Sometimes, while daydreaming about the trial scheduled to begin in St. Louis Circuit Court in 524 days _ not that anyone is counting or anything _ I like to think about the specific examples lawyers will point to as they attempt to show a jury just how much the NFL mangled its own relocation guidelines to justify moving the Rams to Los Angeles.
A timeline that overlaps Rams executive Kevin Demoff's public reassurances about the team wanting to stay in St. Louis with the behind-the-scenes work Rams owner Stan Kroenke was doing to prepare a stadium site in Los Angeles would illustrate how the Rams failed to check the box reserved for good-faith negotiations with St. Louis.
A live reading of the email reportedly sent to St. Louis authorities from a league official with a competing relocation bid that outlined all of the ways the Rams were violating relocation rules could be a nice touch.
Kroenke, Demoff and former Rams coach Jeff Fisher _ who was asked questions about relocating a team during his interview for the job _ would be must-sees on the witness stand, where the truth actually matters. Same for Eric Grubman, the former NFL vice president who went from being the supposedly unbiased overseer of the Los Angeles relocation process to _ get this _ becoming the chairman of the board for On Location Experiences, the sports corporate hospitality firm that makes a large chunk of its money selling Super Bowl packages Kroenke's SoFi Stadium will regularly host. One wonders what some former Rams employees who were cast aside after the move might have to say about what they were told before the move, if they have not yet been paid by Kroenke to stay quiet.
Barring some sort of settlement between Team STL (that's the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority, St. Louis and St. Louis County) and Team Kroenke (that's The Mustache, the Rams, the NFL at large, and 31 other NFL teams and their owners), we could see some fireworks as Team STL pursues a staggering amount of money in damages stemming from the relocation rip-job. The individual counts _ breach of contract, unjust enrichment, fraudulent misrepresentation, tortious interference with business expectancy _ can be boiled down to this: Team STL wants Team Kroenke to be held accountable for running a rigged game.
Yet another example could be in the headlines again soon.
Here's a question to add to the list.
Hey, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, how do you explain your flip-flop on stadium funding?
Sports business writer Daniel Kaplan reported in The Athletic last week that the Rams have requested up to $500 million in additional NFL stadium financing. Their horrendously over budget SoFi Stadium project is fast approaching $4 billion in cost overruns due to a series of setbacks. Not only does Kroenke want more league money, Kaplan wrote, he wants to double the amount of time typically required to pay back the loan. If approved, and there is little reason to think it won't be, the Rams will have borrowed close to $900 million from the league's G-4 stadium lending program. Even if it's justified as a split between the Rams and the Chargers because the two will share the new stadium _ a thought that requires swallowing significant spin, considering the Chargers had hoped to play in another stadium with the Raiders _ we would be talking about at least $450 million in G-4 funding for the Rams. For a stadium that still isn't finished, and might not be able to host fans until who knows when due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It's fun to poke fun at Kroenke's SoFi stadium misadventures, but that's not the point here.
Turn back the calendar to Dec. 17, 2015.
One day before St. Louis aldermen approved a financing plan for a new $1.1 billion NFL stadium on the St. Louis riverfront, Goodell sent a letter criticizing Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and his stadium task force for requesting � gasp! � an additional $100 million in G-4 funding. The commissioner sternly reminded St. Louis leaders that the league standard was $200 million to help teams build new stadiums. An ask by the St. Louis project for $300 million in G-4 money was, in Goodell's own words, "fundamentally inconsistent with the NFL's program of stadium financing."
Fundamentally inconsistent, it turns out, is the best way to describe Goodell's stance on this issue.
Goodell's letter clashed with prior statements made by league representatives, Team STL claims. And less than one month after Goodell sent that letter, the lawsuit states, the NFL promised $300 million to two other franchises for new stadiums in their home markets. The league has since increased the amount of money that can be borrowed by teams. And now Kroenke needs Goodell to move the G-4 goalposts in his direction once more. This would make Goodell's previous undercutting of St. Louis over $100 million that much more obvious, wouldn't it?
Asked recently what he thought of Goodell's shift on the topic of stadium funding, Nixon declined to comment.
Some answers should be saved for the jury.
