The Los Angeles Times reports:

NFL owners voted 30-2 to allow the St. Louis Rams to move to Los Angeles for the 2016 season and to give the San Diego Chargers a one-year option to join the Rams in Inglewood.

The Rams’ home will ultimately be on the site of the old Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood in what will be the league’s biggest stadium by square feet, a low-slung, glass-roofed football palace with a projected opening in 2019 and a price tag that could approach $3 billion.

“We realized this was our opportunity,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said.

Goodell, while pointing out the Rams are returning to their former home market, also predicted the Inglewood stadium would change “not just NFL stadiums and NFL complexes but sports complexes around the world.”

The historic vote in a fourth-floor conference room at a suburban hotel left open the possibility of the Chargers or Oakland Raiders sharing the Inglewood stadium.

The league will also give the Chargers and the Raiders each $100 million to put toward new stadiums if they stay in their current home markets. No public money will be used to build the Inglewood stadium.

If the Chargers do not exercise their right to move to Inglewood by Jan. 15, 2017, the Raiders will have a one-year option to join the Rams.

Rams owner Stan Kroenke called the decision to leave St. Louis “bittersweet.”

The Times’ Bill Plaschke comes off as less than totally happy about the Rams’ return to L.A.:

The sports landscape around here has changed dramatically in the last two decades, and there are some things you should know.

First, we didn’t ask you to come back. Oh, we may have whined occasionally during Super Bowl weeks, but we didn’t hold giant rallies or send emotional letters or really miss you that much. We play fantasy football, we watch DirecTV, we drive to Las Vegas for a three-team parlay. We’ve had our fill of the NFL without actually having a team.

Live football? We’ve fallen in love all over again with the pro-style programs at USC and UCLA, just check attendance figures.

Sundays? We’ve done just fine watching the Dodgers on Sunday afternoons in the fall and the Lakers on Sunday nights in the winter.

Second, we’re not paying for you to come back. Every place else you’ve gone, the grateful locals have slipped you a few bucks to show up, but not here, not even close, which is probably why it took 21 years for you to return.

We didn’t pry open civic pocketbooks or agree to any special taxes like some of those other smaller towns. We’re sophisticated enough to understand that you’re not a hospital or firehouse, that billionaires shouldn’t need handouts to bankroll their pigskin parties.

So understand first that you’re here because you want to be here and because you think you can make money here, not because anybody was dying to see you again. Consider yourself lucky to be back on our turf. And while you’re here, you’ll have to play by our three simple rules:

You must win. You must entertain. You must do both with the sort of decency and integrity that makes us feel comfortable enduring long lines of traffic, long lines at bathrooms, and mosh pits in parking lots for a chance to watch you play.We’ve done that at Dodger Stadium and the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum, and we’ll do that for you. But you have to earn it.

You must learn from Frank McCourt. The former Dodgers owner tried to cheat us and we ran him out of town.

You must learn from Donald Sterling. The former Clippers owner embarrassed us so we ignored him for years, until the NBAfinally ran him out of town.

The NFL has made plenty of money off a tribal mentality among its fans, but we don’t think like that. Sports is not our obligation, it’s our entertainment, and when the fun stops, we stop showing up. You lose, we’re gone. You take us for granted, we’re gone.

We don’t owe you cheers — even Kobe Bryant has been booed here. We don’t owe you unconditional love — even with three consecutive division titles, the Dodgers brand has been splintered by an ownership group that refuses to fix a contact that has left more than half their fans unable to watch on television.

Watching the NFL march back through our door is like watching the return of a quiet, beloved relative who left home to become rich and famous. Now that he’s back and wants everyone to join his party, well, hmmm.

When the Rams left town, they were viewed as a sweet neighborhood operation whose players weren’t too proud to participate in an infamously corny music video — “Let’s Ram It!” — and whose most ardent fans wore watermelons on their heads. But these Rams are coming back as an ATM for the reticent Stan Kroenke, and are a team that hasn’t made the playoffs in 11 years.

The Rams’ evolution has mirrored that of its league. The NFL has become the biggest and coldest of businesses, run by owners who have trivialized domestic abuse, covered up the effect of concussions, and mishandled legitimate cheating allegations against its most celebrated player, all in the last couple of seasons.

But there is much potential here, because the NFL is also about community. Just ask those purple-bundled fans sitting in below-zero temperatures in Minnesota last weekend, or the roaring sea of orange that can be found in Denver this weekend, or the thousands of screaming “12s” who show up all season in Seattle.

The NFL has become a shared experience like none other in sports, with a unique ability to connect even the most diverse neighborhoods in a weekly experience that for its most ardent fans has become sacred habit. Because it is as powerful on television as it is in person, because it owns every Sunday between September and February, and because its players represent helmeted superheroes unlike those found in any other league, the NFL owns the sports landscape in nearly every community it exists.

At least, everywhere else. And maybe here one day. But it’s not going to be easy.

The Rams and Chargers can’t just untie a bag of footballs, roll them across the Coliseum floor, and expect everyone to bow and pay $150 for the privilege.

The Lakers and Dodgers run this joint, and college football teams are giants, and nobody wins like the Kings, and nobody has more drama than the Clippers, and in 21 years Los Angeles has become arguably the nation’s most interesting sports town — without the national pastime’s help.

Welcome back, NFL. Now make us glad we missed you.

Next up on the relocation clock is either the Chargers, which moved from L.A. to San Diego in their second year of existence, or the Raiders, who moved from Oakland to L.A. in 1982 and from L.A. to Oakland in 1995. There’s also the Jacksonville Jaguars, whose owner has denied rumors of moving to St. Louis and London.

The San Diego Union Tribune’s Kevin Acee writes:

Chargers chairman Dean Spanos has the offer of an additional $100 million to help his stadium effort in San Diego that he didn’t have before Tuesday. He also has the fallback – or is it the first option? – of playing in a brand new stadium in Los Angeles in three years.

“I don’t want to mislead anybody or say anything that would not be correct,” Spanos said after leaving a press conference in which the decision was announced. “… In the next several weeks or so I am going to sit down and look at my options and make the decision in the near future.”

Yes, non-committal would be the most accurate way to describe Spanos’ commitment to engaging in stadium negotiations in San Diego.

However, the team has for months been quietly working on the possibility they would have to exercise such a Plan B in San Diego. Should they choose to try to stay, the Chargers would fund a citizens’ initiative with an eye toward a November ballot measure. The decision would have to be made in the next month. The language of a citizens’ initiative has to be final (with the same language that will appear on the ballot), and Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani said a signature drive would need to begin in March.

This was, Spanos has maintained all along, about having options.
“I have created that situation,” he said Tuesday.

Multiple owners said it was Spanos’ decision to maintain the San Diego option rather than join Kroenke immediately. However, too much should not be read into that. As one owne explained, there needed to be more exploration done by the Chargers on the partnership with the Rams.

The Chargers have until Jan. 17, 2017, to negotiate a deal with Kroenke to share his stadium in Inglewood before the rights to those negotiations would move to the Raiders.

Ostensibly, the Chargers have a year to get a deal done in San Diego. …

The league and the Rams have been working on the framework of a partnership agreement. The Chargers contingent met multiple times Tuesday with the league’s finance committee and on Wednesday will meet with league staff to go over the potential Inglewood deal. It is also believed Spanos and Kroenke will meet.

None of the three teams that were seeking to move to L.A. wanted to be the second team to arrive, and that will be among the Chargers’ considerations in the coming weeks. They may also commission polling to gauge how conditional approval to move would affect their chances at a successful campaign in San Diego. The team has long pointed to polling that showed a lack of support for a measure calling for public help building a stadium. …

Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said it was “unlikely” a second team will play in Los Angeles in 2016. However, regardless of whether the Chargers try for an election in San Diego, two owners said on the condition of anonymity they believe the Chargers would ultimately end up in Los Angeles.

Said San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York, whose team last year opened the first NFL stadium in California in almost a half-century years, largely with private money: “I think Dean genuinely wants to stay. He knows it will be an uphill battle.”

Up the state of California from both San Diego and L.A. is Oakland, whose Tribune editorializes:

With three teams vying to relocate to Los Angeles, NFL owners accepted the St. Louis Rams bid and offered the San Diego Chargers a one-year option to join. The Raiders were frozen out, told they could go only if the Chargers decide not to.

However, the NFL owners offered Davis a consolation prize: $100 million to help finance a new stadium in Oakland. It’s a nice parting gift, but it won’t bridge the funding gap he faces if he wants a new facility.

He’s essentially back to square one but without a viable threat of moving to Southern California. That means it’s time for him to stop trying to squeeze East Bay taxpayers for a subsidy and find another source.

It’s time for him to recognize what a good thing he has going here. The fans have been incredibly loyal despite his late father’s traitorous 13-season move to Los Angeles. The taxpayers continue to fork over money for the Coliseum renovations Al Davis required two decades ago as a condition of the team’s return.

And, despite all the grumbling now from the Raiders, the Coliseum location is superb, sandwiched between the BART station and the Nimitz Freeway and closer to San Francisco than the 49ers new stadium.

Mark Davis can keep threatening to move, perhaps filling the void in St. Louis or his latest rumored alternative, San Antonio. But that means building a fan base from scratch. Some of the Raider Nation followed him to Los Angeles three decades ago, but flights to Missouri and Texas will never be as quick, cheap or frequent.

He can look across the bay for a deal with the 49ers to share Levi’s Stadium, but it’s unlikely there’s enough room in the facility for both team owners’ egos.

Or he can talk seriously about the current Oakland site. Davis might need to find an investor to help him out. Or he could look at renovating, rather than rebuilding, the existing facility, which would be a good and cheaper option.

Meanwhile, Oakland has two teams to accommodate. The A’s, after the Supreme Court scuttled its San Jose bid, are seriously exploring options in their home city.

There’s plenty of room for the Raiders, too. And no one is talking about one stadium for the two teams again. But Davis will have to abandon his fantasy that he will be given control of the entire Coliseum site.

He’s welcome to stay. But he’s going to have to pay his own costs.

It occurs to me that instead of trying for a smooth writing transition here, a chronology of every team and city involved might be more efficient, beginning with …
1920: American Professional Football Association forms, including the Chicago Cardinals. APFA changes name to National Football League in 1922.
1936: American Football League forms, including the Cleveland Rams.
1937: Cleveland Rams move into NFL.
1946: Rams move from Cleveland to Los Angeles after winning 1945 NFL title. All-America Football Conference forms, including the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts.
1950: AAFC dissolves, with three teams, including the Browns and Colts, moving into the NFL. AAFC’s Los Angeles Dons merge with Rams. Colts dissolve after 1950 season.
1952: Dallas Texans form, but go bankrupt during the season.
1953: Dallas Texans move to Baltimore and become the Colts.
1960: American Football League forms, including the Los Angeles Chargers, Houston Oilers and Oakland Raiders. Chicago Cardinals move to St. Louis.
1961: Los Angeles Chargers move to San Diego.
1970: AFL and NFL merge, with Baltimore Colts and Cleveland Browns moving into the Amerian Football Conference with the 10 former AFL teams.
1972: Owners of Baltimore Colts and Los Angeles Rams swap franchises.
1980: Los Angeles Rams move to Anaheim.
1982: Oakland Raiders move to Los Angeles.
1984: Baltimore Colts move to Indianapolis.
1988: St. Louis Cardinals move to Phoenix. (Name changed to Arizona Cardinals in 1994.)
1995: Rams move from Los Angeles to St. Louis. Raiders move from L.A. back to Oakland.
1996: Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore and become the Ravens.
1997: Houston Oilers move to Memphis, moving to Nashville one year later and becoming the Tennessee Titans one year after that.
1999: New Cleveland Browns join NFL.
2002: Houston Texans formed.

This probably reads like the New Testament’s begats, or looks like a game of whackamole. What should be obvious is that the NFL abhors a vacuum, which in this case was L.A. after the Rams and Raiders left the same year.

The vacuum now is St. Louis, whose Post–Dispatch’s Jeff Gordon writes:

Our city’s sad pro football history got another painful chapter. We lost the football Cardinals to Arizona after their mostly inept run under the Bidwill family.

And now we’re losing the Rams after their mostly inept run under former showgirl Georgia Frontiere and her partner/successor, Silent Stan. What did one city do to deserve so much incompetence? Is St. Louis cursed as a football town?

Is it time to move on from the gridiron and pursue something new, like Major League Soccer?

In fairness to the Bidwill family, it did move the Cardinals from Chicago. And Frontiere moved the Rams from Los Angeles which — if we’re being totally honest here — is the rightful home for that franchise.

When a city steals a team, turnabout becomes fair play. That is why St. Louis so badly wanted an expansion team to start fresh. The Stallions would have been ours, for better or worse.

Still, it’s tough to lose teams after supporting through thick and mostly thin. Twice fans made an emotional investment in a franchise and twice they were jilted through no fault of their own.

Bill Bidwill was a bad owner here and in Arizona. The Cardinals only gained traction in the Valley of the Sun after Michael Bidwill replaced his hapless father as the franchise’s point man.

Kroenke was a bad owner, too, and there was no such relief from his regime in St. Louis. His son was busy in Colorado overseeing also-ran teams there. Stan took the reigns of a losing team and kept it on its sub-.500 path, against all odds.

Along the way he did nothing to revitalize support for the franchise. His team president, holdover Kevin Demoff, served as the Architect of Doom.

As the losses eroded and the franchise’s future became more uncertain, attendance plunged at the Concrete Circle of Death. That was totally understandable, as other owners saw. Intentionally or unintentionally, Kroenke poisoned this market.

The league-wide ill regard for Kroenke was evident in his struggle to move West. This shouldn’t have been so difficult for him. Remember, he moved boldly to solve the NFL’s decades-long LA problem.

He bought land in Southern California, a breakthrough move. He partnered with another developer to design a massive multi-use project that included a privately financed state-of-the-art stadium. He greased the political wheels in Inglewood to make sure the locals were on board.

Kroenke and his partners had everything needed to bring the NFL back to LA: The team, the land, the plan and billions of dollars to invest.

And still he met resistance. Amazing! All he had to do was co-opt San Diego Chargers owner Dean Spanos as the stadium’s second tenant and this was a done deal.

Understandably, Spanos wanted no part of Kroenke. He sought an alternative solution in Carson, Calif., and partnered with the Oakland Raiders in the process.

Playing from behind, those teams and that stadium gained significant support from owners, including five of the six on the committee studying LA opportunities.

Despite Carson’s support from owners who studied the issues most closely, the Inglewood proposal still had more votes as the meetings neared. So key owners and NFL executives tried to get Kroenke and Spanos together, working to broker a more favorable deal for the Chargers.

That didn’t happen until push came to shove at the end after one round of voting. These two antagonists needed significant third-party assistance to start finding common ground.

The ownership divide spoke volumes about Kroenke’s standing with fellow owners. NFL leaders hoped to come up with a Grand Compromise before the owners met in Houston.

But with commissioner Roger Goodell providing his trademark strong leadership, no resolution emerged from meetings last week.

Lobbying continued from both sides, with Spanos leading the charge toward the Carson project (with Raiders owner Mark Davis in tow, bowl cut and all) and Kroenke pushing his Inglewood plan, where groundwork for the development is already underway.

As the Houston meeting neared, the Inglewood initiative gained momentum. Then came the presentations and more chit-chat among the millionaires and billionaires who own teams.

When it came time to vote, Kroenke still didn’t get the number he needed to move forward. But he got 20 votes, just four short, and that gave him a commanding edge on the Spanos/Carson proposal.

That put the owners on the clock to bridge the gap and solve the problem. Ultimately they did, jobbing St. Louis in the process while rewarding the Raiders with a nice participation bonus.

The NFL made up the relocation process as it went along, but that is a Goodell trademark.

Now Dave Peacock and Co. have a stadium plan with no tenant. St. Louis barely cobbled together the stadium financing it had — failing to satisfy the NFL in the process — and now the city will encounter bidding wars if it tries to get back in the game.

Already there is noise about the Raiders playing Oakland off San Antonio and the STL. Oh, boy.