11 a.m. update:
ATLANTA • The St. Louis Rams have a new owner -- finally. Stan Kroenke was approved this morning in Atlanta by a full vote of the NFL's league membership, making him the seventh majority owner in the team's 73-year history.
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Our earlier story, published before the NFL owners' voted today to approve Stan Kroenke as owner of the Rams:
If St. Louis has learned anything in its on-again, off-again relationship with the National Football League, it's to never assume anything.
Nonetheless, league approval of Stan Kroenke's bid to purchase a controlling interest in the Rams appears to be a mere formality today in Atlanta.
Last week, the NFL's finance committee recommended unanimously that Kroenke's bid be approved by the full league membership. Kroenke, a billionaire from Columbia, Mo., already owns 40 percent of the franchise. He's attempting to purchase the 60 percent of the team for sale by Chip Rosenbloom and his sister Lucia Rodriguez.
It takes 24 yes votes from the 32 club owners for approval. The finance committee recommendation, particularly because it was unanimous, is a strong indication that Kroenke's bid will be approved.
The NFL uses a committee system to do its legwork on a variety of issues, and in many cases team owners are committee members. In this case, New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson is chairman of the finance committee.
Benson dropped a strong hint on the status of Kroenke's bid at the NFL's May owners meetings in Dallas, when he told the Post-Dispatch, "Everybody wants him to be an owner, I can tell you."
It has taken three additional months to iron out the details of what is a complicated purchase, but it looks as if Kroenke and the Rams will reach the finish line today in Atlanta. If so, there will be closure on an ownership situation that has been uncertain since longtime owner Georgia Frontiere died of breast cancer on Jan. 18, 2008.
Her children, Rosenbloom and Rodriguez, inherited Frontiere's share of the club, with Rosenbloom becoming controlling owner. Estate tax issues have helped force the sale of the team, with Rosenbloom consistently stating that his goal was to sell the team to someone whose priority was keeping the Rams in St. Louis.
It has been a long and occasionally winding road over the last 2½ years from Frontiere's death to Kroenke's impending takeover. St. Louis Blues hockey chairman Dave Checketts assembled a group to purchase the team. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh was poised to become part of that group until mounting opposition caused Checketts to drop Limbaugh.
The sale seemed almost complete just a few days after the Super Bowl in February when Shahid Khan of Urbana, Ill., an auto parts manufacturer, entered into a sales agreement with the Rams.
Two months later, Kroenke surprised just about everyone, Rosenbloom and Rodriguez included, when he exercised a right of first refusal matching the Khan sales agreement.
Kroenke's purchase is based on an overall franchise value of $750 million, 60 percent of which amounts to $450 million.
Money doesn't appear to be a problem for Kroenke. He and his wife, Ann — a Wal-Mart heiress — are worth $6 billion, according to Forbes. Kroenke has made a fortune on his own in real estate and strip mall development; many of his projects have included Wal-Mart stores.
The stickiest part for Kroenke in the sales process has been satisfying the NFL's rules on cross-ownership, which read as follows:
"No person who owns a majority interest in, or has direct or indirect operating control of an NFL member club, may own or acquire any interest in a club in another major team sport (baseball, basketball, hockey), except for a club located in: a.) his/her NFL club's home city, or b.) a non-NFL city that is not a potential NFL city."
For Kroenke, the problem was that he owns the Denver Nuggets basketball team and the Colorado Avalanche hockey team in a town where the Denver Broncos football team also does business.
Kroenke plans to either transfer ownership in the Nuggets and Avalanche to family members or sell those teams to family members in order to meet cross-ownership guidelines.
The details of Kroenke's plan have yet to be made public.
Along the way, Kroenke had to convince NFL club owners, particularly members of the finance committee, that he would not be involved in day-to-day operations of the Nuggets and Avalanche, that he would give the Rams his full attention and be active in league affairs.
Kroenke and Rosenbloom declined to comment Tuesday, preferring to wait until today's vote.
Over the years both have gained an understanding — sometimes the hard way — that in the NFL nothing is official … until it is official. This is true for Kroenke in particular.
Seventeen years ago, Kroenke emerged late as a lead investor for the St. Louis expansion team group, and watched as St. Louis went from perceived front-runner to being out in the cold when franchises were awarded to Jacksonville and Carolina in 1993.
In 1995, Kroenke was poised to become a 40 percent owner of the Rams once they moved from Southern California to St. Louis. But league owners initially voted down the Rams' move in March 1995, before reversing field a month later (after the Rams sweetened the pot financially for the NFL and threatened a lawsuit).
This time around, there have been no major bumps in Kroenke's road to purchasing the team. All of the details apparently have been ironed out to the league's satisfaction, otherwise there would be no vote today.
While the finance committee makes its report on Kroenke's bid today to the full league membership, Kroenke can comment or respond to questions as he chooses. And then the owners will vote. Barring an unexpected hitch, the entire process may take only an hour or two.
The only other items on the NFL agenda in Atlanta are discussion on extending the regular season beyond 16 games, and plans for Kickoff Week activities to open the 2010 regular season.
