I am voting for San Franscisco. They appear to be trying to hold the city hostage to build them a replacement for candlestick.

I think Cinnci will not end up moving. Dayton and Cinnci are sprawling together and that will make Cinnci's media market much larger and much more worth holding on to.

I wouldn't be suprised to see New Orleans go to LA either as Lousiana is a poor state. Still things are not as bad as a lot of folks think. After Katrina a lot of NO residents left, but a lot of them moved to Baton Rouge. The two cities are relatively close to each other, football crazy, and willing to drive to a game. Combined thaat is a big enough population to support an NFL team.

Jacksonville could be another team that moves. They are a smaller city.

Buffalo may go to toronto.

The Niners seem destined for Santa Clara... as in closer to the real money in Silicon Valley. You don't realize how badly Lew Wolff wants to move the Athletics to San Jose... or what the Giants did to make that their territory.

Cities will go after the Oakland Raiders... once Al Davis dies.

In the end, I doubt ANY team moves to LA. The owner will be on the hook for the stadium.

Another victim of the economy is new stadium construction. It may be a long time after completion of the NY and Dallas playgrounds before we see another. I don't what Roski has going in LA, but I doubt he can do it all privately. Usually just a lot of hot air coming out of La La Land. It looks like the Santa Clara and Fresno projects are dead in the water and San Diego and Minnesota as well. In this environment the few completed and empty facilities - Toronto and San Antonio - are the only choices for a team looking to relocate.

Toronto seems destined to be the home for the Bills once Wilson dies (he said he wants to move the team but won't do it after seeing the backlash against Modell when he moved the Browns). I wonder if Rogers passing will have an effect on a Toronto relocation.

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I wonder whether the $$$'s in Toronto can overcome the lackluster attendance at the Bills-Dolphins game or the restricted size of the stadium.

Not sure how widely publicized this is, but the St. Louis Rams have been put up for sale.

Georgia Frontiere (widow of former LA Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom) who moved the team to her original home town of St. Louis in 1995 died of breast cancer last year. She owned 60% of the team.

Stan Kroenke (married to a Wal-mart heiress) and owner of the Denver Nuggets / Colorado Avalanche / Pepsi Center (Denver) owns a 40% stake. He has the first option to buy Frontiere's 60%, however, NFL by-laws state that he cannot be majority owner of an NFL team, while owning sports franchises IN ANOTHER CITY. Kroenke has a home somewhere near Columbia, MO and specializes in site selection and real estate deals for new Wal-Mart locations. It would appear that he WON'T be exercising his right to buy the other 60%, since he would not want to have to divest the Denver sports teams.

So anyway, upon Frontiere's death, her 60% ownership state passed from her estate to the two children she had with Carroll Rosenbloom (Dale "Chip" Rosenbloom and his sistem Lucia). They apparently have no interest in being NFL owners and have chosen to "liquidate".

Upon relocating to St. Louis in 1995, the Rams organization signed a 30-year lease with the [former TWA-, now Edward Jones] Dome, which runs through the 2024 season. However, there is a clause which allows them to break the lease after 20 years (following the 2014 season) IF the facility is not among the "top 1/4 [= top 8] NFL facilities". Not clear who determines this, or how it is determined, but certainly a retractable roof is now clearly a NECESSITY for football (not sure exactly why - blimp shots I guess....). So a new owner can claim an "out" after 2014, or leverage the situation to demand reasonable upgrades to the Edward Jones Dome.

St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts claims to be assembling an investment group to make a bid for the Rosenbloom 60%.

Stay tuned....

You basically just posted what I was writing for the News section today: a Los Angeles Rams piece.

There is supposedly an outside-of-St. Louis ownership group interested in the rams. It's rumored they would want to move them to LA. Ideally though, I'd like to see the Raiders get int he way and move back to LA. Of all the expansion or relocation options, the Raiders are the clear #1 to be able to revitalize the fan base. If you recall, it was the stadium issue that made Davis leave for Oakland.

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Yeah, the Rams and Raiders both left LA in 1995.

The Rams played before sparse crowds in the "Big A" that was shared by the Angels, just before they left..
Originally that stadium had only bleachers in the outfield. The stadium was "closed in" sometime in the late 1970s (very similar to what was done at Candlestick, to add more seats, and the Rams moved from the Colisseum to the Big A.
I think the Big A was damaged somewhat during the 1994 Northridge quake. After the Rams bugged out, I believe the stadium was re-furbished (is it called Edison Park) for baseball only, and the multiple deck outfield seats may have been removed (i didn't see them in "Angels in the Outfield").

So the Colisseum only had college football tenants when the Raiders swooped down from Oakland in the mid-1980s. That was built for the 1932 Olympics and has a rather unusual seating arrangement. To accommodate a 400m running track, the end zone seats (I think at the end where the torch is) are WAY back from the back of the end zone. I think maybe Davis didn't even sell those seats. I think UCLA and USC both used to play home games there in the 1970s, but UCLA moved to the Rose Bowl long ago. I had read where the Colisseum was required to undergo some Seismic re-work and USC had requested some renovations before re-upping on their lease. No owner would want to remain in the Colisseum for the long term. The layout is poor, and there seems to be no way to add luxury suites.

Davis has tried to work out a new stadium deal in Irwindale, I think. Fell through....

As the Raiders' success waned in the mid-1990s, so did their attendance. My best friend is from LA, and says that there are so many other entertainment opportunities out there, that the NFL isn't anything special. If you're an NFL fan in LA, you may be perfectly fine just watching the game on TV, rather than bucking up for season tickets. So even if a beautiful stadium was built at taxpayer expense (the various governments are in financial distress, and nobody seems interested in whacking the tax-payers for the personal benifit of an NFL owner), the fan base remains quite questionable....
So BOTH stadium AND fan base perception are obstacles to the NFL returning to LA.

A few years ago, didn't the San Diego Chargers demand a new stadium ? The "Murph" (now Qualcomm) is over near Mission Bay, and the Padres got the city to build them a baseball only Petco Park downtoen. The Chargers stadium either fell through or was abandoned... At that point the Chargers owner (is it Spanos ?) made noise about possibly moving to LA. Nobody in LA was willing to cough up a new stadium, and the Chargers ownership probably correctly assumed that they were better off with their existing fan base in San Diego. San Diego hosted the Super Bowl in 2003, but were told they will not get another unless Qualcomm is replaced. Based on the financial distress that the Gubernator has discussed this week, one should not expect any help from the State of California.