[Hacksaw]

I want to read the proposals Spanos and Davis submitted.

They are to probably embarrassed to leak it. We might get a chance once things are said and done.
Funny StL'ers are claiming the Rams unprofessional for leaking their'sand hold Spanos in high regard for his professionalism. AAAUGH

[SoCalRam78]

I want to read the proposals Spanos and davis submitted.

Wonder if Spanos submitted another video.

[BuiltRamTough]

Just read the STL application, it's a very good read.

[dieterbrock]

This may be unpopular but I feel really bad for the St Louis folks who have supported the team and adopted them. While I do agree with a lot of what's been said, it just seems poor form to trash the way they did. Maybe they had to in order to get the other owners to see the truth of the matter.
Dunno.
But the guys I've known on RRF/ROD, the good guys from St Louis who have stuck with the team? They deserve better than this.

[Gareth]

But the guys I've known on RRF/ROD, the good guys from St Louis who have stuck with the team? They deserve better than this.

No doubt. But we LA fans didn't deserve what we got 20 years ago. And for those of us who have supported them all this time - we will hopefully reap the rewards.

[Stranger]

This may be unpopular but I feel really bad for the St Louis folks who have supported the team and adopted them. While I do agree with a lot of what's been said, it just seems poor form to trash the way they did. Maybe they had to in order to get the other owners to see the truth of the matter.
Dunno.
But the guys I've known on RRF/ROD, the good guys from St Louis who have stuck with the team? They deserve better than this.

They were F'd by their political leadership who signed-on to a lease that they didn't keep. And when given 12yrs to rectify the situation, they double talked, stalled, and corrupted the process. Those people are the victims of old time rust belt politicians who are so crooked it's hard for the public to even comprehend the deceipt.

[moklerman]

This may be unpopular but I feel really bad for the St Louis folks who have supported the team and adopted them. While I do agree with a lot of what's been said, it just seems poor form to trash the way they did. Maybe they had to in order to get the other owners to see the truth of the matter.
Dunno.
But the guys I've known on RRF/ROD, the good guys from St Louis who have stuck with the team? They deserve better than this.

They were F'd by their political leadership who signed-on to a lease that they didn't keep. And when given 12yrs to rectify the situation, they double talked, stalled, and corrupted the process. Those people are the victims of old time rust belt politicians who are so crooked it's hard for the public to even comprehend the deceipt.

That's where I'm coming from. I haven't trashed the fans at all and do sympathize. But anyone who took the time to look at what St. Louis did to get the Rams knew it wasn't exactly on the up and up.

St. Louis fans shouldn't be blaming Kroenke, LA fans, Shaw or anyone else. It's their local government that has, once again, screwed up dealings with an NFL team/expansion.

[Elvis]

This may be unpopular but I feel really bad for the St Louis folks who have supported the team and adopted them. While I do agree with a lot of what's been said, it just seems poor form to trash the way they did. Maybe they had to in order to get the other owners to see the truth of the matter.
Dunno.
But the guys I've known on RRF/ROD, the good guys from St Louis who have stuck with the team? They deserve better than this.

Can't disagree. I'm loving it on one hand but really do feel for the St. Louis folks who are getting crapped on in the process. Son_Dee tweeted some pretty moving stuff last night.

That said, there have been guys on other boards who were telling us that really there was just one guy in the RSA that rubbed Kroenke the wrong way, that "people in the know" knew this stuff. And that RSA guy isn't there anymore so Kroenke would now play ball.

I wonder what they think now? What are the "people in the know" saying?

I'd go back and ask but seems like it would be in poor taste, even for me...

[Elvis]

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/p ... n-st-louis

No going back now for Stan Kroenke and Rams fans in St. Louis

Nick Wagoner

EARTH CITY, Mo. -- If Rams owner Stan Kroenke's perpetually putrid football team wasn't enough to drive away its most loyal fans in St. Louis, his words, for as rare as they are, might have done the trick.

As the 29-page document the Rams sent to the NFL to plead their case for relocation to Los Angeles made the rounds on Tuesday night, it became easy to wonder whether Kroenke could ever return to St. Louis under any circumstances, even if he doesn't get the green light to head west.

Among the many "highlights" of the proposal from Kroenke and the Rams to the NFL were multiple shots aimed directly at Rams fans in the city -- most notably in Section 3, Parts B and C, which are titled "St. Louis is not a three professional team market" and "Despite significant financial investments, the Rams have been unable to improve the financial performance of the team in the St. Louis market."

Whether it's the Stan Musial, Poplar Street, Martin Luther King, Eads or any other bridge that connects to St. Louis, Kroenke effectively torched all of them in his pitch for Los Angeles. Among the salvos in the aforementioned sections is a portion that directly blames lack of fan attendance for the failing of St. Louis as a market.

"The current Rams ownership's investment in the on-the-field Rams team has been significant," the application reads. "These investments have resulted in a 52 percent improvement in winning percentage over the five years before Stan Kroenke became the controlling owner.

"Despite these investments and engagements, Rams attendance since 2010 has been well below the league average."

While Kroenke and the Rams correctly point out that he has essentially spent to the salary cap every year and invested heavily in the hiring of coach Jeff Fisher in 2012, pointing to the team's resulting on-field "improvement" as reason for fans to attend is one of the most asinine assertions in a process full of them on all sides.

Just so we're clear here, Kroenke and the Rams are blaming the fans for not showing up to support a team because they spent some money. Not because that money was spent wisely or improved the team to make it an actual contender, but for the simple act of spending it.

Under Kroenke's watch as the majority owner, the Rams have added only six more losing seasons to the NFL's longest active streak of nine. Their 7-9 performance in 2015 also represented a 12th consecutive non-winning season. A jump from awful to a little less awful doesn't change the fact that the on-field product has been dreadful for more than a decade.

Put that same product on the field in just about any stadium across the league for that long and it's a safe bet that attendance numbers will dwindle. To place the blame on the fans is unnecessarily insulting and demeaning.

The fans of St. Louis are no more to blame in this situation than the fans of Los Angeles were when the Rams left there. Or the fans of Cleveland were when the Browns departed for Baltimore. Or anywhere else that relocation has taken place. Sports are just like any other business: If you offer a good product, more people will buy it. As one wise man once put it, there are no bad fans, only bad teams and bad owners.

At his very core, Kroenke is a business man, a savvy, cold-blooded one who is used to getting what he wants. Throughout the rest of the application, he makes his case to take his team to Los Angeles and for his Inglewood stadium project. That proposal is incredibly impressive and stands on its own merit.

Kroenke clearly believes the move and the stadium are what is best for his bottom line and, to a much lesser extent, that of the NFL. It's an argument that many might disagree with but can at least be understood from a business perspective, since there's no denying that Los Angeles is a far more lucrative market than St. Louis.

Problem is, Kroenke's application doesn't read like it's just about business. Taking such an open shot at the fans can only be viewed as personal. It stings them even more knowing Kroenke grew up in Missouri, is named after two legendary St. Louis Cardinals baseball players and vowed to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch upon taking the controlling interest in the team in 2010, "I'm going to attempt to do everything that I can to keep the Rams in St. Louis. Just as I did everything that I could to bring the team to St. Louis in 1995. I believe my actions speak for themselves."

Indeed, they do.

And maybe his latest actions were meant to drive home the point that he wants nothing to do with St. Louis. Maybe he wants to make St. Louis uninhabitable for him in an effort to push the league's owners to vote his way next week in Houston. Kroenke hasn't spoken publicly or to the Rams' fans since he hired Fisher in 2012. That his first "comments" to those fans came via a letter that wasn't addressed to them and degrades them at pretty much every turn is particularly weak.

As the details of the Rams' application spread through social media, fans reacted in different ways. Some spewed venom at Kroenke, the team and/or chief operating officer Kevin Demoff. Others leaned on laughter, using the hashtag #KroenkeComplaints to offer the owner's theoretical disappointment in other St. Louis staples, such as toasted ravioli or the rapper Nelly. And still others offered simple sadness, including one fan who admitted to crying over what she had read. Despite all of that, many still want the Rams to stay in town.

This is an ugly process, one that is unfair to fans not only in St. Louis but also in San Diego, Oakland and Los Angeles. They all want to know what is going to happen to their favorite team. They all deserve professional football.

When it's all over, perhaps as soon as next week's owners meetings, some will be excited and some will be disappointed. But none of them deserves to be dumped on.

[bluecoconuts]

Of course...but they should fire whoever did. I'm sure there are lots of professionals here who do presentations/documents or receive them for a living...isn't the look and the design of this amateurish? Most important thing you are going to submit and worth how much to you? But I'm hung up on silly things. Just surprising to me...I don't want to take this off track, so I'll just leave it there. I'm sure it's a much better case then the other two applications and that's what matters.

I've been on many aerospace proposals in my career, I agree with you, the document was not impressive in its structure or writing skills. I wonder why. The Rams team must have dealt with a ton of proposals. Was this done intentionally?

I think it was intentional. Essentially, you have 31 family businesses reading and deciding on this thing. I think an overcooked proposal, in terms of layout and writting style, actually works against you here. The NFL is just noth that sophisticated of a place.

Bottom line, so far everyone that has read it knows they are a slam dunk. So I say it has achieved its purpose dperfectly. I'm stoked !

That was my guess... If a student gave me that, I would give it back, because a research paper should be cleaner and more professional... However for a bunch of old rich guys who are pretty detached, you want something short, with some flashy pictures (that NFL logo on the roof was very much intentional) and easy reading so they don't fall asleep reading it.