When I was 7 years old, I fell in love with the game of football. The St. Louis Rams, my ”hometown” team, were having one of the greatest seasons in NFL history — one that led them straight to a Super Bowl XXXIV win over the Tennessee Titans.
Just recently, a bit of my childhood died because of the announcement that my beloved Rams were going to relocate back to the West Coast and would be the Los Angeles Rams from this point on.
Much like the breakup of a marriage gone utterly sour, the breakup between the city and Rams’ owner and villain Stan Kroenke was a very long and drawn-out process. The rumors of relocation began several years ago.
In August of 2010, Kroenke became the outright owner of the Rams after the NFL approved his $750 million purchase of the team from the family of late-Rams owner Georgia Frontiere. At the time of the purchase, the Rams had been abysmal, finishing at or near the bottom of the league in three straight seasons.
Part of the reason why there was speculation of relocation was the Missouri native’s ties to other sports teams west of the Mississippi River. Kroenke also had ownership stakes in the Colorado Avalanche and the Denver Nuggets.
When he bought the team, Kroenke had been on-record with multiple outlets promising to keep the Rams in St. Louis. Kroenke was also part of Frontiere’s group of investors who helped bring the Rams to St. Louis from LA in the mid-‘90s.
Since then, Kroenke has been part of the perpetual cycle of ineptitude and mediocrity that has surrounded the Rams. His management of the team came into question when he hired former Titans’ head coach Jeff Fisher, a man with a career head coaching record below .500 and one Super Bowl appearance in 2000 when his Titans lost to, you guessed it, the Rams.
Following the Rams’ submission of a bid to move to LA, the documents of the proposal from Kroenke were released to the public. In the documents, Kroenke stated that the city of St. Louis was a “two-sport town” and any proposal for a new stadium would put any football team in “financial ruin.”
In short, the man who swore he would keep the Rams in St. Louis turned his back on a city that genuinely cared about the franchise.
It’s no mystery that the NFL has longed to be back in LA since the Raiders and the Rams left the area in the 1990s. Yet, with a market that is extremely college football heavy with the University of Southern California and the University of California-Los Angeles in the area, as well as a huge basketball market with the Lakers and now the Clippers, the move seems a bit puzzling, especially for those in St. Louis.
The residents of the St. Louis area must pay taxes on a building that no longer houses an NFL franchise. The city now must continue to pay on a loan on the Edward Jones Dome, the Rams’ former home in St. Louis, until 2021.
When the Rams played, the $4.2 million in revenue generated from games was used to offset $6-million-per-year price tag that came with the upkeep and renovations of the stadium, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The remaining money would probably be recouped from taxes and other avenues.
In addition to the loss of revenue for St. Louis, the city will now have to rely heavily on the revenue generated from the other two franchises in the city, the St. Louis Blues and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Why move to a city that already generates tons of revenue from a location that has an embarrassment of riches in terms of sports franchises, when the city that they just left is the one that could benefit the most from the revenue generated from the team’s presence?
While it may seem like everybody wins in this move to LA, the real losers are the fans left behind in St. Louis. They are saddled with a stadium that has millions left on its refinanced bonds and no football team to support and help generate with revenue.
So as I said before, Kroenke: half-man, half-villain. At least you’ll have a nice view from your new stadium in Inglewood, California, to distract you from mediocre football.
