THE ST. LOUIS RAMS : Can They Still Save the Rams? : Anaheim: Fight to block the team’s move to St. Louis will continue.
Tuesday’s announcement that the Rams intend to move to St. Louis has done little to slow the Orange County group working to prevent the team’s departure.
“The fight is just beginning,” said Leigh Steinberg, co-chairman of the Save the Rams task force.
“I don’t care how bad this looks. We’re not done until the first game is played in St. Louis next August. While everyone thinks this is a definitive event in this saga, in reality things will continue to be muddled.”
Steinberg and his group will do everything they can to cloud the picture by lobbying NFL owners and Commissioner Paul Tagliabue in an effort to get the eight votes necessary to block the team’s exit from Orange County.
The Rams, if they are to adhere to league guidelines, need approval from three-fourths of NFL owners--23 of 30--to move. The vote will probably be taken during the March 12-17 league meetings in Phoenix, but it could be taken sooner if Tagliabue called a special owners’ meeting.
If the owners don’t approve, the Rams will have to file an antitrust suit against the NFL--as the Raiders did before moving from Oakland to Los Angeles in 1982--to play in St. Louis next fall.
In addition, the deal is contingent upon St. Louis selling 40,000 personal seat licenses by March 7. They range in price from $250 to $4,500 and provide only the right to buy a season ticket, not the tickets themselves, which carry an additional cost.
“If we flunk the test and can’t show support for the team, then I wouldn’t expect the Rams to go forward with an application to move,” said former U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton, lead negotiator for St. Louis.
Although most team owners couldn’t be reached, Roger L. Headrick, president and general manager of the Minnesota Vikings, said he had concerns about the NFL losing a team “from the second-biggest market in the U.S.”
“The only other market of a similar size (the New York City area) has two teams,” Headrick said.
Save the Rams spent about six months trying to woo the Rams with a package that included a renovated Anaheim Stadium, an infusion of $50 million through local minority ownership of the team, guarantees for the sale of 45,000 season tickets and 100 luxury suites, a new practice facility and a home for retired players, to be named after owner Georgia Frontiere.
In recent months, the group has sought to boost its offer to include a new football-only stadium as part of a sports and entertainment complex in the Anaheim Stadium parking lot.
Just before Christmas, Save the Rams, stonewalled in its efforts to negotiate with Frontiere and team President John Shaw, abandoned that tactic and went to what it called Phase II, in which the booster group chose to take its proposal directly to Tagliabue, league owners and television executives.
Steinberg said he will call on a number of political heavyweights--including possibly Gov. Pete Wilson, U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth--to persuade the other owners that Orange County can support the Rams and deliver a financially competitive package.
The Rams still must submit a proposal for transfer to the league, showing that they can’t survive in Anaheim and that the deal in St. Louis, which includes virtually all revenue from a new 70,000-seat domed stadium, is superior to the Orange County offer.
While Tagliabue is reviewing the proposal, which must be submitted to the league 30 days before any vote, Save the Rams will be bombarding owners with all the reasons the Rams can make it here.
“We’ll do everything and anything,” said Steinberg, a Newport Beach sports agent who represents 19 NFL quarterbacks, among them Dallas’ Troy Aikman and San Francisco’s Steve Young. “We will lobby NFL owners perpetually, and we will do it with the political power of California.
“We can get eight votes, and what could stop the Rams is Mrs. Frontiere’s lack of desire to go through litigation. Georgia is no Al Davis (Raider owner). She’s not going to go through all that.”
If Save the Rams is to have any luck, it must back its proposal with the names of individuals and corporations interested in investing in the team or a stadium project. NFL owners will want to know exactly who is backing the ticket and luxury-suite guarantees and how they plan to do it.
Steinberg said the owners will be told, but since the start of his effort, he has refused to identify potential investors publicly.
“We have some amazing figures, some from the entertainment industry that have the ability to vertically integrate the Rams into their other operations so that having a team, inserting it into films and video games, would neatly fit into everything,” Steinberg said. “But if I talk about their interest, they’ll simply go away.”
Save the Rams will base part of its appeal on tradition, that the Rams have been supported in Southern California for 49 years, and that those years shouldn’t be overshadowed by recent seasons, which have been marked by losing records and sagging attendance.
The group will also attack St. Louis, which lost the NFL’s Cardinals to Phoenix in 1988 and failed in its bid to land an NFL expansion team in 1993.
“One year ago, the NFL decided that St. Louis should not have an expansion team and chose Charlotte, N.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., instead,” Steinberg said. “One year later it can’t be in the best interest of the NFL to allow St. Louis, which lost its own team, to take a team away from an area that has supported it for 50 years.”
But the Rams appear to be more concerned with the bottom line than tradition, and their advertised losses of about $6 million in the recently completed season will probably draw sympathy from league owners. Neither the Rams nor the Raiders have done very well at the gate, prompting many to question whether Los Angeles can adequately support two NFL teams.
That impression, and the image of Orange County filing for bankruptcy, will probably work against the owners blocking the move. As will St. Louis’ new $258-million stadium, which includes 101 luxury suites, 6,550 club seats and is taxpayer financed.
“I don’t have a feel for how the league will vote, but I think St. Louis is a good site,” said owner Lamar Hunt of the Kansas City Chiefs. “It’s one of the major cities in the country and, selfishly, we’d like to see a rivalry in the state.”
Although the outlook appears grim for keeping the Rams in California, Steinberg is not ready to give up.
And Steinberg played a role in a triumph over another professional sports team seeking to move. The owner of the San Francisco Giants had agreed to sell his team to Florida investors in 1992. A move to St. Petersburg, Fla., appeared imminent.
But Steinberg and San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan rallied a group of Bay Area investors, who eventually bought the team, keeping it in Candlestick Park.
What if the Rams do go?
Anaheim city officials said they have already started looking for a new NFL franchise. “I’m not commenting on who we might be looking at because that would be highly inappropriate,” Anaheim Stadium Manager Greg Smith said. “But we would look at any teams.”
There have been reports that the Raiders are considering a move to Anaheim. “It’s possible, but it would take awhile for people in Orange County to get over the burden of who the Raiders are and what they stand for,” Steinberg said. “I’m not sure whether they could do that.”
Times staff writers Greg Hernandez, Elliott Teaford and Lon Eubanks contributed to this story.
