The three NFL teams proposing stadiums in Los Angeles are scheduled to present their plans next week to the six NFL owners in charge of the process, the latest and most significant step yet if the sport is to return to the California city after a more than two-decade absence.
Owners of the Oakland Raiders, St. Louis Rams and San Diego Chargers will offer their most detailed stadium plans to date at the meeting April 22 in New York, numerous sources said last week. Those presentations will include details on architecture, financing and the political process in their efforts.
In addition, NFL Executive Vice President Eric Grubman will update the league’s six-owner Los Angeles committee on the efforts in the teams’ current home markets to keep the franchises in those cities. Grubman is the league executive charged with overseeing the NFL’s Los Angeles process.
“The committee expects details, progress reports, design plans, financing, risk factors, what to expect and when,” said one source close to the committee. That would constitute by far the most thorough update the six owners have received since NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell appointed them to the committee in February.
The Rams, Raiders and Chargers each declined to comment.
The six owners on the committee are John Mara (New York Giants), Robert Kraft (New England), Jerry Richardson (Carolina), Clark Hunt (Kansas City), Art Rooney II (Pittsburgh) and Bob McNair (Houston). They will report to the league’s full ownership at the scheduled May 19 league meeting in San Francisco.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke in early January unveiled a nearly $2 billion stadium proposal for Inglewood, Calif. Soon after, the Raiders and Chargers jointly proposed a stadium in Carson, Calif. In each case, the team’s current home market is striving to keep the franchise where it now plays.
The NFL’s relocation bylaws grant significant deference to home markets, creating parallel processes in Los Angeles and in St. Louis, Oakland and San Diego.
Several of the committee owners, including Kraft and Mara, have publicly stated their belief that the NFL will be back in Los Angeles next year. Goodell tempered that sentiment in public comments to reporters after the league’s annual meeting last month.
The Rams have already won political support for their Inglewood stadium; the Chargers and Raiders are expected to get similar such approval this summer. The Chargers and Raiders, meanwhile, are both giving some credence to the local efforts to keep them, while Kroenke has largely disengaged from the effort in St. Louis to keep the Rams.
The NFL’s Los Angeles committee is not the only league group that’s meeting in New York next week. Several committees are meeting, as is common in the weeks leading up to a full league gathering.
