Kroenke’d

I woke up Tuesday morning a Rams fan. By the time I went to bed, they belonged to my roommate, a Santa Monica native and lifelong fantasy football aficionado.

I’m from St. Louis, and yesterday concluded what many NFL decision makers described as a long, arduous and complicated process. I’m sure the board meetings were tough—a conference room hosting the league’s 32 franchise owners and Roger Goodell certainly must’ve weighed heavily, if only for the egos and stakes involved. But this process, ignited once Stan Kroenke purchased a majority stake in the Rams in 2010, has exacted a far greater and more emotionally taxing toll on the residents of St. Louis.

Los Angeles was always going to rejoin the NFL, and a quick glance at the census numbers will tell you why. A metropolitan area with close to 13 million people makes for a lot more money than midsized city in the Midwest. That reality meant that the entertainment capital of the world’s needs would come before that of the small-market teams. Jacksonville, Oakland and San Diego were contenders; St. Louis got its number called.

So the Rams were ripped away from St. Louis, punishing a notoriously faithful sports city and insulting them in the process. Kroenke, a Missouri native, shrouded his intentions under a thinly veiled guise of silence, refusing to speak to St. Louis officials or the media since 2012, working tirelessly in the meantime to accelerate the development of his Inglewood stadium and NFL amusement park. What’s more, when filing his relocation application, Kroenke went to great lengths (29 pages, specifically) to lambast the economic and social capabilities of the city, affronting the state he’s from and the people who’d been lining his pockets.

I’m sure the bitterness is evident, and while there’s a cheap thrill in throwing as much vitriol I can at Kroenke, that’s really not what the larger point of this relocation has been. Stan Kroenke, and the NFL more generally, revealed in grand fashion just how callous and superficial they are in the pursuit of profits. As well known as that truth is, it often gets lost in the steep emotional investment people choose to make in their local franchises. For nearly every St. Louis Rams fan, the team was a source of civic pride and an avenue of participation in America’s most popular entertainment industry. It gave fans the greatest show on turf and their first and only Super Bowl. But for Kroenke, the team is a cash cow, one he felt wasn’t being milked hard enough.

And that’s the farce—the idea that a sports franchise means anything more than its bottom line. The NFL is a business as much as Wal-Mart is, and Kroenke has a right to maximize his profits. What’s so difficult to reconcile is that people I know—people who choose to spend money they needed on Rams tickets and apparel when they should have spent it elsewhere—have genuinely and wholeheartedly poured themselves into a team that has largely disappointed. The Rams haven’t made the playoffs since 2004, and under Kroenke’s ownership, they’ve largely been stripped of value and assets—another way to expedite their move westward. Yet, the fans remain with a dedication almost incongruent to the socio-cultural dynamics of the 21^st century.

It illustrates the biggest imbalance in sports, one in which the true catalysts—the fans and their money—are continually trivialized, capitalized and extorted by the owners and leagues they support. The NFL may spend millions on ad campaigns telling us that “football is family,” but when push comes to shove, a man who grew up in Missouri chose to scorn his family in favor of one that would pay him more.

Needless to say, I will not be supporting the Los Angeles Rams. I’ll always think fondly of Isaac Bruce and Marshall Faulk, and I sincerely hope that Todd Gurley and Robert Quinn have the same success out west that they did in St. Louis. But to support Stan Kroenke and a league that curtly and unceremoniously chose to take away something important to me and my city, leaving the door open on the way out, is unthinkable. I’ll move forward with my Blues, my Cardinals and my Blue Devils, and fortunately the last one seems sure to stay right where it is.