Football and L.A. Once Had a Future

It has been--what?--two years now since the Rams pulled out. They moved clear to St. Louis before they unpacked.

They were bucking a trend. Everybody else in the U.S. was moving the other way, not northeast but west or south.

You want to hit yourself on the side of the head to see if you’re hearing right. I mean, Green Bay, pop. 96,000, with a trading area of 194,000, has a pro football franchise. And L.A., pop. 9 million, trading area 15 million, doesn’t?

Make sense? I don’t think so.

We’re talking L.A. here. Paul Waterfield. Van Brocklin snarled here. Crazy Legs Hirsch turned safety men into statues here. Tank Younger hit lines. Dick Bass scooted around them. Eddie Meador dismembered people here. Deacon Jones slapped them upside the head. Merlin Olsen buried them. Rosey Grier occupied the attention of three guys on every play.

They were L.A.’s team, the Rams. They came here as carpetbaggers. But so did everyone else.

Dan Reeves used to fire his coach every second week here until finally George Allen took him at his word.

There was never a dull moment.

And then, one day, Carroll Rosenbloom hauled anchor and the music stopped. It was a black day for football and for L.A. He moved to Anaheim for some putative real estate gains, but the hard-core Ram fans, the ones who didn’t waver whether the team won or lost, didn’t go with him. A whole tradition died.

The Raiders moved into the vacuum, but L.A. didn’t really cotton to them. They had this motorcycle-gang image and laid-back L.A. was used to guys in white hats cleaning out the ruffians, not vice versa. When the Raiders won, the fans came, when they lost, they didn’t. It was not a marriage for better or for worse. With the Rams, it had been.

The Raiders even fouled up their own nest. They sued the league for millions. And collected. And established the principle that turned the league into a tribe of Bedouins. The Colts moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis, the Browns from Cleveland to Baltimore, the Oilers from Houston to some place in Tennessee, and the Rams from Anaheim to St. Louis. Anarchy prevailed. The Raiders went sheepishly back to Oakland, Arizona and Minnesota threaten to hit the road any moment unless their communities build them palatial homes to play in. No one was minding the store in the NFL.

The fickleness of franchises had become such a fact of life that concerned citizens here even blocked the construction of new downtown sports facilities until, among other things, they could get assurances the franchises involved wouldn’t be double-parked with the motor running.

But what of L.A. without a franchise? What economic sense did this make to the league, the game and, more important, to the real owners of sports today, TV?

Was L.A. orphaned by the desertions? Naw! Laid-back L.A. could live without anything but the beach, the sun, the freeways. The L.A. fan either didn’t care or, worse, didn’t notice. Whoever tried to fill the void either ran into the intransigence of the city fathers, the stubbornness of the NFL or any combination of the two, which paralyzed movement.

The real amazement is how those in TV, with the highest stake in all this, did nothing. They waived off with a flick of the wrist probably the nation’s second-most important market.

What are they thinking of? Perhaps they think pro football is so entrenched, L.A. will watch anything.

Uh-uh. Bill Veeck once said, “Anybody who depends solely on the dyed-in-the-wool, dedicated fan will be out of business by Mother’s Day.”

With no rooting interests, what does the average L.A. fan do? I mean, he’s going to stay home from the beach to watch Pittsburgh-Indianapolis?

His wife says, “I’d like you to trim the ivy in the backyard today.” Is he going to say, “Not today. Not with Tennessee playing Cincinnati!”

He might still watch Oakland or St. Louis for a while. To root against them. When they get ahead, he’ll turn it off.

How many razor blades or light beers or imported cars do you think they’re going to sell in L.A. with Carolina at Minnesota, Philadelphia at Jacksonville or Atlanta at New Orleans? You going to reserve a seat at the neighborhood gin mill to watch the Chargers play the Cardinals?

Only in football can a city the size of Green Bay sustain a team, attendance-wise. That’s because you have to fill a football park only about eight times a year. You couldn’t put a baseball team in there where you have to fill it 81 times a year or a basketball team where you have to fill it 41 times a year.

But attendance revenue has become largely irrelevant anyway. It’s the TV bucks that keep the game rolling. And TV can’t survive on the Green Bay market. Or the Indianapolis. Or the Buffalo.

How can it ignore the greatest automobile market in the world, L.A. County?

The league’s mistake was not in trying to stop Al Davis from moving into L.A. Its mistake was in letting Carroll Rosenbloom move out of it. It has been all downhill since.

I mean, what are these guys going to do for an encore? Let the New York Giants move to Duluth and the Jets to Peoria? Maybe the Chicago Bears back to Decatur. And think up some totally inappropriate nicknames like my all-time favorite, the Utah “Jazz.” Although L.A. “Angel” wasn’t a bad oxymoron, either.

Whatever they call them, I think the NFL better get a team in here before 15 million people forget there is an NFL.