Is Stan Kroenke losing the NFL’s race to Los Angeles?

The hot-button issue of Goodell’s tenure as commissioner is finally front and center as the league’s 32 teams meet Wednesday in Dallas – but only because a trio of owners forced his hand.

There’s been a lot of clamoring for an NFL team (or two) to make the move to Los Angeles, tapping into America’s second-biggest market and giving the league another enormous revenue stream.

Where this leaves the Raiders – just like everything surrounding the NFL’s anticipated return to Los Angeles – is hard to pin down.

The thought process is that, the sooner a vote happens, the more prepared the relocating team will be for the 2016 campaign. Oakland Raiders owner, Mark Davis, shared a chuckle with Kroenke outside of the meeting but has repeatedly said he was committed to his partnership with Spanos.

Their current home cities, St. Louis, San Diego, and Oakland, now have a firm deadline to finalize stadium plans to keep their teams.

While the Padres are showing off new team jerseys, the Chargers remain focused on a new stadium in Carson. The NFL doesn’t want one or two teams to emerge as losers and get sent back to markets they tried to leave.

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.

For months, reports have indicated that Rams owner Stan Kroenke wishes to build a billion-dollar stadium in Inglewood, California.

Owners met today today to discuss the potential move to Los Angeles on Wednesday.

As for the land on which the proposed stadium sits, Kroenke will control all ownership, in addition to all development around the stadium.

“I think it’s important since we have the ability to put a team there – or teams – we ought to do it”, said the influential Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones. The city and owners would have to creatively paper over the long history of Olympic games providing no benefit for the host cities, or even pushing them into debt, but it would not be the first time the Games were sold as an economic boon.

When will the L.A. vote take place? Only St. Louis is close to having a stadium plan that has certainty, and local officials there believe a vote from the city’s Board of Alderman can be accomplished by December 18 that would approve the final piece of public financing for a $1 billion riverfront stadium.