Disclaimer: I have the book but have not yet started it. Having said that....
I don't believe for a second Orthwein didn't want to move the team to St. Louis. The guy's full name was James Busch Orthwein. That's Busch as in Anheiser-Busch beer, which is synonymous with St. Louis, Missouri. It was the Kraft lease that prevented that, not anything the NFL did.
Here’s the story as per the book. Whether it’s 100% correct, i don’t know - Kraft is the source for a lot of this stuff.
Victor Kiam was in financial trouble, due to the stadium lease with Kraft and due to the boycotts resulting from the Lisa Olsen situation. Note that when he sold everything he made a huge amount of cash, so it wasn’t a long-term problem. It was a liquidity issue.
It was so bad the NFL stepped in, took care of short term issues, and worked to find a buyer. The NFL was thrilled to find Orthwein because of his deep pockets - they were desperate for stability in New England. The NFL did not want the franchise to move.
Orthwein desperately wanted a franchise back in St. Louis after the Cardinals left. But he didn’t want to actually be the owner himself. And he also didn’t want to move another team because he saw first hand how it hurt city pride. The NFL begged him to take on the Patriots. He thought it was a perfect way to achieve his goal — he was working behind the scenes to get the RCA dome built and to get an ownership group assembled because he knew the NFL planned to expand. The whole St. Louis Stallion stuff - that was supposed to be the expansion franchise name. He figured if he stepped in, bailed out the NFL and turned the Patriots around, they would reward the ownership group he organized with the expansion franchise. In his opening statement when he bought the team, he said he was just a caretaker owner to get the team on its feet, and he’d sell once he did that. According to the book, he meant it.
The hiring of Parcells and drafting of Bledsoe caused things to succeed beyond everyone’s wildest dreams. They noticed our reaction in New England, how we sold out, how our ratings spiked, how we were buying Patriots merchandise. “They” meaning not just the NFL but rich people. Orthwein still wasn’t making a lot of money - the Foxboro Stadium lease was a real albatross - but it was no longer deep red like Kiam. He started receiving large offers for the team in the spring/summer of 1993. He decided to sell at that point, and hired Goldman Sachs to do a blind auction. The expansion vote was coming up and he was ready to have that St. Louis expansion team. Procurement and due diligence takes a while, so the plan would be for the auction to conclude around the new year.
That’s when the bomb dropped, that the NFL owners preferred Jacksonville’s ownership and stadium situation to the one he assembled in St. Louis. They unanimously approved the Panthers franchise. Jacksonville was a 26-2 vote with Orthwein being in the minority.
He was pissed and felt betrayed. That was when he decided to spite the NFL and take the Pats to St. Louis. The NFL didn’t want that at all - the New England market was too huge to lose and had just shown how viable it was. He sent a threatening letter to the NFL. It’s implied that he wanted Goldman Sachs to skew the auction towards St. Louis ownership, specifically Stan Kroenke.
Ultimately Goldman kept asking Kraft for the value to get out of the lease, and Kraft refused because giving any dollar amount would allow the team to break the lease and pay monetary damages in court as compensation. Finally Kraft and Orthwein wound up meeting; Kroenke’s offer price was $25m higher than Kraft’s but it was contingent on Orthwein assuming all costs of getting out of the lease. Orthwein gave up and took his $70m in capital gains for owning the team for 2 years....