The ownership merry-go-round

Not a lot happening on the sale of the team at this point. Here's what we know, most of it because Bernie Miklasz has the right connections...

It was reported May 31st that Chip Rosenbloom and Lucia Rodriguez hired Goldman Sachs to sell their majority share of the team. At that point it was also reported that Chip was disappointed in the lack of local investors to fulfill his preferred choice of selling the team and keeping it in town, so the bidding was opened up to everybody from anywhere.


A couple of days later Blues owner Dave Checketts emerged as a candidate to buy the team. Checketts indicated he approached the Rams as an interested buyer "months ago" and that he contacted Chip the previous week to tell him he's the local buyer (at least in terms of keeping the team in town - Checketts lives in Utah) that Chip is looking for.

What's puzzling about that is, if everybody's telling the truth, Checketts expressed interest in buying the team to Chip and Chip still came out later that week to say he's disappointed in the lack of local investors.

Does Chip not consider Checketts a serious investor? Does he not consider him a local investor? Does everybody have their timelines straight?

Or is Chip actually disappointed he had to go outside of St. Louis to drum up enough interest to bid his price up?

RamView heartily endorses Checketts should he prove to have the juice to pull off the purchase. He's run the Blues really well. The franchise is run by "hockey guys", top-notch ones like team president John Davidson, and they're really responsive to the fans. If Checketts keeps the Rams in town, I may even go to a hockey game here again someday.

But Checketts may have some competition. Last week we had this report come out reporting that Federal Express founder Fred Smith is interested in owning the Rams. He's got the money and the NFL connections, as he currently owns a small piece of the Redskins.

The idea that Memphis native Smith would buy the team and move it south has been dismissed by everyone in this scenario. Well, except me. Supposedly Bud Adams would keep it from happening because he has the Titans in Nashville. Of course, that same theory didn't keep the Raiders from moving to L.A. Smith's ties to Memphis are surely stronger than any tie he'd have to St. Louis. Checketts at least has another business here. I don't know why Smith would buy a team and build a stadium here. It seems like remodeling the Liberty Bowl or putting up a football palace to further enshrine himself in his home town would be more logical options. I'd be worried if Smith buys the team, but that's just me.


Meanwhile, Michael Silver claimed in a column last week that the NFL would waive the cross-ownership rule to let Stan Kroenke acquire majority ownership of the team. Bernie Miklasz says Kroenke is biding his time for now and is happy to let others set the market price. He's not going to bid against himself.

That alone makes Kroenke smarter than half the current NFL owners. I wish I shared Silver's conviction the NFL would waive its archaic cross-ownership rule, though. It's not like they're getting rid of the equally-archaic local TV blackout rule any time soon.

This is probably where we'll be for quite a while with the Rams: in ownership limbo while interested parties round up funds and/or ownership groups, kick the team's tires and figure out how badly they can hoodwink the taxpayers into kicking in for a new and/or improved stadium.

I'll do my best to stay on top of things from here, but that should be an up-to-date rundown of the current Rams sale rumors, the perpetual Rush Limbaugh rumor notwithstanding.

Kroenke photo from nba.com