Like many people, I have mixed feelings about the Rams leaving St. Louis for Los Angeles. In some ways, they parallel the mixed feelings I’ve always had about football. Football strategy brings a dimension of chess to the world of athletics, but the inherent violence is in conflict with what might be called healthy competition (witness the Cincinnati – Pittsburgh playoff game of January 9).

It has been said that life imitates baseball, and in many ways I think that is true; I hope it is. Baseball is essentially a happy game that runs the entire emotional gamut of the human experience. Life also imitates football, but football is a much more foreboding and grim game than baseball.

Despite the fact that I feel that a part of my life has been pilfered by the move of the Rams, and that I have very little love for the NFL or the ownership of the Rams, I will not turn my back on the game. Rather, I’ll lament that I will no longer have a front-row seat to the drama that characterizes so much of what in my view is wrong with American life, but also includes moments and individuals of inspiration. I’ll miss not being close up to:

• Hearing how coaches, commentators and others say that what’s most important is the well-being of each player. This, while every effort is made to make players robots and cogs in the wheel of a well-oiled offense or defense.
• How the captains of industry, the owners and the NFL administrators, are driven by private avarice at the expense of the public good. Yes, it happens all over America (and the world), but nothing exemplifies it better than the NFL.
• How the League incessantly engages in self-congratulation for being so charitable – something that is easy to do when you’re wealthy. Just like Republicans, they’re charitable at the expense of supporting justice. Not a word about the “haves” in society having an obligation to help those who are most in need (i.e. support for a government social and economic safety net).
• The omnipresence of gaming the system, whether it’s the illegal or questionable drugs that players take or the gambling by tens of millions of addicted fans.
• The organizational psychology of both winning and losing coaches. Bottom line is that some nice guys finish first and some nice guys finish last. Tyrants also take turns winning and losing. Go figure.
• The empty seats at the end of virtually all games, indicative of how many fans love the game so much that they can’t wait to beat others out of the venue to get home first.
• The “officials’ time-outs” that come at the most non-natural of times and thoroughly interrupt the game, but are necessary because the game is really just a vehicle to drive viewers to the commercials.

On the good side

• The beauty of a sweep play with the pulling guards getting in front of the runner and clearing the path for a graceful runner to elude remaining defenders
• The arc of the long pass (captured so beautifully by NFL films); the pass that falls into the hands of a receiver in stride.
• The fact that some really decent human beings can play this often-savage game and come out with their personalities intact.
• The fun of being a fan and wondering whether the quarterback-impaired Rams will look outside the box for bad-boy Johnny Manziel or good-soldier improviser Robert Griffin III. Also, isn’t it about time for the Rams to at least have a high level African-American coach?

What the Rams do on a day-to-day basis will become more and more distant to me, and I’ll miss that. But maybe that won’t last forever. “Shark” and basketball’s Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said a year ago that the NFL will self-implode in ten years. I could kind of go for that, no more violent tackle football. Instead we could have a low-budget friendly Touch Football League featuring the athleticism and the mental rigor and creativity that makes football so great. Well, I’m dreaming wildly, while the Rams are simply California dreaming.

The post Life will be harder to understand without the Rams appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Stan Kroenke’s recent verbal abuse of St. Louis may, at long last, have awakened this town to the sick relationship it has had with the NFL and Kroenke, the owner of the St. Louis Rams football team.

The verbal abuse came in Kroenke’s application to the NFL to relocate the team to Los Angeles.In an attempt to justify moving the team, Kroenke said:

St. Louis lags, and will continue to lag, far behind in the economic drivers that are necessary for sustained success of an NFL franchise…

Any NFL Club that signs on to this proposal in St. Louis will be well on the road to financial ruin, and the League will be harmed…

St. Louis is not capable of supporting three major sports teams. No other NFL franchise would be interested in the current proposed riverfront stadium…and it doesn’t make economic sense to be in the city.

That hurt. And this cruel assault on St. Louis’ self-esteem is typical of abusive behavior. [Interestingly, the harsh criticisms in Kroenke’s letter to the NFL came after years of zero communication from Kroenke, who St. Louis pundits have dubbed “Silent Stan.” The silent treatment is yet another symptom of abuse.]

But until the Rams—curiously—made Kroenke’s letter public, St. Louis football fans and civic “leaders” desperately wanted to keep the Rams in town. So desperate, in fact, that city leaders were willing to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars to build a new $1 billion football stadium to regain Kroenke’s love, and that of the NFL, too.

Now, the anger aroused by the otherwise silent Stan’s criticisms of St. Louis may be raising awareness of just how unhealthy this town’s relationship with Kroenke and the league has been.

Abuse

What’s an emotionally abusive relationship? The Center for Relationship Abuse Awareness defines abuse as

…a pattern of abusive and coercive behaviors used to maintain power and control…. Abuse can be emotional, financial, sexual or physical and can include threats, isolation, and intimidation. Abuse tends to escalate over time.

An abuser is a grand manipulator and will sulk, threaten to leave, and emotionally punish you for not following their idea of how things should be. An abuser will try to make you feel guilty any time you exert your will and assert what is right for you.

In the St.Louis/NFL case, the abuse began years ago, in 1995, when the city built a domed stadium as a way of enticing an NFL lover, er, team to town. Then, city leaders agreed to lease out the newly constructed dome to the Rams under a rather strange contingency forced on them by the NFL: The Rams’ lease required [St. Louis] to provide an updated “first-tier” stadium for the Rams — in the top eight of 32 National Football League teams — first by 2005, and again by 2015.

In other words, the stadium had to stay pretty to keep the love. Then, in 2013, the Rams complained that the dome had let itself go, was soft in the middle, and needed $700 million in cosmetic surgery and body work. And when the city said no, the Rams threatened to walk away.

More recently, less than a week after Kroenke submitted his St.-Louis-hating proposal, the NFL piled on. Preparing for the long-awaited owners’ meeting, at which the fate of three teams [St. Louis, San Diego and Oakland] could be decided, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell dissed St. Louis’ proposal for a new stadium, calling the plan “inadequate and unsatisfactory.”

An emotional abuser goes through life feeling entitled to be treated like royalty, and wants you to be a willing servant. He or she expects you to do everything and will not help at all.

Rams owner Stan Kroenke got rich by marrying a Wal-Mart heiress and by developing Wal-Mart anchored shopping complexes all over the US. He wants out of St. Louis, and he apparently feels entitled to get his way, even if he violates NFL rules. He has already purchased hundreds of acres of land in Inglewood California, where he intends to build a sports-stadium, entertainment and shopping mega-complex—with his own money.

He has offered zero dollars to help build a new stadium in St. Louis.

Victims’ reactions to abuse

The Advocacy Center says

When an abuser calls their partner names, puts them down and plays mind games it can make the victim feel bad about themselves. Many times victims believe that the abuse is their fault or that they deserve the abuse.

Over the past few years, as Kroenke and the NFL escalated the threat to leave St. Louis without a football team, fans responded as abuse victims often do: They begged and protested their undying love.

A facebook page launched in 2014 by Rams fans said: “Our mission at Keep the Rams in St. Louis is continue to build our tradition in St. Louis, with our passion and commitment. Let’s show the world that we LOVE and support the Rams; and we want them to stay in St. Louis.” The group said it hoped to show Los Angeles and the rest of the country that St. Louis loves its football team and that team should stay right where it is.

There are probably even some St. Louis football fans who actually do blame this whole mess on themselves and on the city’s political leaders, for not attending games, for not supporting the stadium tax giveaway, and for not being the razzle-dazzle city that would make the NFL and Kroenke love us more.

Breaking away?

Kroenke’s gratuitous comments to the NFL have sparked an angry backlash from his victims. They’re calling his criticisms “preposterous pot shots.” Missouri’s governor zinged back, saying, “Our fans support their professional and amateur teams—Especially ones that win.” St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay shifted the blame back to Kroenke, saying “If the Rams leave, it will not be for something the region failed to do. Or the fans.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a half-page dartboard, with Kroenke’s image in the bullseye, and the best of #kroenkecomplaints around the perimeter.

But is any of this enough? Vicitms can cry, hurl zingers, self-justify, or throw the blame back to the abuser, but will it make a difference? Kroenke and the NFL still have the power to decide. The only power citizens, policymakers, and the little people have is to walk away—not just physically, but emotionally, too– from the madness. Some suggest that victimized cities band together and form a coalition–perhaps even a collective-bargaining organization–that would refuse to be blackmailed, extorted and pitted against each other by professional sports leagues and teams.

This is not just about St. Louis. I’m looking at you, too, Oakland and San Diego, and all of the other cities who have  been–and will be in the future–bullied and abused by NFL owners and the league.

So, instead of continuously trying to placate these abusers, maybe NFL cities should be going to court to petition for orders of protection.

The post The NFL’s abusive relationship with cities and fans: St. Louis edition appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It seems that everyone I know in St. Louis is opposed to a new football stadium that just might keep the Rams in St. Louis. This is particularly so among political progressives who are rightly offended by the blackmail that Rams owner Stan Kroenke and the entire National Football League are placing on a mid-market team in a struggling community.

Kroenke is the second wealthiest of the 32 NFL owners and perhaps the most greedy and insensitive to his fan base. The NFL purports to value stability in franchise location, but it rarely stands in the way of any recalcitrant owner who wants to pick up his or her marbles and play elsewhere.

Unless an owner chooses to move out in the  middle of the night (as owner Robert Irsay did, when he moved the Colts from Baltimore to Indianapolis on March 29,1984), cities generally have sufficient time to make proposals to the owner. It’s not uncommon for owners to threaten to move to another city in order to get a sweeter deal from their current cities. But Stan Kroenke has not even pretended to be interested in keeping the Rams in St. Louis. He has not negotiated with the city and has refused to take calls from the governor, the mayor, major civic leaders, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in St. Louis.

Yet, despite his indifference to St. Louis, it’s possible that the team will remain. A two-man task force was appointed by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon to try to keep the Rams in St. Louis. Dave Peacock, a former Anheuser-Busch executive and Bob Blitz (aptly named), a high-powered attorney, have been doing legal and financial gymnastics to put together a plan for St. Louis to have a new stadium. They are doing this via subterfuge, rather than with support from the team’s owner.

All of this bodes well for a city that has had a serious self-esteem problem, dating back to 1854 when a railroad bridge over the Mississippi River was built at Rock Island, IL. The bridge allowed merchants in and around Chicago to reach western markets twenty years before Eads Bridge traversed the Mississippi at St. Louis. St. Louis has been playing catch-up ever since, especially following the World’s Fair of 1904.

St. Louis did not become a National Football League city until 1960, forty years after the league’s inaugural season. However, it has pulled off some good football coups since then. The team that came to St. Louis in 1960 was the football Cardinals from Chicago, obviously a much bigger city. Twenty-seven years later, St. Louis lost the “Big Red” (as they affectionately came to be known) to Phoenix. But eight years after that, in 1995, St. Louis snatched the Rams from Los Angeles, because St. Louis had built a state-of the art domed stadium in anticipation of attracting either an expansion team or a “franchise on the loose” team. The lease agreement for the Rams in the then TWA Dome in downtown St. Louis was so favorable that owner Georgia Frontiere did not mind leaving the much bigger LA market for her smaller home town. Unfortunately for St. Louis, the lease had a provision in it that the Rams could opt out after 20 years, if the Dome (now named the Edward Jones Dome) was not considered to be in the top twenty-five percent of NFL stadiums. With the dizzying construction of new stadiums in the NFL built by cities with guns to their heads in order to keep teams from jumping to a different market, the Jones Dome is now considered one of the worst in the league, after only twenty years. To make things worse, Frontiere died in 2008, and Stan Kroenke, who had been a minority owner, was able to seize control of the franchise. Now Kroenke wants to build a new “state of the art” stadium in Inglewood, California and move the team out to his planned theme park there in a much larger market than St. Louis. However, because two other franchises (San Diego and Oakland) want to move out of their home bases and jointly play in a showcase stadium in LA, the move of the Rams may not be easy for Kroenke.

For there to be professional football in St. Louis, the city does not need a new stadium. The dome may be a little dingy, but it is quite serviceable. The thing about it is that like all stadiums, it looks better when the team is winning. Shortly after the St. Louis Rams won the Super Bowl in 1999, the team began losing and has done so repeatedly. As happens in cities as large as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, solid fan bases can disappear when losing sets in. There’s nothing to say that the Jones Dome could not be rocking on Sunday afternoons with a winning team, especially one that had the offensive flair of the Rams at the turn of this century. In basic terms, it’s a structurally sound edifice where more than 65,000 fans can see football on a regulation-size field.

But the league formula is for teams to build new stadiums, generally at taxpayers’ expense, to deepen the coffers of the owners. This will not stop until the federal government uses its anti-trust powers, as previously reported in Occasional Planet. So, if St. Louis wants to remain an NFL city, it has to do what the unelected powers-that-be say – build a new stadium, perhaps every twenty years or so. If St. Louis does not accede to this blackmail, it will not only lose its current NFL franchise, it will also lose some of its already diminishing self-esteem.

So what can St. Louis do to make keeping the Rams a “must-do” for the NFL? It can do what no other city has done. It can have two stadiums for one team. Here’s how it would work:

Every game day, the football fans of St. Louis would congregate at the intersection of North Broadway and O’Fallon. This would be about three blocks removed from the Jones Dome and three blocks from the “to be named later” new stadium. Each fan would bring his or her cell phone. Then using the texting survey program, Poll Everywhere, the fans would vote for which stadium they would like to see the game played. No more compromises with a retractable domed stadium. Instead, on a beautiful fall afternoon, they could have a wonderful outdoor experience literally on the banks of the Mississippi. But if there was a blizzard, a downpour, or even the threat of inclement weather, the fans could opt to go to the tried and true Jones Dome and live in the comfort and luxury of the 1995-vintage dome.

The fans could begin their texting earlier in the week and Las Vegas could be taking odds on in which stadium the game would be played. Fans could congregate on Saturday at the Muny Opera in Forest Park and have great debates about where the team should play. The whole saga could become a reality TV show and fans/taxpayers would use the royalties to replenish their wallets or government coffers. Opposing teams would fear coming into St. Louis where the Rams would have the oddest home field advantage of any team in any sport because opponents would not know the conditions of the upcoming game.

Frankly, I think that the call for a new stadium is a big shakedown, as it was for baseball’s Busch Stadium in the early 2000s. But until we as citizens adopt the only logical solution – federal control of the NFL, we have to further accommodate ourselves to tolerating the absurd. St. Louis can lead the nation.

The post St. Louis’ absurd political football scenario, and how to solve it, absurdly appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In the next few years, two of the biggest potential economic developments in the St. Louis metropolitan area may be a new stadium for the St. Louis Rams and a new location for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. These are both complicated projects with numerous financial variables. One way to simplify matters, though rarely discussed, is for the federal government to step forward to clarify and equalize tax burdens.

The Rams stadium situation is one that is being repeated across the country, and possibly soon across the ocean to London and beyond. The Rams moved to St. Louis from Los Angeles twenty years ago. St. Louis built a domed stadium for the Rams and gave team ownership the most favorable lease in the league. Now the team argues that the stadium is not in the top 25 percent of stadiums in the league, and under the terms of the contract, they are now free to move elsewhere. Los Angeles, which has been football starved for twenty years, is anxious to have the Rams back. Concurrently, NFL teams in Oakland, CA and San Diego, CA are looking for ways to leave their traditional venues and to also move to LA.

This is the kind of mess where you want “an adult in the room” to appear. As it presently stands, cities are battling against one another for sweetheart deals from each of the municipalities with whom they are negotiating. In order to make new stadiums most feasible, they are looking for the best possible tax breaks in Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland, and St. Louis.

The adult in the room that is needed is the federal government. It can solve these problems rather easily, but the political will to do so seems miles away. The federal government treats the NFL as some super-sanctified profitable non-profit organization (somewhat akin to the Catholic Church). NFL, Inc. has non-profit status, yet it makes billions of dollars each year. We’re not talking about just the money that the 32 individual franchises make; we’re talking about what the corporate monolith accrues.

What is needed is for the federal government to put the interests of the fans of the franchises ahead of the billionaires who own the teams. This means that the government must set in place rules that forbid communities from bidding for professional football teams, largely on the basis of waiving state and local taxes that most any other business would have to pay. Who can give the most to the Rams, St. Louis or Los Angeles? Who can give the most to the Raiders and Chargers? This question has been asked about storied franchises such as the Miami Dolphins and the New Orleans Saints.

It’s time to stop the madness, and one way to do that is to strip from states and locales the power to levy most taxes. If the federal government had a series of progressive taxes that took the place of the bizarre hodge-podge of state and local taxes that now exist, it could make the system much simpler and much fairer (two values that even Republicans espouse).

Regarding relocation of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, four sites in the St. Louis metropolitan area are being considered. One is in Illinois, adjacent to Scott Air Force Base. The land is already owned by the federal government, so the purchase price would be zero. Since the federal government does not tax land, no tax revenue would be lost if the NGIA relocated there.

A preferred site for people in St. Louis is in north city, adjacent to the infamous Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project of years past. Much of this land is privately owned and would have to be purchased through  eminent domain. The expected cost to the city would be $8 to $10 million for residential properties and millions more for several businesses located in the area. Even if the city purchases the land and sells it to the federal government at fair market value, the city would still lose all the property tax that it is currently collecting from the area. This again is the kind of problem that would not exist if the federal government had the role of tax collector in our metropolitan areas, meaning that no locale would need to worry about loss of tax revenue if a public development is built.

As feasible as the idea of the federal government as tax collector for all jurisdictions would be, it is not on our political radar.A serious consideration of reforming our taxes in a way that stops localities from cannibalizing one another is indeed a worthwhile goal. It would not help St. Louis and the Rams, nor St. Louis and the NGIA, but it could help us several decades down the road when similar problems occur. As always, keep the dialogue flowing.

The post Let the feds be tax collectors for all appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s time to put the National Football League on Facebook.  I don’t mean a “fan” page or anything like that; I mean actually running a video stream on Facebook.  It has to do with the commercials that populate the game.

I have been an on and off football fan; loving the strategy of the game but really disliking the violence.  In 2009 the hometown Rams won one game while losing fifteen.  Out of that lemon came the lemonade of having the first selection in the player draft and choosing Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford.  There was a buzz before he was drafted and it continued throughout the season even though his final game on Jan. 2 will not be a featured one if he makes it to the Hall of Fame.

In order to understand why I want to put the N.F.L. on Facebook, I have to ’fess up and say that while I may not have classical A.D.D., I certainly have attention deficit in selected situations.  One of them is with commercials on televisions.

It’s possible that one of the five most significant days in my life was the one when my nephew introduced me to TiVo.  Television without commercials; what could be cooler.  On top of that, you could watch programs when they are convenient for you rather than having some network “voice of authority” tell you to stay home on Thursday night or else you’ll miss “must-see TV.”

I went to the Rams first game of the season, a good one although a losing effort against the Arizona (one-time St. Louis) Cardinals.  I lasted a little more than a quarter and then took advantage of the fact that there normally is not a rush out the doors in the beginning of the second quarter, so it was easy to get back to my car and back home.

Maybe it’s because I’m of an age that I grew up playing “disorganized” sports.  There weren’t always coaches filling the space, often with hot air.  We just played, and played, and played.  Okay, sometime we took a break and went to a gas station where the soda machine provided us with the necessary if not nutritious refreshment.

Watching an NFL game reminds me of what it must have been like to drive down a dusty road in a Model-T with a bad carburetor.  When are we ever going to get there?  Why do we always have to stop?  I want my hay-burner (horse) back.

So while I was at the Jones Dome I was spared the commercials but not the interminable delays.  It got to the point where I didn’t want either team to score; didn’t want any fumbles or interceptions; didn’t want anything to happen that would cause a stop in play which would result in five minutes with nothing to do but listen to the drunk people behind me.

So for the rest of the season I watched the games on TV.  I should say that I took a 210 minute event and condensed it into 75-90 minutes with the help of my friend TiVo.  It was terrific; there was a flow to the game and I could enjoy the strategy in real time.

When the last game of the season came around, the Rams were in much better shape than most anyone had predicted because (a) they had won more games than expected (7), and (b) they were in the worst division in the history of N.F.L. and had a chance to make the playoffs.  The game was being telecast on NBC with good announcers, Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth.  I wanted to see it as it happens.  If a friend called and said, “Did you see that play?” I didn’t want to be a quarter and a half behind but catching up on my TiVo.

Now the Rams lost the game, looked bad in doing so, and they are not in the playoffs.  But the worst part for me was dealing with the commercials.  The “chic liberal” part of me has a Prius; I don’t need to have macho dudes with barely clad women telling me to buy a Ford F-150 truck or a Lexus which is a very expensive way to get from Point ‘A’ to Point ‘B.’ And of course football has the perfect cocktail; trying to sell you vehicles and booze at the same time.  It’s endless.  Due to a combination of morbid curiosity about the commercial epidemic and engagement in the game which was close for fifty-eight minutes of play, I stayed with it.

The next day I see something that may appear to be unrelated but I look for the possible connection.  Investment giant (and moral virtuoso) Goldman-Sachs has valued Facebook at over $50 billion and wants a piece of the action.  How can that be; Facebook doesn’t have pop-up ads with Ford F-150s flying out of the screen into my face?  How can they be worth anything; how can they make any money?

It was well-explained to me that evening on the News Hour by Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of the writers of that morning’s article in the New York Times on the Goldman – Facebook flirtation.  Facebook makes a fortune the way in which Google does; through advertisements on the right side of the screen that are not obtrusive.  The beauty of it is that I have the choice of looking at it or not doing so.  I get a certain pleasure in seeing Sarah Steelman’s face on the right side of the page, knowing that she is spending money to NOT get my attention.

Now Facebook has video, plenty of it.  So wouldn’t it be great if the N.F.L. games could be played on Facebook in real time.  At any occasion I could look at the right side to see if somebody wanted to sell me a new external hard drive because Mark Zuckerberg knows that I like computers.  I’m fine with that.  The N.F.L. can exist; make a ton of money; and add the audience of people like me who have borderline A.D.D.

Good idea or not, it probably won’t happen, at least not next year.  You see the billionaire owners and the millionaire players seem to be hell-bent on having a work stoppage / strike over something that no one will remember once it’s settled.  But the good news is that they’ll have to rebuild their fan base.  Where are there more fans than on Facebook?

The post Put the N.F.L. on Facebook appeared first on Occasional Planet.