Rams break camp for tour of palatial home of the future
After Jared Goff tipped back his hard hat and swung his arm a few times to get loose, he grabbed a football and tossed a high-arching spiral straight into the arms of an excited construction worker on an upper deck.
The Los Angeles Rams’ franchise quarterback has already completed his first few passes inside his team’s palatial new stadium in Inglewood two years before it opens.
Although the multibillion-dollar new home of the Rams and Chargers is currently a dusty construction site with a whirlwind of activity, Goff and his teammates feel confident it will be well worth the wait after getting their first tour Thursday.
“Even flying over it, you can’t truly understand how big it’s going to be until you get down here and look at it,” Goff said, gazing wideeyed from the future playing field way up to the top reaches of the arena. “It’s exciting. You hope the years go by fast.”
Rams coach Sean McVay canceled the final practice of the defending NFC West champions’ mandatory minicamp and loaded his players and assistants onto buses for a drive from Thousand Oaks.
In safety vests and personalized blue hard hats complete with Rams horns, they got an up-close look at the progress on owner Stan Kroenke’s stadium project, now a steel-and-concrete shell rising out of a massive hole dug at ground level on the former site of the Hollywood Park racetrack.
This stadium project is widely thought to be the most complicated and most expensive in sports history, and the main 70,240-seat arena is on track to open in the summer of 2020. When the surrounding complex eventually opens its shops, office buildings and innumerable additional features, the Rams and Chargers will be working in a new Los Angeles-area landmark.
The stadium also will host Super Bowl LVI on Feb. 6, 2022, and college football’s national championship playoff game in January 2023.
Other events arriving in the next decade alone include expected matches for the 2026 World Cup and the opening ceremony at the 2028 Olympics.
The stadium has a clear roof in sunny Southern California partly because of its intention to host a men’s Final Four, which hasn’t been held in California since 1975.
Giants: Star wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. confirmed that he will report to training camp on time July 25 whether he gets a new contract by then or not.
“No holdout,” Beckham told a group of reporters Saturday when he hosted his annual youth football camp in New Jersey.
Legal: Former NFL tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. was jailed without bail Friday after pleading not guilty to multiple counts of kidnapping, rape and other charges.
The 34-year-old Winslow was ordered to return to San Diego County Superior Court on June 25 for a preliminary hearing.
If convicted, Winslow could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
His attorney, Brian Watkins, did not immediately respond to a message left at his office.