Rams Use Simple Bribe to Lure Owners’ Votes

Thursday in Dallas, Georgia Frontiere pitched her get-rich scheme to a roomful of professional football owners wanting to know how a league with the St. Louis Rams will be any better off than a league with the Anaheim Rams.

The Rams are still the Rams, last they heard.

Headmaster Paul Tagliabue announced afterward that he thought “Georgia made a good presentation” and that she was “organized and to the point” and, by the sound of things, Georgia’s book report was worth at least a B-plus.

So how does one go about persuading 29 multimillionaires--some of them traditionalists, all of them steely-eyed capitalists--that it is good business to rip one of the league’s prized franchises out of the country’s second-largest market and move it to the 34th, where pro football already went bust once before?

Why, one attempts to bribe them, of course.

“I told them when they come to play us in St. Louis, they will take home a check for $900,000,” Georgia said.

That is about as blatant as it comes, but the NFL allows this sort of bribery. Entirely above board and over the table. “Visiting gate receipt,” the NFL calls it. In seasons past, this meant playing the Rams in Anaheim and returning home with a check for $400,000 or $450,000. Now, for the inconvenience of re-booking one team charter into St. Louis, the Rams are doubling their offer.

Grudgingly, the owners allowed that they would have to consider it.

The owners also sought to learn more about this fascinating new ‘90s concept known as the “personal seat license,” a money-grubbing scheme so ingenious and insidious, it’s amazing no one thought of it during the ‘80s.

In lay terms, “personal seat license” means “buy one seat, pay for it twice.” It works like this: In order to buy a season ticket, the customer pays through his or her nose--but first, the customer must pay for the right, or the “license,” to pay through the nose. Sort of like slipping the maitre d’ a fifty to get a good table, from where you then are permitted to blow another $200 on dinner.

In St. Louis, the Rams are charging from $250 to $4,500 for these personal seat licenses. “PSLs,” in the newly familiar shorthand. A month before the league’s owners vote the St. Louis Rams in or out of existence, the City of St. Louis reports it has received more than 72,000 orders to purchase PSLs.

These are ground-breaking, earth-shaking numbers, and the St. Louis Rams are a test case.

Having come this far, the NFL is going to vote against the PSL?

Having come this far, the NFL, more likely, will rename itself the PSL.

Save The Rams, whose opposition to the move was read by the owners in Dallas, but not heard, submitted written charges that the Rams violated the league’s franchise relocation criteria by deliberately driving down home attendance to facilitate a move.

With the PSL dilemma staring them in the face, the odds of Save The Rams mustering enough votes (eight) to block the move are, roughly, 72,000-to-1. But if Save The Rams has any hope, it is with these charges.

Tough to prove, they may be, but the case can be made.

“How To Drive Down Home Attendance,” a seven-step primer:

1. Rigorously avoid marketing and promoting your team within the community, with the occasional exception of an eye-catching “We’re Home Sunday” black-and-white newspaper ad.

2. Alienate the community by insisting the name of another community be featured in the franchise’s title.

3. Lose the conference championship game by 27 points, tease the community about “being on the brink” and then clock in with back-to-back finishes of 5-11 and 3-13.

4. Fire one coach, replace him with another who’s about to turn 60 and hasn’t won 10 games in a season since he was 54.

5. Lose more games than any team in the conference over a five-year period.

6. Pay occasional lip service to the concept of “turning the franchise around.” Token gestures that can easily backfire, such as spending $3 million on a gimpy quarterback and trading down from the fifth pick in the draft to the 16th, are highly encouraged.

7. After four consecutive seasons of double-figure losses, announce you’re taking an offensive tackle in the first round and are actively courting relocation bids from other cities.

As any objective observer can tell you, that should just about do it.

How objective is this group of NFL owners? We have a month to find out. At least a few are said to be shaking their heads over the idea of Georgia a fielding a substandard product and raking in the profit as a result.

“Why don’t I run my team into the ground and make $20 million?” one owner is alleged to have grumbled.

On the other hand, there are those big, beautiful PSLs to ponder . . . and a potential $10 million-to-$12 million relocation fee to divvy up . . . and Georgia’s guarantee of $900,000 every time you pass through St. Louis.

Nine hundred thousand dollars and a victory.

(Georgia forgot to mention the victory part.)

Does that sounds like an offer eight NFL owners can afford to refuse?

* RAMS MAKE PITCH

Georgia Frontiere and John Shaw made presentations to NFL owners to persuade vote to approve Rams’ move. C12