Stan Kroenke's bold move to buy land in Los Angeles to build a stadium to hold an NFL team may be the impetus to return pro football to L.A. - except just not Kroenke's team.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the cities of Oakland, San Diego and St. Louis are running out of time in preparing bids to keep the Raiders, Chargers and Rams in their current cities.
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"This could come to a vote in a year," Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants, told the Post-Dispatch. The NFL has made it "very clear," he said - St. Louis, San Diego and Oakland need to "get their proposals to their respective teams sooner rather than later."
"Is it crunch time? Is it a two-minute warning yet? No," said Tisch. "But ... those three cities are kind of in the fourth quarter."
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The Post-Dispatch adds, however, that of the three cities in danger of losing their franchise, St. Louis is the farthest along in putting a bid together to save its franchise.
The Post-Dispatch interviewed five of the six owners that comprise the Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities. And while they agreed to take part of the committee, they told the newspaper that their priority remains to keeping the team in their current markets.
"We never wanted to be a league that had teams moving all over the place at the drop of a hat," Steelers owner and committee member Art Rooney II told the Post-Dispatch.
But that sentiment holds only as long as each of the hometowns mount serious plans to solve the stadium issues for their teams.
The San Diego Chargers have been asking for a new stadium for 14 years. A proposal won't be made to the team until mid-May, and that is just the proposal. The city would then have to prove that the proposal would become a reality.
Oakland began working on a proposal to keep the Raiders last week, the Post-Dispatch reported, and won't have a proposal ready until August.
St. Louis already has a 64,000-seat, $985 million riverfront proposal on the table for the Rams. The city now must to put together the financing to show the Rams - and the league - that they have an acceptable alternative to Los Angeles.
"But the NFL owners are looking for certainty. And the St. Louis plan isn't yet that," the Post-Dispatch reported.
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