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The NFL's Search for El Dorado
Paul Tagliabue, then commissioner, announced the NFL's intention to give Los Angeles an expansion team at a 1999 news conference at Memorial Stadium. The team went to Houston, which offered $195 million for a new stadium, and Bob McNair, who bid $700 million.
(By Victoria Arocho -- Associated Press)
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Then there is also Matt Leinart. The former USC star and Heisman Trophy winner grew up in nearby Santa Ana and admitted, after playing his first exhibition game with the Arizona Cardinals, that it was the first NFL game he had ever been to. He was the first of an era of kids since the Rams arrived in 1946 who had grown up in Los Angeles without a local pro football team.
"It's probably why I didn't like football much when I was a kid," he says.
As a child, he'd watch an occasional game, but often with disinterest, professing to like the Raiders but really having no passion for any team. It wasn't until he went to high school and became a football star that the game held any appeal to him .
This is something the league worries about. It's something a lot of people who care about the NFL in Los Angeles worry about.
"You've lost a generation," said Chadwick, of the coliseum commission.
But at what price? Yaroslavsky, the county supervisor with 2 million people in his district, says he receives "zero letters saying 'get us an NFL team.' "
"I was a season ticket holder for the Raiders. I was a nut, but I don't miss it," he adds. "First of all I get an extra game on television every Sunday. This isn't Charlotte where it's the only game in town or Green Bay or Lincoln, Nebraska. There are a lot of options here where an Angeleno can spend his sports dollar."
This has kind of been the dirty secret of Los Angeles. While many have worked tirelessly to bring football back here, there is a sense that many people simply don't care if it ever returns.
"We lived without a team for 10 years and we signed a new deal [with the NFL] that's a six-year deal. [A team in L.A.] certainly wasn't critical enough for us," says Ed Goren, the president of Fox Sports, which is based in Los Angeles.
'The Bar Is Higher in L.A.'
The NFL remains unsure what it wants to do. Memorial Coliseum could house a team in the middle of Los Angeles with close access to Hollywood and movie stars. But renovating the coliseum is tricky and costs could soar well past the supposed $800 million. It also means diving into the muddled political system of Los Angeles.
Anaheim gives the league something it craves -- control. The city will sell a plot of land near the Angels' stadium at a relatively low price for California real estate and the NFL can build its own stadium from the ground up.
This would be appealing. But does the NFL really want to make its splash in Orange County? It's the very subject the owners are weighing.
