Rams’ Kroenke betrays St. Louis in bid to move
Team owner says the city isn’t a “three professional team market.”
The Benedict Arnold of St. Louis was born in Columbia, Mo., a two-hour drive from St. Louis, in July 1947. He was named after two of the greatest athletes in St. Louis history: baseball legends Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial.
Enos Stanley Kroenke didn’t stray far as a young man, receiving undergraduate and master’s degrees from his hometown school, the University of Missouri. Many years later, he would buy a significant portion of the St. Louis Rams.
In 2010, he would become the full owner of the team.
In the very early days of 2016, he would throw his fellow Missourians under the bus.
Kroenke is one of three NFL owners who wants to move his team to Los Angeles. (The owners of the Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers are the others.) While he certainly is not the first sports owner to yearn for the warm, enticing glow of Los Ange- les, he might be the first to so thoroughly trash his neighbors and friends on what he hopes will be his way out the door.
“St. Louis is not a three professional team market,” Kroenke proclaims in a bold headline in his relocation application, which was obtained by USA TODAY Sports, referring to the city’s baseball Cardinals, the NHL’s Blues and the Rams.
“Compared to all other U.S. cities, St. Louis is struggling,” Kroenke says, preferring not to limit his argument to all major league sports towns, but literally every American city. The report
uses all kinds of foreboding numbers and rankings, as well as words like “lowest,” “decline” and “near the bottom,” to illustrate just how bad St. Louis is.
Kroenke also takes a shot at the people who actually paid to support his business enterprise, the football fans of St. Louis.
“The current Rams ownership’s investment in the on-thefield Rams team has been significant,” the application says. “Despite these investments and engagements, Rams attendance since 2010 has been well below the league average.”
It’s important to note right here that the Rams have not had a winning season since 2003. They were 7-9 this year, the 11th consecutive season in which they failed to make the playoffs.
Here’s a theory that you won’t find anywhere in the Rams’ 29page relocation application:
St. Louis sports fans are smart. They are widely considered to be the best baseball fans in the country. They realize the product that has been put on their football field is inferior, and they are doing what most reasonable people in a great sports town do — refuse to pay for it.
To add insult to injury, Kroenke readily heaps praise in his application on San Diego and Oakland, the homes of his com- petitors in the battle for L.A.. So there’s your native son for you, Missouri. Show me? He showed you, all right.
Kroenke, of course, has the right to do all of this. It’s a free country and these are his billions and if the NFL owners agree, he can bolt, no doubt about that. But at what cost to his name, his legacy, his reputation?
Stan the Man? Heavens, no. It’s more like Ban this Stan.
I write this as someone who works in Washington, D.C., covers sporting events around the world — and vacations in suburban Toledo, Ohio, where I own our family home. It’s really easy to bash good, solid Midwestern cities. I hear it all the time. It’s just surprising when it’s done by one of our own.
The NFL has said it will support only one new stadium in Los Angeles capable of housing two NFL teams, so someone is going to lose this battle. What if the NFL owners pick the Chargers and the Raiders, not the Rams? Ruh-roh. That would mean Kroenke would have to crawl back to St. Louis and stay there. That, St. Louis sports fans, would be the very definition of a last laugh.