Stan Kroenke's plan to win the race to Los Angeles

For weeks, I've been wondering about something.

Mark Fabiani, Dean Spanos, and the San Diego Chargers seem to being playing a political game to try and win the race to Los Angeles with their Carson stadium project. They brought on Carmen Policy, they added Bob Iger to the project, and all along they've been toting the Oakland Raiders as the crying homeless child that the NFL can't leave out in the cold.

What I've been wondering is this: Why hasn't Stan Kroenke been playing this game? Surely, with his resources, he could be adding big names to his Inglewood stadium project. Why hasn't he been firing back counter-punches?

I came to the only reasonable conclusion. Stan Kroenke was going to use his money, his biggest and best asset, to win the race to Los Angeles.

Today, in a report filed by the St. Louis Business Journal, Inglewood Mayor James Butts confirmed that the stadium in Inglewood would be built with or without the St. Louis Rams being granted relocation to Los Angeles.

That means a couple of things.

1. The Inglewood project does not need to wait around for a decision from the NFL or the other NFL owners before they can start construction.
2. By building a better venue than the Carson stadium, and therefore stealing big events away from Carson (World Cup, Olympics, international soccer matches, etc.), Kroenke can rob the Carson stadium project of much of its value.

Due to Stan Kroenke's incredible wealth, he can build a stadium with the sole purpose of being spiteful and damning the Carson stadium's success. I'm not saying that's his sole purpose here, but at the very least it's a nice fringe benefit.

In my eyes, the NFL would not risk playing in the second most impressive new NFL-level stadium in Los Angeles. That would be like forcing the Chargers to play their current home games at Chargers Park.

This doesn't mean that the Chargers are staying in San Diego, but it does seem to paint a pretty optimistic picture for the Inglewood stadium site.