With Futbol, We Don’t Miss Football

They left town a while ago, but I still follow the Oakland Raiders pro football team with mild interest. I’m troubled that they’re not playing in today’s Super Bowl, but not for the reason hard-core Raider fans are.

Like millions of TV viewers who saw the Raiders lose a playoff game to the New England Patriots two weeks ago, I know the Patriots are in the Super Bowl only because of a referee’s bad decision. But it never surprises me when the National Football League tries to foul the Raiders. They have been the least-favorite team of NFL bigwigs since 1982, when they sued the league in federal court to clear the way for their move to L.A.

My disappointment stems from the fact that if the Raiders were playing today against the St. Louis Rams, it would have given hundreds of journalists bored by the NFL’s usual pregame hype something genuinely provocative to write about: the first Super Bowl involving teams that once called Los Angeles home.

What those sports reporters would have found is that six years after both teams fled, hardly anybody in Los Angeles misses the Raiders, the Rams or the NFL.

Most of us realized from the very start that the NFL needs L.A. more than we need it. Nothing that has happened since the Raiders abandoned the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and the Rams skulked out of Anaheim Stadium has changed that consensus. Even last year’s decision by NFL owners to put an expansion team in Houston, rather than L.A., was shrugged off like a flat tire on the freeway--an annoyance that slows life in the fast lane temporarily.

And spare me any crocodile tears for the “average” L.A. football fan, who presumably doesn’t share my elitist contempt for the NFL. Our “average” fan never had it so good. Without a home team to enforce blackouts of network TV, fans in L.A. see more games--free.

Of course, that has not kept the NFL’s TV ratings from steadily declining, much to the chagrin of executives at the TV networks, who paid beaucoup bucks for broadcast rights.

Those TV types know that some Sundays there are now more soccer matches on local television than NFL games. They worry that one reason for the plummeting interest in the NFL here is because L.A.’s “average” sports fan is more interested in the success of futbol teams, such as Chivas of Guadalajara or Cruz Azul of Mexico City. The global sporting event those L.A. fans are looking forward to is not the Super Bowl or even the upcoming Olympics but soccer’s World Cup tournament in Korea and Japan in June.

The folks who run the Coliseum figured that out long ago. The stadium has remained profitable by staging international soccer matches that draw crowds that are as enthusiastic but better behaved than NFL crowds.

Demographics is destiny, the saying goes. If multicultural L.A. is a precursor of what other big cities in this country will be, that’s just one more reason Angelenos can patiently wait for NFL honchos to sneak back into town someday, like snake-oil salesmen looking for new tricks to help peddle their nostrums.

It could happen as early as 2003.

The San Diego Chargers are unhappy with their stadium and the lease that is supposed to keep them there until 2016. Despite the fact that the lease obligates San Diego to buy all unsold tickets to home games--a provision that has cost the city more than $25 million since 1997-- the Chargers are the latest NFL team hinting they might relocate to L.A. if taxpayers don’t build them a new stadium. A clause in the lease (whoever negotiated that thing for San Diego should be shot) lets them skip out of town in 2003.

What makes this scenario juicy is the fact that the next Super Bowl will be played in January 2003 in San Diego. So it will be easy for journalists to drive a few miles north and write about L.A.’s nonchalant attitude toward the NFL.

So if you like drama, don’t bore yourself watching today’s Super Bowl. Wait ‘til next year.

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Frank del Olmo is associate editor of The Times.