11/21/24
January 18, 2008
Rams owner dies after lengthy illness: After a long fight with breast cancer, Rams owner Georgia Frontiere died Friday in Los Angeles.
May she rest in peace, despite disagreements over the relocation. I do not want to sound wierd, but what is the future of the franchise without Frontiere? is it in STL? Is it in Ed Jones Dome, if in the Gateway City?
posted by SFValley_Dude at 09:15 PM on January 18, 2008
Did she confess to having her husband killed so she could own the team to begin with?? Conspiracy theories abound about that whole thing.
posted by jknemo at 10:58 PM on January 18, 2008
My sympathies to her family. John Shaw is a doofus and was soundly boo'd at the Faulk jersey retirement ceremony. The Ram's will be heading back to L.A. at the first opportunity is my guess. The "ED" is badly in need of repairs.
posted by budman13 at 11:05 PM on January 18, 2008
Being from St Louis originally, I would surmise that the Rams are staying put. Unlike LA fans, the St Louis fans actually attend the home games regularly. It is difficult to get tickets to a Rams game due to the incredible number of personal seat licenses they sold when they moved to St Louis. There are only about 18,000 seats in the EJD that aren't already "presold". Here they be...Thanks Georgia..St louis owes you irregardless of the rumors and history
posted by knowssome at 02:16 AM on January 19, 2008
Anyone who thinks The Rams should move back to L.A. is offering up an ignorant opinion by one who never lived in Los Angeles during The Ram's last ten years there. I lived there up until I turned 30, only a few years before they left L.A. for St. Louis. Support? They had hardly any, even though they were the only NFL team in town. L.A. is not an NFL city; why do you think they have had no team for years? When you make the playoffs and the next year can only draw about 30,000 for your home opener, it's time to get out. L.A. folks are more concerned with their Mercedes, music and show business, The Dodgers and The Lakers. Football ain't glitzy enough for L.A.!!
posted by robslob at 08:50 AM on January 19, 2008
Frontiere would be a great subject for a business book, given how she inherited the team unexpectedly in 1979 upon husband Carroll Rosenbloom's death and led a successful relocation and Super Bowl win. When she took over, I think her only business experience was studying the subject at Pepperdine University and working as a secretary for several years. If I recall correctly, she was the subject of a lot of derision when she took over. A lot of people expected her to fail.
posted by rcade at 09:12 AM on January 19, 2008
Forget all the rumors and crap. Like Dick Vermeil said, she (along with Mrs. Halas) were the Queens of the NFL. Rest in peace.
posted by dyams at 09:20 AM on January 19, 2008
Unlike LA fans, the St Louis fans actually attend the home games regularly. It is difficult to get tickets to a Rams game due to the incredible number of personal seat licenses they sold when they moved to St Louis. There are only about 18,000 seats in the EJD that aren't already "presold". Here they be...Thanks Georgia..St louis owes you irregardless of the rumors and history That was the case at one time but it's no longer accurate. We aren't selling out on a consistent basis unless the out of town fans (like Greenbay did this year) are buying up the rest of the tickets. There were more Greenbay fans at our home game than Ram's fans. It has been eluded to on more than one occassion by John Shaw that her son's who have no interest in running a team will in all likelihood sell the team. Stan Koenke (Wal-Mart) doesn't appear willing to step up and become the majority owner. Will the Ram's move? Hell I don't know but as I said before, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. St. Louis will tolerate a lot but as we did with Dollar Bill Bidwell there will come a time when bad drafts, bad coaches and players who are lazy wads will be the demise of this team. Also as I stated before the Rams are no longer happy with the condition of the Edward Jone's Dome and since the Cardinals had such a hard time getting the new Busch Stadium built we could have a repeat of what happened when Bidwell demanded a new stadium.
posted by budman13 at 12:29 PM on January 19, 2008
Anyone who thinks The Rams should move back to L.A. is offering up an ignorant opinion by one who never lived in Los Angeles during The Ram's last ten years there. Also, I never said that the Rams should move back to L.A.. I said that it wouldn't surprise me. Big difference.
posted by budman13 at 12:47 PM on January 19, 2008
I hope they will move back. They were abused because of the Raiders. They are now gone.
posted by SFValley_Dude at 01:39 PM on January 19, 2008
Here's another link to the article. The first one was removed.
posted by BoKnows at 03:08 PM on January 19, 2008
Unlike LA fans, the St Louis fans actually attend the home games regularly. Please give me a break with the stupid LA stereotypes. The Dodgers average 3 million a year and USC and UCLA football thrive in L.A. I do not want to trash the dead on a public forum but I will say that she and Shaw did everything they could to alienate L.A. fans so they could make a boatload of money moving to St. Louis (I believe it was a 20 million dollar relocation fee she pocketed). In fact, I believe that she was inspiration for the fictional Cleveland Indian owner in "Major League." I'm not a fan of hers and I never will be. Football ain't glitzy enough for L.A.!! Tell that to Pete Carroll and the trojans or even the UCLA football team. You want to know why there's not a team here? Because the NFL wants us to spend millions of tax dollars to fund a NFL team's move. Most people would rather spend it on our woefully underfunded public school system or something similar. There are tons of NFL fans in L.A. You can go to hundreds of sports bars in the L.A. area any NFL weekend and find people rooting for their teams. But unlike many smaller cities, we don't feel the need to bribe the NFL to come here.
posted by cjets at 03:20 PM on January 19, 2008
The Rams aren't goin back to LA anytime soon. LA has Kobe and the Lakers. Although it was pitiful that there were more tickets sold at home to the other teams fans rather than our own, why would the Rams move? All they need to do is fire the head coach and get another quarterback, Marc Bulger holds onto the ball for too long. The defense played better this past year than the offense. What the Rams should do is hire Jason Garret of the Cowboys next year. Getting back to Georgia, she had some guts being an NFL owner cuz all the other owners were men. While reading the story I picked up that Georgia Frontiere was a good person. She lived a long life and did a very good thing bringing the Rams to the STL.
posted by Scars at 03:24 PM on January 19, 2008
In fact, I believe that she was inspiration for the fictional Cleveland Indian owner in "Major League." The movie was released in 1989. The Rams move was in 1995. Quite the foresight by director David S. Ward. Or maybe the movie was made because he's from Cleveland and was an Indians fan.
posted by BoKnows at 03:31 PM on January 19, 2008
hey cjets, what would youd do if you were an NFL owner? Wouldn't you move to another city if you had a chance to make more money? Exactly. And while we're talking about football, even though the USC Trojans are my favourite college team, they are still just a college team. Although right now, the Rams are in the same position right now that they were in 1995 in need of a move. If the Rams fans in Saint Louis don't want to pay tickets to home games, I'm pretty sure people in LA gladly would.
posted by Scars at 03:32 PM on January 19, 2008
The movie was released in 1989. The Rams move was in 1995. Yes, but by that time, her husband had already died under suspicious circumstances, she had fired her husband's son and she moved the team to Anaheim. I'm sure David S. Ward wrote about the Indians because he was from Cleveland. But if you reread my post, you'll see that I was only talking about the greedy female owner (remember her? The one that wanted the team to tank so she could move them from Cleveland) not the entire team. All that being said, the info I have is anecdotal so it may not be true. hey cjets, what would youd do if you were an NFL owner? Wouldn't you move to another city if you had a chance to make more money? No, I wouldn't. I think that NFL (all professional) teams should be considered a public trust and not allowed to move except under the most dire of circumstances. She screwed up in the first place by moving the team to Anaheim, which is 40 to 50 miles away from her fan base (despite what Arnie Moreno might tell you) into a decrepit stadium. And then she complained because no one wanted to come to the games. I don't see why she is any different than Bob Irsay moving the Baltimore Colts or Art Modell moving the Browns (though Browns fans did get a version of their team back).
posted by cjets at 03:47 PM on January 19, 2008
And while we're talking about football, even though the USC Trojans are my favourite college team, they are still just a college team. Yes, but I was refuting the point another poster made that LA would not support football. I think the success USC and UCLA have in continuously attracting huge crowds of fans is strong evidence that LA absolutely would support an NFL franchise.
posted by cjets at 03:50 PM on January 19, 2008
And while we're talking about football, even though the USC Trojans are my favourite college team, they are still just a college team. Yes, but I was refuting the point another poster made that LA would not support football. I think the success USC and UCLA have in continuously attracting huge crowds of fans is strong evidence that LA absolutely would support an NFL franchise. posted by cjets at 3:50 PM CST on January 19 Winning solves all problems. Put a team that has a scheme for winning (sorry to some, but the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox are the current models for such teams), fans will show up to all games and fill seats, not to mention buy team logo wear and gear.
posted by Cave_Man at 08:39 PM on January 19, 2008
All this evidence of support for UCLA and USC football convinces me of NOTHING. Actually, it's evidence of the OPPOSITE...........that there are too many other things going on in Los Angeles for anyone to care about an NFL team.
posted by robslob at 02:31 PM on January 20, 2008
“It’s difficult being a woman owner in a strictly man’s league,” Armey said. “Thank goodness for the loyalty of John Shaw. That was a key for her survival in the NFL. But she was able to handle the pressure of that situation. She had to deal with that all the time, and she dealt with it very well.” -From the article