Picture this: It’s the fall of 2011. The Rams are mounting a quest to repeat as NFC West Champions behind reigning MVP Marc Bulger and converted wide-receiver Chase Daniel. Running back Stephen Jackson is making a push to pass Eric Dickerson’s franchise record for rushing yards in a season.

In the middle of a crucial Monday night contest against the rival Seattle Seahawks, comes a commercial for “Proposition D.”

“The Rams have given their all to St. Louis,” says team spokesman Kurt Warner, now a special assistant to the general manager. “Now it’s St. Louis’ turn to give back.”

Voters are told that Prop. D, as in Dome, will authorize a half-cent tax on hotel rooms to fund $150 million in improvements to the Rams’ stadium — improvements that, if they are not made, could mean the return of the team to California.

Sound far-fetched? Maybe not.

The scuttlebutt about the Rams shopping the team around might be premature, but it seems increasingly likely that civic leaders will, once again, find themselves in a fight for their football team.

The Rams are tied to the Edward Jones Dome, built with over $300 million in tax dollars, until at least 2015. After that, they can leave the dome if the facilities are not among the “top tier” of NFL stadiums.

The problem for St. Louis football fans is that, as covered recently by the Business Journal, officials don’t know where they are going to get the cash to make the Dome one of the league’s best by 2015.

The baseball Cardinals, faced with a similar problem around 2001 — a stadium that would need tens of millions in upgrades to attain elite status — just decided to build a new park.

Of course, for the Cardinals, who have been here more than a century, moving away was never really an option.

The Rams, however, don’t have that same local connection.

Former Big Red football star Dan Dierdorf, now chairman of the Convention and Visitors Commission, told sports scribe Bill Coats for today’s paper that it might take a team team effort from the city’s civic and political players to keep the Rams in St. Louis.

“The dome is going to be 20 years old. So, are we talking about hundreds of millions of dollars to update the dome, or are we talking about a brand-new stadium?” Dierdorf said. “There needs to be a dialogue involving the business community, the political community and the sports community. Everyone has to start talking about, what are we going to do to make sure that the Rams are here through the end of the lease?”

It seems that Dierdorf is laying the seeds for some sort of regional tax initiative that would pay for massive improvements to the Dome, or fund a new stadium entirely. Hospitality taxes are always popular because, well, tourists don’t vote — at least not here.

Either way, the sale rumors may have sparked the beginnings of a potentially intense political fight that would rehash the always thorny issue of public-funding for sports stadiums.

Could make the next few football seasons pretty interesting — on and off the field.

Will this be the Rams home after 2015?