In the middle of a chilly night in 1983, a handful of Mayflower moving trucks made their way to Indianapolis with the hopes and dreams of a city and its passionate football-loving fans. It would be 1996 before that city and its fans got a new team to call its own.
There’s a chilling parallel here for those who are willing to uncover their eyes and look. There’s the erratic owner using the very real threat of relocation in order to get the city to build his team a new stadium. There’s a stadium that really is out of date and needs updating. There’s local civic leadership up in arms and confused by an owner who doesn’t seem to understand two-way communication.
Finally there’s a team that has struggled mightily in recent years but is still beloved by fans who remember past glory days and hope for more to come in the future.
In 1983 it was the Baltimore Colts heading to Indianapolis. In the near future, it could be the St. Louis Rams heading to Los Angeles.
Standing in for Bob Irsay is Rams owner Stan Kroenke.
Kroenke has been deadlocked with St. Louis and Missouri officials on either upgrading or replacing the Edward Jones Dome.
For decades the “build it or we’ll go” mentality of stadium replacement has permeated professional sports, but it has reached epidemic levels in the NFL with the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers joining the Rams as teams seeking an upgrade over their current venues. Both California teams have out of date home fields, but leveraging Los Angeles as a potential new venue has become vogue for anyone who wants new digs.
The Rams could be the most “odd” suitor for a few reasons. First, they abandoned Los Angeles before the 1995 season when their owner felt that the team couldn’t be profitable in the market without a new stadium. Funny enough, she attempted to move to Baltimore to replace the Colts before settling on St. Louis. Second, the city of St. Louis has, after a rough start, begun coming forward with ways to keep the team and build them a new home. Third, Oakland and San Diego can at least claim a move for them makes some sense geographically. It isn’t a reach to believe that their fans wouldn’t abandon the team. St. Louis and Los Angeles aren’t anywhere near each other.
Finally, the whole drama playing out between Kroenke, the local government and the NFL has all the trappings of 1983 in Baltimore and 1994 in Los Angeles.
Is the NFL really going to head down this road again? For its part, the league doesn’t seem too enthused about the plan. They’ve already announced that no team will be in Los Angeles next season and didn’t exactly give a warm reaction to Kroenke’s announced plan to build a new stadium in the Los Angeles market. Kroenke’s move would require levels of approval that would have turned Bob Irsay’s cheeks an even deeper shade of crimson than they were during his legendary rambling press conference just before he packed up his team and snuck across the Maryland border.
Kroenke, however, does own the team. What he owns he can move. It would cost him $500,000 a day plus a prohibitive relocation fee, but perhaps he’s just the sort of wild card that would do it. Perhaps he’s just enough of a Bob Irsay to call up another round of Mayflower trucks. Rams fans, loyal in the same way Colts fans were in 1983, are crossing their fingers that he won’t do it. Stranger things, however, have happened.
There has yet to be a plan from any franchise that makes Los Angeles a viable move. The league knows that two teams abandoned it 20 years ago and no one without the need for a new stadium actually wants to go there. If Oakland weren’t stuck in the cesspool that is O.co Coliseum and San Diego didn’t continue to play in Qualcomm Stadium, they wouldn’t think twice about Los Angeles.
Just like that midnight move out of Maryland’s capitol, this renewed interest in Los Angeles isn’t about money. If it was, the Raiders and Rams wouldn’t ever have abandoned the country’s second-largest television market in the first place. It isn’t about fan support either. The Rams have no problem drawing in their dome and there are few more passionate fan bases than Raider Nation.
This is purely about getting a stadium at the lowest cost possible to the team owners. The reason the Rams scare people more than the Raiders or Chargers when it comes to a potential move is that their owner has come forth and stated he will build the new stadium in Los Angeles. Until then, every team was waiting for some wealthy benefactor to build a football palace next to the Hollywood sign. Now there’s someone crazy enough to actually do it.
And that crazy guy owns an NFL team. He isn’t trying to buy into one. He isn’t trying to lure one. He has the deed in his safe already.
For now, everything is on hold. The league will have to do due diligence on the latest St. Louis effort to keep the team and build their new stadium. Kroenke, while he fails to return phone messages from city officials, has to debate whether he can afford to thumb his nose at the NFL and move without permission.
Fans will sit anxiously in three NFL markets and hope that the lure of the bright lights and big city won’t steal away their favorite football franchise.
