The whole ugly picture

So let's see... now we find out the team's new owners want to sell it. It's almost impossible to blame them. Inheritance tax is a bitch.

Minority owner Stan Kroenke ought to be the #1 ownership option, but the NFL won't let him become majority owner, if he even wants to, because he owns teams in other sports. That NFL rule is almost as stupid as its TV blackout rule.

If Kroenke doesn't at least make an honest effort to keep the team here, he'll become as big a St. Louis football villain as Bill Bidwill. Sure, fans try to spend their team owners' money for them all the time, but Kroenke's an especially fair target, having made his fortune spending, or taking advantage of, his wife's Wal-Mart fortune. He may live in Colorado, but he indeed has a civic duty here. His stake in the Rams has increased wonderfully since he bought it, and it's because of St. Louis fans. Kroenke owes us.

However, Kroenke acquired the Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets well after he bought into the Rams. He knew the rule then regarding ownership of multiple sports franchises. So he'll either make a move to have the rule re-considered, or he'll hide behind it while somebody else buys the team with the transparent motive of moving it back to L.A. Option B is likelier. His stake's value would increase without him lifting a finger.

For --St. Louis-- Rams fans, this is shaping up about as ugly as it can get. The team is coming off an awful season and will be lucky to sell out two home games in 2008. The Rosenblooms need to sell the team and don't figure to spend significantly to improve it. One person that's great news for: Scott Linehan. Suddenly, he's becoming a great bet to play out his contract, almost no matter what he does. It's not like the current owners will spend big bringing Marty Schottenheimer or whoever to St. Louis. Nor would any potential owners waiting out the lease so they can jump to the West Coast.

And this is an awful time to be a fan of a team with a tight budget, because the owners have unanimously voided the CBA with the players' union and made 2010 an UNCAPPED season. After which the owners and the players' union will play chicken with the 2011 season. Whether or not this is mindless idiocy the owners bring on themselves (it is), it's a poisonous atmosphere for trying to revive a franchise.

So, the team's going to suck, under owners who either can't, or won't, spend significant money to improve it. The rich teams will pull way away from the poor teams in 2010. There may not BE a 2011 season. The Rams' waning popularity in St. Louis will become plunging popularity. Oh, and the stadium lease, the only thing really keeping the Rams in the city, in a facility widely regarded as "declining"? Runs out in 2012. The city of St. Louis surely has no plan for replacing the E.J. Dome, and the chances of building a new football stadium here are about as good as Eric Crouch's chances of becoming NFL MVP.

Assuming the Rosenblooms have sold the team by 2012, look at all the excuses hypothetical new owners will have to move the team. A declining fan base and a declining facility in a small market will make it impossible to compete in a freer-spending league, in a sport that's shot itself in the foot popularity-wise with another strike. To be economically viable, we need to move the team.

Sounds a lot like the team's excuses for moving from L.A. in the first place.

Can I just add how fucking cruel it is that we let Isaac Bruce go to the 49ers, and now, there's articles talking about the whole team going to... Eddie DeBartolo? Just shoot me now.

It's practically unavoidable. Too much has to happen to prevent it.
* Does Stan Kroenke -want- to be majority owner? Can he get the NFL to change its rules preventing him from becoming majority owner? Will another local owner emerge?
* Can the team improve quickly enough to revive fan interest? Can local interest survive the inevitability of losing out to richer teams, a potentially damaging strike, or, simply, more seasons of bad football? I hate to bring up baseball here, but basically, can the Rams survive here the way the Cardinals have?
* Can the city and the team reach an agreement in the next four years on a new stadium? Will anything short of that do?
* Will somebody else - the Saints? Jagwires? expansion? - beat the Rams back to L.A.?

Unfortunately, I think the answer to all of those above questions is no, and that, little though we suspected it, the endgame of the Rams' stay in St. Louis has begun. The war's over. Wormer dropped the big one. The team's era here passed when Georgia Frontiere did.

I justified buying my original PSLs with the idea that if I held them for 20 years, they only cost me an extra $5 a game.

Looks like I'll never see that rate of return now.