Colt Fans, Moving Vans

The RCA Dome was sold out Sunday night. It almost always is because the home of the Indianapolis Colts has the smallest seating capacity in the NFL and Indiana fans are passionate and loyal.

Will their loyalty be exploited, some of them wonder? There is this rumor about how owner Jim Irsay stood up at an NFL owners’ meeting and asked what it would take to move the Colts to Los Angeles.

No one can get Irsay to confirm or deny the statement. It seems the Colts have a lease at the Dome through 2007. But the Irsay family does have it in their DNA, that moving-the-team gene.

So the loyalists are nervous. And a little angry. And a bit concerned.

Colt fans will point out that Irsay has bought a new helicopter and built a helicopter pad at his house. They notice that Irsay spent $2 million for a manuscript, which went to the New York City Library and is being auctioned off for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But Colt fans only see a very rich man positioning himself to get taxpayer money for building a new stadium, either in Indianapolis or in Los Angeles.

Yep, Los Angeles gets used again.

Our poor, woebegone town doesn’t have a pro football team, so the populace must be in a constant state of depression. Our citizens must feel that life is not fulfilling if Peyton Manning isn’t throwing a game-ending interception in our town on Sunday night.

Life can’t be worth living if an NFL-team-owning billionaire isn’t asking our football fans for ransom money--oops, personal-seat-license money--so that our little burg can have its own, sparkly, high-tech, NFL palace.

Of course Irsay will use Los Angeles. Of course Irsay wants to be in Los Angeles. A man who has his own helicopter so he can negotiate Indianapolis traffic would certainly be happier living in Beverly Hills among helicopter-owning neighbors.

And according to a source close to the Colts, the RCA Dome lease has some “wiggle room” if it came to allowing the team to relocate before 2007.

The lease originally ran until 2014 but was renegotiated when the RCA Dome was renovated three years ago. Seating capacity was reduced to 56,127 to allow more luxury boxes.

The Colts also have the lowest average ticket prices in the NFL, as well as the fourth-lowest payroll and a team with good young talent, talent such as Manning, running back Edgerrin James and wide receiver Marvin Harrison.

It would make more sense for Los Angeles to get an established team with a realistic chance of moving into the playoffs than an expansion team, , which would most likely suffer through several losing seasons. A very bad team would not sell out a Los Angeles stadium for very long. That would result in TV blackouts. Right now, the NFL gets three games televised into the nation’s second-largest TV market.

The rumors keep flying, then, on Colt Internet message boards and chat rooms and among Colts’ employees, that somehow there’s a way Indianapolis will lose its NFL franchise unless a new stadium gets built. And maybe that won’t even be enough to keep the team, not if the owner wants to go Hollywood badly enough.

But maybe it’s time to put the rumors away. It might be nice to see a pro football team in Los Angeles. It might not be.

It will, though, be totally unseemly for any NFL owner who thinks his stadium is too old or too small or has insufficient luxury boxes or is the wrong part of town or in the wrong town to drop hints about wanting something more from taxpayers in this country.

The Saints and the Chargers have escape clauses in their leases too, which would let them flee even sooner than the Colts, like after the 2003 season. But so what?

Any owner who tries to hold up an American city, who tries to “negotiate” for city-funded football palaces, who tries to explain how a newer, nicer place for millionaires to play a game when the economy is suffering, when taxpayers are being asked to make sacrifices so that international terrorists can be eliminated, who will, in any way, make it seem as if life is less worthwhile in a non-NFL city, will be doing a very bad thing.

Bill Benner, formerly an Indianapolis Star sports columnist who now works for the Indianapolis Sports Corp., wrote, “Let’s not give in to implied threats. Let’s recognize who we are, what we’ve become and what it took--unprecedented public-private cooperation and keen foresight to take our humble Midwestern burg and put it on the national and international map.”

And, “Jim [Irsay] also needs to understand the principle of shared sacrifice. Or that he can’t plead poverty while he’s living the high life, flying about in the chopper and dumping millions on manuscripts.”

Indianapolis will fight for its team. It will look downright unpatriotic for Irsay or any other NFL owner to leverage one city’s desire for an NFL team against another’s desire to keep one.

As someone in the Colts’ offices said, “Whatever Jim wants right now, it’s probably better to just be quiet. Everyone knows we want a new stadium. It’s just not the right time to say we need one.”

Now more than ever, the difference between need and greed is clear. And for Los Angeles NFL fans, that means watching three NFL games on TV each Sunday.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.