The St. Louis Stallions was the name of a proposed
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...
(NFL) franchise which was to have been located in
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...
, in the early 1990s. There were two attempts to get a team with that name in St. Louis, which had been without a professional football franchise since the end of the 1987 season, when the
Cardinals
Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to:
Animals
* Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds
**''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae
**''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...
left the city to
move
Move may refer to:
People
*Daniil Move (born 1985), a Russian auto racing driver
Brands and enterprises
* Move (company), an online real estate company
* Move (electronics store), a defunct Australian electronics retailer
* Daihatsu Move
Gov ...
to
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1 ...
.
Expansion attempt
The first attempt to get a team back in St. Louis came in 1991, when the city submitted a package to the NFL. The NFL was looking to add two teams in time for the 1994 season (later pushing this idea back one year), and St. Louis was one of the finalists. The others were
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
, which like St. Louis had seen its team, the Colts,
move out of town in 1984;
Charlotte
Charlotte ( ) is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont (United States), Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Meckl ...
, which had been seeking a team since 1987 and had already seen an expansion
NBA team awarded to the city;
Jacksonville
Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...
, which had seen several aborted attempts at relocation in recent years; and
Memphis
Memphis most commonly refers to:
* Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt
* Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city
Memphis may also refer to:
Places United States
* Memphis, Alabama
* Memphis, Florida
* Memphis, Indiana
* Memp ...
, who had been trying to get an NFL team since the folding of the
United States Football League
The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be ...
cost the city its only professional sports team, the
Memphis Showboats
The Memphis Showboats were an American football franchise in the United States Football League. They entered the league in its expansion in 1984 and made the 1985 playoffs, losing in the semifinal round to the Oakland Invaders. Perhaps the mo ...
. The NFL placed expansion teams 384 miles from each other, and Charlotte 187 miles from Atlanta.The action could be considered territorial rights infringement.
St. Louis was to have placed the Stallions in
Busch Stadium
Busch Stadium (also referred to informally as "New Busch Stadium" or "Busch Stadium III") is a baseball stadium located in St. Louis, Missouri. The stadium serves as the home of the St. Louis Cardinals, the city's Major League Baseball (MLB) f ...
, where the football and baseball Cardinals played, for a brief period while a new
domed stadium
A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...
was constructed near the city's
America's Center
America's Center is a convention center located in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, and is situated next to the Dome at America's Center, the former home of the National Football League's St. Louis Rams (now the Los Angeles Rams) and the current ...
. Although St. Louis had been considered a favorite to land a team, the NFL instead announced in 1993 that the Charlotte and Jacksonville groups were declared the winners and that the
Carolina Panthers
The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. T ...
and
Jacksonville Jaguars
The Jacksonville Jaguars are a professional American football team based in Jacksonville, Florida. The Jaguars compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division. The team play ...
would begin play in 1995.
First relocation attempt
After St. Louis came up short in its expansion bid, it appeared that the city might land a new team anyway. Advertising executive
James Orthwein
James Busch Orthwein (March 13, 1924 – August 15, 2008) was an American heir and business executive. He also owned the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL) from 1992 to 1993. After unsuccessfully attempting to relocate th ...
, a St. Louis native and member of the
Busch family
Busch may refer to:
People
*Busch (surname)
Places
*Busch (Ortsteile), a subdivision of the municipality of Odenthal, Germany
*Busch, Missouri, a ghost town in the United States
*Germán Busch Province, Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia
**Puerto B ...
, bought the
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
in 1992 from
Victor Kiam
Victor Kermit Kiam II (December 7, 1926 – May 27, 2001) was an American entrepreneur and TV spokesman for Remington Products, and the owner of the New England Patriots football team from 1988–1991. He was well known for his turnaround of Remi ...
to resolve a debt between local sportscaster Doug Vaughn and the two men. The Patriots had long been in financial malaise since original owner
Billy Sullivan, who was still the team president during Kiam's ownership, had squandered all of his net worth on a series of bad investments in the mid-1980s and was forced to sell the team to Kiam and
Foxboro Stadium
Foxboro Stadium, originally Schaefer Stadium and later Sullivan Stadium, was an outdoor stadium in the New England region of the United States, located in Foxborough, Massachusetts. It opened in 1971 and served as the home of the New England Pa ...
to
Robert Kraft
Robert Kenneth Kraft (born June 5, 1941) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Kraft Group, a diversified holding company with assets in paper and packaging, sports and entertainment, ...
.
Immediately upon purchase, Orthwein made it clear that he wanted to relocate the team from its
Foxborough, Massachusetts
Foxborough is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States, about southwest of Boston, northeast of Providence, Rhode Island and about northwest of Cape Cod. Foxborough is part of the Greater Boston area. The population was 18,618 at ...
, home to the Mound City. With the city of St. Louis having begun construction on the new domed stadium that they had discussed in their expansion bid, Orthwein was set to leave New England at the end of the 1993 season.
Orthwein's plans to move the team were thwarted when Kraft refused to let Orthwein out of the long-term lease that he had secured from Kiam and Sullivan as part of his purchase of the stadium. Orthwein did not want to own the team if he could not move it, and Kraft initiated a
hostile takeover
In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to ...
that resulted in his purchase of the Patriots in 1994.
St. Louis finally gets a team
During the 1994 season
Georgia Frontiere
Georgia Frontiere (born Violet Frances Irwin; November 21, 1927 – January 18, 2008) was an American businesswoman and entertainer. She was the majority owner and chairperson of the Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams NFL team and the most prominent fem ...
, the owner of the
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The Rams play ...
, was having trouble finding a new stadium for her team as the city of Los Angeles and the surrounding area was not willing to have taxpayer money pay for it. At the time, the Rams were playing in
Anaheim Stadium
Angel Stadium of Anaheim is a baseball stadium located in Anaheim, California. Since its opening in 1966, it has served as the home ballpark of the Los Angeles Angels of Major League Baseball (MLB), and was also the home stadium to the Los Angel ...
, to which the team had moved in 1980 from the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (also known as the L.A. Coliseum) is a multi-purpose stadium in the Exposition Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Conceived as a hallmark of civic pride, the Coliseum was commissioned in 1921 as a mem ...
and which had required a massive reconstruction in order for the Rams to be able to play in what was originally only intended to be a home for the
California Angels
The Los Angeles Angels are an American professional baseball team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Angels compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) West division. Since 1966, the team ha ...
. Frontiere, who inherited control of the team following the death of her husband
Carroll Rosenbloom
Dale Carroll Rosenbloom (March 5, 1907 – April 2, 1979) was an American businessman. He was the owner of two National Football League franchises; he was the first owner of the Baltimore Colts, and later switched teams, taking ownership of the ...
in 1979, decided that relocation was the only option and initially considered Baltimore, the city where her husband originally owned the Colts before he traded ownership of the team with
Robert Irsay
Robert Irsay (March 5, 1923 – January 14, 1997) was an American professional football team owner. He owned the National Football League's Baltimore/Indianapolis Colts franchise from 1972 until his death in 1997.
Early life and education
Irsay ...
, before deciding on St. Louis (her home city) as the domed stadium that was originally intended for the Stallions franchise was nearing completion. The NFL initially was unwilling to allow the move out of Los Angeles, and in fact had voted to reject it, but acquiesced after Frontiere threatened to sue the league. Unlike the Patriots/Stallions proposal, Frontiere opted to keep the Rams name.
Shortly after the Rams left, the
Raiders also left to move back to Oakland, where they had last played in 1981. The
Trans World Dome
The Dome at America's Center is a multi-purpose stadium used for concerts, major conventions, and sporting events in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Previously known as the Trans World Dome from 1995 to 2001 and the Edward Jones Dom ...
, which the completed stadium became known as, opened on November 12, 1995, with a game against the expansion
Carolina Panthers
The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. T ...
.
Departure
A major problem with St. Louis was that their fixed-roof and fully covered domed stadium was built at a time when
retractable roof
A retractable roof is a roof system designed to roll back the roof of a structure so that the interior of the facility is open to the outdoors. Retractable roofs are sometimes referred to as operable roofs or retractable skylights. The term op ...
s which allowed generous daylight dissipation through the roof material were becoming the norm. The lighting within the stadium was also noted as 'warehouse-like' and unable to light the field properly, and the darker blue and gold shades the Rams adopted for their logo and uniforms in the early 2000s exacerbated the situation further. Because of its dual use as an extension of the America's Center convention center, the field continued to use
AstroTurf
AstroTurf is an American subsidiary of SportGroup that produces artificial turf for playing surfaces in sports. The original AstroTurf product was a short-pile synthetic turf invented in 1965 by Monsanto. Since the early 2000s, AstroTurf has m ...
, a long-outdated brand of
artificial turf
Artificial turf is a surface of synthetic fibers made to look like natural grass. It is most often used in arenas for sports that were originally or are normally played on grass. However, it is now being used on residential lawns and commer ...
that was used primarily for its ability to be easily moved and rolled up into storage, even after its most recent renovations (most other stadiums had already gone to permanent
FieldTurf or similar installations by this point; it was eventually converted to an AstroTurf-branded surface that more resembled FieldTurf, though this dark surface only increased the dreary feel of the stadium). By the early 2010s, the dome was consistently considered one of the worst stadiums in the NFL.
On January 12, 2016, the NFL approved a request by
Rams
In engineering, RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability and safety)Stan Kroenke
Enos Stanley Kroenke (; born July 29, 1947) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the owner of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, which is the holding company of Arsenal F.C. of the Premier League and Arsenal W.F.C. of the WSL, the Los ...
to move the Rams back to the
Greater Los Angeles Area
Greater Los Angeles is the second-largest metropolitan region in the United States with a population of 18.5 million in 2021, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino Coun ...
. And returned to play at the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (also known as the L.A. Coliseum) is a multi-purpose stadium in the Exposition Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Conceived as a hallmark of civic pride, the Coliseum was commissioned in 1921 as a mem ...
. The Rams opened and began playing at
SoFi Stadium
SoFi Stadium () is a 70,240-seat sports and entertainment indoor stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, California, United States. SoFi occupies the former site of the Hollywood Park Racetrack, from Los Angeles International Airport an ...
in
Inglewood, California
Inglewood is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 107,762. It was incorporated on February 14, 1908. The city is in the South Bay ...
in 2020. The team's move left St. Louis with no team and no realistic prospects of gaining one in the immediate future, barring future expansion or relocation.
References
{{Los Angeles Rams
National Football League teams
St. Louis Rams
Sports in St. Louis