Read the debate intro, Loyal Homer’s argument that Los Angeles should have an NFL team, and Bleacher Fan’s argument that LA should not.
You may have noticed, as astute reader Rocketfan did in the comments, that I intentionally omitted the Oakland Raiders in my “history” of Los Angeles professional football. Tricky, eh? The plan was to see if Loyal Homer and Bleacher Fan were able to pick up on the most glaring reason for why the NFL has failed to put a successful franchise in LA for the long term… without handing it them. The smart writers that they are, they each brought up the point about two football teams in LA sharing the spotlight, and some of the difficulties that come with that arrangement. So many of these real estate speculators come into LA spouting off about how LA is a football starved town. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact that Los Angeles already has great football and a loyal following for a dominant team – a team that is not subject to stupid NFL broadcast black out rules (as teachj alluded to in the comments) – is really important. Yep, I’m making a reference to the Trojans of USC, and therefore awarding today’s debate win to…
BLEACHER FAN!!!!!
Southern Cal has a huge and loyal football fan base and plenty of other competition for sports allegiance. Any “newcomer” to the LA sports dynamic will be naturally viewed as an interloper on the scene – a team that isn’t TRUE LA, with players who aren’t TRUE LA – and fans will have a difficult time giving themselves over to a new team with unfamiliar players, or an old team with lousy players (if, say, the Buffalo Bills move to LA).
Like the LA Raiders and LA Rams learned years ago, USC football is competition for an LA NFL franchise, even if they do not play on the same day. Split loyalties are hard to overcome for football fans, unless long-standing tradition is stronger. For example, the New York Jets and the New York Giants have been around forever, and the market and tradition is plenty big to handle both. But Chicago, a successful split sport city in baseball, could never support two pro football teams because of long-standing traditions. The same fact is as true in LA now as it was in the 1980s and 1990s – those conditions have not changed.
There is also a fair share of legitimate fan skepticism at this point. If the city has had four different football franchises in town since 1926, why should a fan believe it will work THIS time? Surely they can get behind this team because a team can’t leave for a fifth time, right? Wrong. If the money is right, er, rather, if the attendance is NOT right, the team will move… as is the inescapable tradition of professional football in LA.
Loyal Homer did make a couple of good points, primarily the big TV market point. But market size is only an indicator of potential, not reality. Reality (and history) dictates the NFL moving back to LA would be another mistake, and it has nothing to do with facilities or shifting demographics. Even big kitchens can have too many cooks.
The truth is, as Bleacher Fan stated, the conditions for professional football in LA have not shifted enough to create a good opportunity. And no state of the art, top-of-the-line facility by a successful real estate broker will change that.
Posted by Sports Geek 
