As the NFL rockets toward filling the 20-year vacancy in Los Angeles, the mayor of one of the two towns in contention to host one or more teams has backed off his “we will build it even if they don’t come” vow.
Via Chris Hrabe of KMOX in St. Louis, Inglewood Mayor James Butts said Tuesday that it’s not a certainty the stadium proposed by Rams owner Stan Kroenke will be built even if an NFL team (like Kroenke’s Rams) won’t be playing there.
Amazingly, Butts had not previously addressed an Inglewood Today story from Sunday asserting that the stadium would be built regardless of whether the league agrees to put a team there. On Tuesday, Butts said that Inglewood Today mistakenly assumed that the stadium would be built, no matter what.
After the St. Louis Business Journal and then others picked up on the story and trumpeted Inglewood’s (and in turn Kroenke’s) defiant stance, it was time for damage control. The report came off as an attempt by Kroenke to force his way to 24 votes at next week’s meeting, and it’s the kind of aggressive stance that could have boomeranged on Inglewood.
So Butts had no choice but to backpedal, even if Inglewood Today didn’t make a mistake.