Would Los Angeles support an NFL expansion team? by Jeff Little

There have been rumors in other cities for years that the city of Los Angeles would not support any NFL team let alone an expansion team. The basis of the argument was due to the endless entertainment options in the southland.

This statement could not be further from the truth. While this city does not have is a team to call its own, it has a strong contingent of football fans. The TV ratings for NFL games in Los Angeles have been significant.

It has been 16 years since a professional football team called Los Angeles home. A generation of kids has grown up without a home team. Los Angeles is the second-largest media market in the U.S. as well as the biggest without an NFL team.

The All-American Football Conference gave the southland the Los Angeles Dons in 1946, the team called L.A. home for four years. That same year, the NFL came to town when the Cleveland Rams relocated to Los Angeles.  In 1960, the Chargers of the American Football League were born in L.A., and they played here for a year before moving to San Diego.

The site for the vast majority of those home games was the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Coliseum, commissioned in 1921 as a memorial to veterans of World War I, is jointly owned by the State of California, Los Angeles County, and the city of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission manages the venue.

The Coliseum has the distinction of being the only stadium in the world to host the Olympic Games twice, in 1932 and 1984. The venue is also the only Olympic stadium to have hosted a Super Bowls and a World Series. The Coliseum officially became a national historic landmark in a ceremony on July 27, 1984.

The Rams moved to Anaheim in 1980 and to St. Louis in 1995. The Oakland Raiders moved to Los Angeles in 1982 and won a Super Bowl in 1983, only to move back to Oakland in 1995 due to the trifecta of low attendance, losing seasons, and Al Davis’ battles with the aforementioned Coliseum Commission.

The Coliseum itself is a big reason L.A. doesn’t have a team. It is an older stadium not up to today’s NFL standards. The last upgrades made to the stadium were after the 1994 earthquake. Los Angeles has seen teams come and go, but the idea that this city does not want an NFL team is wrong, as evidenced by the fact that prior to the city of Houston landing an expansion team and starting league play in 2002, Los Angeles had put together two groups seeking that expansion franchise.

Thanks to AEG, the company behind the Staples Center, the Home Depot Center and L.A. Live there is a proposed downtown Los Angeles stadium plan in place return the NFL to Los Angeles in 2015.

The privately funded $1 billion investment in the stadium means no debt to the city of Los Angeles. The new 68,000 seat Farmers Field Project stadium will create jobs for our community, boost the economy, and return football to Los Angeles. An existing team re-locating to Los Angeles will garner interest, however a new expansion team to playing in a new stadium will provide something that L.A. has never had — their very own football team from the start.