize, it'll immediately in my estimation catapult it to international status," Butts said. "And why would that be? Because you would immediately have the newest, best, shiniest football stadium in the world."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...-kroenke-hollywood-park-james-butts/23463967/
Inglewood 'all in' on bringing NFL to Los Angeles area
Josh Peter, USA TODAY Sports 6:49 p.m. EST February 15, 2015
INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- Almost six weeks after St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke announced plans to build an NFL stadium here, buoying hopes that professional football will return to the Los Angeles area after a 20-year absence, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts says he is more confident than ever.
"Let me put it to you this way, buddy: It's going down," Butts tells USA TODAY Sports. "This is a happening thing."
He dismisses speculation that Kroenke is using the proposed stadium in Inglewood as a way to leverage a new stadium in St.Louis, but Butts declines to reveal what reassurances he has about Kroenke's intentions.
"As far as everybody being all in, everybody's all in," Butts says.
That includes the mayor, and he might be the most overlooked player in the deal — one in which a city plagued by high crime, high unemployment and high poverty could beat out groups associated with downtown Los Angeles and nearby Carson and Irwindale for the right to host an NFL team.
Butts, 61, presides over the so-called City of Champions that became the City of Has-Beens in 1999, when the Los Angeles Lakers packed up their 11 championship banners and, along with the Los Angeles Kings, left The Forum in Inglewood for newly built Staples Center in Los Angeles. Inglewood's pride took another hit in 2013, when Hollywood Park racetrack closed after 75 years.
That same year, Butts helped broker a partnership between Stockbridge Capital Group, which owns the 238 acres where Hollywood Park still sits and on which the NFL stadium would be built, and Kroenke, who owns 60 adjacent acres to be used for parking.
Chris Meany, an executive with the joint venture, says the Stockbridge group that purchased its 238 acres in 2005 had grown fatigued by talks of joint ventures and NFL stadiums.
"Somebody calls you up and says they want to be an NFL stadium, the first time you get excited," Meany tells USA TODAY Sports, adding that at least half a dozen groups approached Stockbridge about building an NFL stadium. "But every one of those meetings we took ended up being a disappointment. They could never pull it off.
"The mayor knew our view. ... He was the one who said, 'You know, I think this Stan Kroenke guy is a little more real and a little more capable of doing things than some of the people that have been calling.'
"And that mattered."
Chris Meany discusses a rendering of the proposed stadium. (Photo: Nick Ut, AP)
BATTLE-TESTED MAYOR
Flattered by supporters, Butts also gets irritated by skeptics. He says outsiders question whether Inglewood has the gravitas to pull off a multibillion-dollar deal. The city has a population of about 110,000 over 9 square miles; Los Angeles, the biggest city in Los Angeles County, boasts 3.7 million people on 503 square miles.
But the mayor points out he has an MBA — from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona — and talks with ease about economic development, the business of running a city and how an NFL stadium could invigorate Inglewood. In fact, Butts says dealing with billionaire investors and the mighty NFL is nothing compared to what he has been through.
"When you're riding around at 11 o'clock at night and your headlight's shot out and you hear the next bullet hit the undercarriage of your car, there's not much daunting after that," he says.
Butts is not a career politician, and he has gotten to know Inglewood from a unique view: behind the wheel of a squad car.
After an injury cost him a basketball scholarship to Cal State-Los Angeles, Butts says, he took a part-time job with the Inglewood Police Department as the city's second African-American cadet. It turned into a full-time gig.
He worked homicide. Led a SWAT team. Went undercover.
"I was shot at four times during the course of my career," he says. "All of that prepared me."
Some of the biggest threats to his career came not on the streets but internally — such as in 1991, when he was selected as chief of police in nearby Santa Monica. Butts had a locomotive painted on a gun safe at his new department. Northbound Train, it read.
"In my organizations, we go one direction, and that's northbound," he says.
What remains of Hollywood Park, which was once home to premier horse racing. (Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY Sports)
The Santa Monica Police Officers Association had other ideas.
"It was a strong police union," says Mike Beautz, who worked for the department. "The people that were on the board took an almost immediate dislike of Chief Butts, and they tried to make it as hard as possible on him. They tried to stop everything he tried to do, and they failed miserably."
Butts' supporters — and there are plenty for a mayor who was re-elected with 83% of the vote in 2014 — see it as conviction. But critics take a different view of a man who turned in his gun and badge and became mayor of Inglewood in 2011.
"His role is basically to shut down anyone who dare disagree with anything that he thinks," says Diane Sambrano, a 59-year resident of Inglewood. "And at this point that happens to be that all things point to the stadium as the salvation of our community."
Randall Fleming, a journalist based in Inglewood, said of Butts, "He controls city council."
After USA TODAY Sports left messages for Inglewood's four city councilmen, Butts said he would be the only one addressing news media questions about the stadium.
The Forum, former home of the Lakers and Kings, has a new life since being bought by Madison Square Garden. (Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY Sports)
'TREMENDOUS FOR THE CITY'
One of Butts' biggest accomplishments as mayor was revitalizing The Forum, located across the street from Hollywood Park.
Faithful Central Bible Church bought the arena in 2000, held Sunday service there and rented it out for concerts and sporting events. In 2012, Madison Square Garden Co. purchased The Forum, and Butts helped clear the way for a $100 million renovation that has brought the famed facility new life.
"He has been a transformative element," Meany says of the mayor.
Bob Steiner, a 30-year resident of Inglewood who oversaw public relations for the Lakers and Kings from 1979 to 1999, says the NFL stadium could help restore pride lost after the departure of those teams and the closing of Hollywood Park.
"Football is a power unto itself," Steiner says. "The NFL would be a huge impetus for the city. If that whole development comes through, the retail and the residential, that would be tremendous for the city."
Butts has not won over critics such as Sambrano or Fleming. Nor does he seem concerned. With the mayor throwing his support behind the project — in part because it will be financed privately, before developers can recoup up to $100 million in taxes the first five years — organizers needed less than two weeks to collect signatures from 22,000 Inglewood residents, more than twice as many as needed to put the project on a ballot initiative.
The measure could be on the ballot by midyear, and voter approval would advance Inglewood's chances of being home to the NFL — to going from the City of Has-Beens to the City of Once-Agains.
"Whatever city ends up with the prize, it'll immediately in my estimation catapult it to international status," Butts said. "And why would that be? Because you would immediately have the newest, best, shiniest football stadium in the world."
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bluecoconuts
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RedAlice
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The actual question is not if I am a chick or if I am hot. I am both. The fact is that I talk Rams 24/7 and I annoy the hell out of most people because I want to talk about the Rams. I will not shut up. I do this in cities and to people constantly and always and everywhere....all the time....the only actual question is why have you allowed some dudes who love to troll other teams to let you keep from letting me post about the Rams here?
Let's talk Rams as in serious about the team - and then if you impress me, I might care if you think I'm a chick.
BuiltRamTough
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Dm me your address
RedAlice
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No. Let's have a discussion about Bradford.
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