It’s been a long road for Stan Kroenke to get finally own the worst team in the NFL, but it looks like he might finally get the team. First there was the sudden claim of the team from Shahid Khan, then the NFL rules he had to dodge about cross-city ownership, and after all that, he had to be all like “Dude. I don’t have the money, but I promise I will have it soon. Be cool. What happened? You used to be cool.”  None of that matters now because the NFL finance committee has unanimously voted in favor of our man Stan.

The NFL’s finance committee has unanimously recommended approval of Stan Kroenke’s Rams purchase bid, the Post-Dispatch has confirmed through several league sources.

The finance committee will make its report and invite discussion Wednesday in Atlanta. At that time, Kroenke can comment or respond to questions as he chooses, and then the vote will take place.

The final vote will happened later today at the NFL owners meeting, but from here it looks to be smooth sailing for Stan Kroenke. Congrats Stan!

By the way, we have some issues with your new purchase: The team sucks, the arena they play in is crap and even with a #1 drafted quarterback, you still can’t put enough butts in the seats to get a home game shown on local TV.

Kroenke’s only issue? St. Louis’ lack of direct flights to L.A.

More:

Stan Kroenke Was All Like POW and Khan Was All Like WHAT?! Over Last Minute Rams Bid

Top 10 Things We Wish Stan Kroenke Would Step in and Buy

Mayor Slay Gets in to the Sports Reporting Business

Kroenke Tries Putting the Rams on Layaway

“You know what? Screw it! I’m going to buy them!”

“I think that’s against the rules.”

“Nah. I can get around them.”

“Ok, so you are serious? Because someone already said that they wanted to buy them.”

“Screw that guy, I’m going to buy them.”

“Eh…I guess we can change the rules…”

“Yeah, change them.”

“Good point. Ok, we’ll change them. That will be $600 Million dollars please.”

“I only have half. I’m good for it though.”

“What?!”

“I’ll give you the other half in a few years. “

That’s you Stan Kroenke. That’s our impression of you.

via St Louis Business Journal

Well kinda. It’s more like the real first pitch that goes to a celebrity at a ballgame and then the 14 other “first pitches” that they give out to retarded children.

Guess which one St. Louis is in that metaphor?

The buddy-cop comedy is set in New York, so the Big Apple gets the first bite, on Aug. 4. But the next day, Will and Mark will jet to St. Louis and walk the red carpet for local fans.

A pat on the head and an “Atta-boy! You Almost made the ball go forward. Maybe try again a few steps forward…eh, can you just go hand it to the minor league nobody we had called up for this?” for those local fans.

Chosen from an online poll through Facebook, St. Louis took the top spot and now it all goes down this Thursday (August 5th) at the Galaxy theater in Chesterfield, which of course is a great location to show big Hollywood stars how metropolitan St. Louis is. “On your right you will see every fast food chain ever and a Best Buy…to your left…a big stupid field.” Anyway, it all starts at 6pm and the movie will start at 7.

As for the movie itself: “Hi I’m a wacky Will Ferrel character, wacky with a heart of gold. Hi I’m a stern Mark Wahlberg character (Say hello to your mother for me.) Here’s the one memorable quote from this movie! We’ll never be able to work together as partners. Oh wait, yes we can. The End.”

via STLToday, who sucks

Over the weekend, the Rams’ #1 draft pick, quaterback Sam Bradford finally signed his contract and it was for a lot of money. A believe the parlance is a “panty dropping amount”.

No. 1 overall draft pick Sam Bradford agreed to a six-year, $78 million contract with the St. Louis Rams Friday night, with $50 million in guaranteed money.

The Rams and the former Oklahoma quarterback concluded negotiations in time for the first full-squad workout, set for Saturday. The guaranteed money is the highest ever in the NFL.

It can get even better for Bradford since, after incentives, the contract can reach $86 Million.

Though his name is getting to be well-known, most people can’t recognize a photo of Bradford. Here’s a hint: If you see a guy around St. Louis reenacting the video below, that’s him.

You know what we’d do with that kind of money? Two chicks at the same time. We figure a dude with that kinda money could hook that up.

via ESPN

A few days ago we told you that former Cardinal catcher Mike Matheny might need to crash at your place for a little while. Nothing perminant. Just until he can get his feet under him. Two weeks tops…maybe a month. Oh and he says you’re out of Lucky Charms.

Former Cardinal catcher and still crowd favorite Mike Matheny is catching something else these days: Heat from a lawsuit filed against him and a few others by the Business Bank of St. Louis.

Matheny’s home is up for grabs and soon…like next Monday soon.  All yours for $2.5 Million dollars!

Our friends at Cards Diaspora came across this news and asked us for an update on Matheny’s situation.

From the excellent website Punching Kitty comes this tid-bit about former Cardinals catcher Mike Matheny: his house is in foreclosure and is or has been recently put up for public auction. Can we get PK to find out more about this story, please? Did this house sell? How the hell did Matheny get in this situation after only being retired a couple of seasons?

Ask and you shall receive! We have an update, but lets take these questions one at a time:

Can we get PK to find out more about this story, please?

Yes. Actually we just said that. Pay attention.

Did this house sell?

No! Our initial post on the dealings said that Matheny’s home was going on the auction block July 19th, but at the last second, the auction was cancelled. According to St. Louis Business Journal:

Larry Parres, the Lewis Rice attorney who represented the bank, confirmed the sale had been called off on the 10,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom home at 2034 Joe’s Way in Chesterfield.

Business Bank originally scheduled its foreclosure sale on the Matheny home for July 12 but then delayed the auction until [July 19th].

As of this writing we still couldn’t find any answer as to why the auction was killed the morning of it’s scheduled time, but as of right now the bank is still in control of Matheny’s home.

How the hell did Matheny get in this situation after only being retired a couple of seasons?

Matheny and his wife used their house as collateral for loans given out by the Business Bank to a real estate investment business owned, in part, by the Matheny’s. Not only that, but the Matheny’s are also on the hook for another 4.2 Million down do the same bank.

It appears investing in real estate was a bad idea in the last few years. Maybe he should have stuck to “Protege Baseball” videos.

via St. Louis Business Journal

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Pujols’ agent, Dan Lozano, pulled a Jerry McGuire Tuesday, leaving his prominent sports agency and taking with him his list of big time clients.

“Danny Lozano has left Beverly Hills Sports Council, and we wish him well in his future endeavors,” said agent Jeff Borris.

Lozano’s departure is likely to have major ramifications within the industry. Pujols, an eight-time All-Star and three-time Most Valuable Player with the St. Louis Cardinals, is closing in on free agency, and is expected to sign an enormous contract in the aftermath of big recent deals for Minnesota catcher Joe Mauer, Philadelphia first baseman Ryan Howard and others.

Pujols is making $16 million this year in the final year of a guaranteed seven-year, $100 million contract. The Cardinals have a $16 million club option on him for 2011.

Sounds like a good move to us. Why share any more of the agent cut of a contract nearing $300 Million?  …This could mean Lozano will be pushing Pujols to go big with no discounts for the home team.

Lozano’s other big name clients include Jimmy Rollins and the Ranger’s Michael Young, though its not known if they have expressed interests in staying with the now solo Lozano.

What is known is that sometimes I name drop the names of hot chicks that have nothing to do with St. Louis on here as an excuse for posting their picture.

Christina Aguladasdlkdsajfsdaf….whatever.

via  ESPN

St. Louis’ newest station 100.3 The Sound, owned by ClearChannel might be gone before it ever really got started according to a source of STLMedia.net:

Clear Channel is very close to selling/donating 100.3 to one of the groups that tried to stop the KFUO transfer. Its a double win for Clear Channel, triple if you consider that The Sound is a complete failure. All of this is being done with San Antonio because of the complex nature of the deal, but it could be done by July 4th.

You can think music radio has a future all you want, but there’s no denying that it’s damn near impossible to make any money at it.

We didn’t actually mind The Sound all that much, but did we listen to it? No, not really. Only when we forgot to bring our iPod in the car.

We got an anonymous tip last night that succinctly read:

Globe Democrat laid off all employees because it ran out of money.

Hmm. Well the site is still up, and according to the St. Louis Beacon, the Globe Democrat has laid off three reporters and is “refocusing” on only certain sections of news. Namely sports and local politics.

The Beacon reported:

Dan Rositano, who resurrected the Globe-Democrat name and began publishing the news website on Dec. 8, said news reporters Brian Flinchpaugh, Steve Birmingham and Lisa Watson lost their jobs on Monday.

“These are extremely talented, wonderful people,” Rositano said. “I feel personally very blessed to know them. This is just a philosophical change in the way we run our media.

But we had to fire them because it turns out starting a “newspaper” when traditional media is at its lower point ever, turned out to not be a great idea. Lets be clear, just because the Globe-Democrat is a website doesn’t make it new media because from all accounts it is still run like an “old media” newspaper. I think they might actually even hand out those dusty old fedoras with a “press” card tucked in the band and we’re fairly certain someone that works there is named Bugsy.

“What we’re doing is taking a look at some of the strengths we have, some of the weaknesses and we’re reorganizing to move toward what the strengths will be.”

In addition to focusing on sports and political news, Rositano said the Globe-Democrat.com would be looking at its design and possibly changing the syndicated material it carries as well.

Look this is all fine but we think its pretty clear the actual truth falls in between the story the Globe Democrat fed the Beacon and our tipster. The ancient adage “When there’s smoke, there’s fire.” seems to apply here. You don’t “refocus” if everything is going great. You just don’t. When we’re out being awesome and banging 14 super-models, we don’t stop in the middle of the orgy and kick out 10 of them so we can “refocus” on the other 4. “Refocusing” is what someone would do if they were in a big fat girl orgy…something isn’t working…you 7 leave. Take your nachos with you.

According to Compete, globe-democrat.com got around 60k+ unique visitors in March, which isn’t horrible but quite a bit lower than other non-Post Dispatch news sources in the area, like the Riverfront Times. Below we have a graph over six months, from October to March of this year (Note that the Globe Democrat didn’t go live until December).

Look at the Globe Democrat site, you don’t see what you would think is any high-yeild ads on there and their comment to the Beacon about “possibly changing the syndicated material it carries” is telling. The STATS partnership is probably eating a small site like alive with either extremely high costs for their AP news articles or taking up valuable ad space with their own self-purchased ads.

To us this doesn’t seem at all like a “re-focusing” but more like a strip-down cost cutting measure to stay afloat, which only makes it harder to keep the lights on.

Good luck Globe Democrat. You let us know if you want to talk about you rebranding to become Punching Kitty’s Sports Section.

Oh one last thing. Maybe update that “staff” page when you get a chance.

Ray Lankford, the ex-Cardinal outfielder, recently launched his new website all about his time with the Cardinals, his accomplishments and contact info to book him for corporate events and parties.

raylankford16.com is chock full of tidbits like,

Lankford hit more home runs at Busch Stadium (123) than any other player, and finished his career in his home ballpark with a pinch hit home run in his final major league at bat on October 3, 2004 .

He was also traded for Woody Williams to the Padres back in the day…a trade that worked out great for the Cardinals and…well…Ray’s site is about his time with the Cardinals so I’m guessing you could figure out how that went.

We’ll give Ray credit for his tough on himself bio that closes with:

Lankford became eligible for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010. 75% of the vote was necessary for induction, and 5% was necessary to stay on the ballot. He received zero votes, and will no longer be on the BBWAA ballot.

Ok, so for a not even close Hall of Famer and a guy that was a solid Cardinal in his time, what would you think it would take to book him for your corporate event? [Editor's Note: Play along and pretend you didn't read the title. Thanks.]

1k? 1.2k? 1.3k? Nope. Try 5. Five thousand dollars to book Ray Lankford for an appearance.

If we’re going to pay 5 grand for Ray Lankford to come to our party he better be bringing some magic tricks with him, and his first one better be making Willie McGee appear. We’re getting close to making that worth it, but just to be sure, Ray better also bring ice cream for everyone and at the end of the appearance give me $4,000 dollars. If you can set that up, we’ll talk.

In a related story, Bo Hart will appear at your party for a bottle of scotch and a clean spot in your garage for the night.

More: Ray’s Facebook and Twitter

Sick of those stupid Miller and Coors commericals that plays constantly during the NFL season, mercilessly beating the hell out of a once semi-humorus premise.

Well you have one more season to get through.

Anheuser-Busch’s flagship brand Bud Light will be the official beer sponsor of the National Football League, edging out rival MillerCoors, which said Tuesday it wouldn’t renew its deal.

Anheuser-Busch’s six-year deal, which begins in the 2011 season, is worth more than $1 billion, a person close to the league said Tuesday.

So much for that whole “Inbev will cut the Bud Light marketing money” thing huh?  Also interesting is that with a six year deal starting in 2011, there’s a chance St. Louis might be the home of the NFL beer sponsor, but have no local NFL team to watch.

The good news though is those damn Coors Light commercials with the coach videos are gone after this year as I don’t think you would get access to those videos without being the official sponsor of the NFL. It’s exciting to look forward to…horsies playing football?  …dammit. Bud Light commercials suck now too.

All of this reminds me of a story…I’m an awesome chick magnet that beats up guys that pop their collar and still have their frat letters on their car more than 2 years after graduating from college.

I didn’t say it was a long story.