Take Any Team Because They’re All for Taking

Let’s take the 49ers away from San Francisco.

Come on. Are you with me? Together, we can make this happen--the L.A. 49ers. I’m serious here. You, me, the mayor, working side by side, the united way. Flash a little cash, and the 49ers can be ours. Because all it takes is money. Because the NFL doesn’t care who plays where.

First, we find out what the 49ers are worth. Next, we find out how much the 49ers owe. And when their lease runs out. And what cut of the concession sales they get. And how much rent they pay. And exactly how much money the 49er owner would need to tell San Francisco’s fans, “I’ll miss you. I really will.”

We can do it. Los Angeles can have the 49ers.

Because, I repeat:

The NFL doesn’t care who plays where.

Pick a team, any team. That team can be had. That team has its price. You think the Dallas Cowboys don’t have their price? Bull manure. Jerry Jones probably wears a computerized price bar on his suit, like a quart of milk, so a cashier could tell you his price by electric beam. Offer him enough money and this man will do anything --defy the NFL, rewrite the rules, sell out to anyone with enough money, become the Los Angeles Cowboys.

But let’s raid San Francisco first.

Start the ball rolling. Do not assume that Eddie DeBartolo would never move his team in a million years. The NFL is only a business. A heartless, soulless business. You can see that now. You can steal any team in the league. It doesn’t matter how long that team has been in that city. You can be anything you want to be, the New York Seahawks, the Seattle Bengals, the Houston Patriots, the Cincinnati Buccaneers.

This is franchise roulette. The commissioner shouldn’t be Paul Tagliabue. He should be Pat Sajak. So, don’t sit around, waiting. Don’t count on NFL expansion, because the commissioner and his committee will award that team to some new, untested city . . . not to Baltimore, or St. Louis, or some town that has already been stripped by the human piranhas.

Go after any team you like.

Approach the 49ers. Now. Today.

Or, you want the Bears? Say the word. Greatest fans in the game? The NFL doesn’t care. Oldest team in pro football? The NFL doesn’t care. Should the Bears choose to move to northern Indiana, Southern California or Key Largo, the NFL would not stand in their way. The NFL stands in no one’s way. The NFL is a green light that never turns red.

Poor Cleveland. Poor, we-never-saw-this-coming Cleveland. What did these wonderful fans ever do to deserve losing the Browns this way? Not go to the games? They went. Not support a new stadium? They never even got asked. But their team split for Baltimore, the way Baltimore’s split for Indianapolis, the way Cincinnati’s will probably split for Cleveland.

Unless we get there first.

We’ll take the Bengals. We’ll take the Buccaneers. We’ll take the Seahawks. I didn’t think we would, but we will. Because, trust me, the NFL will not interfere. All Los Angeles has to do is start work on that new stadium. We have a beautiful Rose Bowl, an improved Coliseum and a vacant Anaheim Stadium, but nevertheless, all we need is a new stadium. Because our new team’s owner wants a piece of the action, understand?

Or maybe not. Maybe he or she needs something else. Art Modell didn’t even get the right to sell the new Baltimore stadium’s name to some big airline or bank. Georgia Frontiere got paid off by everybody in St. Louis except John Larroquette. And, up in San Francisco, the people who run Candlestick Park gladly renamed it 3Com Park, as soon as somebody greased their palms. For enough money, they would have named it Dunkin’ Donuts Park.

So, let’s go for it.

There is no real reason that the L.A. 49ers shouldn’t happen. Al Davis took ours; let’s take theirs. Why have a conscience? Why have scruples? Let’s get mean. Let’s get down and dirty. San Francisco’s fans will never know what hit them. “But we’ve been great fans!” they’ll yell, to which the NFL will reply, “What’s your point?”

L.A. must act, and I mean now. Pass the hat. Take donations from Disney, from the Dodgers, from kids selling Girl Scout cookies, I don’t care. Snap your fingers, and the Los Angeles Cardinals can be here by summer. Or, hurry up and we can have the L.A. Oilers, and I mean next week. All we have to do is raise more money than Nashville, which can’t be hard. I have more money than Nashville.

You’d rather do the right thing?

Forget the right thing. The NFL doesn’t give a damn about the right thing. It’s dog eat dog. It’s every city for itself.