So none other than America’s owner, Jerry Jones, has stepped to the billion-dollar window to put his and others’ money down on the race to Los Angeles, where he doesn’t just want a win -- but a dollar-making stud horse.
Jones, who owns the Dallas Cowboys, didn’t have to speak last Tuesday when the NFL owners met and conversed on the ongoing L.A. stadium situation. But he did, and in so doing sounded very much like a man who prefers St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s venture in Inglewood to the Chargers-Raiders Carson proposal.
Billionaire leading the billionaire.
But it’s important, perhaps very important to San Diego -- or San Diegans who prefer their football team stay put, no matter how poorly/unfairly they’ve been treated over the past eight months.
Now that Commissioner Roger Goodell and Patriots boss Bob Kraft have filed divorce papers, Jones arguably is The League’s most influential owner, if he wasn’t before Deflategate. In any event, he has power, and although the bosses admire Chargers owner Dean Spanos -- Deano, hardly the rebel, always has been one to play nice -- Jerry never has been afraid to use it.
Spanos hardly is a pauper, but among these wealthy princes -- especially Kroenke, married to Sam Walton’s daughter, the richest of them all (estimated at $12.5 billion) -- he doesn’t have what his fellow owners want -- enough dough to fatten their greedy pie.
It’s going to take a lot of money to move to Los Angeles, even more when you throw in relocation fees, which could be mammoth. And Kroenke swims in Money Lake. Jones is fairly transparent. He doesn’t want to screw around with some haphazard L.A. venture -- involving the useless Raiders, no less -- this time around.
I’m gathering one thing from this meeting near Chicago. The Carson project is on life support, if not dead, despite what Chargers hired L.A. gun/blowhard Carmen Policy says. Kroenke already has spent many millions on his Hollywood Park site, and stadium construction already may have begun.
It’s laughable 24 of the 32 owners must approve franchise shifts. If Kroenke wants to move, he will move, and he’s going to, despite the noble efforts in St. Louis to build him a new facility.
The late maverick Al Davis, who had nowhere near Kroenke’s wherewithal, won that battle in court long ago when he pulled the Raiders out of Oakland into L.A. If Stan defies his brethren and goes, maybe the NFL can threaten him with Inglewood getting no Super Bowls. I don’t know that he cares, and I doubt they’ll try to block him anyway. The owners are tired of dishing out mega-millions to law firms. And Kroenke already has Davis’ in-court victory for precedent.
A big problem is that Spanos & Co. have hooked their wagon to a three-legged mule, the Raiders. Mark Davis, son of Al, has seemed indifferent about the Carson situation. Do you ever see a Raider there? It’s still hard to imagine the Chargers wanting to team up with this guy, Goldman Sachs or no Goldman Sachs.
The Chargers don’t want another team in L.A., because 25-to-30 percent of their business comes from that area, so they say, although it’s never been documented (and the NFL knows the Spanoses don’t own rights to L.A.).
One thing’s absolutely certain: There will not be three teams up there.
And the Rams are going to be one, and if so, Carson is dead, mired in its toxic waste dump. The Chargers can’t go it alone. And if they were to get in bed with Kroenke, they would send “hypocritical” to new heights, because I’m 100 percent sure they don’t like the Inglewood site (not exactly Beverly Hills and with no freeway access).
And they know two things: a) dealing with tight-fisted landlord Kroenke won’t be a day at Universal Studios, and b) they eternally will play second fiddle in Stan’s orchestra.
Courtesy of Nick Canepa - The San Diego Union-Tribune