AMERICA AT LARGE: Rush Limbaugh's hopes of part owning the St Louis Rams appear to be doomed from the outset

THAT THE St Louis Rams would wind up on the auction block had been pretty much a foregone conclusion since the moment Georgia Irwin Geiger Johnson Wyler Hayes Rosenbloom Frontiere succumbed to breast cancer in January, and earlier this summer Madame Ram’s children and heirs, Chip Rosenbloom and Lucia Rodriguez, confirmed their intention to sell.

Two weeks ago the National Football League began vetting candidates as they entertained bids from prospective bidders, and within days word had leaked out that one of the front-runners appeared to be a consortium headed up by Dave Checketts.

Checketts is the former front man at Madison Square Garden, and at one point presided over the National Basketball Association Knicks and the National Hockey League Rangers, and had his thumb on the Garden’s boxing department. Checketts is considered an able administrator, as evinced by the turnaround he has effected since assuming control of the NHL St Louis Blues. (He also is the principal owner of a Major League Soccer franchise, Real Salt Lake.) Since his bid would almost certainly include a commitment to keeping the Rams in St Louis, he was briefly considered the front-runner.

But for all of his qualifications, it seemed unlikely Checketts had access to $850 million or so in walking-around money that seems to be the asking price in this fire sale, and that was confirmed when the news leaked a primary component of his ownership group was the detestable, race-baiting conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

The last time Limbaugh’s name and the NFL appeared in the same sentence had come six years ago, when ESPN hired him to work their pre-game broadcast leading into their Monday Night Football telecasts. After a few weeks on the job Rush accused the media of overlooking the shortcomings of Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb out of desire to see a black athlete, even an inferior one, succeed.

What was not known at the time was Limbaugh was operating under the influence of a serious oxycontin jones. Under pressure, he resigned from ESPN within days, but before the 2003 season was over, a couple of the doctors who’d been enabling his addiction had their medical licences revoked. Rush was spared prosecution when he voluntarily entered a rehab facility. That his reputation had not suffered among his loyalists was made clear when he signed a contract extension worth nearly $400 million for his syndicated radio program, giving him the wherewithal to be a major backer of the Checketts bid for the Rams.

This being America, Limbaugh’s views, however obnoxious, are protected by the First Amendment, and hence cannot be held against him in what would be a public offering. But this is also the NFL we’re talking about, the world’s most exclusive club, and the “winner” would still have to pass muster with the other 31 owners. Some of them are hidebound conservatives who might privately subscribe to some of Rush’s hysteria about African Americans in general and the Obama administration in particular, but they are smart enough to recognise a public relations disaster when they see one, and allowing Rush Limbaugh into the club would plainly be more trouble than it was worth.

His stint in rehab didn’t seem to mellow Rush. He is on record as having compared the NFL to “a game between the Bloods and Crips without any weapons”. Recently he described Obama’s America as “a place where white kids get beat up on school buses and black kids cheer about it”.

While it is true Limbaugh commands over 20 million listeners, that still leaves 280 million other Americans who ignore him on a daily basis.

Limbaugh’s stock also fell in the eyes of many Republican operatives, and the rank and file, during last year’s election, between his antipathy toward John McCain and his earlier “Operation Chaos”, in which he urged Republican voters to abandon their primaries and vote for Hillary Clinton in a last-ditch measure to try to stave off the rolling Obama bandwagon.

That the Rams have lost 15 games going into Sunday’s visit to Jacksonville probably hasn’t done much for the asking price, and several members of the team (two-thirds of whom are black) have voiced their unwillingness to play for a team of which Limbaugh is even a part-owner.) Several prominent potential free agents have indicated like views, and more have been urged to do so by DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the NFL Players Association.

Limbaugh’s Obama obsession appears to have become so personal in nature it strains even the limits of warped conservative philosophy. He is on record as having said he hopes to see the president “fail” at every turn, and when the 2016 Olympics were awarded to Rio, he exploded in glee, having interpreted the president’s pro-forma appearance on behalf of the doomed Chicago bid as a crushing defeat.

A few days ago, Limbaugh sent an email to the Associated Press complaining about his treatment by the media: “It is regrettable something I have dreamed about for years has taken this course,” he lamented. “But the fight is worth it to me. I love the NFL.”

Demagogues at the other end of the spectrum like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are just warming up, but on another level, I’d almost like to see what a Limbaugh-owned team would look like. A lily-white one, one suspects, sort of like the pre-1962 Washington Redskins.

Although he has since distanced himself from the remark, Limbaugh was quoted in Jack Huberman’s 2001 book 101 People Who Are Screwing America with an observation that may have hinted at how he’d like to run a team: “Let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite. Slavery built the south. I’m not saying that we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

I know the man pretty well, and I, for one, can guarantee you theres not a chance in hell of New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft approving a guy like that, and a couple of days ago another friend of mine, Indianapolis Colts’ owner Jim Irsay, became the first member of the club to go on record with respect to Limbaugh’s candidacy, saying, “I, myself, couldn’t even consider voting for him. Our words do damage, and that’s something we don’t need.”

Commissioner Roger Goodell is obviously hoping a new leader in the clubhouse will emerge, thus sparing the owners the flak that would result if they wound up blackballing Checketts’ group because of Limbaugh, but even in his position as honest broker, Goodell said this week “divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about”.

It might be well to bear in mind while Limbaugh’s bigoted speech might be constitutionally protected, membership of the world’s most exclusive club is not. As the prospectus outlining the terms of the sale notes, “Prospective buyers and sellers should bear in mind that the NFL reserves the right not to approve an application for membership.”

Which ought to be end of story.