Does anyone not living in the 314 area code feel sorry for St. Louis Rams fans?
Seriously.
That after St. Louis filed a lawsuit yesterday against the National Football League over its Rams relocating to Los Angeles.
Uh, relocating back to LA.
Something about the NFL “enriching itself at the expense of the community it left behind.”
Which is kinda funny.
That’s because before the Rams pulled the plug on the Gateway City last year to return to LA – a city the team spent nearly 50 years in before moving to Missouri in 1995 – it was St. Louis that ripped off Los Angeles
That’s right, St. Louis offered financial incentives that included a taxpayer funded domed stadium for the Rams to abandon LA.
That’s funny.
I don’t recall any of the 314 crowd worrying about the NFL enriching itself at the expense of LA then.
So much for turnabout being fair play.
Prior to that of course, LA did a number on Cleveland by waltzing off with the 1945 NFL champion Cleveland Rams.
The not too far between-the-lines truth being what most people have long since figured out; that nothing in life is sacred when it comes to big time sports.
Take Roy Williams championship North Carolina basketball team and those bogus black history classes its players received credit for. Or how about KU coach Bill Self‘s largely unpunished squad of Big 12 thugs this past season. Or Chiefs star Tyreek Hill who got tossed by the Oklahoma State football team for beating the tar out of the then pregnant mother of his young son. Or Sporting KC‘s hopping in the sack with disgraced cycling star Lance Armstrong?
Everybody’s doing it…until every once in a blue moon when somebody really, truly, actually gets caught red handed.
Yep, you gotta screw up pretty bad around these parts for anyone to give it much more than a passing thought.
The bottom line: Just win, baby. Everything else will take care of itself.
For purposes of accuracy, Tyreek Hill played a single year with Oklahoma State and not the Sooners, before graduating from West Alabama. Also, Cleveland Rams moved to LA in 1945.
You are correct,sir (on Tyreek) as I’ve written before (and have more news on the way). A little background; the Stomper’s dad went to OU, so he’s a longtime Sooner…
Yes, the Rams moved then – but after winning the NFL title in 1945 – somewhat obvious slip of the keyboard
What are the odds Stomper culled that detail from memory as opposed to doing a Wikipedia search?
“nothing in life is sacred when it comes to big time sports.”
– truth, that… in every sport, even the fine art of safe-cracking. As Willie Sutton said in answer ‘why do you rob banks’: “that’s where the money is.” In Sutton’s heyday 1920’s – 1940’s, he stole some $2 million (the equivalent of some $27 million, today’s value.)
Modern-day robbers are called ‘businessmen’, and operate as members the NFL and MLB… they’ve been going ‘where the money is’ far longer than Sutton did, his career.
Of note, before the Cardinals belonged to St. Louis, they belonged to Chicago. Chicago didn’t cry foul when the Cardinals left 1960 for St. Louis (probably because the Cards were losers in the Windy City & the Bears remained there, long-term winners.) Ditto Dallas when the AFL Texans vacated Texas for Kansas City 1963: Cowboys remained, though a poor team afield annually for more than half a decade their origin 1960, till their fortunes turned in 1966.
MLB, Giants and Dodgers left NY (population 16 million in 1957) for California (the population then the entire state only 14 million), SF (under 750,000) and LA (under 2.5 million), but the Yankees remained; the Mets were soon born & NY had another ‘new’ team. If a single city with 3 MLB teams seemed opulent, California sports fans today support 5 MLB teams, and 4 more NFL teams… today’s population California: 40 million.
Conversely, Green Bay, Wisconsin (population barely 100,000) soldiers on, the last of the ‘small town team’s prevalent at their NFL inception 1921. The only non-profit and community-owned major league professional sports team based in United States, the team played 2 – 4 their games per year some 120 miles away in Milwaukee (population just under 600,000) over 40 years, till end the 1994 season.
As the $takes rise annually,the question presents: which will cry uncle first – the NFL model in lieu the Green Bay way, or vice versa? Probably, life itself will crumble afore either those business models succumb; if the modern-day professional sports moving tack isn’t technically an Ponzi Scheme, it’s close enough to accomplish the same thing. New city as fans same, ‘there’s a sucker born every minute’ and the circus is coming to a city near you, with a team in tow, sooner or later.
“The Rams ain’t from Cleveland,” Roddy Piper remarked to a clearly annoyed Keith David.
HC-
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