There have been reports making their way around the league as of late, indicating that the potential majority owner of the Rams, Stan Kroenke, has his sights set on moving the team out of St. Louis and back to their original home in Los Angeles.
Howard Balzer of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat dropped in this morning with a intriguing piece, outlining Kroenke’s significant interest in bringing the NFL back to the country’s second largest market. Apparently, Kroenke is a major player in the league’s Los Angeles Stadium Working Group.
In and of itself, that revelation doesn’t necessarily mean Kroenke would automatically run the Rams out of town, but it certainly makes his bid to take sole ownership of the club much more interesting. Having the Rams move back to L.A. would certainly be more appealing to Kroenke, financially speaking, than keeping them in St. Louis, where they’re always playing second fiddle to Major League Baseball.
That said, Kroenke also has significant reason to keep the team in St. Louis, in that he’s a Columbia, MO native, a University of Missouri graduate, and has strong ties to the area courtesy of his wife, Anne, who is the daughter of Bud Walton, of Wal-Mart fame.
Kroenke is already facing a semi-uphill battle with the league’s ownership group, given that he is currently unable to own the team under the guidelines in place preventing owners from having majority interests in professional teams in other U.S. sports. Kroenke currently owns both the Denver Nuggets (NBA) and the Colorado Avalanche (NHL).
You can chalk this one up as a conspiracy theory for the time being, but Rams fans in St. Louis certainly won’t be resting easy in the coming days and I don’t blame them one bit.
As always, we’ll keep you posted.
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Written by Chris Kolb
Topics: St. Louis Rams