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Rams to relocate to L.A.; Chargers first option to join

By Dan Hanzus Around the NFL Writer
Published: Jan. 12, 2016 at 08:13 p.m.
Updated: Jan. 13, 2016 at 08:17 a.m

VIDEO, actually two .. http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000621645/article/rams-to-relocate-to-la-chargers-first-option-to-join

LOL, just finished the NYT Roger Goodell’s Unstoppable Football Machine, then snagged that one .. a relevant bit from a really interesting read ..

In the middle of January, a kind of reality version of ‘‘Game of Thrones’’ played out among the Membership in Houston, as the owners tried to end the long-running saga to place a team in Los Angeles for the first time in 22 years. When I mentioned to Goodell that ‘‘The Membership’’ would be a good name for a reality-TV series (also for a Mafia movie, though I did not mention that), he said: ‘‘Oh, you could have a real good reality-TV show in our owners’ meetings.’’ Unfortunately, I was not allowed inside, and neither were any of the 200 or so media types who descended on this Membership huddle.

Outside, the citizens of various kingdoms massed. I befriended a group of Oakland Raiders fans who had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Westin Memorial City Hotel. They had traveled here from as far away as Northern California to display a giant black-and-silver flag and show support for their team’s staying in Oakland despite the efforts of the team owner, Mark Davis, to move the team to Los Angeles. They were joined, in smaller numbers, by fans of the San Diego Chargers and the St. Louis Rams, who were also at risk of seeing their teams bolt.

‘‘The Raiders are bigger than football,’’ a college student named Ray Perez said. Perez, who calls himself Dr. Death, wore a frizzy black wig and striped black-and-white jail pants. He relayed to me an important lesson that his Raider Nation mentor, Raider Jerry, had once imparted. Being a part of this brotherhood involves much more than being a sports fan. It is a form of giving back. Raider Nation is not a club, it’s a movement. ‘‘And it is a people-driven movement,’’ Dr. Death added. ‘‘We show the power of people coming together for something that we love and believe in.’’

Their power was limited here. The Membership ground through their day of private votes and deliberations in a meeting room upstairs. They were debating the merits of a proposed stadium project south of Los Angeles in Carson, Calif., that would become the home of the Chargers and possibly the Raiders, as well as a more ambitious extravaganza in Inglewood, on a 60-acre tract near Hollywood Park, that had been imagined by the Rams’ owner, Stan Kroenke.

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‘The reason football is so dangerous is that the men
making the decisions are not the ones getting hit.’
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Late in the day, Jerry Jones announced to the commissioner that if discussions went on much longer, he would have no choice but to escape to the hotel bar with the Lions’ Martha Firestone Ford (beer and wine were brought into the meeting room). Paul Allen, who never attends league meetings, showed up for the first time in five years and, according to one owner afterward, ‘‘didn’t shut up.’’

By nightfall, the tired tycoons began moving through the lobby en route to waiting limos that would ferry them to private jets and the hell out of Houston. Word emerged that the Membership had voted by secret ballot — 30-to-2 — in support of the Rams’ multibillion-dollar project in Inglewood. After the vote, Kroenke, a clunky-mannered real estate magnate with a charm quotient to rival the Rams’ meager win totals of recent years, joined Goodell for a news conference. He has a pale and jowly countenance, an unruly comb-over and a ’70s-vintage mustache. He is known as ‘‘Silent Stan,’’ and the news conference was about as much as he had spoken publicly in years. ‘‘We spend a lot of resources trying to make sure that we stay relevant,’’ he said in a monotone-mumble. Ray Ratto, a Bay Area sportswriter, observed via Twitter that Kroenke looked as if he were ‘‘overdue for his next baby wombat blood injection.’’

I parked myself in the lobby and watched the owners escape. ‘‘Hey, y’all,’’ said Tom Benson, the New Orleans Saints’ 88-year-old owner, while rolling his wheelchair by. Jones held forth nursing a tumbler of Scotch. The Jets’ owner, Woody Johnson, strolled past him unbothered, wearing a suit and a Jansport backpack over both shoulders. ‘‘Everybody wins in this deal,’’ the Miami Dolphins’ owner, Stephen M. Ross, declared to a bank of reporters as he trailed Johnson out the door. ‘‘What about the fans of St. Louis?’’ someone in the gallery cracked. Ross shrugged. ‘‘Well, somebody has to lose,’’ he said.

Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who represents the abandoned fans of St. Louis, worked closely on the Rams’ relocation process. What is rankling about the league, she said afterward, is its insistence that it is driven by factors beyond the bottom line. ‘‘The money involved in the L.A. plan was irresistible for a league that is focused on growing it to a $25 billion enterprise,’’ McCaskill told me. She described Goodell as ‘‘careful.’’ ‘‘He is always trying to measure the most important constituency, which are the 32 owners, against all the other pressures,’’ she said.
.. your link again .. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/magazine/roger-goodells-unstoppable-football-machine.html?emc=edit_ma_20160205&nl=magazine&nlid=19360561&te=1

.. and again, thank you .. have a supaaa (triple A rating) day .. :)