It’s no secret that the NFL is clamoring to move one or more teams in Los Angeles. There are three teams expected in the conversation for relocation; the Rams, Chargers and Raiders.
Their respective cities have 3 weeks to develop proposals explaining why their teams should remain in their city. The NFL will listen but there’s one NFL executive that feels as though their proposals will fall on deaf ears.
“There’s no compelling proposal from any city,” said NFL executive V.P. Eric Grubman.
“San Diego’s proposal, outline, whatever you want to call it, it’s to be delivered next year. Oakland, who have really started very recently to try to put something together, they’re really just beginning to define it.”
St. Louis is taking the proper steps to keep the Rams but Grubman doesn’t see their efforts being enough to sway ownership.
“St. Louis will fall short of having a compelling proposal that would attract the Rams,” Grubman said. “And to that end, and I don’t mean to oversimplify and I’m certainly not going to negotiate the individual points or attempt to negotiate, the stadium is going to cost more than is at the drawing board at the moment, the funding has declined, and new taxes are being proposed to the Rams. So if you already had an owner who was showing great reluctance to come off his position that he won in arbitration [regarding upgrades to the Edward Jones Dome], it sort of moved away if you will from Stan Kroenke. I don’t speak for him, but those are just the facts and the numbers.”
The NFL will allow two teams to share the new stadium in Carson, California, which means that one of these teams will be scrambling for option B.