Three NFL Teams Officially File To Move To Los Angeles

For the first time in more than 20 years, Los Angeles could have a professional football team – or three. The Chargers and St. Louis Rams also filed a relocation application Monday night.

Later this week, the league’s Committee of Los Angeles Opportunities will meet to discuss the merits of the Rams, Oakland Raiders or San Diego Chargers moving.

The Raiders and Chargers have proposed a joint $1.7 billion stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson, while the Rams have a competing $1.8 billion stadium plan in Inglewood.

The NFL confirmed the receipt of all three applications, saying the teams had submitted all the required documentation.

Team owners will meeting in Houston next week and the committee on Los Angeles will met in New York City Wednesday and Thursday to evaluate the latest stadium plans and make its recommendations on a stadium site and possibly which teams meet the relocation guidelines. A final decision is then expected during a full owners meeting January 12 and 13.

All three teams have previously called Los Angeles home – the Rams played in L.A. from 1946 to 1994, and the Raiders from 1982 to 1994, while the Chargers, established as part of the defunct American Football League in 1960, spent one season in Los Angeles before relocating two hours south. Each team has cited stadium issues in their current home cities for the decisions to relocate. The matter is now in the hands of the NFL’s owners.

Even if Kroenke’s relocation attempt is thwarted next week, there’s no guarantee that the riverfront stadium gets built. At its centerpiece is a $1.1 billion stadium along the Mississippi River, not far from the city’s iconic Gateway Arch. The Rams have rejected the plan.

And that could ultimately complicate the stadium’s financing. If Kroenke doesn’t sign onto the stadium right away, there could be plenty of time for the legislature to block Gov. Jay Nixon’s administration from issuing the bonds by fiat.

“I grew up in Hayward”, he said. “And that position is: We don’t support the issuance of state bonds or state financing without legislative approval or without a vote of the people”. “In an ideal world, I’d like to see them all stay where they are”. “I’m back home. I’ve said I love the fact that I’m back home”. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground between the two sides. “We have to take the approach and with the assumption that everything’s taking place here in St. Louis until we’re told otherwise”.