Football in LA? It’s coming soon

There are many theories out there why the city of Los Angeles hasn’t had an NFL team in the last decade-and-a-half. It seems almost incomprehensible that a league so focused on revenue could somehow ignore the No. 2 market in the country while having a team in Jacksonville and Green Bay. Many people think that Los Angeles residents either don’t care that much about football or have so much else going on that they don’t really clamor for a team. And to that point, that city hasn’t been nearly as devastated over losing their football team as, say, Houston, Cleveland and Baltimore were.

Besides the subjective reasoning, there are major logistical problems with putting a team in Los Angeles -- or at least there were until yesterday. For one, L.A. Coliseum is so gigantic that adhering to the league’s blackout policy would be troublesome. And even if a franchise could sell out every single seat for eight games a year, no owner wants to play at L.A. Coliseum. Owners make their real money from skyboxes and suites that executives pay thousands of dollars to get into; L.A. Coliseum has no box suites, and since the stadium also has a historical landmark status, altering it or tearing down is impossible.

So where do you put a stadium? It is L.A. -- there aren’t a ton of football-stadium sized construction zones out there. That was the major problem facing the city, although that issue appeared to be cleared up yesterday when the Governator signed a bill allowing the construction of a 75,000-seat stadium 15 miles east of Los Angeles.

Majestic Realty Co. is heading the stadium project after helping develop Staples Center, the downtown Los Angeles home of the NBA’s Lakers and Clippers and the NHL’s Kings.

Majestic has targeted seven teams as candidates to move to the Los Angeles area: the Buffalo Bills, Jacksonville Jaguars, Minnesota Vikings, St. Louis Rams, San Diego Chargers, Oakland Raiders and San Francisco 49ers.

A keen observer will note that three of the seven teams (the Raiders, Chargers and Rams) have already played in L.A. How crazy would Al Davis have to be to move the Raiders to Los Angeles twice in his ownership? Who knows if any of those seven are interested in moving, but the odds that there’ll eventually be a team in L.A. are strong. After all, Majestic isn’t building an $800 million stadium just to have high school teams play soccer there, and the league has already given them three teams already. No. 4 is on the way. It’s just a matter of who and when.