NFL owners and one designated guest are gathering in the conference rooms of a suburban Chicago hotel for a very important meeting to do nothing. No votes are expected. No action is likely to be taken. They’re just planning to talk and listen, but it’s who they’re listening to that matters.
NFL owners are gathered to do nothing about Los Angeles
Three NFL teams will make their case for relocating to Los Angeles at a special owners meeting in Chicago on Tuesday, but the league still isn’t ready to do anything about it. So what exactly are they doing here?
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Owners of the three teams making eyes at Los Angeles -- the Chargers, Raiders and Rams -- will make their cases to their peers for projects in Inglewood (Rams) and Carson (Chargers, Raiders). The assembled group will listen and ask questions. The Carson project is up first, followed by the Rams presenting their Inglewood proposal at 11 a.m. CT. Each group will get 45 minutes, which includes 15 minutes for questions. Soon after, owners from those three teams will be shuffled off to an undisclosed location, leaving the representatives from the 29 other teams to discuss the situation.
What’s so special about this meeting?
This is the first time the owners, all of them, will get the chance to get a full update on where the projects in Carson and Inglewood stand ... and to hear it from the owners making their own case for why they should be allowed to move to Los Angeles.
Is nothing really happening?
Not really, at least not as far as pushing a team(s) closer to relocation. One thing to watch is if the league takes action on the deadline to apply for relocation. Right now, teams have a small window of time after the first of the year to apply for relocation, a window that closes on Feb. 15. There’s some speculation that the NFL could move up that deadline, potentially as soon as December.
Bumping up the deadline to apply -- and let’s be clear, we know which teams are going to apply -- would give a team time to sell tickets in Los Angeles, push it through the news cycle before the playoffs and Super Bowl, and keep the team’s former city from turning into a total lame duck with games still on the schedule. Interestingly enough, all three of the teams eyeing relocation play on the road in Week 17. The Chargers and the Rams are on the road for the last two weeks of the season.
There’s something else that could come out of this week’s meeting: a plan allowing Los Angeles fans and interested companies in the market to reserve season tickets for whatever team (or teams) ends up moving there in 2016. They wouldn’t actually be buying those tickets, instead plunking down a deposit for them. It would give the NFL a way to gauge fan support and get a head start on ticket sales. It’s also about as sure of a sign as any that the league is 100 percent serious about putting a team in Los Angeles again.
Which stadium plan has an edge?
This is a bit like predicting the NFC and AFC champs during training camp. The NFL is fostering a healthy competition between the two stadium proposals with an eye toward making sure both are viable instead of previous Los Angeles stadium plans that never made it past the fancy rendering stage.
Stan Kroenke’s stadium in Inglewood is thought to have an advantage. He’s the league’s second-wealthiest owner and has the money, and a willing partner in the Stockbridge Capital Group, to start building the stadium as soon as he gets the greenlight from the NFL. Plans for the Inglewood project also have a lot of things attached to them that the NFL wants to see, things that would make it an attractive venue for future Super Bowls, drafts and other events the league would love to have in Los Angeles.
What about stadium efforts in their current cities?
The Rams may be the team best suited to move, but St. Louis also happens to be the city most able to build the NFL a new stadium. A Missouri judge recently ruled that civic leaders could skirt the democratic process for funneling some $400 million in public funds for a riverfront stadium plan by overturning an ordinance that would have required a public vote for stadium money.
Kroenke doesn’t seem to be interested, having had no contact with anyone involved in the stadium efforts (he hasn’t even talked to media at all since 2012). The St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission lost an arbitration battle with the Rams, declining to spend an estimated $750 million on a plan to renovate the Edward Jones Dome. That freed the Rams from their lease on the building, and is the centerpiece of their argument that they’re free to move to Los Angeles despite the current stadium efforts.
San Diego pitched a stadium plan to the NFL’s Los Angeles subcommittee on Monday. That plan would also incorporate a substantial contribution from taxpayers, but it still relies on a hefty portion from the Chargers and the NFL. The Chargers aren’t interested, which they made clear in their response to city efforts recently.
There really isn’t a tangible stadium effort in Oakland, despite Raiders owner Mark Davis being the only one of the three publicly saying he wants to stay put.
So what’s the point of this meeting?
To keep NFL media types filled up on carbohydrates provided by the hotel’s catering service. OK, that’s not really it, but after watching the muffin tray take the hit it did early Tuesday morning, it left me wondering.
The point of this meeting is lobbying. The three teams here presenting their case to relocate are trying to get an edge in the race. Whenever the NFL does get around to greenlighting a return to Los Angeles, the team(s) will need approval of two-thirds of the league’s owners.
They’ll probably also talk about DeflateGate, because that’s unavoidable, but the reason for this meeting is strictly about greasing the skids for putting an actual NFL team back in Los Angeles.
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