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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/01/12/los- ... adium-vote

The NFL Returns to L.A.

Peter King


Rams owner Stan Kroenke, silent through most of the relocation process, said Tuesday: ‘It's not easy to do these things.’

As triumphant Rams owner Stan Kroenke and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, one of Kroenke’s biggest champions in the long, slow slog to a new NFL reality, celebrated quietly at trendy Houston restaurant Vallone’s near midnight Tuesday, they had to be thinking, “How exactly did this happen?”

And as disappointed San Diego owner Dean Spanos dined privately back at the hotel where NFL owners voted to change the history of football in Los Angeles, he had to be thinking, “How exactly did this happen?”

Noted Los Angeles Times NFL scribe Sam Farmer kept repeating throughout the process of returning pro football to Los Angeles after a 21-year absence: “Anyone who tells you he knows what’s going to happen in L.A. is lying, because the owners don’t even know.” That continued into Tuesday morning at the nondescript Westin Memorial City Hotel in Houston. That where’s the six-owner committee charged with finding the best NFL option for Los Angeles voted 5-1 in favor of building a new stadium complex in suburban Carson anchored by the Chargers. Within hours, the NFL owner membership, voting by secret ballot (that was important), rebuked the L.A. committee hours later by voting 20-12 and then 21-11 for the Inglewood project.

The Rams are scheduled to begin play—with or without another team as a neighbor—in the 70,240-seat stadium and $2.6-billion complex in Inglewood in 2019.

“It was unbelievable,” Jones said. “I’ve never been in a meeting where that many people voted for what the committee didn’t want.”

So why the switch?

Two things. “The key was changing from public to secret ballots,” said one NFL source. “The reversal of support [from Carson to Inglewood] from what Dean expected shocked him. And absolutely the 21 votes for Inglewood was a shock.” Conversely, the lack of support for Carson once the ballots went secret was very surprising. The Carson support evaporated in a flash, which few people in Houston saw coming.

The switch came about, another high-ranking club source said, because of the quality of Kroenke’s proposal for a 298-acre stadium site, and so much more. One high-ranking club executive said the overall quality of the Inglewood site, with inclusion of a new campus for NFL media—NFL Network, NFL digital ventures and NFL.com, including a theater for premieres of NFL-produced programming and documentaries and films—was a big factor in swaying so many owners to the Kroenke side.

“The surprise of the day was getting the 21 votes right off the bat,” the high-ranking club source said. “That set the tone. This is the league’s biggest asset, and it’s significant that they awarded it to Stan. They trust him.”

So this is the way the vote happened, and how the three tenuous teams stand today:

The Rams: Owners eventually voted 30-2 for Kroenke to move to Inglewood and shepherd the NFL back to Los Angeles for the first time since 1994. Owners, in addition, gave the Chargers until January 2017 to make a deal to move to Inglewood with Kroenke. The Rams will play in the Los Angeles Coliseum for either two or three seasons, beginning in August, while the Inglewood stadium is being built. St Louis, meanwhile, bitterly accepted the NFL decision and prepared to move forward without a team. “This sets a terrible precedent not only for St. Louis but for all communities that have loyally supported their NFL franchises,” said Missouri governor Jay Nixon.

• THE DAY THE NFL DIED IN L.A.: Revisiting Dec. 24, 1994, when the Rams and Raiders played their final games in Southern California
The Chargers: For a decade Charger brass felt frustrated that it couldn't get a deal done in San Diego. The NFL has given Spanos and the city a year and one final chance to get a new stadium arranged—or to join Kroenke in Inglewood in a facility that Kroenke finances totally. There were indications that Dean Spanos, who seems to be done with San Diego, will move to strike a deal in Inglewood within a month or two, though it’s certainly not his first preference.

The Raiders: “We’ll be working really hard to find us a home,” owner Mark Davis said in a statement Tuesday night. “We’ll get it right.” How, exactly? The Raiders will almost certainly return to the O.co Coliseum for the 2016 season while Davis considers his option, which are bleak. He has no stadium lease. (The one at the Coliseum just expired, and he likely would have to go year-to-year there now.) The Raiders will have the option to join the Rams in a year if Spanos doesn’t get the deal done in that time, but it is a longshot to think the Kroenke stadium would ever be an option for Davis. The Raider future, which will be supplemented by a $100-million check from the NFL in the effort to get an Oakland stadium done, would be best spent in Northern California, with a second owner helping Davis get a good stadium deal done.

As far as NFL alignment goes, the Rams’ move makes make great geographical sense. The NFC West will now presumable be comprised of Seattle, San Francisco, Arizona and the Los Angeles Rams, a perfect top-to-bottom West Coast (and slightly inland) group. If the Chargers move, the AFC West would consist of Oakland (for now), Denver, Kansas City and the Los Angeles Chargers. The franchises, they are a-changin’.

The folks in Missouri won’t appreciate that, when the vote was over Tuesday evening, the membership gave Kroenke—a silent partner for the most part, the NFL’s Howard Hughes owner—a warm ovation. That’s stunning in itself, because of fractious nature of the multi-year relocation process and the enmity Kroenke engendered among some owners who felt St. Louis was a perfectly fine market willing to bend over backwards for an NFL franchise.

“Stan is a tremendous asset to the NFL,” Jones said after the vote. “I don't think there was anything short about Carson. There was everything long about Inglewood. The best thing we could have done was have Stan Kroenke lead the Rams back to Los Angeles, with absolutely the greatest plan that has ever been conceived in sports as far as how to put the show on.”

To the victors go the NFL franchise. The bitter taste won’t soon leave the mouths of Rams fans in St. Louis. And, possibly soon, San Diego.