St. Louis Rams Stadium Latest News 2016: Team Headed Back to Los Angeles
The Rams finally moved on, making the weeks of rumors and plans of relocating to Los Angeles official. There's also a good chance that another team might do the same. While the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders have for now decided to stay put, their leaders didn't really have a unanimous agreement about that, which means one of them might just follow the Rams in L.A.
After a tedious process of voting and re-voting, 30 out of the 32 franchise owners in the NFL approved the Rams' proposal to move from St. Louis to the old Hollywood Park racetrack site located in Inglewood. That's actually less than 10 miles from Los Angeles. The votes also stipulate that the Chargers have an option to join the Rams in one year, but if they decline, that option will be given to the Raiders.
Both the Chargers and the Raiders made a different proposal wherein they would be sharing a new stadium that's planned to be built in Carson, but it didn't get the 24-vote requirement to be approved.
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The approval of the Rams' proposal is a historic one because it officially ends two decades of absence of an NFL team in the city of Los Angeles, the country's second biggest media market. Mayor Eric Garcetti did not waste time responding to the approved proposal. "Today, with the NFL returning home, Los Angeles cements itself as the epicenter of the sports world," he said. "We cannot wait to welcome the Rams and perhaps the others soon," he added.
The Rams actually made Los Angeles their home for almost 50 years before they transferred to St. Louis before the start of the 1995 NFL season. To be fair with St. Louis, they did show effort in the hope of keeping the team, specifically by submitting its own plan to the NFL for a new venue near the riverfront, costing about $1.1 billion. But then again, team owner Stan Kroenke already made up his mind from the very beginning of all these.
With the Rams' imminent transfer, they now will become part of a larger family of sporting franchises that include the NBA's Lakers and Clippers, NHL's Kings and Ducks, MLS's Galaxy, and MLB's Dodgers and Angels of Anaheim.
It certainly looks like the winner for all of this are the fans.
