[den-the-coach]

I've been wanting to pontificate about this for a while and now I finally have a site to express my feelings, but the road back home is quite a story.

John Shaw was on the expansion committee back in the early 90's and realized the potential and the amount of revenue that the teams were receiving. When the NFL announced they were going to expand the front runners were Charlotte, NC for obvious reasons (Southeast at that time was a hot bed) and St. Louis because mainly because the St. Louis group was led by Walter Payton and the NFL loved him and really would've embraced a minority being the face of a franchise.

Well, at the last minute Payton's group lost their main money guy and the NFL delayed their decision by a month in order for the St. Louis contingency to regroup and fine a new money guy. One month later Payton was out and the new money guy that would be the owner of the St. Louis expansion team for be none other than Enos Stanley "Stan" Kroenke. So each city made their bids to the NFL owners, Charlotte, St. Louis, Baltimore, Memphis & Jacksonville.

Charlotte was a slam dunk led by former player Jerry Richardson, but after Payton was out the owners were not fans of the new guy heading the St. Louis group in Kroenke. Stan came to those meetings in a cowboy hat & boots with the western tie and the owners came away thinking he was a youkel. Granted it was their first meeting with Stan, but they came unimpressed and they really liked Wayne Weaver and amazingly announced that they would grant expansion to two southeaster teams Charlotte & Jacksonville as commissioner Tagliabue stated the Southeast was a football hotbed.

That's when Shaw got in Geogia's ear because he knew about the other teams that were left out in the cold, but the money and opportunity were too good to pass up. Shaw also believed there were too many things to do in California and fans were not as passionate as east coast fans and wanted the Rams to move back to Baltimore. But Baltimore's stadium was several years away and Thomas Eagleton now working on doing whatever he could to ensure an NFL team was heading to Missouri to fill the convention center they were building was making a deal with the devil John Shaw and why they agreed to all Shaw's demands including the top tier stadium clause.

Fast forward to the Los Angeles relocation committee headed by none other than Stan Kroenke. Kroenke had worked very hard at reinventing his image and understood the windfall of what waited in Los Angeles and also understood that his team still had the strongest following being that they were in L.A. for 49 years. Purchasing the Rams for a bargain price of 554 million dollars a move to Los Angeles with the perfect venue would catapult the value of his franchise and make them far more relevant again.

Kroenke watched the palace that Jerry Jones built so he ensured he had that architecture firm and he also knew that for years Al Davis felt the Hollywood Park area was the perfect venue for Los Angeles so he purchased the only land available there and partnered with the City of Inglewood to put together the City of Champions Project to build a palatial venue second to none....So a Missouri Native brings the Rams back to Los Angeles you can't make this up and the twists and turns are just amazing.

[Hacksaw]

Great story den. I can only hope that Stan is better received by the owners and his local yokel handle is forgotten.
It is an amazing journey. The team lost forever. What else could we think when the franchise moved away? Then they are bought out by Mt Missou, further cementing (in my mind) the thought that they wont ever come back now.
Thankfully he is more about money than Missouri and the impossible could actually occur. The Los Angeles Rams ride again.
Now with the team (owner) wanting to bring them home and an incredible stadium waiting to be built with no restrictions, if Goodell and the owners don't allow the Rams to undo the travesty caused by Georgia , I will be hugely upset with the NFL.

[Elvis]

Uber Angeleno John Shaw moves the Rams to St. Louis while Mr. St. Louis, Stan Kroenke, may well bring them back to L.A., definitely ironic.

Makes me a little nervous counting my chickens before they hatch but i am confident they'll be in L.A. in 2016.

It's a weird thing. If a local restaurant i really liked decided to move to a different location because they thought they'd make more money in the new location, sure i'd be a little bummed but i wouldn't take it personally. It wouldn't be a crime against humanity.

Sports fandom is on a whole different level, emotionally...