In yesterday’s San Diego Union-Tribune, the newspaper’s editorial board added a bit of intrigue to the NFL’s plans for relocating a team to Los Angeles. Referencing an owner’s meeting scheduled for August, the board writes speculation has arisen that the owners may vote the entire process back by one year, allowing the situations in San Diego, St. Louis, and Oakland to “percolate.”
For his part, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk isn’t entirely buying said speculation, going as far as to opine that the Union-Tribune, which has a vested interest in seeing San Diego retain an NFL team, could have simply “conjured” the news. Either way, such a delay in the process would have negative consequences for San Diego, writes Florio. A scenario could exist where the Raiders and Rams both move to L.A. and the Chargers stay in San Diego; such moves would obviously be a negative for the Chargers, as they’d have to compete financially with two teams in their area.
Albert Breer of NFL.com (Twitter link) has heard rumors of a different scenario, one where the Rams move to Los Angeles for the 2016 season, while the second spot in Inglewood remains open (for how long is not known) so that the Chargers and Raiders maintain leverage. In a second tweet, Breer says that situation could get more complicated if the city of St. Louis is able to come up with a suitable financing plan for a new stadium.
We heard on Friday that the league is exploring temporary venues in L.A. in the event that a club moves to Southern California for the 2016 season.