Rams offer to share with Chargers or Raiders

New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said he expects they’ll be locked in a room until “we get a decision January 13”, and Houston Texans owner Bob McNair added, “One way or another, we’re going to get this resolved”.

The NFL owners are in Dallas for their winter meeting which normally focuses on labor issues, but this year is different. There is a ton of uncertainty surrounding these teams’ relocation, as each owner will need to get 24 votes out of the league’s 32 owners to approve any move, and the Inglewood project now faces a hurdle with the Federal Aviation Administration.

“If we don’t have the consensus of all the ownership, then [a team] hasn’t been there for 20 years, can it go another month or two months or a year?”

Several influential owners, such as Jerry Richardson of the Carolina Panthers and Clark Hunt of the Kansas City Chiefs, have said they would prefer to keep the Rams in St. Louis. How do we fix it?

In the case of L.A., the league would manage the outcome instead of pitting the two projects against each other for an up-or-down vote.

The St. Louis Rams, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders all want to move to Los Angeles, with Rams owner Stan Kroenke pitching a plan to build a stadium in Inglewood and the Chargers and Raiders ownership groups presenting a competing plan to jointly build and share a stadium in Carson, south of the city.

Tuesday, the Los Angeles Opportunities Committee heard from Kroenke and Chargers owner Dean Spanos.

All three teams involved once called Los Angeles home, although America’s second-largest metropolitan area has not had a team to call its own since the Rams and Raiders departed in 1995.

The St. Louis Rams have reportedly offered a partnership to the San Diego Chargers or the Oakland Raiders to join them in Inglewood, Calif. If the Chargers were allowed to move, and triggered their annual escape clause, San Diego loses its 50-year history as an National Football League city.

“I just don’t see it”, one owner who is part of a key committee said.

Now, the Rams and the Chargers-Raiders combo are demanding the chance to take a similar risk, and that’s in addition to ponying up a relocation fee of between $500 million and $600 million. This afternoon, they’re discussing it as a group for the first time since October.