Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
There's just a little bit of karmic justice at work here.
Let's not forget that for as badly as St. Louis hated Bidwell, he really really wanted to stay in St. Louis and spent years trying to make it work. He just couldn't get any traction on getting a new stadium built and as a guy who's football team wasn't profitable all that often, there really wasn't any way for him to build one himself nor was it tenable for him to just stay where he was for another 15 years. It was genuinely difficult for a team with a lousy stadium situation back then to make it work, especially if the team owner derived his income from the team, rather than many other owners who own their teams almost as a hobby.
Bidwell genuinely needed a new stadium and some help from the city of St. Louis - they told him to **** off. They called his bluff and it burned them.
It was a serious 'grass is always greener' thing. Had St. Louis not dicked around with Bidwell, the gridbirds would've been STL lifers. Instead they essentially ran him out, chased a carpetbagger and then acted surprised when new roots never took hold.
St. Louis is reaping a little of what they sowed here. It's still a shitty think for Kroenke to have done, but Kroenke never should've owned a team in St. Louis to begin with.
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Basically everything I read up on that situation from the newspaper archives is was it a bitch fest between the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. City didn't want to lose the stadium to the county. County wanted the stadium out of the city (where Riverport Amphitheater is). Basically a city vs suburbs battle that screwed both.