Maybe they won't get away with it after all.
Perhaps some sort of justice will be served.
That's my immediate reaction to the news that the city, the county and the Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority are suing the National Football League over the Rams' relocation rip-job.
This isn't a reactionary lawsuit. Unlike this column, it includes no cheap shots, no bitter overtones. The lawsuit has been in the works for two years. The 52-page whopper filed Wednesday in St. Louis Circuit Court has evidence dating back to 2010.
What you will find is a clinical description of how the Rams repeatedly made a mockery of the NFL's relocation guidelines while Jerry Jones helped sell the rest of the league's owners on an exploitation that would result in a financial windfall.
You remember the relocation guidelines. They were the list of rules the NFL swore had to be met when it was pretending St. Louis stood a chance of presenting a stadium plan that settled the team's beef with a regrettable lease that never should have been signed.
In the beginning, NFL suit Eric Grubman spoke of these rules like they were chiseled into stone. But as time went on, Grubman backpedaled and the rules softened into suggestions, country club politics at its worst.
An effort to keep the team that Houston Texans owner Bob McNair once described to the Houston Chronicle as "pretty close, in my opinion, to being an attractive proposal" was lumped in with the lackluster efforts of Oakland and San Diego and canned. It was sealed with a secret ballot cast behind closed doors. And if it's up to the NFL, that would have been the end of it.
What was never explained was how the Rams and the owners who voted to approve their move successfully dodged rules that were created because a court suggested the rules needed to exist to keep this exact thing from happening.
This lawsuit picks at that scab.
It wants an answer.
Remember Rams owner Stan Kroenke saying, "I'm going to attempt to do everything that I can to keep the Rams in St. Louis." Remember Kevin Demoff, Kroenke's talking head, saying "he (Kroenke) didn't lead the charge to bring the Rams back to St. Louis to lead the charge out of St. Louis." Remember when Demoff told fans there was a "one-in-million chance" the team would move?
These are just a few of the money lines featured in the lengthy list of statements the plaintiffs claim prove the team did not engage in good-faith negotiations with St. Louis. I'm calling it Demoff's Greatest Hits for short.
The lies that ruined Demoff's credibility always looked reptilian.
But could they become legally damning?
Too early to tell.
The NFL is flush with cash and qualified counsel. Kroenke has more big wins in court than his teams do on the field.
Sure, it's a long shot.
But good for the plaintiffs for sticking up for themselves.
If this lawsuit gets any bit of money back from the league, like the more than $16 million spent on the effort to keep the Rams, it wins.
If it forces the NFL to stop making up rules as it goes along, it wins.
If it stops other cities from working in vain to keep a team, it wins.
Even if fails, it should become a thorn in the side of the professional liar, his puppet master and their accomplices.
Hopefully it becomes that and more.
Sports on 04/13/2017