Something is Missing...

Los Angeles is the second largest city in the country and home to numerous sports franchises. The Dodgers, Angels (in name), Lakers, Clippers, Kings, Sparks, Galaxy, and Avengers all call Los Angeles home, as well as the Bruins of UCLA and the Trojans of USC. Looking at the list, you may notice something is missing.

An NFL franchise.

For the past 11 years, ever since the LA Raiders packed up their bags and moved themselves back to Oakland, the city and fans have been clamoring for a team to come to LA. The problem has been, and continues to be, where will they play? The only viable scenarios that have been presented involve the use of the LA Coliseum. However, with renovation costs now estimated at $1 billion, this is simply not realistic. If the city is serious about attracting a new team, a brand new stadium must be erected, and it must be somewhere in the vicinity of downtown. A new football stadium would only further the revitalization of Downtown and provided countless jobs and income to the city.

It is simply embarrassing that LA still does not harbor a true professional football franchise. With around 3.5 million inhabitants living in the city limits and up to 10 million more on the outskirts, the potential fanbase is already enormous. Los Angeles is the second largest media market in the nation, and yet the “National” Football League is not represented in LA. Baffling. On the other hand, booming metropolises like Green Bay, Wisconsin and Buffalo, New York have no problem housing teams.

What has stopped the NFL and LA from reuniting? Bureaucracy and politics. But that should not come as a surprise to anyone who is used to living in LA.

For the past several years, competing plans were being pushed to the NFL as potential sites for a team. Most prominent were the Los Angeles Coliseum, which was originally built for the 1932 Olympic Games and currently is home to the USC Trojans, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and a potential site in Carson near the Home Depot Center. As the months and years went on, all three sites competed for attention and rotated as the supposed “front-runner” for the NFL’s services.

Eventually, the posturing became too much. Carson dropped out and decided it would be more lucrative to build a shopping mall instead. The Rose Bowl was never interested enough to begin with, and they too dropped out. All that was left was the Coliseum. However, the $1 Billion price tag to fix it up, the fact that USC (who has been wildly successful and drawn sellouts of 90,000+ for the past five years) would prefer to remain the sole tenant, and the site’s status as a Historical Landmark and its accompanying notoriously difficult to-deal-with Coliseum Commission has led the NFL to drop them from consideration.

So where does that leave Los Angeles now?

Right to where it should have started at the beginning – a new site built in the vicinity of downtown to correlate with the fantastic new programs being developed currently to revitalize the area. It began several years ago with the Staples Center, and is now continuing with L.A. Live well under construction (the Nokia Theater just opened) and the Grand Avenue project just breaking ground. Thousands are flocking back to the area, with up to 20,000 more residents expected to move by 2010. There is potential in the area for a stadium, anywhere from the old abandoned warehouses to the space by Dodger Stadium.

For this to be accomplished, public dollars have to be devoted. And this is where the biggest obstacle lies.

The NFL will gladly put in hundreds of millions of dollars to assist LA in building a stadium, as it has just as much interest in establishing a franchise here as the city does. However, the fact that LA refuses to give a penny to professional sports is scaring off the league. The NFL is doing very well and has far more power in the relationship, as they can easily afford to not have a team in place for the next decade.

If the citizens of the city really want a team, they are going to have to put forth and vote for measures allowing the use of small taxes to help fund the project. The potential job opportunities and revenue that can eventually flow in far outweigh the short-term expenditures needed at the beginning. With a franchise in the heart of LA, up to 65,000 fans would pour into the surrounding area for 9 weekends of the year in which they will happily be spending their money in an area in which they normally would not. Why force fans in the city to drive to San Diego to see professional football?

It is up to us to make a difference. For too long have the fans in the city complained while taking little action. Los Angeles has the potential to be the leading sports city in the world, and has all the pieces in place to do so. All that is needed is a little more leadership, and a lot more involvement by its citizens. We have brought major championships to the city in recent years through the Lakers and the Trojans among others, and now we are just waiting for that Super Bowl victory.

Let’s make it happen.