11 a.m. update: Stan Kroenke was unanimously approved today by NFL owners in his bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams.

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All around Rams Park on Tuesday afternoon, the conversation was about the impending transfer of power on the field — temporary as it might be — involving No.1 draft pick Sam Bradford as he continued to prepare for his first start in the NFL.

But several hundred miles away in Atlanta, the true transfer of power within this struggling franchise is about to take place, one that will resonate just as loudly, and with equal if not greater impact than Bradford's new gig as the Rams starting quarterback. Young quarterbacks might be difference makers on the field and perhaps even at the box office. But new owners — at least the really good ones — create the stimulus for the true recovery of a moribund organization.

Now that the NFL's very influential finance committee has unanimously recommended approval of Stan Kroenke's purchase bid, today's vote by the full league ownership group should sail through easily, finally placing this long-failing franchise in the hands of a man who possesses not only the passion to fix the Rams, but also the sort of massive economic clout and proven expertise to actually pull it off.

Entrance into pro football's exclusive ownership fraternity can be a difficult procedure. But Kroenke came prepared with the best possible qualifications. He is a familiar and trusted face (having been a minority owner since the Rams moved to St. Louis) and an extremely deep-pocketed one as well (estimated family net worth at nearly $6 billion). Still, the long and often undistinguished history of pro sports ownership is littered with nice guys with extremely deep pockets (not to mention a long list of bad guys too) who couldn't replace a light bulb in the ceiling of their luxury box, much less successfully run an NFL team.

History has shown us in all pro sports ownership circles that money doesn't always buy you happiness. Lots of exceedingly wealthy men have come into this fraternity and failed miserably because they either surround themselves with incompetent people who have no idea how to put together a winning product, or worse yet, they decide to take on the job themselves, armed with nothing more substantial on their business résumé to qualify them to run a football team than the fact that they watch games on Sundays.

Thankfully, Kroenke's history suggests clearly that he won't be one of those guys.

You will find that there is no Daniel Snyder in him. Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, is the patron saint of know-nothing control freaks whose egos make them insufferable to live with and whose repeated idiotic business decisions make their teams' league chronic laughing stocks.

Kroenke won't be an insufferable little Napoleon like Snyder, and chances are he won't be much like Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys' free-spending, attention-grabbing owner either.

That's not Kroenke's style. He's way too low key for that. But everything he has done as both a businessman and sports owner suggests timidity isn't his style either. As one league source told me Tuesday, he's not really sure what immediate differences Kroenke's ownership will make within Rams Park, other than perhaps the ability to pull the trigger on spur-of-the-money big deals. However, you can look toward Kroenke's track record for success as an experienced owner in other major sports leagues as the surest sign that things will be better for the Rams organization under his majority ownership.

Check the records of the teams in Denver under his ownership. The NHL Avalanche have been to the playoffs in all but two years since he bought the team in 2000, with one Stanley Cup title. His NBA Denver Nuggets have a .514 winning percentage, three division titles and seven trips to the playoffs in 10 seasons.

Those results more than suggest that Kroenke knows how to build successful professional franchises. His sports empire is littered with winning teams and winning formulas no matter what the economic rules may be. He's done it within the NBA's rules, and he's done it within the NHL's salary restrictions, and he's done it in British soccer, too, despite fear from the Brits that he would overspend foolishly (he never did).

But if there is anything that ought to concern anyone here in St. Louis about what he might do differently with the Rams, it's this: one of his closest friends and long-time trusted advisers is the 'semi-retired" former team president John Shaw.

Will that old friendship keep Shaw in the background, always lurking behind the curtain like the Wizard of Oz, silently determining how this team should be run?

If Kroenke is every bit as smart as everyone says he is, let's hope that Shaw remains in semi-retirement and as a very silent partner. Let's hope that he only serves the new owner in matters of the big-picture negotiations (stadium leases, the impending labor situation and other pressing league financial matters), but stays out of the true day-to-day business of running the organization.

In case anyone has forgotten, Shaw has been the Rams owner-by-proxy for a long time, and he has done a commendable job of making the old ownership families a lot of money with his ruthless negotiations that helped bring the Rams to St. Louis. But his management style was not good for this football organization. The fact is, the Rams won two NFC titles and one Super Bowl in spite of him. Shaw was the one who put all the wrong people in place who made bad decision after bad decision. He is the one who generated the environment of chaos that pitted Mike Martz and Jay Zygmunt against each other and wrecked the one brief successful period the Rams have experienced over the past 30 years. He was always the man in charge throughout all of those decades of errors, and oversaw the rapid descent over the last 10 years that ultimately turned this into the most abysmal franchise in the league.

Shaw's way of doing business created a lengthy failed body of work.

Let's hope Kroenke remembers that as he assumes control and begins charting the new direction of the organization.