SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NFL GETS BACK IN THE GAME : Drawing Lesson : History Shows L.A. Market Fickle, Fertile for Football

The Rams and the Dons are splendid, but this is only their first year.

If they continue good football, the crowds soon will appear.

Time is a great healer, we’ve oft heard it cracked.

Give the pros sufficient time and the Coliseum will be packed.

Sports fan Aldo Molinari in a letter to The Times, Nov. 10, 1946

You’re the owner of a sports team in search of a lucrative market.

You look at Southern California and what do you see?

Everything you’re looking for--bright sunshine, huge crowds, big money, sports-minded movie stars, big-time exposure and armies of media to push your product.

The only question you have is, where do I sign up?

Well, hold that pen for a moment.

Because while all of the above is true, so is everything you’re not looking for--an endless number of alternatives for the entertainment-minded consumer, rival teams in every size, shape and sport to compete for the dollar, and discriminating, spoiled fans who won’t support anything but a winner.

Just ask Al Davis. Or Barron Hilton.

Are you listening Ken Behring, owner of the soon-to-be Los Angeles Whatevers?

The poem at the top was written in response to Times columnist Braven Dyer, who had asked his readers to explain the tepid reaction to the arrival of pro football in Los Angeles in 1946.

This long-held bastion of college football, resolutely defended by USC and UCLA, had finally been invaded by not one, but two teams. The Rams moved from Cleveland and a new league, the All-America Conference, began with a local franchise named the Los Angeles Dons.

It wasn’t as if the long-starved pro fans here had to settle for chopped liver.

The Rams arrived as defending NFL champions. Imagine what it would be like now if Jerry Jones were to pack up the Dallas Cowboys and come here.

When the Rams’ move became official in January of 1946, an editorial appeared in The Times with the headline: “Chance To Prove We Are Big League.’

And indeed, when the Rams made their Los Angeles debut in an exhibition game against the Washington Redskins at the Coliseum, 68,188 turned out.

But the regular-season opener against the Philadelphia Eagles three weeks later drew only 30,553, a total below even the dismal crowds drawn by the Raiders at the Coliseum in their final frustrating days there.

The Rams also drew 30,000 for their second game, while the Dons, playing in a league that had yet to prove itself, averaged around 10,000 for their first three games.

After a couple of years of struggling, the Rams were again an NFL powerhouse and their attendance reflected it. By 1949, they were averaging 51,555 per game, best in the NFL that season.

In contrast, the Dons, although playing in the same stadium that same year, were next-to-last in their league in attendance, drawing an average of 22,095, less than half of what the Rams attracted.

It was to be the last year for the Dons. The All-America Conference folded after that 1949 season with three of the teams absorbed by the NFL.

By winning the NFL title in 1951, the Rams also won the loyalty of local fans. They went on to draw three crowds in excess of 100,000 and more than 30 in excess of 80,000 before leaving the Coliseum for Anaheim after the 1979 season.

The Chargers arrived in Los Angeles in 1960 as a charter member of the new American Football League. They tried to attach themselves to the community from the very outset with their name. It was derived from the fan who blew the old cavalry charge on a bugle at Dodger games.

The fans, however, didn’t exactly charge out to watch the new arrivals. A crowd of 27,778 came out for the exhibition opener at the Coliseum.

In that first year, trying to gain credibility in a new league much as the Dons had done more than a decade earlier, the Chargers couldn’t even do as well, averaging only 15,665.

The next year, Hilton, then the Charger owner, moved the team to San Diego and their average attendance nearly doubled to 27,859 although they played that year in Balboa Stadium, where the capacity was 34,000.

The Raiders, led by Davis, didn’t need to validate their credentials when they moved to the Coliseum in 1982. After all, although they were coming off a 7-9 season, they had won the Super Bowl the year before and had long been one of the strongest of the AFL teams.

That was good enough for the L.A. fans. The Raiders, who had averaged 48,989 the previous season in Oakland, drew an average of 56,798 in their first year in the Coliseum, that despite the fact that an ugly strike, which took away nearly half the season, left fans disenchanted with pro football in general.

When the Raiders went on to win the Super Bowl after the 1983 season, the fans again responded. The team averaged more than 70,000 at home in each of the following three years.

The Los Angeles Express of the United States Football League, whose games were played in the spring, also played in the Coliseum in the 1980s. While they opened their initial season of 1983 with a crowd of 34,000 at the Coliseum, by their final season of 1985, the Express was averaging around 7,000, with one crowd estimated as low as 2,000. Things got so bad that the final regular-season game was moved to Pierce College before the league folded.

So the lessons to be learned by Behring and any other football owner dreaming of captivating this town are pretty basic: If you want to succeed, come in here with an established winner in an established league.

And one other thing. Keep on winning.

Or maybe the best thing to do is to follow the example of the Los Angeles Buccaneers.

Who?

The Buccaneers, the city’s first pro football team. They played in 1926 when the NFL consisted of 22 teams. The Buccaneers finished 6-3-1 in their only season of existence.

And they never had trouble drawing hometown crowds. Because they never tried.

The Buccaneers were a traveling team that never played a single game in Los Angeles.

Now there’s a foolproof method of solving the problem of fan support.