If You Build it, Will the NFL Come?

So, Joe Buck enters the fray and says this: “…when you step back and look at the timeline and realize how hard a ticket this was when the team was good ... Dome or no Dome, it didn’t seem to matter. As we sit here in 2015, I would agree the stadium isn’t good enough. It doesn’t make fans want to trudge down there.” Thus, Buck posits in the first sentence that it’s the quality of the team that matters to fans, and in the second that it’s the quality of the stadium. Memo to Joe: It’s the team. When the Rams were good, no one stayed home because they were unhappy with the stadium. And the “trudge” would be the same, new stadium or old.

This much is clear: The fans don’t care about a new stadium. Most of them are mildly critical of the existing one and like to grouse about it, but the reality is this: Fans, being generally sensible people, understand that when they go into a stadium, they’re not moving in and setting up housekeeping; they’re going to be in there for about three hours, eight times a year. They’re okay with it if it is reasonably clean, has seats, lights, a field, plenty of bathrooms, and plenty of readily available beer and hot dogs. And they know that any new stadium, no matter what “tier” it occupies in the eyes of league officials and owners, will also have those same (entirely sufficient) basic requirements – seats, lights, field, bathrooms, beer – and nothing else they really care about. No matter what bells and whistles are added to it to assure its exalted place in tierdom, it will still be just a football stadium. What keeps the paying customers coming is a competitive team. So unless the place where that team plays has dark corners where unidentified things skitter in the shadows, they’re generally okay with it. And so, the great mystery: If the fans don’t care about a new stadium and the owner doesn’t care about a new stadium (more on that later), who does?

And speaking of tiers, who in their right mind enters into a contract calling for top tier status in which the definition of top-tier is not unambiguously spelled out, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph? What exactly, the stadium lessors should have demanded to know, does being in the top 25-percent consist of? The agreement they entered into instead seems to say,“the stadium must be rendered top-tier – we don’t know what that means exactly, but we’ll know it when we see it.” Talk about a moving target.

“Is this it?”

No, that’s not it. Try again.”

There’s a memorable scene in the movie “The Fugitive” where Harrison Ford shouts, “I didn’t kill my wife!” and Tommy Lee Jones, his pursuer, shouts back, “I don’t care!” Jones is trying to get Ford to understand that it’s not about that. Which seems to be what Stan Kroenke is conveying, by deed if not word, to the folks working feverishly to offer him a new stadium for the Rams to play in: He doesn’t care. It’s not about that.

At this point, the stadium undertaking appears to be exactly what its proponents have gone to considerable lengths to deny that it is: A last-second Hail Mary launched in the forlorn hope that it will keep the Rams in St. Louis, even though there is scant indication that it will work that way. I could be wrong about that and I am open to any new information regarding exactly who is going to occupy the thing. But as far as I know, Kroenke has never said that dissatisfaction with the stadium situation in St. Louis is what's pushing him out the door. He isn't saying that he would keep the Rams in St. Louis, or consider doing so, if a new stadium were built or the existing one refurbished to his liking. He isn't saying that where he locates his business is in any way connected to St. Louis stadium facilities. Hasn’t said that in the past…doesn’t seem to be saying it now. What he has said, by his actions if not his words, is that he wants and intends to move the team to Los Angeles.

But maybe the folks pushing for construction of a new stadium have information to the contrary about Kroenke's thinking on the matter. If so, they should tell us what they know. Tell us there is evidence that construction of a new stadium will keep the team here. Because so far, all the evidence we’ve seen points to the Rams leaving, stadium or not. It also seems to be the case that no consideration is being given by the NFL to expanding, and no existing team is considering moving to St. Louis. Here again, if someone knows something that suggests otherwise, say so. If there is solid information out there suggesting that a new stadium would actually be occupied – by the Rams, by a new team, or by an existing team -- let’s hear it. Doesn’t it make sense to have something lined up before you throw $800-million at a stadium project?

In a heartbeat, the stadium discussion has gone from blue-sky speculation to “no new stadium, no team in St. Louis, period.” How and why that happened is a mystery. But it’s important to understand that “if you don’t build a stadium, there won’t be a team” is not the same as “if you do build a stadium there will be a team.” We’ve heard the former, but not the latter.

When you question the need for a big civic project like a new stadium you risk being accused of not understanding the big picture – the way these sorts of enterprises work together in a synergistic way to have and hold world class things, and the quality of life to which those things contribute. They keep the big wheel turning, and the visionaries understand the need to keep it turning, and what it takes to do it. I get that. Civic foresight is about big ideas. I just don’t see a rightful place on the big wheel of commerce and prosperity for a new stadium, and certainly not for one whose occupants, as of now, will be tractor pulls and rock concerts. If you build it, they (the NFL) will come? Right now, that’s the billion-dollar maybe. Again, if there is reliable information regarding an NFL occupant for a new stadium, please let the rest of us in on it. Anyone? Anyone?