Stan Kroenke was the only NFL owner who could revive L.A. football

Jerry Jones, the NFL’s leading mover and shaker, sprinkled table salt on the rim of his beer can in his makeshift office at the Dallas Cowboys’ training camp in Oxnard. It was a memorable moment before he gave an important piece of advice.

“Keep your eyes on Stan Kroenke,” the colorful Cowboys owner said in his familiar Arkansas tone, leaning back in his office chair.

The trade comes to mind as the Rams celebrate the 10th anniversary of their return to Los Angeles on Monday, their bold move closing the book on the strangest chapter in this city’s sports history.

Kroenke is the owner who solved the Rubik’s Cube that once seemed impossible. He did more than return a beloved franchise that had been in Southern California for 49 seasons. He privately financed a $5 billion stadium in Inglewood and pledged to spend several times that to develop the surrounding campus and a massive Rams Village under construction in Woodland Hills.

Before all this, Jones advised me to keep Kroenke in my line of sight.

I was an NFL writer for the Times for more than a decade. I had returned to my hometown after five years in Seattle, and five more as a writer covering the Oakland Raiders.

With the Raiders, I could tell you everything about the roster, down to the third-string right guard. But that in-depth knowledge of a given team wasn’t important in Los Angeles. Here I had to establish a relationship with every owner and executive of an NFL team who might one day have something to do with a team’s return to the market. I had to know the politicians, the land planning lawyers, the heavy hitters concerned about relocation.

It was a running joke at the Super Bowl commissioner’s press conference — first Paul Tagliabue, then Roger Goodell — that I would stand up and ask a question about the NFL returning to Los Angeles. I’ve had to phrase it differently every year.

“Can you look to the future and tell me what a naming rights deal, which would be the largest in history, would mean for bringing soccer back to Los Angeles, and is it a game-changer?”

“What could happen in the next year that would make the league pursue the opportunity for a stadium in Los Angeles?

“Are you disappointed that Los Angeles didn’t make it?”

And in 2015, the year before the Rams moved: “This is the 20th year without a franchise in the nation’s second-largest market and, coincidentally, the 20th year in a row I’ve asked this question…”

“I already recognize him, Sam,” Goodell said with a laugh. “Would you like me to finish it for you?”

August 9. Dallas Cowboys Chief Operating Officer Stephen Jones, left, team owner Jerry Jones, center, and Rams owner Stan Kroenke talk before a preseason game at SoFi Stadium on August 9.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

After the Rams returned in 2016 and the Chargers a year later, I playfully asked Goodell, “When L.A. stop get NFL teams?

But what Jones said about St. Louis Rams owner Kroenke stuck with me. He said Stan was the only person with the resources and determination to make a deal here. More importantly, Kroenke had a team to move.

That was the problem with the NFL stadium derby, which lasted two decades. Everyone had their ideal location. Everyone had their own financing plan. Everyone had their beautiful renderings of places – man, I could wallpaper City Hall with those – but no one had the complete solution.

Not even close. Supposedly “laid back,” Los Angeles was full of sharp elbows, back daggers, and a relentless quest for glory. Oh, to be the hero who brought Los Angeles and the NFL together.

Billionaires have tried. The politicians tried. Studio heads and celebrities have tried. Tom Cruise (we’re talking about Mission Impossible), Magic Johnson, Garth Brooks… everyone had a project to build a stadium or attract a franchise. It was the gold rush in reverse. The people were already there and they were determined to get the bounty from them.

Los Angeles has been very valuable to the NFL without a team. We were the bogeyman. The mere threat of a team moving here caused the current city to commit public funds to a new stadium. This has happened over and over again in the league.

But there was no public money in Los Angeles and the cost of a new stadium was no longer measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, but in billions. The universe of people willing and able to finance this – and who controlled an NFL team – was tiny.

A Rams merchandise caravan sits outside the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis a day after the NFL approved the team’s move to Los Angeles on Jan. 12, 2016.

(Jeff Roberson/Associated Press)

That’s what Jones told me at our annual meeting in August, when I asked him to think about a series of topics regarding the upcoming season. Kroenke had the money and cajones to bring the Rams back, and it wasn’t fantasy football like all the other stadium projects were.

Offshoring is terrible. Owners who round up their teams and leave are forever villains in their old markets. Whether it’s Georgia Frontiere in Los Angeles, Dean Spanos in San Diego, or Stan Kroenke in St. Louis, that’s how they’re perceived.

But for the fans here, Kroenke is a hero of sorts. It was not a move but a restoration.

Imagine the Los Angeles sports landscape in a shoebox, with most of it concentrated downtown with the Lakers and Dodgers. Kroenke tilted that box and tapped his side, shifting the center of gravity to Inglewood, where the NFL would move its robust media operations and where Steve Ballmer would build Intuit Dome.

There was a deeply emotional component to the Rams’ comeback. This cuts across all demographics, but there was one common story I heard from many men ages 40 to 60: “My dad and I clashed over almost everything when I was growing up, but what we had in common was a love of the Rams.”

Fans celebrate in Inglewood after the NFL approved the team’s move in January 2016.

While it may seem like an obvious winner, putting the nation’s No. 1 league back in the No. 2 market was much more complicated than that. Los Angeles is full of people who grew up elsewhere.

“It’s the Ellis Island of NFL fans,” Howie Long once told me. “Every team is represented here.”

Additionally, fantasy football boomed when this city didn’t have a team, so many people focused more on individual players than teams. We didn’t even watch the entire games anymore, thanks to RedZone Channel.

So building a fan base is a challenge and remains so, as the Rams and Chargers can attest. This city still belongs to the Lakers and Dodgers, even as the Rams — with their wins, investments and community efforts — are beginning to turn it into a triumvirate.

Rams coach Sean McVay celebrates the team’s Super Bowl championship at the Coliseum in February 2022.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

What Kroenke has done over the past decade has far exceeded expectations. He arrived in Los Angeles with a reputation as a middling owner who would put a lukewarm product on the field. Instead, the Rams made bold moves early on, whether it was making the NFL’s biggest trade up first overall to draft quarterback Jared Goff, or the league’s first No. 1 quarterback trade to replace Goff with Matthew Stafford.

There was the jaw-dropping decision to hire Sean McVay, a trainer barely old enough to shave. And a long line of high-profile, cash-rich free agents, coupled with general manager Les Snead’s golden nugget finds.

This led to the Rams playing in two of the last seven Super Bowls and winning one on their home field. During an 18-month period, the Rams won a Lombardi Trophy and two other Kroenke franchises – the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche – also won championships.

That’s a lot of salt on the beer can. As prescient as Jerry Jones was that day in training camp, even he couldn’t have predicted this.