SPORTYMCBLOGGIN.COM: Irrational Fan Rant Week - Day 3

SportyMcBloggin.com

SPORTYMCBLOGGIN.COM: Irrational Fan Rant Week - Day 3 - The Rams

Irrational Fan Rant Week - Day 3 - The Rams

Hello and welcome to SportyMcBloggin's "Irrational Fan Rant Week". When we're not making jokes about curling, getting kicked out of bars, or picking fantasy football team names; we do our best to be objective about sports topics ranging from how bad Peyton Manning is in the playoffs, the baseball awards, to the reporting on Penn State. However, that's out the window this week as we bring you a bunch of stereotypical fan rants. After all, it's what the internet was created for.

Day 1 - The Packers
Day 2 - The Cardinals

I'm not going to address the Rams here. I'm not going to address the owner. This is for the journalists. This is for the ticket buyers. This is for City Hall. This is for the companies that buy the luxury suites. This is for the city. This is for the county. This is for the bullshit politics that ruin the metropolitan area beyond its inability to support a sports franchise.

The Rams ownership's posturing leaves much to be wanted. We are all aware. But no individual of stake has stated any intention of leaving St. Louis. For four years this has been a rumor completely conjured up by St. Louis media types who combined Roger Goodell's intent to fill the Los Angeles void with the inevitable stadium lease disaster. To run speculation as news, for that amount of time, shows more interest in saving the Post-Dispatch than saving the football team.

This much is true: the NFL is making eyes at L.A. and the Rams have a terrible stadium situation which must be corrected to stabilize the franchise. However, the irresponsible speculation has done more to damage the fan base of The Rams than the drought of winning seasons experienced in the previous seven years.

If you listen solely to local sports radio it would be easy to draw the conclusion that Rams owner, Stan Kroenke, is determined to move his newly acquired franchise. It would never enter into your head that silence is a standard in business negotiations. Broadcasters act as if they aren't aware that Kroenke's owned 40% of the team since its arrival in St. Louis. The universal panic button pressed by St. Louis media has been eating away at Rams fans. Every action taken by the organization is cast as a heralding of the franchise's exodus.

Hiring Jeff Fischer? They want to have a good head coach for the Los Angeles market. Playing a home game per year in London? They want to move to England, instead of merely creating a fan base that could create additional revenue streams. The London arrangement certainly creates a premium value on the remaining seven games in St. Louis doesn't it? Why do the Lions play on Thanksgiving? Because they wanted to market their franchise. It's been the only non-Barry Sanders/Calvin Johnson relevance they've experienced in the last 40 years.

Why do the Rams have an awful, out of date, dreary stadium as their home? Because St. Louis didn't have an NFL franchise secured when the arena was proposed. Did the drab design of the structure cost St. Louis an expansion franchise? I guess I'd merely be as speculative as a sports reporter... but compare it to the stadiums for Jacksonville or Carolina. Other than the lack of a tarp over the upper sections the Edward Jones Dome is behind both complexes of its vintage, and it was designed as an incentive to lure a franchise to St. Louis.

I remember how shocked St. Louis was when Jacksonville won its expansion bid. That decision sums up the NFL's consideration for this dying metropolitan area. St. Louis is, based on the 2010 Census, the 18th largest metropolitan area in the country but only the 53rd largest city in America. This divide is significant when you take into account that St. Louis and Baltimore are the only two major cities in the United States operating independently from a county.

There's very little tax base for the city of St. Louis to draw funds for a new stadium from. Building a new home for the Rams in the county would be more financially viable, but would require the 91 municipalities uniting to formulate how to sort out the costs and additional tax revenue (yes 91, also there's 9 unincorporated portions housing one third of the county's population). Much of the metropolitan area is spread even further than the county: St. Charles and Farmington. The farther the area extends, the thinner funding for a new stadium will get.

The more the pessimism is spread by the media, the faster the demise of football in St. Louis will be. It's an easy scenario to perpetuate, because the city has seen it before. St. Louis, one of only three American cities to host the Summer Olympic games, has had a rough century. And based on the negative news, the outlook isn't getting brighter. If the Rams do leave they will join the exodus of major sports franchises from St. Louis: Hawks (NBA), Cardinals (NFL), Browns (Orioles, MLB ).

At a certain point you, St. Louis, must realize this extends beyond sports. Teams provide a way to unite cities. The more decentralized a metro area becomes, the more important a franchise can be in shaping a community identity. Building stadiums generates a net-loss for the area that surrenders the tax incentives. You can read about that in "Super Freakanomics" or "Soccernomics", I honestly can't remember which one. Regardless, the pride instilled in a city from a local team, or a large event, is a felling that transcends sports.

St. Louis needs its football fans, its companies, its leaders, to unite whether they inhabit the city or county. They need to shun the negative outlook of their media and stand behind their team. You need to stand behind your city.