Missouri senators are already rallying for return to St. Louis. Notice I said senators and not the mayor of St. Louis. Missouri will have lost two NFL franchises in a little over a decade.

(02-25-2026 07:47 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 02:59 PM)tf8693 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 11:46 AM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 09:36 AM)Dr Dawgma III Wrote:  While everyone thinks of the Bears-Packers as the oldest NFL rivalry, it was in fact Bears-Cardinals.

The Chicago Cardinals were the White Sox (South Side) equivalent in Chicago. So all those blue-collar fans in the SNL skits would have been Cards fans in an alternate universe. Hard to imagine!

• • • 

I'll pose this question again: if the State of Illinois loses all that NFL tax revenue, could there be a movement to build a multi-purpose dome east of St. Louis across the Illinois border? The NFL looks to have some stability for the time being, but St. Louis is an interesting case. They only lost their team because the owner wanted to move to LA; it wasn't due to lack of support or success.

It appears high ranking political officials in Missouri support the idea. So could this hypothetically open the door for Illinois to pull the ol' okie-doke if the state loses the Bears?

I don't see the NFL ever revisiting the St. Louis market again. Outside of the Greatest Show on Turf years, the Rams were in the bottom third of attendance in the late 1990's, late 2000s and early 2010s, before bottoming out before moving to Los Angeles. The St. Louis Cardinals football also never hosted an NFL playoff game, and they were restricted attendance wise playing in old Busch.

It is a baseball/hockey city, with no professional basketball or football franchise (which is different reason I remain so high on SLU as a BE candidate, as there are limited competitive alternatives in the winter; and they are getting 9/10k at their home games this year).

I don't think the NFL will expand again anytime soon. I think 32 is the sweet spot for that league. If the NFL does ever expand again, I think 36 is the next number, so they'll need to add four teams.

Where St. Louis does potentially enter the picture, however, is as follows: there are more markets at least arguably capable of supporting a NFL franchise than there are available NFL franchises. So the owner of a NFL franchise looking for a sweetheart stadium deal can shop his team around to prospective NFL markets in the hope of getting the best deal available. We're going back a few years here, but that's how the original Cleveland Browns wound up in Baltimore, and how the old Houston Oilers wound up in Nashville. And this is only my opinion, but I think it's why the Buffalo Bills got a new stadium deal done as quickly and as quietly as they did.

I think 2 teams in London, 1 team in Frankfurt, and one in Paris or perhaps Rome are probably next on the NFL's agenda. Perhaps Mexico City and Toronto, too, though those 2 don't need to happen together or even at all. 4 teams in Europe would allow for long trips every season, if you're playing 2 games there b/c your division plays their division, just play the games back to back and spend 10 days in Europe or whatever. Rio is probably on the list at some point, too.

If the NFL ever goes to Europe, it will be through the expansion process, and as you pointed out, several teams would be added at once to relieve travel issues. No existing team would be permitted to move to Europe, at least not until there were several other teams already there.

To illustrate, go back to my example about the Bills and tweak the facts slightly. Assume instead that the stadium negotiations had been somewhat rocky, and Terry Pegula had threatened to move the team to London. He would have been laughed at, you know it and I know it. But assume instead that he had threatened to move the team to St. Louis, or San Antonio, or San Diego, or Toronto (worth noting that Toronto is< 100 miles from Buffalo), and it's a completely different story.

(02-26-2026 12:16 PM)tf8693 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 07:47 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 02:59 PM)tf8693 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 11:46 AM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 09:36 AM)Dr Dawgma III Wrote:  While everyone thinks of the Bears-Packers as the oldest NFL rivalry, it was in fact Bears-Cardinals.

The Chicago Cardinals were the White Sox (South Side) equivalent in Chicago. So all those blue-collar fans in the SNL skits would have been Cards fans in an alternate universe. Hard to imagine!

• • • 

I'll pose this question again: if the State of Illinois loses all that NFL tax revenue, could there be a movement to build a multi-purpose dome east of St. Louis across the Illinois border? The NFL looks to have some stability for the time being, but St. Louis is an interesting case. They only lost their team because the owner wanted to move to LA; it wasn't due to lack of support or success.

It appears high ranking political officials in Missouri support the idea. So could this hypothetically open the door for Illinois to pull the ol' okie-doke if the state loses the Bears?

I don't see the NFL ever revisiting the St. Louis market again. Outside of the Greatest Show on Turf years, the Rams were in the bottom third of attendance in the late 1990's, late 2000s and early 2010s, before bottoming out before moving to Los Angeles. The St. Louis Cardinals football also never hosted an NFL playoff game, and they were restricted attendance wise playing in old Busch.

It is a baseball/hockey city, with no professional basketball or football franchise (which is different reason I remain so high on SLU as a BE candidate, as there are limited competitive alternatives in the winter; and they are getting 9/10k at their home games this year).

I don't think the NFL will expand again anytime soon. I think 32 is the sweet spot for that league. If the NFL does ever expand again, I think 36 is the next number, so they'll need to add four teams.

Where St. Louis does potentially enter the picture, however, is as follows: there are more markets at least arguably capable of supporting a NFL franchise than there are available NFL franchises. So the owner of a NFL franchise looking for a sweetheart stadium deal can shop his team around to prospective NFL markets in the hope of getting the best deal available. We're going back a few years here, but that's how the original Cleveland Browns wound up in Baltimore, and how the old Houston Oilers wound up in Nashville. And this is only my opinion, but I think it's why the Buffalo Bills got a new stadium deal done as quickly and as quietly as they did.

I think 2 teams in London, 1 team in Frankfurt, and one in Paris or perhaps Rome are probably next on the NFL's agenda. Perhaps Mexico City and Toronto, too, though those 2 don't need to happen together or even at all. 4 teams in Europe would allow for long trips every season, if you're playing 2 games there b/c your division plays their division, just play the games back to back and spend 10 days in Europe or whatever. Rio is probably on the list at some point, too.

If the NFL ever goes to Europe, it will be through the expansion process, and as you pointed out, several teams would be added at once to relieve travel issues. No existing team would be permitted to move to Europe, at least not until there were several other teams already there.

To illustrate, go back to my example about the Bills and tweak the facts slightly. Assume instead that the stadium negotiations had been somewhat rocky, and Terry Pegula had threatened to move the team to London. He would have been laughed at, you know it and I know it. But assume instead that he had threatened to move the team to St. Louis, or San Antonio, or San Diego, or Toronto (worth noting that Toronto is< 100 miles from Buffalo), and it's a completely different story.

Jaguars to London rumors have been swirling for years, I suspect the only thing stopping it is that the League would prefer several in Europe at once instead of just a single team.

Haven’t the Bills played a game here and there in Toronto? I seem to recall that Toronto was viewed as the likely move if Buffalo didn’t get the stadium across the finish line. Note that the Governor of NY was heavily involved in that deal, she’s no fool. Unlike Illinois politicians, she was wisely determined to keep the Bills in-State. A great way to mobilize opposition against yourself is to run an NFL team out of town.

FWIW, Toronto seems like a complete no brainer for the NFL. $7m people and the “Canadian NFL team”? That’s a license to print money!

(02-26-2026 12:35 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(02-26-2026 12:16 PM)tf8693 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 07:47 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 02:59 PM)tf8693 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 11:46 AM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  I don't see the NFL ever revisiting the St. Louis market again. Outside of the Greatest Show on Turf years, the Rams were in the bottom third of attendance in the late 1990's, late 2000s and early 2010s, before bottoming out before moving to Los Angeles. The St. Louis Cardinals football also never hosted an NFL playoff game, and they were restricted attendance wise playing in old Busch.

It is a baseball/hockey city, with no professional basketball or football franchise (which is different reason I remain so high on SLU as a BE candidate, as there are limited competitive alternatives in the winter; and they are getting 9/10k at their home games this year).

I don't think the NFL will expand again anytime soon. I think 32 is the sweet spot for that league. If the NFL does ever expand again, I think 36 is the next number, so they'll need to add four teams.

Where St. Louis does potentially enter the picture, however, is as follows: there are more markets at least arguably capable of supporting a NFL franchise than there are available NFL franchises. So the owner of a NFL franchise looking for a sweetheart stadium deal can shop his team around to prospective NFL markets in the hope of getting the best deal available. We're going back a few years here, but that's how the original Cleveland Browns wound up in Baltimore, and how the old Houston Oilers wound up in Nashville. And this is only my opinion, but I think it's why the Buffalo Bills got a new stadium deal done as quickly and as quietly as they did.

I think 2 teams in London, 1 team in Frankfurt, and one in Paris or perhaps Rome are probably next on the NFL's agenda. Perhaps Mexico City and Toronto, too, though those 2 don't need to happen together or even at all. 4 teams in Europe would allow for long trips every season, if you're playing 2 games there b/c your division plays their division, just play the games back to back and spend 10 days in Europe or whatever. Rio is probably on the list at some point, too.

If the NFL ever goes to Europe, it will be through the expansion process, and as you pointed out, several teams would be added at once to relieve travel issues. No existing team would be permitted to move to Europe, at least not until there were several other teams already there.

To illustrate, go back to my example about the Bills and tweak the facts slightly. Assume instead that the stadium negotiations had been somewhat rocky, and Terry Pegula had threatened to move the team to London. He would have been laughed at, you know it and I know it. But assume instead that he had threatened to move the team to St. Louis, or San Antonio, or San Diego, or Toronto (worth noting that Toronto is< 100 miles from Buffalo), and it's a completely different story.

Jaguars to London rumors have been swirling for years, I suspect the only thing stopping it is that the League would prefer several in Europe at once instead of just a single team.

Haven’t the Bills played a game here and there in Toronto? I seem to recall that Toronto was viewed as the likely move if Buffalo didn’t get the stadium across the finish line. Note that the Governor of NY was heavily involved in that deal, she’s no fool. Unlike Illinois politicians, she was wisely determined to keep the Bills in-State. A great way to mobilize opposition against yourself is to run an NFL team out of town.

FWIW, Toronto seems like a complete no brainer for the NFL. $7m people and the “Canadian NFL team”? That’s a license to print money!

Toronto will not be getting an NFL franchise. The last two games there did not come close to selling out and the last one barely reached 38k fans. It's a nice "in case of emergency, break glass" market for owners to threaten if a state is withholding funds for a stadium, but in terms of global markets, and continued development in Europe, I just don't see it. It's apples to oranges too, but the Argonauts are at the bottom of the CFL in attendance.

Their best bet was about a decade ago when the Bills did their Toronto series (much to the objection of Buffalo and the CFL). Ralph Wilson Stadium was going to be replaced and Buffalo, outside the Sabres, do not have a major sports franchise. It would have been easy to slide over into Canada and to Toronto, but obviously never materialized.

(02-26-2026 10:58 AM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 09:04 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 08:38 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 07:05 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-25-2026 09:36 AM)Dr Dawgma III Wrote:  While everyone thinks of the Bears-Packers as the oldest NFL rivalry, it was in fact Bears-Cardinals.

The Chicago Cardinals were the White Sox (South Side) equivalent in Chicago. So all those blue-collar fans in the SNL skits would have been Cards fans in an alternate universe. Hard to imagine!

• • • 

I'll pose this question again: if the State of Illinois loses all that NFL tax revenue, could there be a movement to build a multi-purpose dome east of St. Louis across the Illinois border? The NFL looks to have some stability for the time being, but St. Louis is an interesting case. They only lost their team because the owner wanted to move to LA; it wasn't due to lack of support or success.

It appears high ranking political officials in Missouri support the idea. So could this hypothetically open the door for Illinois to pull the ol' okie-doke if the state loses the Bears?

I don’t think all of these “If Illinois (or Chicago) loses the Bears, then couldn’t Illinois (or Chicago) build a stadium for another team?” posts are fully understanding that it’s all circular. If neither the State of Illinois nor the City of Chicago can figure out a stadium deal for the team that its residents actually cares *and* that team is even spending $2 billion of its own money towards stadium construction (which is a huge team contribution by NFL standards), then they certainly aren’t figuring out a stadium deal for a hypothetical random team that would almost certainly be asking for a fully publicly-subsidized stadium (as is the case for virtually any team that threatens to move).

It’s like asking whether someone that has failed basic arithmetic can then immediately get an A+ in AP Calculus BC. The economics of the Bears stadium deal are far easier for the politicians to deal with and less expensive to the taxpayers compared to any realistic stadium deal for a hypothetical new team. Even if the NFL cares about the St. Louis market (and I don’t think they do as they’ve set their sights on international markets as the engine for future growth), there is zero reason to believe that the State of Illinois government would somehow get a different stadium deal done with a different team (and that’s not even taking account they couldn’t even afford it even if they wanted to get that deal done).

While I fully agree that Illinois isn't going to fumble away the Bears and then magically attract the Bengals/Jags/etc, there is ample precedent for cities and States fumbling away teams and then paying 5-10x as much for a new team a decade or 2 down the road. The big difference here is that Arlington Heights is already 100% on board, it's just the State of Illinois that has been dragging their feet for literally YEARS, to the point that Warren has finally moved on to Plan C. It wouldn't happen tomorrow, but if enough politicians lose their jobs after fumbling away the Bears, then their replacements would have learned a very valuable (and expensive) lesson, and they'd be more apt to do whatever it took to return the NFL to the State. Most likely, that would just be getting the Bears to move back once their deal in Indiana expired ofc, but other options would likely at least be considered.

I understand what you’re stating. I think the huge difference here and all of the examples provided by Dawgma (e.g. St. Louis, Baltimore, LA, etc.) is that the Indiana location is IN the Chicago market. The Bears aren’t moving away from the Chicago *market* and that is the relevant geographic area as opposed to a state line. This isn’t like the Colts leaving Baltimore for Indianapolis and then in turn the Browns leaving Cleveland for Baltimore. This is pretty much a carbon copy of the new Chiefs stadium move from Kansas City, MO to Kansas City, KS. I’m not saying that I personally like the Indiana location, but it is 100% clearly within every definition of the Chicago metro area and TV market. I think there’s a lot of psychological belief for a lot of people (even within the Chicago area) that moving to Indiana is some type of massive distance that totally belies the actual geography. I don’t personally feel it because I grew up in the South Suburbs where the Indiana state line was only a few miles away, but it has been interesting to see people nationwide totally not understand that Northwest Indiana is every bit as much of the Chicago area as New Jersey is to the NYC area.

I think that it was much easier for people to understand in Kansas City bc, well, most people probably already thought that the KANSAS City Chiefs were a KANSAS football team, anyway. They've even moving from one Kansas City to another. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that it's every bit as frustrating for KC, Missouri fans as the Bears potentially moving to NW Indiana is for Illinois Bears fans, but to outsiders, the Bears thing seems like a much greater thing than it it actually would be in practice. Ultimately, few Bears fans will be impacted if the team plays 25 miles in one direction or 25 miles in the other direction. Both are still "Chicago", just as Irving, Frisco and Arlington are still "Dallas" for Cowboys fans. Your "these are not serious people" quote is quite telling, this would be the first time I'm aware of that a State fumbled away a franchise without it actually making the city lose the team, with all the reputational damage falling squarely on the State's shoulders.

New York lost not one but two teams when the Giants and Jets moved to the JerseyMeadowlands.

(02-26-2026 11:25 AM)Dr Dawgma III Wrote:  Missouri senators are already rallying for return to St. Louis. Notice I said senators and not the mayor of St. Louis. Missouri will have lost two NFL franchises in a little over a decade.

In the Super Bowl era, the following cities lost their teams:
1982 - Oakland Raiders > Los Angeles
1984 - Baltimore Colts > Indianapolis
1988 - St. Louis Cardinals > Phoenix
1995 - Los Angeles Raiders > Oakland
1995 - Los Angeles Rams > St. Louis
1996 - Cleveland Browns > Deactivated (assets became Baltimore Ravens)
1997/1998 - Houston Oilers > Nashville
2016 - St. Louis Rams > Los Angeles
2017 - San Diego Chargers > Los Angeles
2020 - Oakland Raiders > Las Vegas

Times Lost:
2 - Los Angeles, Oakland, St. Louis
1 - Baltimore, Cleveland, Houston, San Diego

Los Angeles had a net loss of 0. I suspect at least the Rams will stay in L.A. long-term. I have a feeling the Chargers will, at some point, return to San Diego. I'd like to see a team move to St. Louis but I'm not sure who other than possibly the Jaguars (which would tighten the geography of the AFC South).

(02-26-2026 09:35 AM)Bill Marsh Wrote:  Isn’t this pretty much the same thing as what the Giants did 50 years ago when they abandoned NYC and moved across the river to a new stadium financed and built by the State of New Jersey? They were joined 8 years later by the Jets who also left New York City for the Meadowlands.

A few years earlier, the Patriots left Boston and moved to Foxborough, MA 28 miles away. While it was in the same state, they dropped “Boston” from their name and became the “New England” Patriots. They might just as well have moved to Rhode Island. They did in fact enter negotiations to move to Connecticut 20 some years later and only stayed in Mass after they received concessions from Massachusetts for highway access infrastructure.

IIRC something like a third of the New York metro area lives in North Jersey, by comparison NW Indiana is less than 10% of Chicagoland (and has a lot less wealth). Imo this was all waiting on Virginia Halas McCaskey to pass last year, with her gone her descendants want to get this resolved. Using the Hammond ploy to get Illinois to move things along isn’t the worst idea in the world, even if the benefits of public funding of stadiums/arenas is dubious at best. At least the deal we get will likely be a good deal better than Kansas is getting for the Chiefs.

The NFL recently approved a rule to allow PE investments up to 10% of a team right? I’m skeptical of PE getting involved in pro sports, but if the McCaskeys need cash it may not the worst idea (if they get out after 5-10 years) since a drastically increased valuation from a new team-owned stadium is pretty likely.

Will we be getting a Super Bowl in picturesque Hammond?!?!

Hammond Bears

(02-26-2026 04:41 PM)BePcr07 Wrote:  I'd like to see a team move to St. Louis but I'm not sure who other than possibly the Jaguars (which would tighten the geography of the AFC South).

The Jaguars realistically are off the table for another ~30 years as their stadium is getting renovated. I'm not really sure who the next relocation threat would be.

If the NFL ever expands beyond 32, I could see one angle where they add 3 North American teams - some combination of San Diego, Saint Louis, Mexico City, and Toronto - and then 5 teams in Europe who would play in one division.

berlin, london, rome, paris, dublin?