NEXT L.A. : A look at issues, people and ideas helping to shape the emerging metropolis. : Touchdown, Lion Kings!

One reporter’s look back at the sports future of Southern California, with tongue planted in cheek. . . .

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Well, 2010 turned out to be another banner year for the home teams.

The Mighty Ducks claimed the lone local championship--their fifth Stanley Cup of the millennium--and attendance was up again for the Nissan-Dodgers, Lakers, Angels, Clippers and Lion Kings.

“It’s hard to believe there was a time when franchises didn’t want to stay in Los Angeles,” Dodgers Vice President Hideo Nomo said.

Ironically, back in 1995, the year Nomo made his sensational splash as a Dodger pitcher, the Rams and Raiders split town, claiming Los Angeles was a financial loser.

History, of course, has settled that score.

Rams owner Georgia Lovelace (we remember her as Frontiere) moved the team to St. Louis only to face an awful realization: There was no Bel-Air there.

It surprised few six years ago when Lovelace sold the Rams to Anheiser-Busch and revived her career as a nightclub singer.

And what can you say about Al Davis, the 80-year-old owner of the Contra Costa Raiders?

It’s an old saw now: Davis’ legendary 1999 fight with Oakland over its refusal to require all city structures be colored silver and black, prompting Davis’ move to Contra Costa.

His last Super Bowl championship, in 1984, remains a faded memory.

Had Lovelace and Davis not been so out of step in 1995, they might have stayed and savored success in the New Sports L.A.

It wasn’t that L.A. did not understand them. It was they who did not understand L.A.

The answer was right under their noses. The Rams used poor attendance and community betrayal as excuses to move the team after 50 years in the Southland.

Yet, a slap shot away from Anaheim Stadium, the upstart Mighty Ducks, owned by Disney, sold out every home hockey game--capacity 17,174--played at the Pond in 1994 and ’95.

And the Ducks had a losing record.

Al Davis thought it was a civic duty for people to attend his team’s games, that marketing was something mothers did.

While Davis slept, Disney and the Ducks were tapping into the sports marketing mother lode in the ‘90s when they sold the Ducks as a total family entertainment package, not just as a hockey team.

The Ducks’ innovations almost seem hokey now in hindsight--the notion of using every spare moment between game action to entertain. It was the dawn of sporting event as game show: audience participation contests, cartoons, laser shows, mascots swinging from the rafters, three-wheeler races on ice during intermissions, cash giveaways.

The smart ones saw it coming.

In a 1995 interview, Bill Robertson, director of public relations for Disney Sports Enterprises, explained the concept.

“It’s the wave of the future, sir,” Robertson said. “The hockey purists are rolling over in their grave, but we’re in the business of entertaining fans. We know the game’s the most important thing, we know fans are coming for that. But we’ve got to give them more.”

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Robertson and Disney studied demographics and logically sized up what they were up against.

“There’s the movies, Hollywood, beaches, the mountains. Those are tough things to compete against. That’s why we think we have to be better than anything else.”

Disney called the plan its “1-10 Theory,” an axiom that holds that every person who had a good time at a Ducks’ game would tell 10 people.

Robertson predicted there would be a new NFL team in Los Angeles within three years of the Ram-Raider departure. He also predicted any outside team coming in would take a “totally progressive” marketing approach similar to Disney’s.

Right he was.

Disney head Michael Eisner was awarded an NFL expansion franchise in 1998 and promptly named the team “The Lion Kings.”

Disney, which already had controlling interest in the Ducks and Angels, turned the Anaheim Stadium complex into an extension of Disneyland called “Sportingland,” connected by monorail to Disneyland’s main hub.

The vision was completed when Disney unveiled its state-of-the-art stadia/theme park for the Angels and Lion Kings, connected by moving escalators to the nearby Pond.

Halftime bungee-jump contests became the rage at Lion King games.

In 2004, “Home Run Adventure,” a virtual reality baseball experience, surpassed “Space Mountain” as the theme park’s most popular attraction.

All this was only the beginning. As you may know, media mogul Steven Spielberg is negotiating with the Rose Bowl in the hope of bringing an NFL team and theme park to the Pasadena area.

He has a concept in mind.

You guessed it:

“Jurassic Park.”