Los Angeles Is on the Goal Line

How long has it been since I actually saw a Super Bowl? I forget, but I wasn’t watching Sunday. Like a small but growing number of Americans, I’ve discovered the simple pleasure of doing other things--skiing, taking the family to Disneyland--while most people are watching television.

Besides, even before the National Football League played its annual championship game in Miami, I knew what city was the big winner this pro football season. It was neither Denver nor Atlanta, whose teams played in this year’s Super Bowl. It was Los Angeles.

I know Los Angeles doesn’t have an NFL team--and hasn’t since the Rams (now in St. Louis) and Raiders (back in their original Oakland home) left town four years ago.

But I am not referring to competition on the athletic field. I’m referring to the test of wills that ensued between this city and NFL officials--30 team owners and the league office in New York--after the Rams and Raiders fled. It hasn’t gotten much attention, and NFL spokesmen will surely deny it if asked, but this season L.A. won the standoff.

The league initially expected this city to react like others that have lost NFL franchises: with panic and guilt. Angry pro football fans demand action. City fathers beg the NFL’s forgiveness. And eventually some combination of local businessmen and taxpayers pay through the nose for a new franchise.

But here in L.A., after briefly pondering the prospect of autumn Sundays without the Rams and Raiders, we shrugged and went about our business.

Our estrangement from pro football only grew. As the NFL moved teams into second-tier burgs like Jacksonville and Hartford, the reaction from Los Angeles was apathy, occasionally interrupted by open hostility whenever someone was foolish enough to suggest using public money to lure the NFL back.

Just before the start of last fall’s season, the NFL blinked. In announcing plans to expand to 32 teams by 2002, league officials said they would entertain bids from two cities: Houston, the biggest city in football-mad Texas, and (ahem!) Los Angeles.

Since then, league sources have privately made it clear that L.A. is the city they really want. And two groups have come forward to submit bids for an NFL franchise. Both include local businessmen known for their bargaining skills. Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz heads one group. The big-money man in the second is Eli Broad, who made his fortune building and selling houses here.

I would be surprised if either of these savvy businessmen takes seriously the NFL’s $1-billion price tag for an L.A. team--$600 million for the franchise fee and $400 million for a new stadium.

The NFL is trying to back up this billion-dollar bluff by threatening to build its own stadium in Los Angeles, then auctioning it off, along with a new franchise, to the highest bidder. But only someone who doesn’t know much about L.A. and how difficult it is to build anything big here without a lot of local support thinks that gambit will work.

The cold, hard fact of the matter is that Los Angeles has pro football right where we want it. The NFL now realizes they need us more than we need them.

Why? Start with TV ratings. Despite the multibillion-dollar contract the league signed last year with four major broadcast networks, ratings for football declined again. Even the league’s showcase, Monday night games on ABC, saw viewership drop 7%. Los Angeles is the second-biggest TV market in the country, so it would help the NFL to have us back in the fold when they renegotiate those contracts, starting in 2002.

Then there are the league’s demographic problems. Its fan base is mostly middle-aged men who got hooked on the sport in the 1960s, and we’re not getting any younger. Meanwhile, fan interest among the young, who prefer participation sports like surfing, skateboarding or bicycling, is falling even more precipitiously than football’s TV ratings. And that trend won’t be turned around until, and unless, the NFL revives fan interest in the city that sets the tone of youth culture in this country--El Lay.

And of course it’s now a cliche to call Los Angeles the modern-day Ellis Island--the port of entry where millions of new immigrants are first introduced to U.S. culture. Well, those new immigrants care more about soccer than American football. Just check out the big crowd that I guarantee will show up at the Memorial Coliseum on Feb. 10 when the soccer teams of Mexico and Argentina play a mere exhibition match. If the NFL ever wants to interest those sports fans in their product, they need a team back in the city of Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles--and pronto.

All of this is what prompted the NFL to come crawling back to Los Angeles. And none of us--Broad, Ovitz, their partners and any elected official who gets involved--must lose sight of everything L.A. brings to the table as details of the NFL’s humble return to “the city of the 21st century” are negotiated.