How come such a big American city can’t sustain an NFL team?
The Rams and the Raiders both played in LA for many years. I’m not sure why they moved, but looking at Wikipedia, it appears both teams didn’t have the money they needed in LA/Anaheim.
They sustained two for quite a few years. But the Raiders moved back to Oakland and the Rams moved to St. Louis. Attempts to get a new franchise failed; no one seems willing to move, and there are some facilities issues (IIRC, the Coliseum, where the teams played, is an old facility and the city has resisted calls for a new stadium at taxpayer expense; the Rams played in Anaheim for awhile, but didn’t like the terms, so left).
According to the t-shirts I have seen on various Raiders fans, the reason they left was that “L.A. Sucked.”
My god, Los Angeles CAN do something right!
I’ve heard it said the NFL does not want an LA team now so it can use that as leverage to help get public financing of new stadiums around the league.
It’s the Coliseum. It is too old, and doesn’t have enough luxury skyboxes. NFL owners refuse to play in cities that won’t build them shiny new stadiums with acres of skyboxes.
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Off to IMHO.
GQ > IMHO
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I thought sports threads go in CS.
There is also not a huge groundswell of support in L.A. for an NFL team either from football fans (who are quite content to root for the Raiders or whatever team they rooted for before moving out here) or the corporate world who would have to cough up the money to own a team.
Mayor Villaraigosa recently said that the Coliseum did not have to be the stadium for any NFL team in L.A., but there’s still no viable plan to build a new stadium anywhere else.
The NFL would prefer a brand new stadium built in the Chavez Ravine area, but that would also require Dodger Stadium to be torn down and the Dodgers moved to Downtown L.A. However, the Dodgers owners are spending a lot of money on renovations and structural work on Dodger Stadium, so I doubt that will happen.
Right. And as long as other cities will do this, there’s not a lot of incentive foe teams to pay for their on in L.A. Throw in a revenue sharing structure that allows a team to be financially successful in smaller markets and there’s really no urgency to put a team in L.A.
Still, you’d think that not having a team in L.A. would slowly erode interest in the NFL. It may be glacially slow, but eventually you’d think they’d need a team there.
In LA, one of the world capitals of The Art of the Deal, there is *still * no deal for a damn stadium. Sad.
Are you LA’ers saying that even if you do build it, they won’t come?
Because the Trojans will make them look bad! 
Why should LA’ers do the building?
Not the citzenry necessarily, but there’s fo’ dam sho’ enough people there rich enough to do it themselves as a business investment, if not as a noblesse-oblige thing.
Because that is where Jacksonville will move to.
That’s exactly the point, you were right the first time around. Those rich folks ain’t laying down one brick until they get a** guarantee ** of return-on-investment, that if they build it they **will ** come – and the League may not be too generous about approving either a sale of an existing team or an expansion franchise, to a bunch of people who just busted their extortion racket.
But surely there are any number of NFL-hungry cities out there that could be used to provide leverage instead of a city as important as Los Angeles.
That’s the point, really: a team in Seattle or St. Louis wouldn’t be afraid that the NFL is going to move their team to Topeka or Reno. But it’s a huge anomaly that a city as important as LA doesn’t have one… and cities don’t want to be the one to lose their team for the ‘inevitable’ move of a team.
There have been several ownership bids come down the pike, but they ALL hinged on some sort of upgrade to the Coliseum. God alone knows why. We do not want to attend games at the Coliseum. It is a pit. A cavernous pit with no parking in a bad part of town.
The best hope for NFL in LA is a huge sinkhole opening up under the 50 yardline.