Impassioned pleas, tears, and scathing verbal attacks against St. Louis Rams owner San Kroenke were part of the NFL town hall meeting held Tuesday night at Peabody Opera House.
With hundreds of fans filling seats, about 20 people shared their thoughts with NFL officials about possibly losing the franchise, which moved here from Los Angeles in 1995 and could move back to that city as soon as 2016.
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“Are you going to do what is fair?” asked Jill Bauer of Columbia, Illinois. “Are you going to do what makes the most sense? Or are you going to let an owner buy his way into what he wants, no matter how it impacts a city full of fans that has supported this team from day one financially and emotionally through many, many bad seasons? Look me in the eye, and tell me what my loyalty is worth to the NFL.”
Judy Mundle of St. Louis asked NFL executive Eric Grubman and other league representatives to fast forward a few years. “I’m envisioning a January playoff game with Todd Gurley leading the Rams and beautiful shots of our new stadium on the river,” she said, praising the work of Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz, the two-member task force that’s helped develop a new stadium plan. When the two men were introduced at the beginning of the evening, they received a standing ovation.
David Collins, 81, had a prepared statement that he began to read, but he was overcome with emotion. His wife, Mary, had to step in for him and share his story of being a Rams fan since the franchise moved to L.A. in 1948. In 1999, she was offered a job at Principia College, and David was ready to relocate “because that’s where my Rams are.”
“In my 69 years with the Rams, I’ve seen hundreds of games,” he said. “It is my passion in life. Please do not take my Rams from me again. They belong to fans like me. The owners are just the caretakers.”
Dan Palen of Springfield, Missouri drove three hours to attend the meeting, just as he and family members do for Rams home games. “The thought of not having the Rams in St. Louis anymore goes beyond sadness,” he said. “It feels like we would be losing part of our lives and history.”
He added that the the Rams are needed by the community. “Without disparaging other sports, I’ve seen a greater diversity of people at Rams games,” he continued. “I believe football brings us all together. Rather than black and white, we see blue and gold. The city needs things to unite us. At Sundays game, I high-fived people all around me from different ethnic backgrounds.”
He went on to share about how proud he was that Rams players helped in Joplin after the 2011 tornado. “To have these men of character pulled away would be a gut punch to the people of Missouri,” he said.
Al Sampson, a season ticket holder since the Rams’ arrival in St. Louis, said, “The whole [relocation] process is a joke. How could you be questioning our loyalty? Don’t feed me the line you can’t make it here. If they move, it’s a joke, and the NFL has lost a fan that will never come back.”
Randy Karraker of 101 ESPN, the St. Louis Rams’ flagship station, used the opportunity to speak as a season ticket holder; media members were not allowed to ask questions. Karraker criticized Kroenke for not engaging with the community and openly challenged the NFL’s relocation rules.
The crowd cheered Karraker, then booed Grubman and other NFL executives in attendance.
“We are here to listen,” replied Grubman. “We will answer your questions. I think it is right for us to say ‘thank you’ and not refute anything you say. We are going to respect every comment that is made, but we are not going to jump in and try to refute you. We are going to respect your opinions and take them back with us.”
A continuous theme through the evening was that Kroenke and the Rams have not met the relocation guidelines established by the NFL and that the owner has not negotiated in good faith with stadium task force members.
Grubman derailed thoughts that the guidelines are rigid rules, saying it’s “not a checklist that gives you an answer at the end. We are not the voters. The 32 [NFL] owners are the voters. These are subjective things.”
He added, “In stadium negotiations I’ve seen and been a part of, sometime an owner has been directly involved, sometimes not. The recipe for success is to produce a project that is attractive. There is a role for the NFL. When an owner doesn’t want to engage or chooses not to because that is a negotiating style, the role of the league is to do our best to negotiate in place of the team.
“It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last,” he continued. “I don’t want to predict what happens here. We can put the pieces together to do it, but I don’t want to speak for any individual, and frankly I don’t care if any particular individual is at the table or not. I care what is the end product.”
Similar NFL town hall meetings are scheduled for Oakland and San Diego. NFL owners are then scheduled to meet again in December. Several have said they would like to have a decision made by the end of January.
