There’s a lesson to be learned from having the Rams and NFL bolt from St. Louis, and it has nothing to do with football or sports fans or mean billionaires or the worth of our city.
It’s about the perils of an echo chamber.
For several years—and especially the past one—local politicians, business leaders, and the media talked themselves into fantasyland over the prospect of preventing Rams owner Stan Kroenke from moving his team back to Los Angeles. False hopes and assumptions reverberated. Foolish nonsense became conventional wisdom.
If you drank the Kool-Aid, you were righteous and honorable and loyal to your hometown. Unlimited public money was no object. And you hung on every encouraging word as if it had appeared on a stone tablet. Conversely, if you noticed objective realities or questioned priorities of the echo chamber, you were anti-St. Louis, anti-progress, or worse.
So St. Louis wasted more than $16 million and a staggering amount of civic time and energy chasing a hopeless dream with a stadium plan that ultimately seemed held together by chewing gum and baling wire. And in retrospect, we wound up groveling at the feet of a contemptible cartel of billionaire sports monopolists.
We never had a chance to keep the Rams here, at least not after Kroenke bought full control of the team in 2010 and decided to follow an easy path to free agency for his franchise. Once he made that decision, there was no question as to whether he was going. It was only a matter of where and when.
If you think that’s wrong, work backward from the result. If Kroenke—whose lust for money is doubted by no one—was ultimately willing to take a $2 billion gamble on Los Angeles, what possible deal or proposal could have ever been counteroffered by any market less than one-fourth L.A.’s size to dissuade him?
There’s no need for hindsight or second-guessing. St. Louis’ goose was cooked from the beginning. Ironically, that should provide local comfort, because the loss of the Rams was not a reflection on St. Louis at all. We didn’t fail. We were simply struck by a perfect storm. In fact, let’s make that Item No. 1 in a list of “10 Takeaways That St. Louis Finally Needs to Understand”:
1. St. Louis was struck by a perfect storm. The Rams fell into the hands of one of the wealthiest men on the planet. He had no ties or loyalty to St. Louis, arguably the NFL’s least-favorite city. He saw an opportunity to make billions as a developer by moving to L.A. He owned that city’s favorite NFL team, one that had played there for 49 years. He had no contract binding him to St. Louis. He had NFL executives in his hip pocket. He wasn’t sentimental. And he was driven. This was out of St. Louis’ hands from the beginning, a point made in this very space four years ago this month.
2. The sad ending of St. Louis’ Rams saga can be traced to its desperate beginning. In 1995, St. Louis had a state-of-the-art NFL stadium under construction with no NFL team to put in it. The L.A. Rams were the only team that could be considered a good prospect for a move here at that time, and they had a number of other options, including L.A. We went to them; they didn’t come to us. We had zero leverage and paid a dear price in lease negotiations. Try as the city might, St. Louis couldn’t get the Rams to make a 30-year commitment to stay here. Effectively, the two sides signed a 20-year lease 20 years ago.
3. It was game over when St. Louis had no choice but to default on this lease in 2013. Herein lies the most misunderstood aspect of the saga. St. Louis would’ve had to unearth $700 million to assure just 10 more years of NFL football as a result of the dreaded clause requiring it to keep the stadium up to “first tier” NFL standards. But this wasn’t some fine print sneaked into the lease, nor was it the result of stupidity on the part of our negotiators. This was simply the agreed-upon mechanism for giving the Rams an escape clause if they needed it (which, in fairness, no one foresaw in 1995). When three arbitration judges gave the Rams an easy victory in a court battle over what “first tier” meant (the team’s first shutout in years), Kroenke’s free agency became a formality.
4. St. Louis should never have underestimated that the arbitration award was a thing of beauty to Kroenke and his fellow NFL cartel members. The most preposterous idea resonating in the echo chamber was that somehow Kroenke could be persuaded to give up this ticket to freedom, toss in $250 million for a new St. Louis stadium that he hadn’t asked for (as opposed to the zero he owed for a first-tier stadium under the award), and forfeit his free agency by signing a 30-year deal to play in it (presuming he was blocked in moving to L.A). Under the lease, he had nine one-year options to continue playing in the dome—for the cheapest rent in the NFL—all the while maintaining his freedom to move to a more lucrative venue. So even if Kroenke had been forced to stay awhile in St. Louis, there was no chance that his Rams would ever play a single down in a new stadium here.
5. St. Louis also had to know that the NFL was never going to allow its “relocation guidelines” to create the Church of the Second Chance. Again, the echo chamber filled with crazy noise, suggesting that the NFL would tell Kroenke that even if St. Louis had defaulted on giving him a “first tier” stadium—at zero cost to him and the league—its “guidelines” meant he’d have to give us another chance. Instead of spending zero, the Rams and NFL would spend $550 million. And St. Louis would have its obligation cut in half. Seriously? Bottom line: There was no way the league would set the precedent of allowing a city to use its relocation guidelines to back out of an unfavorable lease.
6. The NFL owners aren’t your student council. Collectively, these people have a long history of not caring about brain damage to their players. Did you really think they cared if one of their cartel members broke our hearts, especially because we’re from St. Louis, a city that they’d voted against as an NFL market on four occasions in a seven-year period (and since we’d broken hearts in L.A. 20 years earlier)? So when our mayor says that we were “duped” into thinking that the league cared about being fair to St. Louis, well, now that is sad.
7. As much as we want to turn the page, it’s still worth asking: What did St. Louis politicians and other stadium backers know, and when did they know it? They had to realize early on that their stadium plan was a nonstarter for Kroenke and his Rams, even as they continued to raise fans’ hopes to the contrary. In retrospect, they seem to have had no basis to support their private assertions that we might get a team on the rebound if Kroenke left. Yet they went forward, spending $16 million in public funds—with little or no bidding or scrutiny—through the murky St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority. We’ll likely never know the full story of who got paid.
8. We in St. Louis might want a new definition of what’s meant by “we in St. Louis.” If there was one common theme insisted upon by Gov. Jay Nixon, Mayor Francis Slay, and the “task force” of Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz, it was this: Public processes and votes needed to be avoided at all cost. This was the opposite of an exercise in democracy. It’s a little hard to square that with rhetoric about how “St. Louis” had come together as one to offer hundreds of millions in public largesse to the almighty lords of the NFL.
9. The St. Louis media performed about as well here as the Rams did on the field. It’s one thing to get behind the stadium editorially. But Peacock and Blitz—two guys reverently labeled from the beginning as “the task force”—might as well have been covering themselves. Your canary in the coal mine: Near the end, after NFL officials publicly questioned the legitimacy of the stadium numbers, the “$1 billion project” became the “$1.1 billion project” overnight in St. Louis media, without as much as a story noting the increase. No reporter appears to have even asked for an explanation of the $100 million explosion in costs, much less reported it as news. And few of the obvious points referenced above ever found their way into the news coverage of the stadium issue over the period of a year.
10. Let’s not make these mistakes again. We need a little self-esteem here. The most important takeaway is that St. Louis has nothing to hang its head about with regard to the NFL leaving again. It will have no long-term effect on the economy. Many non-NFL cities have fared better than many NFL cities (including St. Louis) in recent decades. This is still a great sports city, and more important, for my money at least, it’s a better place to live and raise a family than Los Angeles. So there. Let’s get over it. And stay out of echo chambers.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
A Stroll Down Memory Lane
More Rams-related columns from Ray Hartmann and stlmag.com
• December 18, 2015: St. Louis' New NFL Stadium Falls into $112 Million Hole...And No One in the Media Seems to Wonder Why
• December 10, 2015: An Exercise in Political Futility? The Ways and Means Committee of the Board of Aldermen will vote on whether to fund a new stadium, a day after NFL vice president Eric Grubman all but declared the new stadium project dead.
• November 12, 2015: St. Louis Aldermen Join the NFL Stadium Soap Opera 10 questions that city officials might consider asking the task force
• October 23, 2015: A Primer on St. Louis NFL Stadium Financing Cutting through the confusion of a very expensive deal to the city
• October 21, 2015: The NFL Cares What St. Louis Thinks About Moving the Rams to L.A. Really.
• October 8, 2015: Setting the Record Straight About the St. Louis NFL Stadium Proposal
• October 7, 2015: St. Louis Officials Respond to SLM Report on NFL Stadium Funding Plan The chiefs of staff for the mayor and the president of the Board of Aldermen have conflicting views about our story on how much the stadium will cost taxpayers.
• October 6, 2015: St. Louis NFL Stadium Plan Could Cost Taxpayers Millions More Than Anticipated
• August 14, 2015: A Football Fairy Tale The NFL stadium odyssey has been hard to believe.
• August 4, 2015: Why Can’t We All Be Friends? St. Louis stadium project survives pseudo-lawsuit.
• June 15, 2015: Gov. Jay Nixon’s Stadium Misdirection Play Effort to get public funding is all about deceit in St. Louis
May 27, 2015: A New Blocking Scheme: Legislators File Lawsuit That Could Shut Down Proposed NFL Stadium in St. Louis
• May 20, 2015: Raiders Owner Has “Absolutely No Interest” in Moving to St. Louis—And St. Louis Media Has No Interest In Covering the Story
• February 10, 2015: Stan Kroenke’s Forgotten Options Why any new-stadium idea is dead unless the Rams leave St. Louis
• December 2, 2014: Silence of the Rams? Why players’ gestures to honor Michael Brown are fine with me. (And so is the police outrage.)
• November 14, 2014: The Sky Is Falling, Again Twenty thoughts to ponder as we prepare to lose another NFL team
• January 31, 2014: Uh oh, Another L.A. Rams Sighting Relax, Stan Kroenke just picked up a few items (and maybe a stadium site) on his way home from the airport
• March 14, 2013: The NFL-to-LA Story Has Not Quite Gone Away St. Louis Rams may want to watch out for AEG and Farmers Field
• February 14, 2013: Bad Start St. Louis may be blowing its slim chances of keeping Stan Kroenke's Rams
• February 6, 2013: Stan Kroenke’s Free Agency Understanding the grim outlook for pro football in St. Louis
• May 15, 2012: The St. Louis Rams Move One Step Closer to Los Angeles
• February 17, 2012: St. Louis Needs Luck to Keep the Rams in Town California, here they come?
• February 15, 2012: Stan Kroenke, Meet Bill DeWitt A St. Louis connection to the Dodgers (and Rams?) saga
• January 20, 2012: St. Louis Rams’ London Fog Is it the first stop on the way to Los Angeles?
• September 27, 2011: L.A. Rolls Toward An NFL Team Like a Foe Trampling the St. Louis Rams' Backfield
• September 8, 2011: Embargoed: Do Not Read, Rams Fans Anschutz closes in on NFL Stadium for L.A.
• August 20, 2011: Oh No! Bernie Miklasz Is At War With Me Over the Rams Maybe Moving to L.A. And he won't even say my name!
• August 17, 2011: Be Afraid, St. Louis Rams Fans The mogul pushing for an NFL team in L.A. is Stan Kroenke’s partner
• October 22, 2010: The No-Longer Invisible Man The Rams’ owner won’t stay Silent Stan forever.
