urbanSTL

the central scrutinizer wrote:

gary kreie wrote:Sounds like the Rams had bad lawyers too if the words are that non-specific.

No. Because they're holding all the cards. It's a dream lease from their perspective.

Maybe, but the Rams have to argue the definition of "top tier" as well. What I haven't seen is what, if any, penalties exist for the Rams if they just leave. Could they afford to continue paying (part) of the lease and go to LA?

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... f6878.html

Gloves off. Let the mudslinging begin!

rawest1 wrote:http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... f6878.html

Gloves off. Let the mudslinging begin!

The CVC started a pissing contest they cannot win. Bad move.

downtown2007 wrote:So they are supposed to let the Rams walk all over them?

Exactly. The CVC and the Rams have this stipulated in their contract. The Rams will most likely be leaving St Louis (just basing that opinion on everything I've read in the past couple of months) because of the CVC being unable to hold up its end of the arbitrary 25% garbage, but the Rams are supposed to be able to vioalte the contract so Stan can put more money in his pocket by playing some games in London. Makes sense to me.

Somebody in the comments on STLToday pointed out this paper from the Marquette Sports Law Review about the contract between the Rams and the CVC - http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cg ... %20inc.%22

Long URL huh? I could TinyURL it...but nah.

^ Sure, so they eventually give on the London games. Kroenke +1. Then Kroenke doesn't make CVC find $200M it doesn't have. CVC +1. Seems about right.

Anyway, I won't pretend to know what's going to happen, but I do very much believe that whatever is going to happen is pretty well set. Stan knows if the team is moving or not. All that's left is the body count. How does Stan look coming out of this? How does the CVC look? It's a chess match. Now where is Rex Sinquefield when you need him?

downtown2007 wrote:So they are supposed to let the Rams walk all over them?

Nope. They could have brought it up with the Rams only, instead of the Rams and the press.

"The NFL is far and away the most popular sport in America and it's a big, big deal to have a team in your city."

Can you explain this more? Is it an ego thing, an economic thing, something else?

Alex Ihnen wrote:"The NFL is far and away the most popular sport in America and it's a big, big deal to have a team in your city."

Can you explain this more? Is it an ego thing, an economic thing, something else?

It's a little bit of all of those things. Having an NFL franchise means one more thing to do in St. Louis for entertainment. This city has no beaches, no mountains. Our winters, when the NFL is played, are very cold (except for this year for some reason). Having a team represent your city in the nation's far-and-away most popular sport is a welcome diversion, and it's one more thing that makes people talk about St. Louis. People visit St. Louis those eight weekends every year and spend their tourist dollars who wouldn't otherwise if we had no NFL franchise here.

Think about cities like Indianapolis, Buffalo, or Green Bay. You must know SOME people who visit at least one of those places to see NFL games from time to time. I personally know several who visit each of those cities multiple weekends each Sept/Oct/Nov/Dec. If there were no football team that played there, they wouldn't be giving those cities a second thought.

But everyone knows the economic studies are all over the place and don't conclusively prove the econ value of having an NFL team. More than anything, if I had to pick one thing, I'd say it's a psychological thing. Bryan Burwell recently spoke to Webster University sports economist and Forbes columnist Patrick Rishe, who pointed out that:

Being a pro sports town has "a psychological effect on a community's psyche," Rishe said. "'We are now a big-time city because we have a pro sports franchise.' Oklahoma City is a great example. More people look at that city as a place to go check out because it is more visible and talked about because it has an NBA franchise, and more to the point a winning NBA franchise. With the Rams and football here in our city, we've already taken one blow to the gut when the Bidwills moved the (Cardinals) franchise in the '80s. So the real concern is what sort of image or stigma might be associated with the city psychologically to outsiders if we lose a second NFL franchise?"

If you're a city like L.A., with ten million people living in the area, hundreds of obvious reasons to visit as a tourist, and relevance that will never be in doubt, you can afford to lose three NFL franchises, still not have one, and not even blink.

When you're a mid-sized midwestern city that has been in disastrous decline for decades, it means a completely different thing to be "the city that failed twice at supporting an NFL franchise."

Sure, the tradeoff might be being known as "the city that signed a really, really unfavorable deal with an NFL franchise" like Cincinnati, but who actually knows Cincinnati that way? I certainly wouldn't have if I didn't read your articles on the situation with the Rams and St. Louis.

In the end, for me personally, it's a tradition thing.

Some of my earliest memories are when I was six years old, and my dad would take me down to the river Sunday mornings with his friend and his friend's son, and we'd grill burgers and hot dogs, and throw rocks at driftwood in the Mississippi. We'd throw the football around. And then we'd head into the dome to watch the Rams (usually get beat).

I want to be able to do that with my kid, someday.

So, I hope to God that you and others who predict similarly are right in your predictions (if I'm not mistaken, you have consistently suspected that more likely than not, the Rams and STL will come to some sort of terms). For me, it seems like it's fifty-fifty on what'll happen.

But, we'll see.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football ... 0f31a.html

Stan's bid made it past round 1.

From the latest Bryan Burwell Column (read more at http://bit.ly/wDjOCH)

"I don't care what the economists say about the inability of a team to enhance a city's economic base," former Indy mayor Bill Hudnut told the Indianapolis Star this week. "It sure seems to me that in this case it did. The city has so much more vitality, and there has been so much revitalization downtown. To me, it's all paid off."

St Louis needs a civic visionary such as Hudnut, the man who started it all for their city back in the late 1970s and early '80s. It began with the construction of the old Hoosier Dome and the luring of the Colts out of Baltimore, and now hits a dramatic crescendo with Super Bowl week as tens of thousands of visitors stream through a revamped airport into a revitalized downtown ready to fill up a state-of-the-art sports facility that will host this week's Super Bowl and has already hosted one Final Four and will the be the host of many many more over the next 15 to 20 years.
Hudnut took office in 1975 and when he left 1991 Indianapolis had been transformed from a dying Midwestern ghost town into a robust city that is the center of the sports universe this week. Indianapolis has been transformed culturally, too. If you get the time, go to the Indianapolis Star's website and watch the documentary the Star produced in conjunction with a local TV station about how the city made this dramatic turnabout.

It talks about the struggles and the resistance to the change. It talks about the stubborn refusal of some in the community to see how the success of the sports boom could raise all the civic ships in the water. It ultimately showed how the vision of Hudnut worked when city and county governments pooled their best and brightest to plot the 25-year plan for the region collectively.

So who will be the big thinker here?

Who will be the bold visionary who can envision the dream that transforms our town into something bigger and better for all of us?

It happened in Indy. Why can't it happen in St. Louis, too?

I WANT THIS FOR ST. LOUIS!

^ IMO - this is a bit over the top boosterism. I know downtown Indy very well. It's nice, but it's not some urban hub of vitality. Whatever success it's had has been built on the back of IUPUI, the state capital and amateur sports. The NFL team may be part of it, but what else would you expect Bill Hudnut to say?

Alex Ihnen wrote:^ IMO - this is a bit over the top boosterism. I know downtown Indy very well. It's nice, but it's not some urban hub of vitality. Whatever success it's had has been built on the back of IUPUI, the state capital and amateur sports. The NFL team may be part of it, but what else would you expect Bill Hudnut to say?

Yeah, but it is nice that for one week, Indy is at the center of the most prestigious, popular media event in America. I'd like that for St. Louis.

We tried to get some similar attention with our DNC bid. We failed. Hopefully we won't continue failing at trying to attract this sort of attention, including via our status as an NFL city. I wonder if we would have stood any better of a chance at attracting the Democratic National Convention if the Edward Jones Dome were "top tier"?

newstl2020 wrote:^I don't think that would have made the slightest bit of difference what-so-ever.

Carolina's stadium is so-so at best.

Votes, not stadiums.

I like where your head is at though.

You're right, in the end it's pretty clear they chose the Carolinas because they need that area bad this November.

That said, couldn'ta hurt. And thanks for at least appreciating where my head's at

It will not be public. Apparently very few know the contents. The Rams are expected to not divulge details either.

Maybe they can use this as a conversation starter:
Keep the Rams? Think Outside of the Box

^^ Yes.

^ Yes. $6M from the City. County's $6M is from increased hotel tax. MO = $12M, or approximately $11.9M more than they give to fund transit in their most populous city.