A great article about the LA saga with some new info. These are the highlights of it which is still a hell of a lot!
-Going into the meeting, most believed Carson had more votes.
But one moment, many would later recall, seemed to halt its momentum. Michael Bidwill, president of the Cardinals and a Carson supporter, argued that the NFL doesn't exist just to make rich owners richer. Owners needed to consider what would be best for the league, and ...
Jones cut him off: "When you guys moved the team from St. Louis to Phoenix -- it wasn't about the money?"
As Bidwill tried to answer, Jones moved in for the kill: "You did it for the money."-At Mastro's, the two men met to determine whether they might have a shared vision for Los Angeles. Kroenke was enthusiastic about a 60-acre tract of land in Inglewood, nestled between the Forum and the soon-to-be-closed Hollywood Park racetrack. Earlier in the year, Kroenke had driven around the site at 5:30 a.m. and raved about its potential to Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff and to Jones. Spanos, though, was cool on the Inglewood location, citing concerns about parking and traffic.
Still, both men, and their associates, saw the convivial dinner as a promising first step toward a potential partnership. They agreed to be in touch.
But after the dinner, Spanos called Kroenke several times. Kroenke never returned any of the calls.
Despite Spanos' reservations, the Inglewood land -- owned at the time by Wal-Mart, the family business of Kroenke's wife, Ann Walton Kroenke -- still intrigued Kroenke. At the time, it was being sold in a blind auction.
Without any warning to Spanos, a company set up by Kroenke, Pincay RE LLC, offered $90 million, outbidding everyone -- including NFL executive Eric Grubman, who later would become the league's point man on the relocation process.
Nobody knew whether Grubman had bid on his own or on behalf of the league or some other buyer. But Kroenke's purchase -- and his later deal for an adjacent 238 acres -- was a precursor of what would become the dominant theme of the NFL's return to Los Angeles:
Stan Kroenke would not be stopped.
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NOBODY KNEW IT at the time, but the league office had already lost control of the Los Angeles relocation process. Commissioner Roger Goodell's mishandling of the Ray Rice domestic violence discipline in the summer and autumn of 2014 distracted him from executing the league's longtime goal of returning to LA and severely weakened his standing in ownership circles. Meetings about LA that were scheduled for September were pushed to November.
The distractions also created a power vacuum that Grubman -- and other owners -- eagerly filled.Spanos reacted to Kroenke's Inglewood purchase by proposing to buy a 168-acre landfill lot in Carson. He and his team had designed a creative development method, based on a landmark California Supreme Court decision a few months earlier, that would expedite the arduous process of entitling a stadium to a city council vote, overcoming legal hurdles that often take years to clear. At a meeting in Los Angeles in mid-November 2014, the Chargers leaders presented their plan to Grubman, who some owners and executives suspected favored Kroenke and Inglewood.
Both proposals were rolling forward. And then, all of a sudden, they weren't. Later in November, several owners who would serve on the league's LA committee told Kroenke no team would be moving for the 2015 season -- owing, in part, to Goodell's weakened leadership. In mid-December, on the eve of an important Carson City Council stadium meeting, Art Rooney II of the Steelers delivered the same message to Spanos, telling him to "stand down." Spanos complied.
But Kroenke, who was well-versed in relocation politics after he had helped move the Rams to St. Louis as a minority owner after the 1994 season, told a few owners that he would play one more season in St. Louis but would exercise his right to relocate in 2015 -- "when the window is open," he told associates. Some took Kroenke's declaration as a veiled threat to sue if anyone tried to block him; others understood that he had paid a fortune for the land and wanted to move forward.
Jerry Jones, who once played himself on an episode of Entouragebrokering the NFL's return to LA, implored Kroenke to "just go" and not wait for the league's sluggish bureaucracy.
-And so on Jan. 5, 2015, Kroenke unveiled plans to build his Inglewood stadium, all but announcing a move to Los Angeles. Spanos and his associates not only were furious that Kroenke had beaten them out of the gate but
were also deeply suspicious of Kroenke's plan to fast-track the entitlement process. It was the exact process they'd presented to Grubman. The Chargers suspected that Grubman had alerted the Rams to it; the Rams insisted that their own California-based development company knew about it.
Either way, it didn't matter. Carson was behind.
-The stage was now set for a showdown. On Aug. 11, 2015, the league's owners convened at the Hyatt Regency, in a Chicago suburb, for a special LA meeting. For the first time, both sides presented their proposals.
The Carson team went first.
During its presentation, Grubman paced in the back of the conference room, drinking coffee.
The Rams contingent went next. Grubman moved to the front of the room and took a seat at the commissioner's table. The presenters showed off a model of their football oasis, and Mark Davis stared at it in awe.Saints owner Tom Benson posed the first question about Inglewood, asking why owners should defray the costs of the extra real estate developments -- up to $200 million in league loans available for new stadiums -- that would benefit only Kroenke. But before Kroenke and Demoff could say a word, Grubman jumped in to answer the question, explaining that Benson misunderstood the amount of money the league would contribute.
The pro-Carson owners couldn't believe that a league official appeared to be speaking on behalf of the Rams' proposal. That moment, along with persistent rumors that Grubman wanted to work for Kroenke in Los Angeles, c
emented in the minds of some owners that he was an agent for Inglewood.
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Before the meeting ended, Jones, as would be his habit, took control. He delivered a rollicking, profanity-laced eight-minute endorsement of Kroenke's monumental vision, saying in his Arkansas drawl that whichever owner returned to Los Angeles, he needed to have "big balls."It was awkward and hilarious. Everyone, including Kroenke, tried not to laugh. But it was also a welcomed sentiment for the new-money owners such as Dan Snyder of the Redskins and Jeffrey Lurie of the Eagles, who backed Inglewood. "If you want to do it right," Jones continued, "you have to step up."
-With a final vote scheduled for Jan. 12, 2016, in Houston, only five months away, the Carson supporters knew they were in trouble.
Making matters worse, Spanos and Davis had argued with each other about Carson earlier that day in front of other owners -OWNERS AND EXECUTIVES say the following weeks were among the wildest they had seen. They called and texted each other daily with sales pitches, demands and gossip. Almost nothing was out of bounds. Some Carson supporters weighed ways to try to jam up Kroenke, such as forcing him to pay the entire $550 million relocation fee up front while giving Spanos and Davis a payment plan. Undecided owners considered the price of their vote, whether it was changing their division and conference alignment, horse-trading a vote for a promise of future support for an ownership succession plan or a new stadium of their own. Others were convinced that some owners didn't even know where Carson and Inglewood were located. "Owners were all over the place," one team executive says.
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Most owners wanted to avoid a Raiders return to Los Angeles, owing to Al Davis' burned bridges and the co-opting of the team apparel by gangs, concerns so deep that some wouldn't even consider Carson-Richardson flew his private plane to visit several owners. Everyone around the league called it the Jerry Tour. He insisted that Carson was the better site and that the league not only would regret leaving St. Louis for a second time but would set an awful precedent by turning away the estimated $477 million in public funds for a new stadium that the state of Missouri was poised to offer. At times, Richardson's hard-charging style, delivered with a threatening tone and citing favors he had done for them, offended some owners. "
He bullied people," a team executive says. "Some were turned off by his forcefulness."-Goodell privately expressed frustration about all three owners -- if they were elite, they wouldn't be trying to relocate in the first place, he told a friend -- but in the end, the commissioner supported their efforts to leave
-PROGNOSTICATIONS DEPENDED ON which Houston restaurant you happened to be having dinner at on Jan. 11, the night before the final meeting. Those at Vallone's steakhouse across the street from the Westin hotel, the venue for the owners meeting, mostly predicted the Rams and Chargers would end up in Inglewood. Those at a private room at Eddie V's Prime Seafood felt certain Carson would prevail. If Iger could assuage the antipathy toward the Raiders and get 20 votes, and if the LA committee voted for Carson, the rest of the votes would fall in line -- or, worst case, a final vote would be delayed until the Super Bowl.
At 10 p.m., the Chargers and Raiders received a curious email from league officials: a proposal for one of the two teams to share Inglewood with the Rams. It was a modified version of a resolution Jones had submitted the previous weekend, calling for the Rams and Chargers to share Inglewood. Spanos and his associates were offended. The eleventh-hour email suggested that before the owners voted, the league was laying the groundwork for its own solution.
-On behalf of Carson, Iger went next. He tried to "break the ice," he says now, with a joke about how in his 42 years at ABC and Disney, he had paid more money to the NFL than anyone else. The quip was met with blank stares. For about 20 minutes, Iger spoke with a slideshow behind him, then ended with another prepared line, a spin-off of the famous commercial of the Super Bowl MVP shouting, "I'm going to Disney World!" "I hope I'm going to the NFL!" Iger said. Again, silence.
-Then the owners moved to a debate period.
Paul Allen of the Seahawks opened the discussion by asking everyone to forget about the teams and the personalities involved and ask, What's the best site? Let's work backward from there. One owner then reminded everyone that Carson "is literally a dump."
-A committee vote is usually a reliable predictor of the full ownership's vote. And so, during a lunch break, some owners were so certain that Carson would win that they checked out of their rooms
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Rooney and Richardson were quiet, even "despondent," one meeting participant says, angry on Spanos' behalf and frustrated that their recommendation was ignored. "These are proud people," the participant says. "It was a slap in their faces."-Goodell spoke first. When he announced that the Rams had won the right to relocate,
Spanos closed his eyes and breathed deeply and loudly, as if preparing to speak at a funeral. When Goodell said that the Chargers had the option to join the Rams, Spanos closed his eyes and sighed again-In the lobby of the Westin after the news conference, Jerry Jones exited an elevator, carrying a nearly empty glass of whiskey, looking both energized and relieved. Though he deeply believed that the vote reflected the league's best interest,
Jones had engineered the defeat of one of the most beloved owners by one of the shrewdest. A few feet away at the hotel bar, some owners took turns consoling Spanos. He felt as if he'd been stabbed in the back. Someone suggested that he should pull a Kroenke and move to Carson anyway. Spanos didn't want to hear it.
-This gambit all but assures that the ugly process, and uncertainty hanging over two NFL cities in California with old stadiums, will continue at least another year.
Jones, though, was unapologetically proud. He had helped at least double the Rams' franchise value, ranked at a league-low $930 million in 2014 by Forbes, and had given Spanos the chance to increase the value of the Chargers if he chose to move to Inglewood. The race for LA was always a race for money, and so it ended the only way it could. "
Stan is a tremendous asset for the NFL," Jones said. "He's God-sent, really."A few hours later, at Vallone's steakhouse, Jones, Kroenke and a handful of associates held court. It was nearly 1 a.m., and they had an entire section of the restaurant to themselves. Kroenke's move, which in some ways began with a steak dinner with Spanos in 2013, was ending with another.
Every five minutes or so, Jones would stop the conversation, raise his glass and say, "The Los Angeles Rams," as if none of them could quite believe it. espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14752649/the-real-story-nfl-owners-battle-bring-football-back-los-angeles