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Strauss: For Kroenke, business is business
• By Joe Strauss
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colu...cle_059a4042-a1c7-5b64-9cef-b2fa023bdbfc.html
SEATTLE • Sunday afternoon closes another losing Rams season, which doesn’t surprise anyone who appreciated the significance of Sam Bradford’s second torn knee ligament in less than a calendar year. Argue all day about whether Bradford returned too soon from the initial surgery, but there can be no debate what his loss meant to summer’s up-with-franchise optimism.
A loss Sunday against the heavily-favored defending Super Bowl champions would leave the Rams 6-10 after going 7-9 and 7-8-1 during the Jeff Fisher era. It doesn’t sate a fan base still awaiting its first winning season since 2003. But it’s not abject in a 2007-11 kind of way.
The Rams were good enough to beat Sunday’s opponent, the Seattle Seahawks, on Oct. 19, four weeks before dismantling the defending AFC
Champion Denver Broncos 22-7. The Rams also helped expose the San Francisco 49ers as intrigue-stricken frauds. Plenty of good teams lack that on their résumés.
The Rams are also defective enough to lose a home game to Arizona while not allowing a touchdown. They blew a 21-point lead at home against the Dallas Cowboys three weeks before fumbling away a 14-point lead over the 49ers. After the defense allowed three touchdowns in a five-game span, the Rams lost their last chance for a .500 season by showing up flat — again, at home — against the unsightly New York Giants.
The Rams aren’t gawdawful but they remain inconsistent at the very least.
Of course, this season played out against a backdrop of franchise uncertainty that set new standards in media speculation. How many weeks did various NFL insiders have the vans packed and the Rams’ front office area code changed from 314 to 213 or 626?
By keeping silent, Stan Kroenke merely allowed one outlet after another to confirm what it didn’t know as St. Louis roiled.
Locally, Kroenke is depicted as a cross between Snidely Whiplash and Gordon Gekko, a mogul salivating at the opportunity to relocate his undervalued franchise west while again leaving St. Louis an NFL orphan.
It’s become part of one’s civic duty to lampoon Rams ownership as greedy, devious ... whatever.
My preference is to call it what it is: Business.
Barely four years ago, Kroenke used his right of first refusal to purchase the club from leveraged owners Chip Rosenbloom and Lucia Rodriguez, who inherited the franchise from their mother, Georgia Frontiere. The on-field product circled the drain. One low-hanging head coach replaced another. The roster became a last-chance saloon for castoffs and “four-pillars” stalwarts.
The Rams aren’t that franchise anymore. True, Mayflower’s Team teases and infuriates because of its inability to get past Bradford as an offensive hub. But they’ve become credible as the league’s second-youngest roster. Fisher is among the game’s highest-paid coaches, not some OJT guy too far over his skis.
St. Louis isn’t confronted as much by a bad owner as it is by decades-old lousy negotiating in bringing a franchise to a facility obsolete almost the day it opened.
The narrative that a billionaire Mizzou grad, who could post up the current governor in pick-up basketball, wouldn’t leverage his position to (at least) double his franchise’s value was at best naive.
Kroenke isn’t running some misdirection play. This was part of the scenario when he trumped Shahid Khan for the franchise. Why else introduce relocation when interviewing a prospective coach? Why else send out smoke signals for Hollywood Park, now razed and ripe for redevelopment? Kroenke hasn’t played to the crowd. He hasn’t floated any “best fans” garbage. Instead, he’s got front office types mingling with Los Angelenos wearing throwback Rams garb in a San Diego parking lot.
Would I like to interview Kroenke on the topic? Absolutely. But in a way it’s also refreshing someone prefers to say nothing rather than issue some disingenuous platitudes.
When the truth isn’t good PR, one can see the value in shutting up.
At this point it’s hard to tell whether Gov. Jay Nixon’s two-man commission of Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz will get a fair hearing from Rams ownership or if St. Louis’ best hope is to inveigh on Commissioner Roger Goodell and other owners.
Wouldn’t it make more sense for the NFL to relocate Oakland and San Diego to address its longstanding California problem, especially with St. Louis and the state crafting a stadium and financing proposal?
As a developer, Kroenke doubtless knows a good deal from a bad one and is willing to walk away. Because they get to play with other folks’ money, city and state governments have shown themselves more pliable. At core here is whether what the NFL wants and what Kroenke wants are the same thing.
The Rams appear set to remain in St. Louis for at least next season. To Kroenke’s credit, he has funded what his football people have requested. As Kroenke famously uttered the day the franchise announced Fisher’s hire, “I haven’t taken a lot of ‘jack’ out of this market. I’ve put a lot of ‘jack’ into it.”
One looks forward to the day when a Rams season will serve as something other than a sideshow to relocation intrigue and the parlor game of which team ends up in which Southern California venue when. Doubtful that the 2015 season will qualify.
Meanwhile, here’s an idea: Rather than remain hostage to one owner, why not further explain the soon-to-be-released stadium plan to other owners with itchy feet? It would be business, no?
• By Joe Strauss
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colu...cle_059a4042-a1c7-5b64-9cef-b2fa023bdbfc.html
SEATTLE • Sunday afternoon closes another losing Rams season, which doesn’t surprise anyone who appreciated the significance of Sam Bradford’s second torn knee ligament in less than a calendar year. Argue all day about whether Bradford returned too soon from the initial surgery, but there can be no debate what his loss meant to summer’s up-with-franchise optimism.
A loss Sunday against the heavily-favored defending Super Bowl champions would leave the Rams 6-10 after going 7-9 and 7-8-1 during the Jeff Fisher era. It doesn’t sate a fan base still awaiting its first winning season since 2003. But it’s not abject in a 2007-11 kind of way.
The Rams were good enough to beat Sunday’s opponent, the Seattle Seahawks, on Oct. 19, four weeks before dismantling the defending AFC
Champion Denver Broncos 22-7. The Rams also helped expose the San Francisco 49ers as intrigue-stricken frauds. Plenty of good teams lack that on their résumés.
The Rams are also defective enough to lose a home game to Arizona while not allowing a touchdown. They blew a 21-point lead at home against the Dallas Cowboys three weeks before fumbling away a 14-point lead over the 49ers. After the defense allowed three touchdowns in a five-game span, the Rams lost their last chance for a .500 season by showing up flat — again, at home — against the unsightly New York Giants.
The Rams aren’t gawdawful but they remain inconsistent at the very least.
Of course, this season played out against a backdrop of franchise uncertainty that set new standards in media speculation. How many weeks did various NFL insiders have the vans packed and the Rams’ front office area code changed from 314 to 213 or 626?
By keeping silent, Stan Kroenke merely allowed one outlet after another to confirm what it didn’t know as St. Louis roiled.
Locally, Kroenke is depicted as a cross between Snidely Whiplash and Gordon Gekko, a mogul salivating at the opportunity to relocate his undervalued franchise west while again leaving St. Louis an NFL orphan.
It’s become part of one’s civic duty to lampoon Rams ownership as greedy, devious ... whatever.
My preference is to call it what it is: Business.
Barely four years ago, Kroenke used his right of first refusal to purchase the club from leveraged owners Chip Rosenbloom and Lucia Rodriguez, who inherited the franchise from their mother, Georgia Frontiere. The on-field product circled the drain. One low-hanging head coach replaced another. The roster became a last-chance saloon for castoffs and “four-pillars” stalwarts.
The Rams aren’t that franchise anymore. True, Mayflower’s Team teases and infuriates because of its inability to get past Bradford as an offensive hub. But they’ve become credible as the league’s second-youngest roster. Fisher is among the game’s highest-paid coaches, not some OJT guy too far over his skis.
St. Louis isn’t confronted as much by a bad owner as it is by decades-old lousy negotiating in bringing a franchise to a facility obsolete almost the day it opened.
The narrative that a billionaire Mizzou grad, who could post up the current governor in pick-up basketball, wouldn’t leverage his position to (at least) double his franchise’s value was at best naive.
Kroenke isn’t running some misdirection play. This was part of the scenario when he trumped Shahid Khan for the franchise. Why else introduce relocation when interviewing a prospective coach? Why else send out smoke signals for Hollywood Park, now razed and ripe for redevelopment? Kroenke hasn’t played to the crowd. He hasn’t floated any “best fans” garbage. Instead, he’s got front office types mingling with Los Angelenos wearing throwback Rams garb in a San Diego parking lot.
Would I like to interview Kroenke on the topic? Absolutely. But in a way it’s also refreshing someone prefers to say nothing rather than issue some disingenuous platitudes.
When the truth isn’t good PR, one can see the value in shutting up.
At this point it’s hard to tell whether Gov. Jay Nixon’s two-man commission of Dave Peacock and Bob Blitz will get a fair hearing from Rams ownership or if St. Louis’ best hope is to inveigh on Commissioner Roger Goodell and other owners.
Wouldn’t it make more sense for the NFL to relocate Oakland and San Diego to address its longstanding California problem, especially with St. Louis and the state crafting a stadium and financing proposal?
As a developer, Kroenke doubtless knows a good deal from a bad one and is willing to walk away. Because they get to play with other folks’ money, city and state governments have shown themselves more pliable. At core here is whether what the NFL wants and what Kroenke wants are the same thing.
The Rams appear set to remain in St. Louis for at least next season. To Kroenke’s credit, he has funded what his football people have requested. As Kroenke famously uttered the day the franchise announced Fisher’s hire, “I haven’t taken a lot of ‘jack’ out of this market. I’ve put a lot of ‘jack’ into it.”
One looks forward to the day when a Rams season will serve as something other than a sideshow to relocation intrigue and the parlor game of which team ends up in which Southern California venue when. Doubtful that the 2015 season will qualify.
Meanwhile, here’s an idea: Rather than remain hostage to one owner, why not further explain the soon-to-be-released stadium plan to other owners with itchy feet? It would be business, no?