St. Louis Stallions
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The St. Louis Stallions was the name of a proposed
National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...
(NFL) franchise which was to have been located in
St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...
, in the early 1990s. There were two attempts to get a team with that name in St. Louis, which had been without a professional football franchise since the end of the 1987 season, when the Cardinals left the city to
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to
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.


Expansion attempt

The first attempt to get a team back in St. Louis came in 1991 as the NFL was looking to expand. Initially planning this for the 1994 season (the expansion would not actually take place until the following year), the NFL accepted bids from several cities including St. Louis for consideration. The others were
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, which like St. Louis had seen its team, the Colts, move out of town in 1984; Charlotte, which had been seeking a team since 1987 and had already seen an expansion NBA team awarded to the city;
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, which had seen several aborted attempts at relocation in recent years and had been home to the
Jacksonville Bulls The Jacksonville Bulls were a professional American football team based in Jacksonville, Florida. They were members of the United States Football League (USFL) during its final two seasons, 1984 and 1985. They played their home games in the Gat ...
of the
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during the 1980s; and Memphis, who had been trying to get an NFL franchise since at least the mid-1970s when owners of the city's
World Football League The World Football League (WFL) was an American football league that played one full season in 1974 in sports, 1974 and most of its second in 1975 in sports, 1975. Although the league's proclaimed ambition was to bring American football onto a w ...
team, the
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, attempted to force their way into the league by filing an antitrust lawsuit. St. Louis was to have placed the Stallions in
Busch Stadium Busch Stadium (also referred to informally as "New Busch Stadium" or "Busch Stadium III") is a baseball stadium located in St. Louis, Missouri. It is the home of Major League Baseball's St. Louis Cardinals. It has a seating capacity of 44,383, ...
, where the football and baseball Cardinals played, for a brief period while a new domed stadium was constructed near the city's America's Center. Although St. Louis had been considered a favorite to land a team, the NFL instead announced in 1993 that the Charlotte and Jacksonville groups were declared the winners and that the
Carolina Panthers The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South division. The t ...
and
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would begin play in 1995.


First relocation attempt

After St. Louis came up short in its expansion bid, it appeared that the city might land a new team anyway. Advertising executive James Orthwein, a St. Louis native and member of the
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, bought the
New England Patriots The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. The Patriots compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The Pa ...
in 1992 from
Victor Kiam Victor Kermit Kiam II (December 7, 1926 – May 27, 2001) was an American entrepreneur and TV spokesman for Remington Products, and the owner of the New England Patriots football team from 1988 New England Patriots season, 1988–1991 New England ...
to resolve a debt between local sportscaster Doug Vaughn and the two men. The Patriots had long been in financial malaise since original owner Billy Sullivan, who was still the team president during Kiam's ownership, had squandered all of his net worth on a series of bad investments in the mid-1980s and was forced to sell the team to Kiam and
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to
Robert Kraft Robert Kenneth Kraft (born June 5, 1941) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Kraft Group, a diversified holding company with assets in paper and packaging, sports and entertainmen ...
. Immediately upon purchase, Orthwein made it clear that he wanted to relocate the team from its
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, home to the Mound City. With the city of St. Louis having begun construction on the new domed stadium that they had discussed in their expansion bid, Orthwein was set to leave New England at the end of the 1993 season. Orthwein's plans to move the team were thwarted when Kraft refused to let Orthwein out of the long-term lease that he had secured from Kiam and Sullivan as part of his purchase of the stadium. Orthwein did not want to own the team if he could not move it, and Kraft initiated a
hostile takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (law), company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are publicly listed, in contrast t ...
that resulted in his purchase of the Patriots in 1994.


St. Louis finally gets a team

During the 1994 season Georgia Frontiere, the owner of the
Los Angeles Rams The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Greater Los Angeles area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC West, West ...
, was having trouble finding a new stadium for her team as the city of Los Angeles and the surrounding area was not willing to have taxpayer money pay for it. At the time, the Rams were playing in
Anaheim Stadium Angel Stadium is a ballpark in Anaheim, California, United States. Since its opening in 1966, it has been the home venue of the Los Angeles Angels of Major League Baseball (MLB), who relocated from Los Angeles to Anaheim following the 1965 seas ...
, to which the team had moved in 1980 from the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (also known as the Los Angeles Coliseum or L.A. Coliseum) is a multi-purpose stadium in the Exposition Park, Los Angeles, Exposition Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. Conceived as a hal ...
and which had required a massive reconstruction in order for the Rams to be able to play in what was originally only intended to be a home for the
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. Frontiere, who inherited control of the team following the death of her husband Carroll Rosenbloom in 1979, decided that relocation was the only option and initially considered Baltimore, the city where her husband originally owned the Colts before he traded ownership of the team with
Robert Irsay Robert Irsay (March 5, 1923 – January 14, 1997) was an American professional football team owner. He owned the National Football League (NFL)'s Baltimore/Indianapolis Colts franchise from 1972 until his death in 1997. He was the father of for ...
, before deciding on St. Louis (her home city) as the domed stadium that was originally intended for the Stallions franchise was nearing completion. The NFL initially was unwilling to allow the move out of Los Angeles, and in fact had voted to reject it, but acquiesced after Frontiere threatened to sue the league. Unlike the Patriots/Stallions proposal, Frontiere opted to keep the Rams name. Shortly after the Rams left, the Raiders also left to move back to Oakland, where they had last played in 1981. The
Trans World Dome The Dome at America's Center is a multi-purpose stadium used for concerts, major conventions, and sporting events in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Previously known as the Trans World Dome from 1995 to 2001 and the Edward Jones Dom ...
, which the completed stadium became known as, opened on November 12, 1995, with a game against the expansion
Carolina Panthers The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South division. The t ...
.


Departure

A major problem with St. Louis was that their fixed-roof and fully covered domed stadium was built at a time when
retractable roof A retractable roof is a roof system designed to roll back the roof of a structure so that the interior of the facility is open to the outdoors. Retractable roofs are sometimes referred to as operable roofs or retractable skylights. The term o ...
s which allowed generous daylight dissipation through the roof material were becoming the norm. The lighting within the stadium was also noted as 'warehouse-like' and unable to light the field properly, and the darker blue and gold shades the Rams adopted for their logo and uniforms in the early 2000s exacerbated the situation further. Because of its dual use as an extension of the America's Center convention center, the field continued to use
AstroTurf AstroTurf is an American subsidiary of SportGroup that produces artificial turf for pitch (sports field), playing surfaces in sports. The original AstroTurf product was a pile (textile), short-pile synthetic turf invented in 1965 by Monsanto. Si ...
, a long-outdated brand of
artificial turf Artificial turf is a surface of synthetic fibers made to look like natural grass, used in sports arenas, residential lawns and commercial applications that traditionally use grass. It is much more durable than grass and easily maintained wi ...
that was used primarily for its ability to be easily moved and rolled up into storage, even after its most recent renovations (most other stadiums had already gone to permanent
FieldTurf FieldTurf is a brand of artificial turf playing surface. It is manufactured and installed by FieldTurf Tarkett, a division of French company Tarkett. FieldTurf is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and its primary manufacturing facility i ...
or similar installations by this point; it was eventually converted to an AstroTurf-branded surface that more resembled FieldTurf, though this dark surface only increased the dreary feel of the stadium). By the early 2010s, the dome was consistently considered one of the worst stadiums in the NFL. On January 12, 2016, the NFL approved a request by
Rams In engineering, reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS)Stan Kroenke Enos Stanley Kroenke (; born July 29, 1947) is an American billionaire real estate magnate and sports team owner. He is the owner of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, which is the holding company of Arsenal of the Premier League and Arsenal Wo ...
to move the Rams back to the
Greater Los Angeles Area Greater Los Angeles is the most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. state of California, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino County and Riverside County in the east, ...
and returned to play at the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (also known as the Los Angeles Coliseum or L.A. Coliseum) is a multi-purpose stadium in the Exposition Park, Los Angeles, Exposition Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. Conceived as a hal ...
. The Rams opened and began playing at
SoFi Stadium SoFi Stadium ( ) is a domed multi-purpose stadium in Inglewood, California, U.S., a suburb of Los Angeles. SoFi occupies the former site of the Hollywood Park Racetrack and neighbors the Kia Forum and Intuit Dome. Opened in September 2020, the ...
in
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in 2020. The team's move left St. Louis with no team and no realistic prospects of gaining one in the immediate future, barring future expansion or relocation.


References

{{Los Angeles Rams History of the Los Angeles Rams New England Patriots St. Louis Rams Sports in St. Louis