L.A. Almost Had NFL Climbing Walls for It

The Houston Texans will open the season in a new $449-million stadium next Sunday night on national TV in a game against the Dallas Cowboys, while L.A. begins year No. 8 without an NFL team in our backyard.

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Q: What would have happened had the NFL awarded an expansion franchise to Michael Ovitz instead of Houston’s Bob McNair on Oct. 6, 1999?

a) By now a business-troubled Ovitz would have sold and moved the team to San Antonio.

b) The season opener in L.A. would have to be blacked out locally because of low ticket sales.

c) Fans entering the Rose Bowl for the first game would have been beaten to a pulp by Raider fans still waiting for their team to return.

d) Los Angeles would have one more Carr, and would be thrilled about it.

A: d. Rookie quarterback David Carr, married, father, handsome, articulate and armed with talent, would already be one of L.A.’s most popular athletes.

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Q: What would the name of L.A.’s football team be right now?

a) The Los Angeles Stars (represented by Ovitz), or the SROs for short.

b) The San Antonio Stars.

c) The Spidermen.

d) The Future Inmates.

A: c. Trick question. Had Tampa Bay accepted a deal from Hollywood Park to move here in 1995, the Bucs were going to change their name to the Spidermen. By this time, Hollywood Park would have already hosted at least one Super Bowl. The land there is now going to be used to build a strip mall.

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Q: What did L.A. lose when the NFL awarded the team to Houston?

a) Super Bowl XXXVIII to be played on Feb. 1, 2004.

b) A monument, in the form of a wall, listing the 12,518 charter members who purchased personal seat licenses for Houston’s new stadium.

c) Tom Cruise throwing a football around with Penelope Cruz in warmups.

d) Cruz throwing a football around with the Page 2 columnist in warmups.

A: All of the above. Houston received Super Bowl XXXVIII because McNair gave NFL owners $700 million to divide. The sale of $50 million in personal seat licenses helped defray the cost of McNair’s new playpen, and in return he put the fans’ names on a wall so everyone in Houston knows just who the suckers are. Cruise was going be one of Ovitz’s co-owners, reportedly now basing “Mission: Impossible 3” on the chances of getting local fans interested in the return of the NFL and Cruz throwing a football to the Page 2 columnist under any circumstances.

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Q: How would life be different in L.A. if we had an NFL team?

a) Football fans might not care as much about a Sparks’ victory parade.

b) Spidermen games might conflict with Dodger-Angel World Series.

c) Mark Ridley-Thomas might be left speechless.

d) Mayor Jim Hahn would be seen wearing Brian Urlacher’s jersey.

A: d. The No. 1 selling jersey in the NFL is No. 54--belonging to Urlacher, a linebacker for the Bears--and that’s how out of touch we are with the NFL.

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Q: Bob Walker, the race and sports director at the MGM and Mirage in Las Vegas, puts the odds at 150-1 that Houston wins the Super Bowl this year, so wouldn’t we be better off with a team moving here?

a) The Chargers are 45-1 coming off an eight-game losing streak with a quarterback who has made one NFL appearance in his career.

b) The Saints are 28-1, the Bills 30-1, the Vikings 28-1, the Cardinals 55-1, the Colts 12-1--and for some reason they all look better on DirecTV.

c) The Raiders are 14-1 and waiting for Darrell Russell to return.

d) USC and UCLA are each 45-1 to win the bowl championship series with the Bruins the 2-1 choice to have the first player hauled off in handcuffs this season during a game.

A: None of the above. Looking at these numbers, football brings only misery.

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Q: Some team is still going to try to move here, but which one?

a) The Chargers can trigger an escape clause in their lease beginning in December for 90 days, and every December, but only once every three years.

b) The Rose Bowl’s hiring of John Moag suggests the NFL already has a team in mind to move to L.A.

c) The San Francisco 49ers.

d) Who has Casey Wasserman’s telephone number?

A: I don’t know, and that’s my final answer. I look for the Chargers to wait another year before exercising their escape clause, which would start the small-city panic in San Diego a year from this December. Wasserman is tight with Charger management and there are rumors he might be interested in Transamerica Building land for a new stadium, but he’s going to need big-time help from someone like Ron Burkle. Tim LIE-weke, pardon, Leiweke has run into some tennis problems at Cal State Dominguez Hills and never got the OK from boss Philip Anschutz to pursue football. That prompted the NFL to call Moag, which is significant. That tells me the either the Saints, Colts or Chargers are hot to trot, and the league wants a viable option in L.A. to avoid the Coliseum.

My longshot choice has always been San Francisco--given the logjam of two Bay Area teams, the 49ers’ stadium problems, the DeBartolo family breakup, and my personal aversion to having the Spanos Goofs, who own the Chargers, follow in the footsteps of Al Davis and Georgia Frontiere.

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Q: In the meantime, while the stadium game goes on and we watch TV, who makes it to the Super Bowl in San Diego at the end of this season?

a) St. Louis (7 to 2) versus Pittsburgh (13 to 2).

b) Philadelphia (15 to 2) versus New England (8 to 1).

c) Tampa (8 to 1) versus Miami (12 to 1).

d) Washington (10 to 1) versus Tennessee (18 to 1).

A: c. Ricky Williams returns to San Diego, where he went to high school, and races off with Super Bowl MVP trophy before being stopped by the CHP, asked to remove his helmet and then given a ticket for speeding again.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com