NFL Latest Low-Speed L.A. Chase

Judging from recent developments in our town’s pursuit (if you can call it that) of the NFL, the new team (if there is one) should be nicknamed the Yadas.

As in, “The NFL needs us more than we need it, yada, yada, yada.”

Or, “We will not spend one penny of public money, yada, yada, yada.”

Or, “Nobody here cares about having a pro football team anyway, yada, yada, yada.”

After months of uninspired shadowboxing, the only winner here has been the rhetoric.

It’s time to face the reality.

We’re within three months of losing our third franchise in five years.

Can everyone just be quiet and get it done?

Those things we’ve been saying--me included--have been as true as a John Elway pass.

But it’s time for Los Angeles and the NFL to clear their desks of the dog-eared arguments and put the final touches on that rarest of gifts:

A public treasure that doesn’t cost a public fortune.

Lost in all the sniping is the fact that we are on the verge of acquiring a pro football team that can bring new excitement to the community while giving it another good reason to bond.

If you want to spend hundreds to watch that team play in person, fine.

But it won’t cost you a penny to watch it on TV, or talk about it around the water cooler, or share it at the dinner table.

It’s almost a no-lose situation.

Yet the NFL and Los Angeles are on the verge of getting beaten and embarrassed.

No, a new NFL team is not a museum or library. But it’s not a sanitary landfill, either.

It’s time for everyone to cut through the garbage.

The NFL needs us more than we need it.

Fine. Everybody knows that. I’ve written it 10 times. Make the NFL beg, fine, whatever.

Listen, by picking us over a completed deal in Houston, the NFL has already started to beg. Yet our city leaders still refuse to slow down and pay attention.

Why can’t somebody other than Eli Broad or Michael Ovitz step forward and remind the NFL it is still wanted?

For the umpteenth time, this effort needs one voice, one leader, one figure around whom everyone can rally before the owner is picked.

If Peter O’Malley is looking for something to do while staring out that new big office window, why not do this?

If Mayor Richard Riordan truly wants football--as he says he does when the cameras are rolling--this would be only a slight diversion from the far more important governmental issues.

How long does it take to tell somebody, “We want you.”

We will not spend one penny of public money.

Don’t you understand this, NFL? Our city leaders have not merely said it for four years, but proved it in the tussle to build the Staples Center.

Haven’t you been listening, NFL? This is not St. Louis. We are not rolling over for any businessman, whether he sells cars or cogs or quarterbacks.

Now, can we please get on with it?

The NFL needs to concede the battle for public money and instead begin fighting the equally important battle for public support. And it needs to fight it face to face.

The league needs to stop trying to cut a Southern California deal from New York. It needs to send somebody here, set up an office, learn about the players and the neighborhoods and the problems.

By the time the Cleveland Browns had their franchise back, the people there looked at Commissioner Paul Tagliabue like a neighbor. To us, he is still a stranger.

The more we think the league is trying to understand us, the more we’ll try to understand it.

Public support can be as strong as public money. As the Dodgers and Lakers have proved, it can also last longer.

Nobody here cares about having a pro football team anyway.

Of course we don’t care. But what does that have to do with the price of corn dogs?

The fans here, while certainly not the most passionate in the country, undoubtedly have the best sense of the dramatic.

We don’t show up at games until they start because, well, nothing’s happening. We leave early not only because of traffic, but because we are easily bored.

And you want us to care about a football team before it’s even a football team?

When it makes sense to care about it--when there is a quarterback and uniforms and the Raiders come to town--we’ll care about it.

And to make a team work, how many of the 16 million people in this area really need to care, anyway?

Those selling tickets will tell you only 60,000 with money.

I think we can supply that.

That’s simply common sense. All of this is simply common sense.

What began as a convoluted chase has come down to four basic principles.

A team participating in the new national pastime belongs in the nation’s second-largest market.

The NFL needs it.

There are at least two guys who can own it.

There are millions who would probably end up following it.

It’s time to get real about it.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.