The Rams’ Front Office Is All Business : Task Force to Save Team Makes Valiant Goal-Line Stand but It Probably Isn’t Enough

If anybody around Anaheim Stadium was wondering whether pro football was really a business first and a sport second, the end of sentimentality might have come with a recent assessment of the future of the Los Angeles Rams offered by team President John Shaw.

The decision on the location of the franchise in the future is, he says, strictly business. And while it is nice there are loyal fans in Southern California, he says the offer of the Save the Rams task force just isn’t good enough. What the team needs, he says, is a new stadium and a much better deal, like those being offered in Baltimore and St. Louis. There is no new stadium in the plan to keep the Rams here. It is hard to quarrel with the logic of a chief executive who is looking at possibly paying a lease of $1 per game and getting all revenues from sky boxes, club seats, parking and concessions, instead of paying Anaheim up to $400,000 a year. The handwriting on the wall seems especially clear. The bottom line seems to be that the Rams are going to leave unless the attractive offers fall through and the team has little choice but to stay.

The task force has done good work trying to put together a package, so there is still an outside chance that the team will stay. Credit Save the Rams co-chairman Leigh Steinberg and company with being businesslike themselves and refusing to put local backers into too much financial jeopardy in favor of trying to present “a competitive and financially sound package.” By the way, speaking of being businesslike, there isn’t much of a bargain for the city in Shaw’s statement that he would not rule out a controversial admissions tax on sporting and amusement venues, traditionally opposed by the team, in order to make a deal. The last thing the other entertainment companies in Anaheim need is an amusement tax when prices already are high and they are competing for tourist and leisure dollars. Disney has gone so far as to warn that such a tax could be the end of plans for a Disneyland expansion.

For now, it doesn’t look especially good, but to paraphrase Yogi Berra, sage of another sport, the game isn’t over until it’s over.