The St. Louis Rams may be inching ever closer to their seemingly inevitable relocation to Los Angeles.
This summer, the Rams will hold joint training camp practices with the Dallas Cowboys at their facility in Oxnard, California.
While that does not necessarily increase the likelihood of their already likely relocation, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' recent comments on the joint offseason work may.
"With the initial focus groups and the initial [look-sees], the Rams are a very popular team in Southern California," Jones said, via Jon Machota of the Dallas Morning News. "And so one of the reasons that it was attractive to us to work against them is because they have that good flavor. It is certainly not a reach at all to say that fans remember the Los Angeles Rams, and that is not a reach. So that makes them a good partner to practice with in the Los Angeles area."
Rams owner Stan Kroenke, of course, has been pursuing an Inglewood-based stadium initiative in California which would allow him to move the Rams back to Los Angeles and out of the now-outdated Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis.
As Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com notes, these joint practices with the Cowboys could simply be another avenue for the NFL to determine the viability of the Rams' likely move.
"That could be a fancy way of saying that Jones wanted to give the Rams a chance to return to California on a trial basis in August, in the hopes of gauging local reaction," writes Florio. "And if local reaction is overwhelming positive, it becomes another data point that favors the Rams being one of the teams that returns to L.A. once the music stops on a three-way dance with only a maximum of two seats available."
Besides the Rams, the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders are also potential relocation candidates for the league. The Chargers and Raiders have developed their own stadium initiative in Carson which is reportedly behind Kroenke's plan in terms of recent advancements.
With Missouri Governor Jay Nixon's proposed plan to build a new downtown stadium for the Rams in the hopes of keeping the team in St. Louis coming under fire via a suit from lawmakers for its proposed use - or misuse - of taxpayer funds, the chances of Ram relocation seems to have increased exponentially this offseason.
