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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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For now the league has committed $5 million to the study of each site, sending out teams of engineers and business analysts to see if it can get a decent read of what it can expect to spend and if there are enough corporations that will buy luxury suites and seats to make the deal worth their time.
"The bar is higher in L.A. to be successful," says Glat, the NFL's point man in Los Angeles. "It's not easy to put these deals together. And where it's an important market demographically, it's also a discerning market. You have to put a first-class facility out there and you have to put a first-class product on the field."
Which makes for a lot of risks when you're spending $2 billion and the city is paying almost nothing.
And some wonder if the league is simply dragging its feet.
"I don't think they want to do either of those sites," Yaroslavsky says.
Already the whispers are drifting around Los Angeles that the league remains infatuated with Dodger Stadium. And in many ways it might be the perfect place -- on private land, next to a successful baseball stadium, on top of a hill above downtown, away from all the hassles and infighting.
The league says it remains focused on the coliseum and Anaheim and has dedicated considerable time in its October meeting in New Orleans to a discussion about Los Angeles. The Chargers, Saints and Bills are all potential candidates to someday move and maybe fill the void. There has even been talk of two teams in the market, though Glat says it is unlikely they will both come at once. Perhaps a decision could come from there and another engagement between the NFL and Los Angeles could be announced and a team ready to play in 2010.
Or 2011.
Or 2012.
The script has yet to be written.
