Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor

Rush Limbaugh stood a better chance of suiting up in an NFL game before he would ever step foot in an owners suite as a limited partner in any ownership group.

We can sit here and say that the decision by the partnership trying to pursue the St. Louis Rams decided to put Rush out to pasture because of his hateful words against African Americans and so many others over the years he has been on the radio, but the reality is that the National Football League is the biggest and baddest of all sports leagues, and they were not going to allow anyone – including the guy who just signed a $400 million contract – to mess with their money.

There is nothing that the NFL doesn’t sell to sponsors. Whether stadium naming rights, billboards, suites, and official sponsors of any and everything, corporate America is as much a part of the NFL as the players. And we all know that corporate America likes things squeaky clean, and if anyone gets in the way of the brand, they are removed from the scene. Quickly.

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Limbaugh is out of the group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams.

LZ Granderson
CNN

Things ain't what they used to be.

That sentiment harkens back to a simpler day in which innocence was not met with sarcasm, a man's word was his bond and yadda yadda yadda. What a bunch of crap.

I would like to know which time period in this country's history that phrase is referring to - during the witch hunts? Trail of Tears? Television's "Happy Days" would lead you to believe life in the '50s and '60s was all about high school dances and hot fudge sundaes, but many of us know that was hardly the case.

No, if we take an honest look at this country's 233 years, what we will find are moments of brilliance and triumphs, moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy and a great deal of denial and revision by everyone. It is because of our tendency to rewrite unpleasant aspects of our history that we struggle to make the kind of significant social progress we need to truly realize the American Dream.

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Limbaugh told an interviewer the media couldn't 'break' him.

Don Banks
Sports Illustrated

If conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh ever had much of a chance to be a minority owner in a successful bid to buy the NFL's St. Louis Rams, it is now over, two league sources have confirmed to SI.com.

In a statement released Wednesday evening by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts - who is heading the group that hopes to buy the Rams - he announced Limbaugh's official exit from the bid. It is believed that Limbaugh's controversial participation would have doomed the group's effort in the eyes of NFL owners. League sources told SI.com that Limbaugh's candidacy in any Rams bid had "zero chance" of being approved by the league's owners. In his statement, Checketts said Limbaugh's participation had become "a complication and a distraction" to the group's efforts.

According to league sources, Limbaugh comes with too much troubling baggage in terms of his outspoken views that often intersect the divisive issues of politics and race in America. In a time when the NFL is hoping to have complete uniformity among its team owners in anticipation of the tough collective bargaining negotiations to come with the players union, there was little interest within the league to associate with an owner who is paid to give his highly charged opinions on the radio for hours each week.

"The league would be on pins and needles for three hours a day, five days a week," one league source said. "The NFL isn't interested in having its own Mark Cuban situation, where [the Dallas Mavericks owner] is fined for something he said, but then pays the fine, moves on and doesn't care what he says the next time either. The league wants the focus to always be on the game, not the opinions of any particular owner."

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Reverend Al Sharpton
President, National Action Network

Dear Mr. Goodell:

I was disturbed to learn that there is a potential bid by Rush Limbaugh to buy the St. Louis Rams and I would like to request a meeting with you to discuss the myriad of reasons as to why he should not be given an opportunity to do so. Rush Limbaugh been divisive and anti-NFL on several occasions with comments about NFL Players including Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb and his recent statement that the NFL was beginning to look like a fight between the Crips and the Bloods without the weapons, was disturbing.

I commend the executive director of the NFL Players Association DeMaurice Smith for publicly asking that the League seek to unify not divide in a letter to the executive committee.

Mr. Smith courageously implored that the league reject divisiveness, and we, at National Action Network,
and countless people across the country, strongly echo his sentiments.

I look forward to hearing from you to set up a meeting in the near future.

In Progress,

Reverend Al Sharpton
President, National Action Network

Jeff Roman
Rams Gab

News has come out over the past few days about a bids to buy the Rams by a group headed by Rush Limbaugh and a group headed by St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts. But, St. Louis Post-Dispatch has learned that the two are joining forces to submit a bit on the Rams.

First, the good news. If a group lead by Dave Checketts, owner of the Blues, purchases the 60% stake in the Rams, the Rams will not be able to leave St. Louis. Because of the NFL’s ownership rules, Checketts can own two sports teams, but they both have to be in the same city. Considering that Checketts is a new owner of the Blues, he wouldn’t be in a hurry to sell the Blues to move the Rams. Additionally, Rush Limbaugh is from Cape Girardeau, MO, so he will have a vested interest in keeping the Rams in St. Louis.

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Ken Olshansky
Senior Producer, CNN'S D.L. Hughley Breaks the News

It was a noisy week here at D.L. Hughley Breaks the News.

Last weekend, in a conversation with Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, D.L. called Rush Limbaugh the ‘de facto leader of the Republican party’. “No he’s not,” Mr. Steele asserted. “I’m the de facto leader of the Republican party.”

Then Saturday, Rush Limbaugh—the “incendiary” entertainer himself—gave an energetic address (OK, that’s an understatement) to the Conservative Political Action Committee, in defense of his statement that he wants President Obama to fail.

And on Sunday morning on “Meet the Press”, the president’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel called Rush Limbaugh the “voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party."

These three incidents came together to create a firestorm of cable news chatter. But the problem with firestorms is that they throw off a lot more heat than light. In all the talk, we missed a chance to talk about what we really need: a loyal opposition.

Look, I’m as excited about our new president as the next guy, but presidents are like toddlers (OK, some presidents more than others…). They need firm boundaries or they’ll end up hurting somebody. A loyal opposition provides those boundaries: keeping the president and the ruling party accountable; questioning the motivation behind policy decisions; and most importantly, forcing the president and his party to defend their actions to the voters.

Voters can be supportive of the president and his party, but they shouldn’t be blindly loyal. We need a loyal opposition to keep our system functioning.

But… when the opposition gets all hot and sweaty, and jumps around like the Vegas-period Elvis … we don’t really need that so much.

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Ed Rollins
CNN Contributor

The cold winds of March have obviously affected the intelligence and thought processes of people who need to get their thinking straight.

The idiotic debate raging in Washington this week around Michael Steele, the newly elected chairman of the nearly defunct Republican Party, and Rush Limbaugh, a conservative icon for the past 35 years, is beyond foolish.

The battle to be the "de facto leader" of this party is akin to the question of who wants to steer the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Who represents the party or its values is not relevant when only 26 percent of voters have a positive impression of the party at all and only 7 percent very positive, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey.

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Amy Holmes | Bio
AC360° Contributor

So, now we know. President Obama's mentions of Rush Limbaugh are no accident. Democratic strategists have discovered that Rush has low approval ratings with the general public. So they have devised a strategy to paint Republicans with the Rush brush in order to marginalize conservatism and the Republican Party. In the nineties, they demonized Newt. Now, they're after Rush. And the media is happily going along, as it so often does.

Back in December, while the Republican Party had not one, but two, highly qualified and widely respected African-Americans running for its chairmanship, the media chose instead to focus on the juvenile antics of Chip Saltsman and his Christmas CD. Show after show featured outraged democratic strategists attacking the Republican Party because of one man's lapse of judgment. And conservative after conservative was called on to defend or attack the hapless politician. When Republicans then elected former lieutenant governor Michael Steele to lead the party, it was treated as a non-event. Michael Steele's election as the first African-American RNC chairman received a fraction of the airtime that was devoted to the CD circus, and none of the reverence that has greeted Pres. Barack Obama at every turn of his political career. The media slid right by without a reflective pause, let alone gushing profiles and heroic magazine covers.

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Anderson talks with his panel about a politico.com report that says Democrats are targeting Rush Limbaugh.