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http://insidestl.com/kevin-demoff-thank ... ak/1956732

Kevin Demoff: “Thankfully or Not Thankfully” The Rams Went On A 4 Game Losing Streak

March 14, 2016



Have you ever heard an executive, coach, or player express gratitude for a four-game losing streak for his or her team?

Well, if you haven’t you don’t know the Rams.

And it sure would be quite appreciated if the rest of the country would start getting hip to what took place in St. Louis with this operation as opposed to just lazily labeling St. Louis as a bad football town. As the latest example of the farce that was the Rams’ commitment to a) St. Louis and b) winning while in St. Louis…one of the team’s top executives expressed gratitude over the team falling out of the playoff race in November.

Kevin Demoff On The Ryan Kelley Morning AfterRams’ Chief Operating Officer Kevin Demoff returned to his high high school alma mater Harvard-Westlake in Los Angeles to give fellow alumni the same presentation he gave to owners in Houston on January 12th.

While discussing the headaches that occurred while attempting to get the move to Los Angeles approved by owners with his fellow Harvard-Westlake alumni, Demoff began to express the frustration that the organization was starting to feel with the process.

You can see it for yourself in this video: Kevin Demoff Speaks at Harvard-Westlake High School on The Rams’ Move To Los Angeles

Demoff’s comments regarding winning/losing and the circumstances of the Fall of 2015 begin at 30:18.

“We went through the entire Fall process of trying to convince the owners of where we stood, what this project would mean for the NFL and for Los Angeles, in particular, and the opportunity that was in front of us. And, all the sudden, things were coming upon us pretty quickly. The relocation application was do in the first week in January. Either thankfully or not thankfully, we went on a four-game losing streak in the middle of November (smile from Demoff and laughter from the crowd), so we went from being in the playoff hunt and having a seed to woefully out of the the playoff hunt, which allowed us a little more time to talk about this (pointing to the Los Angeles presentation on the screen behind him) and put this together.”

Isn’t that lovely?

Demoff acknowledges that the team was in the playoff hunt, but “thankfully or not thankfully” they went on a four-game losing streak…”which allowed us a little more time to talk about this.” And, “this” of course is the team’s presentation to get out of St. Louis and move to Los Angeles…part of which was based on the lack of support that they said St. Louis gave them.

I wonder if Roger Goodell or anyone at the NFL would appreciate the words of the Rams’ COO…or if they’d even care. Imagine Robert Kraft…or Art Rooney…or any owner or executive with any team in any of the four major American professional sports leagues expressing gratitude for a losing streak that knocked their team out of the playoff hunt.

There’s only one franchise that delivers that brazen admission.

I am just curious if there is anyone in the league office who gives a damn.

Looks like Demoff is overtaking Kroenke as public enemy #1 for the haters.

BTW, the video everyone seems to have just discovered was posted here over a week ago by TSFH:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1915

I think Timmy needs a Kleenex

Saw the url read "insidestl" so I skipped the article.

maxxx power wrote:Saw the url read "insidestl" so I skipped the article.

Saw the same and skipped, plus I already saw the video and knew the context it was said in.

I do think this speaks to how focused on winning the Rams were in St. Louis towards the end. They had other thing on the agenda. Now they don't. We'll see how much, if any, difference that makes.

It gets even funnier. For those who have the stomach, Randy Karraker is going off on Demoff for speaking at SXSW on ethics:

Rams’ Professional Liar Kevin Demoff Spoke on a Panel About Ethics in Sports:

http://www.101sports.com/2016/03/14/ram ... cs-sports/

For StLfan, it still hurts to sit down there in the Loo.

"Among the panelists in one of the sports sections was Los Angeles Rams COO Kevin Demoff, who organizers brought in to discuss “the intersection of personal ethics, fandom, and commerce in sports.”

To place Demoff in any forum in which personal ethics and fandom are involved is incongruous and disingenuous."

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl-news/46 ... ember-2014

Rams COO: Move to LA in the works since summer of 2013

by By Ron Clements

The Rams decided to move back to Los Angeles before the 2014 season, according to team executive Kevin Demoff.

Demoff, the executive vice president of football operations and chief operating officer, spoke March 1 at Harvard-Westlake High School in the northwest L.A. suburb of Studio City. He said the franchise's official announcement on Jan. 12 "was two-and-half years in the making."

Demoff, who was a senior at Harvard-Westlake when the Rams moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis in 1995, admitted to being "guarded" during his web-streamed presentation, but said he would privately tell those interested the "unadulterated truth."

Demoff gave the same presentation he gave to the NFL in January. He began by explaining the process, which began with an early morning phone call from owner Stan Kroenke in the summer of 2013. Demoff was in St. Louis for training camp when he got a call from Kroenke, who said he was driving around possible sites near Hollywood Park in Inglewood.

"When you get a call from your boss at 7:15 and you know they're on the West Coast, it's either something really great or you're going to be fired," Demoff said. "He said, 'This is an unbelievable site. Do we think this can really happen?'"

Following a two-hour conversation, Demoff said it was the first time he believed a move back to Los Angeles "could really happen." Kroenke purchased a 60-acre portion of land in the area in January of 2014, beating a bid from the NFL. The Rams then "very quietly" began exploring options to acquire the other 240 acres in Hollywood Park.

Demoff blamed the city of St. Louis for not upgrading the Edward Jones Dome into a first-tier stadium by the end of the 2014 season, meaning the Rams "became a free agent in March of 2015."

But the Rams had already begun piecing together the project in April of 2014. Demoff and Kroenke met in Denver that summer with other investors and the HKS architectural firm that was "stealthily" brought in to build the football stadium in the 298 acres of land Kroenke now owned.

By the end of that meeting, the decision to move back to Los Angeles was essentially made. Demoff said the motto over the next two years was, "Do not undersell this opportunity. You only have one chance to move back to Los Angeles and only one chance to do it right."

"We were starting to see this thing come to fruition," Demoff said. "We worked on this for months and months."

Demoff even used the L.A. stadium project as a distraction after quarterback Sam Bradford tore his ACL for the second straight year during a 2014 preseason game in Cleveland. Demoff "jumped on a plane" the next morning for San Francisco for a meeting about stadium development at the Hollywood Park site in Inglewood. Because the Rams' season was "about to be a trainwreck," Demoff welcomed the opportunity to "focus on something else." The Rams went 6-10 in 2014 and finished their St. Louis tenure with a 7-9 campaign last season.

By September of 2014, the NFL had created its Los Angeles committee and in November of 2014, the first official presentation was made to the league in a meeting in Atlanta that also included the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers. The Rams tried to move to L.A. for the 2015 season, but were blocked by the league — but the process was well on its way.

Demoff praised Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for being one of the project's "champions" to get the move done.

"It was a tremendous opportunity for the NFL and I was fortunate enough to work for Stan Kroenke, who had a tremendous vision in how we could bring the NFL back to Los Angeles and solve this riddle of 20 years," Demoff added. "He was the first person to have the team, have the real estate acumen to get it done, pair those two and then we could go to the league and say, 'This is what we can do for you.'"

Demoff admitted relocating an NFL franchise is necessarily difficult, but was happy to be the "storyteller with a terrific vision" to pitch to the league.

It seems to me that Mr D should probably keep a tighter lid on some of the developments that transpired.....

Looks like the video has bee removed...