North County’s Biggest Need? A Pro Franchise

“Hmmm,” the newcomer said, “I’ve heard a lot about this North County, but I can’t seem to find it on a map. I take it it’s somewhere between the city of San Diego and Disneyland.”

Hmmm, I said, you have the right neighborhood . . . but you won’t find North County on a map.

North County, indeed, is one of those mystically mythical places, sort of San Diego’s Brigadoon. Everyone knows it’s there, but no one is quite sure where there is. It’s an area that isn’t a place.

The biggest problem, of course, is that map problem.

What North County needs is something to put it on the map.

The solution?

Sports.

Jerry Buss has kicked up some dust lately with his vaguely defined idea of putting a yet-to-exist hockey franchise in a yet-to-be-built arena on a yet-to-be-identified (or procured) site in North County. The point is that Dr. Buss has the right idea.

Oh, sure, yes. North County does have golf’s Tournament of Champions. It is played each January in La Costa, which is a town like North County is a county. It isn’t. La Costa is in Carlsbad, which struggles to get the national media to accept that fact. But I do have to concede that the T of C gives North County a taste of the big time.

OK, sure, yes. It also has a few weeks of thoroughbred horse racing at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. And I have to concede that the horses give North County a taste of life in the fast lane.

North County needs more than just four days of professional golf and a few weeks of horse racing.

It needs a major league franchise or two.

This may sound silly, but think about it. Think of where Orange County was in 1964, when the Angels agreed to move from Los Angeles to Anaheim. Orange County, at the time, had more fruit trees and bean fields than people. Orange County did have the advantage of being a county, however.

And Orange County had Disneyland.

Perhaps that is what North County has to go out and get first. It has to go out and get an amusement park.

Which peaceful little city wants to be the Anaheim of North County? What will it be? Indiana Jones and His Adventure Village in Vista? Or Crocodile Dundee’s Outback in Escondido? Or Star Trek/A Space Trip in Solana Beach?

This is not the only way to make it happen. This happens to be the way Anaheim made it happen. And now Anaheim, through a twist of geographic gerrymandering, has the National Football League’s Los Angeles Rams as well. It should not be surprising that an NFL team named Los Angeles plays in Anaheim, though, because the NFL has Atlanta in the NFC West and Phoenix in the NFC East.

Of course, North County would not sell out as Anaheim did. The San Diego Chargers, for example, will never play their home games in Fallbrook. If an NFL team settles in Fallbrook, it will be known as something like the Fallbrook Avocados.

And why shouldn’t an NFL team settle in Fallbrook? Or Oceanside? Or Ramona?

In fact, maybe Harry Cooper has gone the wrong direction with his proposed sports palace for professional basketball and hockey. He started with the notion of building it in Sorrento Valley, but ended up looking more seriously at downtown San Diego. The City Parents (you don’t say City Fathers when the mayor is a woman) seemed to prefer a downtown location.

Perhaps Cooper was dealing with the wrong City Parents. Perhaps he should have been looking north rather than allowing himself to be redirected to the south. You think a sports palace wouldn’t do rather well situated along Interstate 5 in Encinitas or Leucadia or Cardiff-by-the-Sea? Jerry Buss seems to have that idea.

Is it sounding any less silly now?

The movement throughout professional sports is to the suburbs.

There are professional franchises in Richfield, Auburn Hills, Foxboro, Irving, Arlington, Pontiac and Landover, among other hamlets. This isn’t even counting Green Bay.

Why not Poway? Or Rancho Bernardo? Or Valley Center?

What it will take will be a visionary with a fiscal imagination. Maybe a group of people should get together and form a Greater North County Sports Assn. A similar such group in San Diego certainly got things done.

North County is already a sports hotbed on a different level. It’s almost impossible to name a North County high school which has not made a countywide (excuse me for making reference here to San Diego County) impact in one sport or another in the last two or three years.

Clearly, this is an area that greatly enjoys its sports.

Just let one of the North County communities turn itself loose in pursuit of an American League baseball team or an NFL football team or a National Basketball Assn. team.

The sky, then, would be the limit.

Can you imagine San Marcos bidding against New Orleans, Tampa, Pasadena and, yes, San Diego for the 2001 Super Bowl?

Or how about Bonsall bidding against Brisbane, Leningrad, Beirut and Hong Kong for the 2008 Olympics?

North County may not be on a map. Its boundaries may, in fact, be rather hazily defined. But it’s very real.

I can’t wait for the first I-15 World Series.