'Play Dunce': A Look Inside How Stan Kroenke Moved Rams to Los Angeles

A St. Louis Post Dispatch report unveiled legal documents on the Rams move to Los Angeles.

Author:
Connor Zimmerlee
Publish date:
May 14, 2022 4:58 PM EDT

It is no secret that the people of Los Angeles are happy to finally have the Rams back in town after a two-decade absence. On top of that, they finally got to celebrate a championship as the Rams would win Super Bowl LVI.

However, how Los Angeles got their team back is not such a great story when you look below the surface, according to a report from The St. Louis Post Dispatch.

The paper, which made public legal records the league sought to expunge, paints a picture of what went down to help get the Rams to Los Angeles as something at least a bit dishonest.

While this was all rather public knowledge, and while we know the NFL's hunger for revenue, the alleged lengths commissioner Roger Goodell and owner Stan Kroenke went to leave St. Louis is understandably bothersome to fans in that city.

From Kroenke to Goodell and with several people up and down the ladder of both the Rams and NFL, they all lied from the jump about the intentions for Kroenke's purchase of Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood, where SoFi Stadium would eventually be built.

Stan Kroenke raising the Super Bowl trophy.

Roger Goodell watches as Stan Kroenke raises the Super Bowl trophy.

Among the allegations: Kroenke wanted to keep his intentions for the SoCal land he purchased a secret, something that Goodell and the league were reportedly happy to oblige.

“We’re going to try very hard to stay under the radar screen and nobody will know we bought it,” Kroenke is said to have told Goodell after buying the land in Inglewood. “We’ll stay hidden, which is what we want, for as long as we can.”

It is alleged that Kroenke was not the only individual in the Rams organization to put on the masquerade of the team's intention to remain in St. Louis, though, as Rams COO Kevin Demoff pushed the same narrative within the organization.

“Our focus will remain 100% on putting the best team on the field for St. Louis in 2014 and beyond,” he wrote in an email to team employees after a story broke that Kroenke planned to move the Rams to his new property in L.A.

How did the NFL play coy about all of this? The league seemingly did not ask Kroenke what his intentions were, so it was able to retain plausible deniability once the news broke that the team was moving to Los Angeles.

Former NFL executive Eric Grubman made the suggestion that if they did not ask Kroenke directly then no blame or wrongdoing could be accused as a result.

“If we do, it is harder to play dunce,” Grubman wrote in an email in January 2014. “If we don’t we will not have his side.”

Ultimately, the Rams moved to Los Angeles under shady pretenses, burning any bridges they might have left in St. Louis as a result. While they did win a Super Bowl, there is no denying the move will leave a sour taste in the mouth of NFL fans for years to come.