The cauldron that has been on a simmer for the past few months has finally started to begin to boil over.  There had been rumors about the possibility of Rush Limbaugh being interested in purchasing some of the St. Louis Rams and it finally exploded when it came to light that Limbaugh had joined the Dave Checketts group to help purchase the franchise.  As expected it has sent the Rams sale from well out of the limelight of most anyone involved in the NFL into being the most talked about topic in the early stages of this week.  The whole thing has reaching the point of being laughable.


When I first brought up the subject of Rush Limbaugh becoming an owner in June on Examiner.com I knew that there would be some who would be very adamant that he should or should not be the owner but I never expected the response I received with that article.  The e-mail's and comments, pro and con, were very polarizing.  When that happened in June I knew that if this ever got halfway serious this would be something that would take over the NFL/Talk Radio debate.  It is now happening.


Now that word is out that Limbaugh and Checketts are supposedly partnering up for the sale it has everyone up in arms.  You have DeMaurice Smith of the NFLPA actively encouraging players to speak out against Limbaugh.  You have NFL players swearing that they will never play for the Rams if he becomes any part of ownership.  You have Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton already throwing grenades at NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.  You now have Indianapolis Colts Owner Jim Irsay vowing to never vote for any ownership group that included Limbaugh.  The media circus is on full tilt.  What is funny to me about all of this is that we are still very far away in the process from ever getting Limbaugh and the Checketts group up for a vote in front of NFL owners.  There are multiple groups with multiple interests who are probably ahead of the Checketts group to buy the Rams and everyone is already hyperventilating.  Amusing.


There are a number of things I don't understand about this though from a business perspective.  First, as Howard Balzer brought up on Insidestl.com, why in the world would Dave Checketts want to bring in someone like Limbaugh onto his group?  Checketts is very PR savvy, he had to know this would cause a firestorm.  My suspicion is twofold.  First as I stated in an article back in June, the Checketts group probably does not have deep enough pockets for the Rams.  They need someone with a lot of cash to front them to make a deal.  Limbaugh fits that mold.  They have deep pockets but not NFL sized deep pockets.  Second, is it possible that Checketts is trying to leverage the Limbaugh backing into someone else coming forward and saying that I will put money into this group so that Limbaugh is not a part of the NFL?  That is probably a little nutty of a conspiracy theory, but it might be plausible.  If nothing else it has gotten the attention of the NFL that Checketts wants into the NFL ownership game.


The second thing I don't understand about the whole Limbaugh thing is did Limbaugh not expect there to be some resistance to becoming an NFL owner?  As I have stated before, he is a very successful business man and he has a lot of traits you would want as the Rams next owner, including keeping the team here in St. Louis.  But Limbaugh could not actually believe that he would receive no resistance could he?  Jason Whitlock even goes as far on Foxsports.com to say that Limbaugh is just doing this for effect and nothing else.  Whitlock sometimes lives on the edge of reasonability so for him to question Limbaugh's motives are not surprising.  My belief is Limbaugh is like most of us, in that we would all love to own a sports team.  The difference is he has the means to make an attempt to do it.  I believe that Limbaugh honestly wants to have an NFL team and make it a winner.  I don't believe for a second that he is just doing this to get back at the NFL or to become the center of a media circus.  But if he did he is more of a master of the media then I ever believed he was.  I just can't believe that Limbaugh thought he could go under the radar on this one.


The one piece of news that did come out about the Rams ownership situation at the NFL Owner Meetings is that the Rams possible sale was discussed.  There are still claims that the Rams might not even be up for sale, which I think we all know are false.  If they weren't going to be sold then why were they even a topic of discussion at this point at ownership meetings.  My hope remains that Stan Kroenke winds up being the owner but we will see how the process plays out over the next year.


The one thing that we can all agree on at this point is the circus that is going on off the field has certainly been more entertaining then the situation that has been going on every Sunday afternoon thus far.



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