St. Louis Rams: A New Spin on Stan Kroenke's Proposal

Stan Kroenke wants the Rams to stay in St. Louis. That's my general take on the proposal submitted to the city of St. Louis by the Rams' owner and his legal team.

There has been a lot of discussion, both locally and nationally, after the Rams submitted their proposal to the city recently. Let's sift through all of the chatter and get down to the nuts and bolts of what is actually being said.

The Conventions and Visitors Commission submitted a proposal to the Rams pledging to spend $124 million to upgrade the Edward Jones Dome. After looking that over, the Rams came back with a counter proposal that is going to cost about $700 million to upgrade the Edward Jones Dome.

At first glance, that seems like a deal breaker.

However, you have to take a step back and realize that this is chess, not checkers. The CVC knew $124 million was never going to get the job done. The Rams know that $700 million probably isn't going to happen either.

Having said that, what most Rams fans really want to know this morning is, "Does Stan Kroenke really want to keep the Rams in St. Louis? Or was this proposal so over the top, so outrageous, that he is basically 'pricing the Rams out,' so he can move the team to Los Angeles?"

Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Post Dispatch had a great story on this topic, and he says that Kroenke has made a fair offer. According to Burwell, Rams fans should see this as a sign that Kroenke wants the Rams to stay in St. Louis:

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Look very carefully at the plan. It is not an over-the-top, ostentatious, football-only counteroffer that attempts to thrust the Dome to the very top of the National Football League's most extravagant stadiums. It's not an outrageous plan that feels like the sort of crazy counteroffer whose sole intent is to blow up the entire process, thus allowing Kroenke to scoot off to Los Angeles as quickly as possible.

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Burwell goes on to say something equally important: "What the Rams have put in front of us is a design whose intent is to make the Edward Jones Dome something that works for all of St. Louis, not just the football team."

This point needs to be emphasized. The Edward Jones Dome is not only where the Rams play eight regular-season football games per year, but it's also where a lot of other events are held, events that bring a lot of money to the city of St. Louis.

Matthew Hathaway, who also writes for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, wrote this article where he makes some great points about the economic impact of the dome on the local economy. In his article, he quotes Marc Ganis, a sports consultant who helped negotiate the lease in the 1990s for the Rams.

Gannis, like Bryan Burwell, says this is a fair deal being proposed by the Rams.

"This appears to be a logical, feasible plan that's meant to get a positive result," said Ganis, "This isn't a pie-in-the-sky plan designed to get to an impasse. It looks to me like a sincere effort to get a deal done."

And as Gannis points out, the cost being proposed by the Rams is far less than a new stadium would cost the city of St. Louis.

"A new stadium is going to cost well over $1 billion," he said. "This looks like it would be roughly half of what a new stadium would cost."

The renovated dome would be an "iconic facility," one that would be a first-class site for the NCAA Basketball Tournament, major conventions and, perhaps one day, even the Super Bowl.

So Rams fans, don't let the sticker shock of $700 million get you down. I expect a deal will be struck to renovate the stadium, and the final cost will be somewhere between $550 and $600 million. How much of that will the city have to pay? How much of that will the Rams have to pay?

That is all going to be hashed out in the negotiations. Like I said, this is chess, not checkers.

Bottom line, this is a good deal for the city of St. Louis in the long run, and I fully expect the Rams to be in St. Louis for a long, long time.