urbanSTL

Couples often live near the wife's parents. When an athlete marries a St. Louis woman there's a good chance they'll set up shop here.

Greatest St. Louis wrote

Fifteen years ago today, this happened:

It is truly hard to believe, after feeling the way I felt just 15 years ago, winning the SB, going through that excruciating NFC championship game against Tampa and the awesome win against the Vikings (1st playoff game in St. Louis), that the Rams are probably leaving. Even more surprising, is the fact that Stan Kroenke, the supposed savior of St. Louis football, will be the one taking our team back to LA, just 20 years or so after I read "Finally Football" as the headline in the Post. I think if it were 2000, I'd be shocked that Stan (then a quiet, well-dressed Missouri businessman), would turn into an evil villain (wearing a bad toupee, expensive suit, living in Malibu (mostly) is the one taking football from us. It is almost like we had a smiling, nice friend amongst us. Who knew he'd become one of the worst villains in STL sports history. He definitely stabbed us in the back! (Assuming he moves)
I love the moments we had during the Greatest Show days. It was riveting. It's just unreal, in 16 years (2016), it will likely be over.

Screw Stan!

At his state of the league press conference today, Roger Goodell repeated his phrase about wanting to keep all teams in their current markets. But he also stated that Stan Kroenke has been working for years on the stadium deal in St. Louis.

The implication is that the league considers Kroenke to have made an effort to get a deal done in St. Louis. They're not going to stand in his way when he's ready to move.

The reality is that the only thing Kroenke has done is propose a way too expensive ($700+ million) renovation to the dome that would have only come with a 10-year commitment. But as Bernie Miklasz said recently, the NFL can create their own reality.

I think we're looking at a less than 10% chance that the Rams are playing football in St. Louis in 2016. There's a reasonable chance of getting a different team, if the stadium plan gets shovel-ready, but I wouldn't consider it likely. Just possible.

moorlander wrote:What else do we lose when the Rams leave....?


http://www.ksdk.com/story/sports/nfl/ra ... /22526451/

Folks are just now catching on about the huge financial loss that will come if the NFL leaves and we don't build this stadium.
As far as I can tell the only public money that would be used for the stadium is continuation of the $12M per year we pay on the dome after that bill is paid off. But as this story points out, Rams and out of town players alone pay $7.6M in income taxes to the state each year. If you add in all the other income taxes of coaches, etc., it is likely the state gets more than $12M per year from just the NFL players, Coaches, Staff, Parking owners, etc. So if the state loses, say, $20M per year because the Rams left, how will they make of the shortfall? Cut Medicaid? What would the Pope say about that? This is obviously now a moral issue. I support the stadium so I won't have to explain to the man upstairs my part in cutting Medicaid to the poor. By the man upstairs, I meant Goodell of course. You thought i meant God?

Unlike the dome, for this stadium the NFL, owner, PSLs, and visitors will kick in $755M in new private money that will turn into many many construction jobs and result in a new city capital asset.

Here is how I believe the financing plan looks:
PSLs $ 130M Not unreasonable at all.
State: $ 175M paid by extending the current $12M per year at near zero interest rates. State gets $7.6 M of that back from NFL Players income tax alone, and probably more than $12M per year when you figure in all the other income generated by coaches, staff, etc.
City: $ 87.5M All paid by visitors via Hotel and Rental Car Tax. Gets back taxes other cities charge us when we visit and build their new stadiums.
County: $ 87.5M All paid by visitors via Hotel and Rental Car Tax. Gets back taxes other cities charge us when we visit and build their new stadiums.
NFL: $200M This is exactly what the NFL is paying for new stadiums in Atlanta, Minneapolis, etc.
Team Owner: $250M This is what is normally expected today from team owners. Colts owner paid less, but Vikings and Falcons owners paid much more than this. The NFL should agree this is fair. They probably have already.
State Tax Credits: $55M This is money generated by the new stadium applied to the cost. State won't get this if the Rams leave or stay either way.
Total: $985M

So, unless you buy a PSL, this stadium is probably free to you. If fact, the State will probably lose money and will need to take it from something.

For the Dome, we got none of this extra money from the NFL or owner. In fact, we had to pay our PSL money to them, which we assumed then was for a 30 year product.

With regard to the old buildings in the path of the parking lot, I agree with Steve that they should say -- we'll appreciate them more 100 years from now than the stadium. But I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive. By 2020, we'll have quite a few cars on the road that will be able to drop us off and go park themselves. We won't need the old massive adjacent parking fields anymore. So go slow on any old building not right on top of the stadium structure footprint and decide later.

So if you oppose the stadium, be prepared for the financial depression that could follow.

gary kreie wrote: So if you oppose the stadium, be prepared for the financial depression that could follow.

It sounds like the Masters of the Universe have already decided the Rams are going to LA, so maybe it doesn't matter whether anyone opposes the stadium or not.

^^That is very interesting. I wonder if politicians in the rural areas and western Mo. will look at the raw numbers and understand that maybe this deal is not as cut and dry as they assume. They see $12 million a year off the books, but do not consider the other money coming in. This data, IF TRUE, should be put in front of the Missouri politicians opposing the stadium deal.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutd ... 17394.html

This article seems to sum up Goodell's comments pretty well. We all know we shouldn't take his words at face value and the NFL cannot be trusted. I'm clear on that. However, he did make a lot of pro-St. Louis statements. I did not like the comments he made about Stan working on stadium issues in STL for years. Ok, let's put $750 million into the dome, so he can get out of his lease in 10 years (yeah... ok....). That is just plain stupid and IMO, not a good faith effort.

The Rams and Kroenke have been at loggerheads over the outdated Edward Jones Dome — which still hasn't been paid off — as the team's home, and recent talks over a new stadium in St. Louis appear to have made little progress.

This statement makes me think the writer is biased. What a BS statement! "Loggerheads" ..... Stan made an outrageous demand, the CVC rejected. It's called negotiating. STL countered with a new stadium and he has stayed silent. This article makes it sound like Dean Spanos vs. San Diego, an 11 year process. 11 years ago, the Rams were selling out and still fresh off 2 SB appearances. Stan makes an outrageous demand, it gets rejected and that is a good faith effort!!!? OK....... right.......

When I saw what Stan demanded to stay for 10 years, I knew for sure he was planning to leave. Kevin Demoff said a new stadium is the way to go and this was just the process to get there, like in Minnesota. I suspect Kroenke's next move is to have his people start to demand more and more from Peacock so Kroenke can claim negotiations have broken down again. He needs them to break down to get enough votes from the other owners. I hope Peacock is ready for that and tells the NFL we anticipate that move.

It will never happen, but in my head I keep going back to my idea of putting the new stadium on the giant empty lot on the NW corner of Grand & Chouteau and building it to house not only the Rams & MLS but SLU's newly created Division 1 football team (yeah, right, I know...). Could have great views of Downtown, Midtown and the CWE.

Good proximity to Interstates 64 & 44 (Grand, Vandeventer and Jefferson Exits on both highways) as well as Metrolink at Grand & BRT up and down Grand. Could re-use the Peveley & Missouri Belting buildings and build on the cleared sites on the NE & SW corners (and take down the Captain D's across the street) and the tailgate lots can be down by the rail tracks & elevated highway & where development is not likely to occur anyway.

Edit: Forgot to add, this could help get some of SLU's ample resources to the table, which ought to minimize the public cost.

The best way to foil Kroenke is to sell out every game and drive around with Rams flags on our cars and wear Rams clothes for a year or two until two other teams figure out how to move to LA. Then and only then will Kroenke get serious about negotiating for a stadium solution here.

blzhrpmd2 wrote: In regards to the NFL being so dangerous, are there some statistics (maybe from the documentary js referenced) that it is becoming more dangerous and gruesome? Are injuries increasing? I don't think that any denies that the game of the past was overly taxing on the body, but what fallout can really be expected from that? Unless those trends continue I doubt fans will walk away from the product in front of them because a few guys are found to have brain damage or post concussive sequelae. What's more, these athletes played the game of their own adult consent, and I doubt many have any regrets. Former players who admit they were overdoing it readily confide that they'd do it again.

The injury rate for the NFL is already 100%, so I don't think it can increase much. In any case, I don't think the issue is necessarily football becoming more dangerous, so much as the public realizing it was always more dangerous than we though.

I also get the sense that society's interest in people bludgeoning each other for entertainment is decreasing over time, although I don't have a metric for that, except maybe the decreasing popularity of boxing.

I'd suggest that the way football will lose popularity, if it happens, won't be primarily because people stop watching. We don't have enough self control for that.

It will instead be because parents stop letting their kids play a sport that in all likelihood will damage their brain. But if that's the case, it will take decades.

MarkHaversham wrote:

gary kreie wrote: So if you oppose the stadium, be prepared for the financial depression that could follow.

It sounds like the Masters of the Universe have already decided the Rams are going to LA, so maybe it doesn't matter whether anyone opposes the stadium or not.

Call me crazy, but I think if the St. Louis fans got mad and decided to try to foil Kroenke by selling out all 8 games in 2015, he might have a hard time convincing enough owners that St. Louis should lose its team. If we do that a couple of years, and two other teams decide to go to LA, then Kroenke will have to negotiate for real, or sell locally, and prepare to stay here 30 years or more.

I'd like to see folks wearing Rams clothes to Cardinals and everywhere, and put a Rams flag on our cars. This is Major League all over again. Two things Goodell said -- The NFL is league of rules that have to be followed. And he said, the players have a responsibility to talk to the fans. He was refering to deflategate and player Lynch. The same statements should apply to the owners.

A determined Mr. Peacock and 8 straight regular season sellouts are Stan's worst nightmare. And we end up with a new stadium somewhere that is virtually free to the public.

^It's a nice theory. Maybe even a correct one. (Although I think you're "free to the public" stuff is mostly just spinning some numbers and ignoring others.)

The problem is that it's just not going to happen. It's already hard enough to get fans to go watch a mediocre product. (Sure, they may well be good next year, but it'll take a few games to prove it.) You're just not going to convince fans to go support a team that hasn't proven they can contend AND is doing their damnedest to leave St. Louis as soon as possible.

Doing it out of spite, and doing it to save the team isn't without sense. I'm just saying there's no hope of it happening.

From this perspective, the best thing that could happen is that the Rams end up being very good. It will only take a couple games for Rams fans to buy-in. And if they somehow went all the way, that'd put the NFL in a really awkward spot.

But that's equally unlikely to happen.

Both of those things are infinitely more likely to happen than the NFL falling out of favor as the U.S.'s national past-time during our lifetimes.

Not sure I agree with that. Football is killing people. But maybe my faith in people changing their habits as a result is misguided.

Greatest St. Louis wrote:Both of those things are infinitely more likely to happen than the NFL falling out of favor as the U.S.'s national past-time during our lifetimes.

It would be impossible for the NFL to stop being our national past-time, since our national past-time is baseball.