The Chris Moeller Archives

Kroenke's ransom

It's very easy for sportswriters to get in over their heads. We see this each time the real world spills over into sports. Jock sniffers at ESPN and FOX Sports were drowning after heinous sex abuse allegations cast shadow over Joe Paterno's football fiefdom at Pennsylvania State University. We were treated to forced apologies from sports media talking heads almost on a daily basis after so many of them attempted to stray from the approved script of the Ray Rice episode. Only one sportswriter, Dave Zirin, is consistently excellent (he's the only writer talking about Thabo Sefolosha during the NBA playoffs, for example), and of course, his publication, The Nation, isn't a sports publication at all.

St. Louis has been enduring this problem for months with their local media involving the status of a new stadium deal for the NFL Rams. It's the height of absurdity, of course, to build a new $985 million stadium in a city whose public schools have only been recently re-accredited. The city also completed construction on a new domed stadium to house the Rams only twenty years ago, and is still paying construction bonds on that facility until 2021.

What we have here is a situation in which the Rams owner, Enos Stanley "Stan" Kroenke-- Sam Walton's son-in-law named by his parents for St. Louis baseball greats Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial-- has purchased property and developed a construction plan to build a football stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood. But out of the clear blue sky, the Chargers and Raiders, shortly after, announced that they had a partnership stadium plan for the Los Angeles suburb of Carson. The NFL will allow two teams to enter the enormous and long-vacant L.A. market, but not three. Columnist Bernie Miklasz puts these facts together as evidence that the city and county of St. Louis (separate entities) should come up with the financing for Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz's riverfront stadium construction project in the warehouse district north of St. Louis' downtown.

It seems to me, though, that the facts demonstrate the presence of a new stadium is immaterial to keeping the Rams. As of two months ago, Kroenke is under no legal requirement to keep the team in St. Louis. He's now on a year-to-year lease. There is no funding in place for the Peacock-Blitz plan and no property has been purchased. At this point, the two men have only offered up other people's money to Roger Goodell. The NFL would dearly love a publicly-financed new stadium in St. Louis, but the facility already in St. Louis, currently known as the Edward Jones Dome, is newer and in better condition than the stadia in which the Chargers and Raiders play, in San Diego and Oakland, California, respectively. Miklasz even acknowledges then that logic dictates the approval by the NFL of the Chargers and Raiders relocation, rather than the Rams, and the Los Angeles Times concurred Friday that "the momentum is now in favor of Carson over Inglewood." Miklasz is concerned only that there is no guarantee, yet he's separately acknowledged that there's no guarantee even if St. Louis, St. Louis County, and the state of Missouri approve financing for the new facility. All of his facts are correct. He just proclaims exactly the wrong conclusion.

The Carson stadium deal became St. Louis' one and only ace. After the two opposing clubs announced their joint agreement, it no longer made any difference what St. Louis ultimately decides to do. Miklasz, however, still believes the smart play is to drop almost a billion dollars on new construction and for the privilege of placing your hopes on the moral integrity of the National Football League.

Sportswriters are always going to come down on the side of 'the money be damned' on this topic because they live on the sports page. The value of the Rams to the city of St. Louis is measured quite differently though in other sections of the Sunday Post-Dispatch. Every economic study completed at this point in every community has determined that publicly-financed stadia are a financial loser for everyone except the owner of the team housed in the stadium. History also tells us that the cosmetic value of having a given sports team in the community is overblown. Los Angeles itself is Exhibit A of this. They've been two decades now without an NFL team (and their taxpayers haven't paid for a new football facility since 1921), and the city appears to be no worse for the wear-- except for the epic drought of atmospheric, surface and ground water they're currently experiencing.

The NFL, financially, has delivered nothing but minimum wage service jobs to the St. Louis area, and few hours of that besides. The team spurs virtually no tourism. It's a television business. The Rams play at home only eight Sundays a year (at least two of which will overlap Cardinals baseball weekends, plus two more if the baseball team continues to reach the League Championship Series each October), and the Rams draw nearly all of their fans from the metro area. The entertainment dollars being spent, therefore, are only dollars being shifted from elsewhere in the community.

When you read items like the one linked above in the LA Times, it should become obvious to St. Louisans what is already obvious to everybody else-- that their city is simply being exploited. In reality, this is a battle between three (or two) ownership groups and two new communities that are going on the financial hook for a public giveaway to private interests. St. Louis could very easily lose the Rams. Indeed they will, within a year or two, I predict. What likely happens is that the NFL gets both stadia, the Chargers get a deal done to stay in San Diego, and Los Angeles gets the Raiders and Rams (back) in separate facilities, as well as a Super Bowl in Kroenke's Inglewood facility in 2020. Yes, there is a minuscule possibility that the Rams get stuck on the outside looking in in Los Angeles, but the fact that other franchise owners, such as Jerry Jones, have already voiced their support for Kroenke, and he has already committed $300 million to Los Angeles speaks loudly. Either way, the presence of another new palace in St. Louis for a billionaire's football team, as stated earlier, is a non-factor. Los Angeles can take your football team with impunity. But guard the water supply.

posted by CM @ 11:32 AM