The nation’s second-largest city is about to get at least one and maybe two NFL teams for the first time in two decades. But the fight to see which franchises will go to Los Angeles, and where they will play, might be one of the biggest the league’s owners have had in years.
On Tuesday, the owners’ committee on Los Angeles presented a report that recommended a stadium proposed for the suburb of Carson that will be jointly-built by the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders. But the recommendation is more or less an expected formality, and momentum has reportedly been building for a joint venture with the Chargers and St Louis Rams in Inglewood. That stadium is the choice of Rams owner Stan Kroenke, who owns land adjacent to the Inglewood site and wants to move the Rams there.
The first vote of the league’s 32 owners, taken Tuesday afternoon, produced more votes for Kroenke’s venture than the Chargers-Raiders project but did not reach the 24 votes needed to approve a team move.
First round of votes completed. Rams/TBD in Inglewood gets more votes than Raiders/Chargers in Carson. Nobody at required 24 yet.
— Sam Farmer (@LATimesfarmer) January 12, 2016
With three teams and two stadium proposals, the NFL’s owners have a great deal to sift through in the next several hours at their meeting in Houston as they try to solve the long-running riddle of resolving the vacant Los Angeles market. For months, there have been two conflicting proposals: Kroenke’s in Inglewood, not far from LAX airport, and the Chargers’ and Raiders’ plan in Carson, a little farther to the south.
While the committee has backed the Carson project because it provides the simplest solution – two teams in a stadium they have already agreed to build – the NFL’s owners have a number of different ways to go.
The most popular plan being discussed would be to have Dean Spanos, the Chargers chairman, join Kroenke in Inglewood. Kroenke has said he is open to taking on a partner, but Spanos has resisted saying he made a deal with Oakland’s owner Mark Davis. Spanos may be loosening that stand, however. When he arrived in Houston on Monday he told reporters he would do whatever the owners decided. Presumably that means if the owners arranged some kind of pairing with Kroenke he would accept it, forcing Davis to stay in Oakland.
In that scenario, Davis might be able allowed to pursue a stadium in either San Diego or St Louis, or will be given enough from the transfer fees paid by Kroenke and Spanos to build his own stadium in Oakland.
But just because the chatter points to a Rams-Chargers marriage in Inglewood, that doesn’t mean the owners will ultimately choose such an arrangement. They might pick the Carson project with the Raiders and Chargers, or force Kroenke to abandon his Inglewood dream and partner with Spanos in Carson.
